Learn True Health with Ashley James

Special Number To Call for IIN - (877) 780-5748 Say you heard about IIN through Ashley James and the Learn True Health Podcast for the listener special! Get a free module to see if IIN's Health Coach Training Program is right for you by going to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach Music "Uniq - Japan" is under a Royalty Free license. Photo of the license: http://bit.ly/2sTETUQ Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: https://youtu.be/MAiHpRUbc0k   The Future of Health Coaching https://www.learntruehealth.com/future-health-coaching Highlights: Recognizing and honoring our uniqueness is going to be the key to our health and happiness. Primary food is what feeds us but it’s not because what comes on a plate. It comes in a bunch of different categories. It could be your relationship with health, it could be your physical activity, it could be your career, it could be spiritual, it could be financial. It’s all those things around you that impact who you are and so you need to think about those.  Living a life of balance being our best self every single day, it’s just knowing what you want to do and how you want to get there you have to help get balance in your primary food. IIN’s philosophy and what it means to be health coach   Want to learn how to be the best version of yourself? Where you could have a life lived with balance in all sorts of ways. Find out on today’s podcast on how you can achieve with as Lynda Cloud shares her success story.   [Intro:] Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I am really excited for you to listen to today’s interview. It’s a little bit different than our other interviews because I’m interviewing the CEO of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. The world largest health coaching training company. Lynda Cloud has some wonderful insights. It’s really interesting looking at the life of someone who was so accomplished and so busy working in New York City as a CEO of a major multimillion dollar company. Here she is focusing on how to create balance and health in her life. In a company who’s corporate culture puts the health of the employees first above all else. The emotional, mental and physical health of the employees above all else. Isn’t that interesting? Wouldn’t you like to work for in a company that treated your health as the most important thing? Of course, a very close second, the customer and customer support and customer satisfaction. What an interesting concept. Normally it’s about cutting corners and trying to figure out how to save money and pinch a penny here and there. With IIN, there are bowls of avocados for their staff. They have a chiropractor come in weekly and a massage therapist come in. they have yoga classes and meditation room. They set out to make sure that the staff really are making sure that their life is balanced. That they have joy in every areas of their life and fulfillment. What does IIN get in return for investing in their staff? They get amazing productivity, creativity and trickles down to us, the consumer, the customer. Me as a graduate, while I was going through the program, I felt so supported and the staff are so wonderful to work with. Many of my friends and many listeners actually have gone through IIN’s program and they had also found that they get incredible service and they feel connected. When they call IIN they feel like they’re being listened to like a human and they’re not just another number. And there’s no high pressure sales that they’re just talking to someone who’s so passionate about helping people become the healthiest versions of their selves. Imagine what the world would be like if every company adapted the same corporate culture as IIN. What’s really neat is that there are companies, and this is what Lynda talks about today is that there are companies who’s training to adapt this. It’s very neat and she shares what she’s done in her life to balance her life in a way that has stopped illness from becoming a problem. I think no matter where you are in life whether you’re interested in becoming a health coach or not. You’re really going to like today’s interview because there’s so much to learn here. I wanted to let you know if you are interested in contacting IIN, they actually created a special phone number, a priority line for Learn True Health listeners. You can give this a call and you’ll be placed with a wonderful staff member at IIN. Most of them are health coaches already where they can discuss with you all the details you want just so you could gather more information and see If that’s something that’s right for you. It’s a major decision to make to want to dive in which of course I did immediately the second I heard about IIN. I dove into that same day. It’s a major decision to make. If you think about it, you’re investing a year of your life into learning and growing. About half the people that jump into IIN do so because they want the personal growth. I got a lot of personal growth out of the program. I can see just doing it for that alone instead of making a career change. The other half are the people that join do make a career change that they want to add on to their tool belt that they’re already in the holistic health space or they want to join the holistic health space as a health coach. You could call this number, 877-780-5748. That’s 877-780-5748. That will also be on the show notes of today’s podcast on Learntruehealth.com so you can go there. If you’re driving or if you can’t give them a call maybe it’s the middle of the night, you could go to Learntruehealth.com/coach and that gives you access to one of their modules. You can just check it out and see if that’s right for you. I highly recommend giving them a call because having a great discussion with one of their staff members and getting more information from them, you’ll start to feel what it’s like to be part of that culture. Be part of the health coaching culture and you’ll learn more about the different areas that you can work and how it can impact your life and how you can impact others. That phone number again is 877-780-5748. Enjoy today’s interview. Please share it with those who you think would be a great health coach. This is the fastest growing sector of the health space and that’s really exciting. That very soon, I think health coaching would be as popular and as well-known as hiring a personal trainer. That it will be that popular that you’ll be able to go to any gym or any health clinic or hospital and you’ll be able to have access to a health coach. There’s so much potential here and also, with the new legislature. We’ve talked about this in the interview that in 2020 health coaches will be able to work with insurance companies. There are just so many doors that are opening, it’s very exciting. Excellent. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and a wonderful holiday season.     [06:09] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 399. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have with us, Lynda Cloud, who is the CEO of Institute for Integrative Nutrition, IIN. It’s the worlds largest health coach training program and the program that I graduated from and many of the listeners have been graduates or are currently going through the program. I’m so excited to learn from you today, Lynda. It’s such a pleasure to have you here on the show.   [06:49] Lynda Cloud: Pleasure is all mine, Ashley.   [06:52] Ashley James:  This is awesome. Now, you have over 30 years of experience in the education space and a lot of it even online of course because we’ve all transitioned to learning online. This idea that no matter how old we are, we can go back to school. No matter how busy we are, we can go back. We can get a degree. We can get certification. We can continue our learning no matter where we are in life. No matter what country we are in. I love that IIN is in all countries. There are students from all around the world who come to become health coaches. I’m really curious. What happened in your life that led you to become the CEO of IIN?   [07:40] Lynda Cloud:  Well, it’s an interesting question. As you said 30 years experience which makes me feel a little old. Not seasoned but old. Had the distinct pleasure of being in education online learning for really my entire career. I started out in education teaching for a bit and fell in love with the idea of learning and fell in love with the idea of trying to make learning as engaging as I could and accessible as I could. That took me through a journey working for the one of the largest at that time, education companies, Pearson and really grew up there. Learned a lot about instructional design, learned a lot about product management marketing, sales. Kinda sat in lots of different seats and that gave me the opportunity to really get a holistic view on customers and what’s important to them. Even what’s most important which is how we help students be successful. That foundation really led me into the next step on my career which is running a division in the K-12 space online learning. That was incredibly rewarding and we did a lot on innovation, a lot of innovative stuff there. Had a great run with that company and through my whole journey. I knew I loved helping make education and schools better. That’s what the first part of my story is, then as I went through this journey I realized as a working mom and trying to do a million things, the thing I let slipped and probably paid the least attention to was my own health of wellness journey. Because if you get only so many hours in the day, what you end up doing is sacrificing things. At the point in my life, I was really sacrificing the time I needed to help myself be the best person I could. Whether it was fitness and activity or meditation and good nutrition. These were all came together for me when I started to talk to the folks at IIN and learn about the school and learn about the mission. It felt like a natural intersection where I could take the general management experience and the work I’ve been doing in running large education companies and marry that really in a way I hadn’t been able to do personally. Where I could live my best self at work at all the time. That’s what led me her and I fell in love with the people and the school.   [10:26] Ashley James: I love it. Now you have mentioned that you were part of creating some innovative stuff in the K-12 space. Is there particular aspect of the K-12 program that you helped innovate the you’re really proud off?   [10:44] Lynda Cloud: Yes. There’s a couple of examples. I was really fortunate to be given a space in large corporations where I could do a lot of RND and a lot of disruptive stuff to help us re-imagine online learning and education. One area I’m most proud of was at K-12 was at one large online learning school. One of the things I did there as launch a new category for them around career destinations. A lot of the students going through that curriculum really, it was their last chance. They were struggling for what they were doing next and maybe to where four-year college wasn’t the right path for them. They were looking for an alternate path. We looked that where the jobs we’re going to be in the next 10 years and we put together a series of curriculum with partners to get people get their high school diploma online while they were getting certified and key areas and help them get a career advancement and opportunities. That was brand new school that was launched. That was fulfilling and mission-driven. Doing good and having fun.   [12:02] Ashley James: How many people would you say went through that program? Just thinking of thousands of people, the ripple effect that you’ve had that idea that you’ve ran with your team. Now because if that thousands of people have their career path and they’re supporting their families and feel proud of themselves like they belong to society.   [12:27] Lynda Cloud: It was a fun one. It was one of those that everybody was, “Who could say no helping kids be successful and getting a career path?” I don’t know the actual numbers. I do know when I left, it was fast growing part of the company. We had a lot of success there and longevity. Really for me, that would – your point the ripple impact is really what’s driven me. I have been lucky enough to be successful and I really attribute my success because I love what I do everyday and I feel like I’m making a difference in people’s lives. I think that when success comes when you’re passionate about something and as you know, the days are long and to be able to make a difference and to take that ripple and pay it forward is awesome which is what I think IIN does.   [13:21] Ashley James: I love it. What inspired you to be the CEO of IIN? Did someone reached out to you or did you reached out to them?   [13:30] Lynda Cloud: Yes, they reached out to me and I started some conversations. I could tell you the moment that I knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted this role was, I spent a day with the IIN team and if any of you get a chance, which we would love to have you come visit us. Our offices in New York City are so cool. You’ll get a chance to meet the incredible team. You walk into the office and you can feel the mission. There’s bowls of avocados, there’s fruit, there’s a vitamin bar, there’s yoga instruction on Thursday night. There’s a chiropractor, there’s a massage therapist. We live our mission everyday and the people here are really passionate about what we do. We have over 78% of our staff are female and they’re mostly all trained health coaches. They are graduates of the program and so they know first hand what’s important to our students and help make our curriculum and our teaching better everyday as a result of it.   [14:39] Ashley James: I get to interview Joshua Rosenthal. The creator of IIN, the founder at episode 106. He talked about the corporate culture that he had created. That he wanted culture where people really did put their health first. Put the company second. Their health obviously everyone’s health is first and then the mission of helping the students is a close second obviously but we have to take care of ourselves. We have to walk the walk and talk the talk. I thought that was so brilliant. I interviewed one of your staff members and she sure enough said that it’s absolutely amazing. That it’s a culture that supported each other and each other’s health. I thought that is so brilliant. What if every business did this? I know that Microsoft did a test in their Japan office where they introduced a four-day workweek and they saw productivity go up. I think it was like over 60%. Every corporate needs to look at IIN and see what they’re doing and look at what Microsoft just did in Japan and see that by shifting the focus from let’s say Amazon. Amazon works their workers to the bone and it’s cutthroat and a really dangerous work environment to be in long term, shift from that to the more nurturing, making sure we have work life balance. We see that productivity goes up and that longevity goes up. The company flourishes long time and which is what is happening with IIN. So you walked for that space that day and you’re just re-pinching yourself thinking that this is different from every other corporation you have ever witnessed.   [16:35] Lynda Cloud: Yes, I did. For me, that was the personal shift I needed to make. I’ve been in corporate America for over 25 years, my typical lens as a general manger and former head of these divisions was figuring out, how do you take the cost out, does this makes sense, are we operating as efficiently. A hard look at business. When I walked in here, what went through my mind, “Gosh, these avocados must’ve cost a fortune” but as I got to spend time with everyone around the organization and realized that, they really are living their true best self here. As a result of it, yes, we have incredible creativity and innovation and productivity. Figuring out how you merge your personal best with your professional. I hadn’t seen in action life there before. So the avocados are staying for sure.   [17:43] Ashley James: Since becoming the CEO this year which is back in March. You’re coming up on a year in a few months and you’ve obviously just got a moment to step into the role and get the landscape. What have you changed or you personally brought in that has been innovative since you’ve stepped in as CEO?   [18:09] Lynda Cloud: The school is incredible. I can’t say enough great things about Joshua and his vision from how he developed and thought about the curriculum to the teams that he hired. Really, I was brought in to help build upon that solid foundation and how to take the organization from good to great. Trying to think through what that can look like ad how we can start to take the footprint that’s here. Really make a bigger impact around the world and so, we are known as the original, the OG’s are what the team calls it. Health and wellness, health coaching. He coined and created the category. Everything we do is about servicing the category and continuing to build the health coach industry so we can have the ripple effect around the world. The work I’ve been doing over the past few months was starting to transition the organization from the school that we are today and help with some professional development and training of the teams. We’ve brought in a new head of sales and marketing. We’ve bought in a new chief financial officer. We’ve kept a nice blend of the old and new guards to help us think through. How we can start to build and enter adjacent markets. We’ve kicked off a new business plan. We’ll be launching a new product line in April because we see how impactful our health coach training program has been and making difference in people’s lives we want to create versions of that. That then can enter for example corporate wellness and help make aspects of the content much more accessible for folks and giving them a taste of small or short-term course. The first courses will start in April. We’re on that which we’re super excited on that. That’s some of the new things we’ve done. We’ve infused new talent. We’ve invested in our existing teams and we’ve started to think about some of the new markets we’re going to be entering.   [20:24] Ashley James: Very cool. When I’ve had Joshua on the show, episode 106. He said that IIN was hiring lobbyists to advocate and educate politicians in DC on the benefits of health coaching and certified health coaches so that we can carve space out. First of all, protect our rights to be health coaches and also make sure that there is space moving forward for certified health coaches and then just this year, IIN announced that here was some movement in legislature. Can you share more details on that?   [21:04] Lynda Cloud: Yes, I’m happy to. We are the only health coach school really that has full time lobbyist in DC. I had the good fortune of going down and something on DC with him. About a month or two ago, meeting with different senators and legislators to talk about the category of health coaching. Part of what we are doing, is bringing awareness. Helping people understand exactly what a health coach is, how we can impact people’s lives and how we can work side by side with hospitals and insurance companies to help be the coach that based on help reverse chronic disease and looking for ways we can help implement new practices and support for people. The change that you’re mentioning is around it’s called CPT111 codes. That consortium in particular is instrumental in getting the work for the ground. Really what that does is positive for the market because it helps get recognized potentially for some insurance payees and different reimbursements in that area. We have right now was a category 3 and that enables us to collect data around the work that we’re all doing around the industry which hopefully results to category 1 which is what we’re striving for in that space.   [22:30] Ashley James: Does that mean that a health coach soon will be able to work with insurance companies?   [22:38] Lynda Cloud: For reimbursement. What we are hoping. Yes, exactly.   [22:41] Ashley James: Very cool. I see it everywhere which is so neat. I didn’t see it everywhere 10 years ago but now I see health coaches at the doctor’s office and even in the hospitals. My health insurance offers health coaches, health coach service. Because now health insurance companies see that they’re going to save money if they get their customers using a health coach because then it’s preventive medicine in a sense. People are cleaning up their diets and being motivate around their health and they’re less likely to get sick. So the insurance companies are investing in hiring health coaches. I’m seeing the space just open and open where there’s so many job opportunities. I know that IIN also teaches people to be independent health coaches. I think some people, they’re being interested in being health coach but they’re not interested at being an entrepreneur? Can you speak to that? For those who maybe a bit hesitant to jump into the health coaching space because they don’t feel like they could not be an entrepreneur?   [23:46] Lynda Cloud: Yes, happy to. Maybe just by way of context, your observations are spot on. I also couldn’t decide if it’s just because I’m living and breathing this every day and now enrolled as a student that I’m seeing health coaches everywhere but when you look at the data, the health coach market is estimated that it’s going to reach 7.9 billion by 2022. We’re seeing incredible acceptance and growth and I feel like we are just at this pivotal moment where we’re going to become ubiquitous in terms of health coaching and how we can help provide health coaches. Our students who go through the programs you know, we graduate close to 10,000 students each year. About 50% and the data’s been remarkably consistent. About 50% of our students are going through the curriculum for personal transformation. Maybe they have something they’re trying to solve in their lives. Maybe they just want to get themselves better. Maybe they’re stuck and they want to get unstuck but about 50% are going though for their own personal journey and personal transformation and betterment. The other 50% are going through it maybe they are a yoga instructor, a fitness instructor, chiropractor and they want to get additional certification or they want to pursue a career in health coaching and those 50% maybe in doctor’s office, they maybe insurance companies. Where MDs hiring health coaches, hospitals all over the world are hiring health coaches. Our students who come out the other side are what we’re trying to do is we look at the curriculum is look at ways we could support them in their journey with different options at the end of graduation. One of the things you’ll hear from us early in 2020, I can’t quite announce it yet but we’re keenly focused on how do we help our health coaches who maybe loves what they’re doing. Some of our students are incredibly entrepreneurial but some of them really don’t want to spend their time doing all the business administrative stuff so what we’re working on is the solution where we can help them just push play. And it would be a way for them to get their business going on much more quickly. In the curriculum, we have way that you could help with. We could help you get your social page going, we could help you get your webpage going, we could help you if want to write a book and launch your dream book but this would be much more supportive very specific to the health coach graduate who want to start their own business.   [26:32] Ashley James: That sounds really exciting. That sound like another Lynda Cloud innovative thing since you –   [26:39] Lynda Cloud: Well, it is certainly a team innovative thing.   [26:42] Ashley James: Well, you’re the head right? Just looking back the ways that you carved out a whole new space for the k-12 online platform and help those students who were, they didn’t have a place, they didn’t feel like they belong and they had a place. That’s sort of the same. Right now, you’re doing the same for these health coaches who or people who wanted to be health coaches but they don’t have the entrepreneurial skill. They don’t have the time energy or the skill to break out on their own but they are amazing at health coaching. We’re expected nowadays to be a jack-of-all-trades to the jane-of-all trades. We’re expected to be a great mom and a great career woman or a great stay at home mom or a great homeschooler. Whatever we’re doing basically 15-hour days and then on top of that have these know everything we should know about internet marketing so that we can have a successful health coaching practice. It’s like, I would really want to see someone who’s an amazing health coach and I don’t need them to be a great marketer but how am I going to reach them or how are they going to reach me? I love that IIN is creating a way for these amazing health coaches to be able to get connected with the people to the people that are looking for amazing health coaches.   [28:09] Lynda Cloud: Yes, it’s interesting. I think that our students and the people in the health and wellness field in particular, were passionate people. We’re really are doing this because we want the world to be better place. Often times it’s hard for people to put a price tag on that. One of the first notes I got when I started here via LinkedIn was from one of my students saying, “Welcome. What do you think I should charge for my health coaching session?” I was like, “Oh, geez.” Because we just don’t know how to put a price tag and contemplate the business aspect of running a business which is so important. This side, I think what we’re working on people will be super excited about. It’ll all just help make their lives easier. They still have the opportunity to personalize it as much as they want or invest the time if that’s where they want to choose it but if as you say, we want a really good health coach spending their time coaching and advising and partnering and they want their tools and the resources they can get them.   [29:00] Ashley James: That is such a common question back when I was 19. I went to college to become a massage therapist. In Canada, it’s a bigger course. It’s like a 3,000 hour course. We study alongside nurses when we take the anatomy classes in college. That was one of the biggest question was, “What do we charge? What do we charge for a service?” I’ve seen that again in the NLP space. I was master practitioner and trainer and worked with the international training company teaching people how to become NLP practitioners. All the NLP practitioners didn’t know what to charge. That was the big question. You charge too little people don’t value what you do. You charge too much you’re unobtainable. You want the sweet spot and basically you want a price that honors the client. What I love about health coaching is it’s affordable. It’s accessible and affordable for people to go through your program but for people for clients who also hire health coaches. I love that it creates because you could do group coaching. Some people charge like $20 or $40 a month and they get a whole group together and by the end of it, the group learns more from each other. Learns even more from each other than they did from the coach but the coach was the facilitator. There’s so many opportunities for people who are even they can’t afford to go see all these holistic experts but they can definitely afford health coaching because health coaching helps them to identify the actionable steps they can take to bring their life back into balance. Now you started being a student at IIN. How far along are you in the program?     [31:00] Lynda Cloud: I am in early days. I think I’m in fifth module. I started working with the education team on the curriculum. We’re starting to look and refresh of the current and I thought I had to start taking this because this is just so compelling. I’m loving it, I’m doing it at night. I’m having fun with it. My family I think is feeling the impacts of it already.   [31:30] Ashley James: Now even before module five when you first joined IIN, there’s a foundation. The second you join even let’s say your class hasn’t started yet because there’s an official launch. The whole cohort of students go through it together even though it’s online you feel like you have this community. I love that because I connect with people around the world. All the students that were in it that the same time as I was. I participated in discussion throughout the whole year together online. Before your official start date when you join, so you can join anytime. You’re given the fundamentals modules and you have to have Kleenex with you because I bawled. I was crying tears of inspiration the entire time. I was like, “I am meant to be here.” It felt like –   [32:25] Lynda Cloud: You found your people.   [32:26] Ashley James: Yes. And it felt like I wasn’t the black sheep anymore. I was just crying and crying. It was so good. It was so cathartic. I felt like my favorite part of the entire year was the foundation. So don’t change that. Just add to it but don’t change it. It was so good. When you watched the fundamentals, the foundation modules what were you’re thinking as you’re going through it?   [32:56] Lynda Cloud: So for me, there are couple of things that happen. I feel like I cheated a little bit because of my role I have the opportunity to go to one of our live events. We had a couple of months ago that was incredible which I’ll talk about which felt like for me that was cathartic but it all made sense to me. There was a ton of common sense but then there’s this shift that transpired where what you were all of a sudden is primary food is not a primary food anymore. Once you start to make that shift and you think about the idea of what’s feeding your soul versus feeding your body and understanding. All those aspects. That to me was really substantial and how I thought about all aspects of my life. Then it was great to get to know Josh which you’ll do – you just feel like, he’s brought you into his world. As well as the other visiting teachers that are incredible. It’s been great. It’s been really helpful for me. Not just in my own personal life but also professionally.   [34:15] Ashley James: Tell us about the live event because it sounds like you enjoyed that even more than taking the online training.   [34:23] Lynda Cloud: Each student as you know who goes through our program has the opportunity to participate in a live event. It’s an event we hold one big event and that’s another area we’re actually looking at for next year is diversifying that and holding many more live events so that we could give people the opportunity the students the opportunity to come together. The live event that I attended was at the Lincoln center. It was a combination of incredible speakers, incredible community. We we’re dancing, we were swaying, we were crying, it’s like a revival meeting where you’ve come to gather and you found your people and people were just excited to be with other students. We have about 25% of people there who came outside the US, which marries the numbers of students we have in our curriculum who participate from outside the US. But was wonderful. It was just a good combination of wonderful speakers and community and people coming together.   [35:34] Ashley James: That’s really cool. What speaker was your favorite?   [35:37] Lynda Cloud: Dr. Weil was there. I just adore him. Andrew Weil I think is brilliant. He’s fantastic. Cherry Walsh talked about her protocol. I had the chance to visit with her and her daughter. She’s just an inspiration. From the business side, there was a woman there Meghan McCarthy. She is a hospital administrator from a hospital in the Pacific Northwest that we do a lot of work with. She’s like our first corporate client if you will. Meghan is an inspiration because she is breaking down those walls and saying, “I believe that health coaches can save the world and I believe that everybody needs to be health coach. “ What Meghan is doing is putting folks in the hospital through the health coach program and then doing a train the trainer model within her hospital community. She’s breaking it. She’s killing it. She’s just doing great work.   [36:48] Ashley James: Wow. Can you share which hospital it is?   [36:50] Lynda Cloud: PeaceHealth.   [36:53] Ashley James: I live in the Pacific North West, I’ve never heard of it but I bet I will be hearing about it. Sounds amazing.   [36:57] Lynda Cloud: You will, yes. We’re actually doing some outreach. She’s a force and she’s just great to work with. So we’re doing some additional work with her. Going out into committees and helping train the trainer within the communities and some of the work she’s doing with meals on wheels program, YMCA, etc.   [37:18] Ashley James: I love it. Since you joined IIN as their CEO, obviously you’ve been learning, you immersed into the corporate culture of IIN. You have gone to the live event, you’ve rubbed elbows with Joshua Rosenthal which you spent any amount of time with him and he is teaching you how to balance your life in a way that brings you joy. You have started to really absorb all of the education that IIN teaches. What changes have you made to your personal life since joining IIN?   [38:00] Lynda Cloud: My whole world changed when I joined IIN. I’ll tell you about it personally and the how IIN helped me get thought the change. I was living up in a town called Newton, Massachusetts right outside of Boston before taking the role at IIN. I moved to New York City. For the first time in my life, I’m living in New York city. That was a huge change. On top of that, my youngest left for college and we were instant empty nesters. You couldn’t have changed one more thing on our world if you wanted to.  For IIN to New York City, that’s a big change. What I found though is I’m eating a lot healthier. We have organic breakfasts and lunches. I eat clean every day that has helped for sure with my energy and my stamina and my overall health. I’m meditating more because New York can eat you up. It can be a really frenetic hectic place. Overwhelming for a sensory perspective, IIN’s philosophy and methodology has helped me I think transition into the city in ways that I can focus on self-care in New York City which is not a an easy thing to do. But it has helped me think about ways to optimize my nutrition, my fitness and my health in a city environment.   [39:39] Ashley James: Very cool. As you’ve been going through the course, I know you’re only five modules in, there’s still a lot of content there. What homework have you implemented in your life from the course?   [39:56] Lynda Cloud: I have taken the spirit of bio-individuality and I’ve taken that from theory to practice. So for those of you who haven’t been through the course when you start to think about bio individuality and the term, it’s really that we’re all unique. Recognizing and honoring our uniqueness is going to be the key to our health and happiness. What you need each point in time in your life may change and it’s very personal to you and one of the things I’ve done in terms of theory to practice is taken that and apply that to a very diverse family that I’ve had. I’ve had vegetarian son and a husband who really loves meat and trying to figure out how do I introduce individualized meals and nutrition for them in ways that are going to make them the best they can be and enjoy what they’re doing and knowing that what’s good for one person isn’t necessarily always good for the other person. It’s really shifted my mindset I would say.   [41:08] Ashley James: Instead of trying to get your son to eat meat and your husband to eat vegetables.   [41:11] Lynda Cloud: Exactly. Which was not successful. We’re trying to find the one meal that would satisfy everybody. That’s been great. We’ve also been busy looking at what the next year’s going to bring for IIN and that’s been super fun. We’ve got a team of really talented people. There’s no shortage of ideas where we can take the company but we think there’s some really great stuff we’re doing in terms of working more closely with our affiliates and ambassadors and visiting teachers. That’s been cool.   [41:52] Ashley James: I love it. You’ve been around enough now to have heard some success stories. Both from the standpoint of the students and the staff and also clients. Can you share some really inspiring success stories that standout in your mind?   [42:12] Lynda Cloud: Yes. I think I’ll share a story of a woman I met at the conference. She was just absolutely fantastic. She just finished the program and she was sharing with me that she had her son who have diabetes and was just really struggling with of how to help him. She was telling me the story welling up at how this gave her clarity in ways that things hadn’t been able to give her family clarity before. She was able to take the philosophy of figuring out exactly what was right for him and helping him become healthier and the success he had. When you hear those kind of nuggets, when you hear those kind of stories, whether it’s health related or it’s just people feeling stronger or people feeling like they’re in a place that they didn’t realize they could get to and how the curriculum and the community which is I would say is the most unsung hero around IIN, is just how strong of a force the community is. Whether you’re posting something or sharing something or seeing someone in person just when the community comes together you feel as you were describing, you found your tribe, you found your people who all of a sudden understand what you needed. They are nothing but supportive and they’re just nothing but supportive and happy people that help you in your journey. That’s  kind of the theme of the most of the stories and most of the impact. That’s the vision is to create this cripple around the world and pay it forward. That’s our goal.   [44:11] Ashley James: Back in the day, Joshua used to call this something else. It wasn’t health coaching, it was health counselling? Was it counselling? But then the word counselling, it wasn’t clear enough and I don’t think it was legal to be called counselor because that’s is more for therapy. What I thought is interesting is I went into – I signed up to IIN to become a health coach not knowing how much emotional support you learn how to provide. I thought I was going in because you learn in IIN in the yearlong course, you learn a hundred dietary theories and I thought I was going in to learn nutrition and how much vitamin C is in something. Which is you don’t really need to know. You don’t need to memorize how much vitamin C is in stuff, you could just google it but you actually learn skills in IIN. How to be with someone and hold the space for them to feel heard. Sometimes for the first time in their life. In a way that is not biased or doesn’t have an agenda. Because when we go to our best friend or when we go to our mom, or we go to people that are in our life, they have agenda. I remember going telling my best friend I was moving. I was moving to a different country. I’m from Canada. And she was really upset because she didn’t want me to move right? That was my path and I needed to. I wasn’t going to get a positive space. She wasn’t going to make a positive space for me. She had to process her own emotions about me moving. When we got to friend or a family member, to talk about what’s happening in our life that stop us from achieving our health goals. Their emotions come up. They can’t be a blank supportive space. Sometimes there’s even self-sabotage and I’ve seen it in my family. I have a family member that says to another family member, “When are you going to lose weight?” and then offers them a cookie. Over and over again. This level of sabotage that’s going on and we love our friends and family, they have their own agenda and maybe it’s unconscious. Going to a health coach you have someone who listens to you who just sits with you listens to you and helps decipher what your goals are. What your true desires are. Then holds that space for you to achieve it and helps you to uncover what’s stopping you and then helps you create an action plan towards it. I’ve had some amazing times with my clients as a health coach that I pinch myself and Joshua says this happens when you as a health coach get as much growth out of health coaching as your client does. Every time my client had a success I felt like I had a success because I learn so much about myself and also my ability to hold the space for someone as they grew.  It’s this career that is constantly evolving you as a person and allowing you to feel human connection and love and care for someone in a way that is not co-dependent. In a way that is uplifting them. Letting them do the work but holding them accountable. It’s a beautiful dance because anyone could google the nutrition or the calories in something that doesn’t teach us how to help someone be the best version of themselves. IIN doesn’t teach us stuff that we can go an just google. It’s teaching us skills that we can really help someone achieve not only their physical health but the emotional health ad help them achieve their life goals. I’ve had clients who we ended up talking about their relationships and their career and things would come up and one of them was an entrepreneur something in her business but changing something in her business it actually affected her health because it lowered her stress. I like that IIN doesn’t just say, “Okay, we’re not talking about your physical health, we’re talking about your client’s entire life.   [48:38] Lynda Cloud: Every aspect of it you’re absolutely right. I love the way when you’re describing it. I pictured this swirl. I pictured this symbiotic imagery that what you’re doing on this side has a direct correlation in this side and this side and this side. So as you talk to a health coach it’s deconstructing and building up and understanding and as you say create the space but also these goals and creating this journey and creating this champion that doesn’t have an agenda. There’s somebody you know you’ve got in your camp that is helping you be the best person you can be based on what you want and what you want to do. That is such a gift. I agree with you, everyone whether it’s friends or families it’s really hard to be at complete objective and partial cheerleader for any of us. I know I try, not always successful with my kids but I’m getting better. It’s a really special space and we’re starting to look with some research behind the power of that in the wellness journey. The hospital I mentioned earlier for example is starting to do some work on we want this to be a third party study of folks who’ve inserted, health coaches into their wellness journey and how that has accelerated and impact what they’re trying to do both on the emotional and physical perspective.   [50:20] Ashley James: Wow. Are there any results back from that study yet?   [50:23] Lynda Cloud: No. Not yet. Just kicked off.   [50:24] Ashley James: I’m so excited. That is going to be so cool to hear about that. I love that you’re doing third party and you just because you want to get the truth.   [50:34] Lynda Cloud: We want to get objective, exactly.   [50:36] Ashley James: Yes. Now you mentioned primary food. For those who have not been immersed in the culture of IIN may not have heard the term primary food. Can you teach us what primary food is?   [50:48] Lynda Cloud: Yes. What I thought primary food was before I started IIN was probably what most of you think primary food is which is the food you eat. Actually when you go through the curriculum what you learn is, primary food is what feeds us but it’s not because what comes on a plate. It comes in a bunch of different categories. It could be your relationship with health, it could be your physical activity, it could be your career, it could be spiritual, it could be financial. It’s all those things around you that impact who you are and so you need to think about those how you balance and what imbalances you have to help get balance in your primary food. As opposed to secondary food which is the things we eat and we start to think about food and food is medicine and how that can help feed our soul but also give us balance in our primary food. It’s very spiral in terms of how you think about it. It’s all interrelated. That’s what generally what primary food means.     [52:02] Ashley James: Right and that’s one of the first things that when someone goes to an IIN health coach that they’re given this little on page quiz that helps them to determine the balance and actually see on this graph the balance of their life. How much joy and fulfillment they have, spiritual fulfillment. Emotional fulfilment, connection, fulfillment within their relationship, within their career. They get to see that. The areas that they’re missing. I’ll give a great example that I just witnessed in myself. I’m looking back at the person I was before IIN. I’ve been on a health journey for many years. In my 20’s, I was very sick. I had type II diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic infections for which I was on monthly antibiotics for. I’d wake up every morning feeling like I was hungover with a splitting headache feeling like I drank alcohol but I hadn’t. I was just sick all the time. And in your 20’s you’re supposed to feel the healthiest. I was so sick of being sick. I was also told that I was infertile and I’d never have kids. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome. Basically every day I was a prisoner trapped in my own body who look outside the doctor’s office for what I could do for my health because being given drugs every month. It was just keeping the infections at bay, it wasn’t helping –   [53:25] Lynda Cloud: The root cause, yes.   [53:26] Ashley James: Right. I was a really busy sales manager for an international training company. I lived in Las Vegas which is sometimes may not be a very healthy environment. Most of the time we’re always indoor in air-conditioning and it’s a very interesting place to live, let’s just put it that way. My husband and I started watching documentaries. Netflix has just started streaming documentaries. That was a new thing for Netflix back in 2008. Some health documentary said, “Eat organic and shop the perimeter of the grocery store.” Within one month, my chronic infections went away just eating organic and not eating as much processed foods. I thought, “If I could change my health in one month, what else could I do.?” That’s what led me down my journey to reverse all of my health conditions. We conceived or child naturally and were just getting healthier and healthier. I’m still on my health journey and what I noticed was before I joined IIN to become a heath coach. I already started the podcast I actually interviewed on of your graduates and I asked him during my interview, “How did you become a health coach?” because that was my first time interviewing a health coach. I almost didn’t interview him because I thought it was so cliché. I thought, “This sounds like a BS certification.” I really almost didn’t give him the time of day. Something me and I love that listen to your gut. Something in me said listen to him and it was a beautiful interview. He had ADD and was put on meds his entire childhood. He had side effects from it. He decided to take control of his health and he completely reversed his ADD using diet and healed his body. Then he went on to become a health coach. Now that’s what he does for others. In the interview he told me all about IIN. I immediately got skype from the interview. I called up IIN and I signed up that day. I was so inspired. Of course I turned to my husband and I said, “Is this okay?” he said, “Go for it. This is great. You should totally do this.” I talked to Juliet. By the way, Juliet is amazing.   [55:37] Lynda Cloud: She’s downstairs right now. She’s a rock star.   [55:41] Ashley James: Yes, I think she’s been there forever. Juliet’s  fantastic. That I called up my best friend and then told her about it and then she signed up. So we did it together. Which I highly recommend. It was great. She’s in Canada and I’m here in the States. Being long distance and doing this course together was so wonderful. That was back in 2016. I graduated in 2017. The person I was before IIN, even though I was eating really healthy, I’ve reversed all those health conditions, I’m doing this podcast I’m totally onboard with holistic health, that person I was would not have said “No” to the free sample of chocolate at Costco. That person every time and we go to Costco like twice a week at least because I buy a lot of organic stuff, we have a great Costco it’s filled with organic produce. The cart gets filled up with organic freshfruits and vegetables every time we go and I will go back again and again for the free chocolate samples because they’ll give out as many. The Lindor chocolate they’re really decadent ones. I would just circle the Costco and go back and again and again and get as much free chocolate as they’ll give which they’ll give infinite amount of free chocolate samples but every year I would absolutely do that. And then would just not feel my best for a few days. I’m allergic to milk and so my immune system would be upset. My digestive system would be upset. I would be inflamed. I’d have brain fog. When you’re really healthy and clean, if you eat something your body doesn’t like it causes inflammation you really notice it. When you eat it all the time and you’re habituated, you don’t notice it as much. Even though I was on this great path I would still give into chocolate and then when I went through IIN. I started to look at my primary foods. Meaning, the food in life that brings me joy and happiness and fulfillment and balance. The food being connection with my husband, connection with my child. Feeling like I’m making a difference in this world. Now fast forward to now, I walked through Costco twice this week and didn’t even give them the time of day, didn’t touched any of the chocolate and didn’t feel deprived about it. I actually felt really happy. Because in the past I recognized that I was using chocolate even if it was free samplse, I was using chocolate to try to give myself joy and fulfillment because my primary food where out of balance. Just yesterday I had a package in the mail that had a bunch of Hershey’s kisses in it from a friend of mine who I guess – it’s just people send chocolate and it’s that the time of year that they send chocolate. I love that person. I’m grateful and I threw out the chocolate. I have no need for that in my body but I didn’t feel deprived and I’m not, I don’t have a ton of self-control. It’s not like I’m one of these people that has a ton of self-control. It just didn’t needed it. It doesn’t fulfill that I’m not using chocolate to self medicate because my primary foods are imbalanced. I’m deeply connected with my husband and my son, I feel fulfilled in my career. I’ve gone through and done the work in the primary foods. I recognized that my food addictive behaviors have subsided because I have done the work that I learned through IIN.   [59:36] Lynda Cloud: Your story is awesome and it is inspirational and it’s also very familiar. When you talk to a lot of before and after IIN, it’s very similar. That you don’t realize what was missing or what was out of alignment or what part of your world your primary foods weren’t in sync but once you actually make that shift tor work on making that shift because the way you describe it is exactly right. Just identifying that, “Do I have the strongest healthiest relationship I should? Do I have the most fulfilling career? Am I in the right place for my spiritually? Am I getting the right amount of physical activity?” Once you actually start paying attention to those aspects and then doing the work in those things that you know are going to help you create that balance, you have this Aha moment and you say – the way you describe it was your Lindor chocolate, you don’t actually think about that anymore. That used to be probably the first thing you thought about when you got into the car on your way to Costco. I know probably would’ve been mine too but now, your mission is different. Your priorities are different. Anyway, I love your story and I love your journey. It’s exactly what we want to hear from our grads.     [01:01:02] Ashley James: Thank you. Thank you for the work that you’re doing. I’m really excited for all the innovative stuff you’re going to be doing with you and your team at IIN. Is there anything that you wanted to teach today or homework you want to give? Is there anything that you really wanted to make sure that the listeners walk away with?   [01:01:25] Lynda Cloud: Well. I think what I would say is one of two things. One is I’ll just say some tips maybe as people are headed into the holiday season as you described, the baskets of chocolates, the baskets of cookies. Getting off your rhythm or your routine. It happens. And so I would just caution people to embrace what they’re about to embark on. Enjoy their family, enjoy their friends. Don’t beat yourself up over if you grab the Lindor chocolates a couple of times this months. It’s going to happen. Or where if you fell like you need to just remember that everything you’re doing is good for you and who you are. Stay true to your mission and vision of what you want to be and where your life to take you because we’re all – I think it’s not about being our best self every single day, it’s just knowing what you want to do and how you want to get there. For me, I go into this season I am still be an interesting one, I can tell you from the last 3 years, I have ended up with an incredible sickness that’s started the first week of December. Literally, I had been in an urgent care in the hospital every December for the past 3 years because of the stress of the holidays. It would often be end of year budget. I would have blisters on my throat. I would end up respiratory something. I’d have all sorts of illnesses and going into this December I feel so different. One is because I’ve got alignment around – not that I haven’t loved my career but I feel like my career and my personal goals are so aligned for the first time in my life. I am paying attention in what my body is feeling so I’m drinking more great tea so I can help with some of the inflammation. I’m eating more mushroom because I know it’s going to help me in terms of detoxing and looking at some things that are going to be stressful for my body. I’m going into the season not that I’m going to live a completely different life but I’m paying attention to my gut and my body and what my body has been telling me for years that I never ever listen to. That’s my advice. People should just go on to the holiday season listening to their body, listen to what they need to be successful and happy and have a fulfilling holiday season. That’s some advice and then I would just, I’d close with keep your eye out for what were going to be, you’ll be hearing from us over the next year. I think we’re doing some super exciting stuff to help based on what we’ve heard from our students and based on how I think we could make a difference in lives around the world. So we’re launching a detox your life healing with alternative medicine, stress management, different types of specialty course that we think will be really interesting for folks to get a taste of IIN curriculum in ways that’s new and different and also our business tool kit which you’ll hear more about as I promise early next year.   [01:04:49] Ashley James: Very cool. Awesome. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/coach to sign up to get a free module just to get a taste of it and see if it’s right for them and learn more about IIN. So it’s learntruehealth.com/coach. They could also just call up IIN. I know that listeners get a really special deal for saying that they heard the Learn True Health podcast with Ashley James when they call IIN. I know that there’s a new lower payment plan for those who would instead of paying the price in one payment would rather pay it off monthly. What Juliet told me when I first signed up she said – I joined and did the payment plan. She said to me if you do the 12-month course because now you can actually become a full time student and do it in six but my understanding is that most people because we have full time lives –   [0105:53] Lynda Cloud: It’s designed for most people who have a full day and then want to do it on top of that. Yes.   [01:06:00] Ashley James: Right. For me, I had my son who was a young toddler at that time or just entering toddlerhood. I also had the podcast. I was very busy and I still managed to do it. Log in into the evenings, do 20 minutes a day oftentimes listen to the videos while I was commuting, while I was at the gym, while I was doing the laundry. I could listen and commute a lot I just pretty much anytime we are commuting we are listening and that was cool because I was like getting my husband to listen too and he enjoyed it. He actually went vegan. Went completely whole food plant-based and he went from a carnivore. Maybe play the videos while your husband listening.   [01:06:48] Lynda Cloud: I have been.   [01:06:49] Ashley James: I’m not saying that everyone should go vegan or everyone should go one diet. I don’t believe in any one diet dogma. My husband listened to his body. After listening  to enough just sort of being the fly on the wall while I was taking IIN, he listened to enough lectures and he was also listening to my interviews and he was taking all these information listening to his body and he really wasn’t happy with the direction his heath was going. He just cold turkey said, “I’m never eating meat again.” So he just eats one to two pounds of vegetables a day. Potatoes and brown rice and he just says I’m ever going back. I can’t believe food tastes this good. If you told me that the whole food plant-based tasted this good, I would’ve stopped eating meat long ago and that’s just the 180 because my husband when I met him, was like would never ever touch vegetables. Pretty much just ate steak breakfast, lunch and dinner or eggs and steak breakfast, lunch and dinner. Just very interesting that he started listening to his body. Really this videos do have an impact on the people who absorb them. I found that I could either listen to it little bits of it throughout the week or sometimes if I got really busy I would then to choose to spend a Sunday afternoon catching up for all the work that week. Just so I found it to be easy to go through the entire year but what Juliet said when she first enrolled me into the program, she said after the first six month, you start to take on clients. Some students get to the point where they actually pay of the entire course before they’ve completed the course because they’ve taken on some clients while they’re still in the course. Because the first six months gives you the foundation. The next six months you continue your training but you also learn how to work with clients as you’re working with clients which is just find brilliant.   [01:08:40] Lynda Cloud: That’s right. You’re moving from theory to practice. Exactly. Yes.   [01:08:43] Ashley James: I love that you guys don’t just like, “Okay, here’s all the information. Now you’re on your own.” It’s really you feel supported for the six months while you’re working with clients. It’s really a wonderful system and that people can immediately start to within the first after six months can start to basically pay off the course. It’s accessible to everyone and I love that. Any advice around those who want or interested or have more questions or want to sign up or any sort of want to make sure that potential students know some information?   [01:09:21] Lynda Cloud: I’ll just give you a quick little. As you described, you can do it on accelerated program six months or you can do a full year program. There are lots of promotions so you should check in to instituteofintegrativenutrition.com. You obviously – I think if you go through Ashley, you’re also going to get additional promotions. Logistically that’s just good to know. I think you should also know, Juliet is a really good example. We actually just did a town hall. We celebrated her 14th year with IIN. Our coaches down stairs are health coaches who’ve gone through the program. Even if you’re just on the fence and you’re saying, “I’m not sure if this is right for me. Can I invest this kind of time? Can I invest this kind of money?” I would have the conversation because you’ll learn something about yourself in that conversation. These are not folks who are going to give you a hard sell. They’re going to walk you through the philosophy and what it means to be health coach because they’re all health coaches and they’ve done this. You’ll get something out of the engagement in the call and learn a little bit about yourself. We would love to have everybody to join one of the cohorts starting next year. We think it’s going to be a super year next year.     [01:10:48] Ashley James: Awesome. Yes, 2020 sounds fantastic. Lynda, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing with us and I would love to have you or one of your wonderful staff members come back on the show to share all of the things you’ve said are in the works. Like the legislation and the new business thing that’s coming out next year who’s going to support health coaches to be entrepreneurs and successfully be health coaches. Also, the third party study implementing health coaches.   [01:11:26] Lynda Cloud: Yes. Our new events too. Yes, we have a lot in the works, we’re super excited, and I would love that. I’d love to visit in person with you so –   [01:11:36] Ashley James: That would be wonderful. If ever you’re in Seattle, let me know. If I’m ever in New York, you know I’m going to be popping by IIN.   [01:11:43] Lynda Cloud: Please do. Please do.   [01:11:45] Ashley James: Fantastic   [01:11:46] Lynda Cloud: Happy Holidays, Ashley.   [01:11:47] Ashley James: Thank you, you too.   Get Connected With Lynda Cloud! Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN) Linkedin

Check out IIN to see if Health Coaching is meant for you! Learntruehealth.com/coach Molly's sites: Main website: www.buildingheroesacademy.com My book: www.homeschoolgetitdone.com My curriculum funnel: www.3homeschoolsecrets.com Building Heroes Academy Homeschool curriculum - homeschool all the kids in an hour a day Book: How to Get Everything Done: How to homeschool AND clean the house AND stay sane I LOVE encouraging homeschool moms. It's overwhelming to so many because it's such an unknown and goes against what most the world is doing. I love teaching principles to help shift your mindset from overwhelm to enjoying life! I love to talk about "How to get everything done" and "how to build heroes in your home - and why you need to."   Homeschool Secret: How To Master Mindset And Avoid Procrastination https://www.learntruehealth.com/homeschool-secret-how-to-master-mindset-avoid-procrastination Highlights: The Hero’s Journey Pattern to all myths – the details are different, you have this basic pattern People feel discontent because we’re not doing what we should be doing Parents are not here to control their children Every human being was born with greatness within Learn how to start listening to calls to action and acting on them The first voice is your authentic self; listen to the first voice When you start feeling stuck in the muck, that’s part of the journey Homeschooling – learn together but you connect it to yourself through principles Obstacles are learning opportunities Training with learning how to be consistent Family economy system – time and money Learn from real life skills that are going to affect them when they get older Play is an important part of child development Program for moms who want to learn how to become disciplined and create habits for themselves Brain principles Children model their parents   In today’s episode with Molly Christensen, listeners will get to know about the tools that Molly uses for homeschooling, tips on how to avoid procrastination and get past the overwhelm, and habits that moms should practice to be the best models for their children.   [00:00:00] Intro: Hello, true health seeker. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You are going to love today’s guest. Now, Molly Christensen specializes in working with moms, especially ones that are overwhelmed and doing homeschooling. However, I think everyone could benefit from listening to today’s interview because Molly shares some amazing tools that help everyone. So enjoy today’s interview. Please share it with busy moms. Share with all the busy mom friends that you have. And all the homeschooling friends you have. Because they’ll gain benefit from it as well. Because she does share specifically some information about that. But she gives amazing advice for those that would love to master their mindset and no longer allow procrastination to stop them. So really, really, really great nuggets of gold in today’s interview. And I want to let you know something really special. If you are a stay at home mom and you   would also like to have a career in helping people, you can become a health coach. You can go to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. It’s 100 percent online. I did their online program. It’s actually designed for busy moms. Now, dads can take it too. But the program is designed for women who are so busy that they’re taking care of a family. And even moms that are taking care of family and a career, but basically we’re so, so busy that they designed as you can fit it in in the evenings, maybe 20 minutes a day. That’s about how much I did, 20 minutes a day for an entire year and I became a certified health coach. What’s really exciting is that in 2020, it’s going to be covered by healthcare. It’s going to be covered by insurance. So it opens up the doors for so many people who maybe in the past couldn’t afford a health coach, would now be able to. Which is really exciting for you as a health coach and also exciting for people who want to hire a health coach that you can use your insurance which is really, really exciting. Give IIN a call. Just Google IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Give them a call and ask them for more information. You can also get a free module of the course by going to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learntruehealth.com/coach. They give you access to a module and you can see if it’s right for you. Now, I got a special deal for my Learn True Health listeners. You get $1,500 off. It’s a huge chunk of the tuition is taken off for mentioning the Learn True Health podcast for being one of my listeners. They also have lots of great specials throughout the year. Sometimes they include things like a tablet or an Amazon gift card for additional books, because of course we love learning. So you know, call them up and ask them what kind of special is going on right now especially through mentioning the Learn True Health podcast and all of the great discounts that they give us as listeners. And please share this information with those in your life that you know would make an amazing health coach. It is the fastest growing field in the health field – n the health space. I think that we’re going to get to a point where health coaching is a household name and that it’s as common to go to a health coach as it is to have a certified trainer when you go to a gym. I’m very excited about that because we need to turn this around. The rate of disease is just increasing every year. We need to turn this around. We need to give the chance for everyone, give the education and the chance for everyone to have true health. That’s exactly what I’m here to do is to help you learn what you can do mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, to optimize your health. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing the podcast to help as many people as possible. Enjoy today’s interview. Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 398. I am so excited for today’s guests. We have on with us Molly Christensen, who is an expert in homeschooling and supporting busy moms. Helping them to no longer be overwhelmed. I came across — my husband actually came across Molly’s work. And as we were watching one of her videos, my husband said, “You have to have her on the show.” And I was like, “You’re right.” She has so much wisdom to share. I thought this is awesome. Even if you’re not a homeschooling mom, I think you can still take away some amazing gold information from Molly. Because nowadays, even kids that are in the public school system come home with, like, over an hour’s worth of homework and it’s overwhelming. And even if you’re not a stay at home mom and you have a career and then you come home and then you have to help your kids with homework and then you have to manage the chores. So I just think that Molly even though your expertise is helping homeschooling moms, I still think that all parents could take away great wisdom from you because you teach that how to have balance with your children, with the chores, and with your own emotional state as well. Which if our emotional state is not in order, if our mindset is not in order, everyone in the household suffers. You know what I mean?     [00:06:00] Molly Christensen: For sure. Absolutely. If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Right?     [00:06:04] Ashley James: Nobody happy. That’s right. Oh, Molly, welcome to the show.     [00:06:09] Molly Christensen: Well, thank you so much. I’m super excited to be here. And thank you for inviting me. This is exciting.     [00:06:15] Ashley James: Absolutely. You have three websites I want to let listeners know about. Your main website is buildingheroesacademy.com. Your book is homeschoolgetitdone.com. And your curriculum funnel is the number three, 3homeschoolsecrets.com. Of course the links to everything that Molly does is going to be in the show notes for today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. I want to dive right into your story because, man, you’ve got — like, I just want to, like, be a fly on the wall and absorb all the wisdom that you emanate from your years of experience. I only have one kid. I don’t know how in the world you’ve done it. You’ve done everything you’ve done. How many children have you homeschooled?     [00:07:09] Molly Christensen: Well, I have seven children.     [00:07:13] Ashley James: And you look amazing by the way.     [00:07:15] Molly Christensen: Thank you.      [00:07:15] Ashley James: So you definitely are doing – you are managing your stress levels. You’re managing everything really well. And I know it’s been trial and error. And now you love teaching people and teaching homeschooling moms how to do that. How to do just what you’re doing. But to take us back to your story, what happened in your life that made you want to homeschool your children?     [00:07:39] Molly Christensen: Okay. For sure. Yeah. So when I was growing up, I actually was kind of an angry child. So people who know me now are like, “Yeah. Right.” So the good news is that you can change that. I was always mad and blaming other people for things. And you know, my siblings now will say, “Yeah. We’re kind of scared of you.” But I was also a very determined person. And luckily, my mother also could see potential in me. She could see that if I put my mind to something, then I could do it. I would do it. But still growing up, I kind of thought, “You know, I’m a mean person. Nobody really likes me.” I remember when my mom came to me – let’s see how old was I? I was probably 14 or so. And she was very brave. She came to me and she said, “You know, if you smiled every once in a while, people might not be – they might want to be in the same room as you.” Okay. She didn’t exactly say that. But that was kind of the gist of it. Of course, I hated hearing that and I was mad at her. But I did take her words to heart and I decided to practice smiling. So I started smiling. And you’re like, “Wait. What does this have to do with homeschool?” Don’t worry, it connects in. But I did start to smile and I did realize that it was better to be happy and to smile and to have people not be scared of you. So when I was in high school, she actually started homeschooling my younger brother and sister. And let’s just say I still wasn’t that great at being happy about things. And I thought, “Why in the world would anybody want to do that?” And they even asked me, “Do you want to be homeschooled too?” And I’m like, “Heck no.” I thought it was the worst idea ever. Why would I want to be home with you? Which is really sad in retrospect. But I did get better. So this is good. So that’s why it was kind of interesting that when I started having kids of my own, and my oldest son was about four, I started thinking about homeschooling. And my brain was like, “No way. You can’t do that. Because not only are you a disorganized mess, It’s weird.” People think you’re weird if you homeschool. And what about socialization? Your kids, they’re going to be weird.     [00:10:29] Ashley James: Yeah. We all know that one weird that came in to, like, maybe junior high or something that was homeschooled. Like, we all know or someone told us. Someone told us, “Oh, yeah. I knew a homeschooled kid and they were just weird.” And so it’s, like, you hear about this one person or a rumor gets spread about one person, maybe you never even met them. And then everyone thinks that it’s like the stigma that all homeschooling kids are just weird, and unsocialized, and awkward, and they don’t know how to communicate. Oh, man. I’ve met some more schooling kids that are so brilliant. And they look you in the eye and they have wonderful conversations. And they’re so on and so connected. That is one of those stigmas that it’s just not true.     [00:11:18] Molly Christensen: I know. But everybody worries about it. And actually I can address that later if we want to go into that. Like, why it’s not even a problem. But I didn’t know that then. I was sitting there going, “I can’t do homeschool.” I don’t even know how. And seriously, I am the most undisciplined person ever is what I thought, you know, because I kind of was. I was kind of a mess. So I didn’t do it. I sent him to kindergarten. And I did not like that, actually. Because part of what I was seeing was he was bringing home some bad behaviors that I did not teach him. And he was learning things like, they had a whole two month unit on saving the rain forest. And I’m like, “You know, I am all for saving rain forest. But when you’re five, shouldn’t the focus be like learning how to clean your room first? Why are we putting all this pressure on him?” I don’t know. That just really kind of bugged me because – and I was thinking, “If you were home, that’s what we could focus on.” And I started looking at what was going on in the classroom. And I was like, “You know, this isn’t really rocket science.” Although, rocket science actually would have been easier for me because I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. I was like, “Yeah. I think maybe I could do this.” Only because I was seeing that it didn’t look quite as hard as I had been picturing it to be. And so the next year in first grade, I decided that I was going to homeschool him. And I asked my husband about it. And he was like, “I don’t care.” He’s just like, “Yeah. If that’s what you want to do, that’s fine.” But he didn’t really understand what homeschool is all about either and neither does I at that time. So I pulled him out in first grade. And by then, I had another kid and she was four at the time. But I didn’t think about the fact that she might want to learn too. So I tried to send all my energy to this one kid, my oldest son, who’s six mind you. And we would go from, like, 9:00 a.m. to about 4:00 p.m. and still not get all the stuff done that I had planned for the day. Because I was thinking, “Hey, if I’m going to homeschool, well, then you’re going to be way ahead of everybody else. And I’m going to make sure that happens.”  Why are we laughing?     [00:14:07] Ashley James: Well, I’m laughing because it’s funny –     [00:14:09] Molly Christensen: I’m just kidding.     [00:14:09] Ashley James: – how much pressure we put on ourselves and also put on our children.  On one hand, children really can excel in homeschooling because they’re getting one on one. If they went to – even if they went somewhere else and it wasn’t you that was teaching them and they had a teacher, a tutor, teach them one on one for a whole entire day, they would have learned more in that day than they would in an entire week at a school. Because a teacher that has to manage 15 or 30 kids is not going to be able to give your child the amount of attention. And also cater to where they are and their learning style. So I’m laughing because they can – and children, when kids are really young, their minds are like sponges. They can really take on and learn so much. But at the same time, I think that as parents, we can put too much on their plate. And I’m talking from my experience. I’ve noticed that with our four year old. I’ve put too much pressure on him. And then I backed off and realized, “Okay. Maybe I need to -” there’s got to be some balance. And I definitely want to talk to you about that. But continue with your story. So here you have your six year old and you have, basically, created a college level curriculum for a first grader that he’s getting the best tutelage in the world. And what’s happening with the four year old? Is the four year old jumping in and wanting to learn also?     [00:15:38] Molly Christensen: Right. So this is what happens. It is kind of funny because so many of us homeschool moms think, “Oh my gosh. I’m going to make my kid be a genius or something.” And then reality hits and you’re like, “I can’t even get him out of bed in the morning.” Because there’s no place to go. So what happened was, my four year old would just kind of tag along. But I didn’t really include her much, which was kind of silly of me. But she was listening and she was soaking everything in. She would actually go off preschool, which is kind of funny, so that I would have free time to work with my other son during that time too. And then when she was home, I would let her do a little bit of stuff here and there. But I was mainly focused on this oldest child. And I was trying to get through this list of, like, 25 different subjects every day. And I was trying to have him do writing assignments that would be things like, “Write three sentences to describe this pencil.” And now if there was anything that was going to ignite passion in a first grade boy, that’s not it. Right? So it was pretty miserable because I was trying to follow all those curriculum that said this is what I had to do in order to get him where I thought he should be. And it was a nightmare because we would end up crying every day. Because I’m like, “Oh, I can’t do this.” And he is like, “I don’t want to do this. I just want to play.” Because he’s a six year old boy, which is what they do. And they do learn a ton from playing. But I didn’t know that. And so I just started searching for answers. And I finally had this thought pop into my brain, which was, instead of trying to get him through all these checklist items and then rewarding him by reading aloud at the end. Why don’t you start off with just reading aloud at the beginning of the day? And I was like, “I can’t do that. That’s the fun part.” But I tried it and actually that made life so much easier when I just put read aloud first. Because what it did is, it was so fun and we had loved it so much to learn and hear different stories together. That what it did is it built our relationship, made us grow closer together. And we have this common learning ground here that was fun instead of miserable. So it was then that I was like, “Okay. If I’m going to homeschool, I got to figure this thing out.” Because it’s great to put the reading first. But how is he supposed to learn everything else? I can’t make him because we’re in power struggles all the time. And it’s miserable. And so that’s kind of when I really just started my journey to figure out what it was that I needed to do. And also at the same time when I’m trying to homeschool, I’ve got these two kids and we are a disaster at home. Because I was spending all this time trying to homeschool all day long that I didn’t ever get around to cleaning the house or actually preparing meals. I just go the fridge and say, “Hm. What’s not moldy in here? Let’s see what I can pull out.” Because they always keep getting hungry, strangely enough. They want food. And I kind of as a free spirit, I’m like, “You know, I just want to be spontaneous and free.” Except for when you can’t find your shoes. You can’t go out anywhere to field trips. So it was one of these really kind of defining moments in my life rose just like, always – so I had started smiling. And so that’s how you could actually get married because I wasn’t so grumpy anymore. And I could have kids. But what I learned was that in my heart, I was still very grumpy. And I was still blaming people. And I was still complaining about everything. And I didn’t realize that it was me causing most of my problems. And so what I had to figure out was that If I really wanted to make homeschool work, I was going to have to change. I was going to have to do things differently. I was going to have to think differently. And so I started reading all the books I could. Because that’s what I do. I’m like, “I got a problem to solve. I want to solve it.” I’m going to start reading. I’m not a quitter. I’m determined. I am pretty stubborn. I have a stubborn card in my back pocket. I can pull it out when I need it. So I started reading all these books. I started learning all these things. But what I found is that I could hardly even ever implement anything because I really was that undisciplined. And I wanted my kids to be able to say they’re going to do something and then be able to do it. Just even with no one nagging them. I always wanted my mom there. Well, I don’t have my mom here to nag me to do the stuff I know I should be doing but I can’t make myself do.     [00:21:01] Ashley James: It took it took me many years of personal growth to get rid of that little nagging – my mom’s nagging voice in my head telling me I’m not doing enough.     [00:21:11] Molly Christensen: Well, I just wanted her told me to do it. You know, sometimes because I couldn’t make myself do it. But yes, we do have our moms that they love us so much and they wanted this so much for us. But I was like, at some point I just got to figure this out for myself. I’ve just got to do this. Because I do not want to ruin my child’s life by homeschooling but I felt pretty strongly that I was supposed to do it. So that’s when I had it turned to me. And what is really funny that happens first for most homeschool moms and probably just moms who are parents, they’ll do is too. They’re always looking for the magic bullet. And this happened to me too. We go through every single curriculum out there. We buy all of them because we want the one that’s going to work and solve all of our problems. And the same thing with moms just who aren’t homeschoolers, we’re trying to find things that will fix our kids, really. When really, it’s us as a mom who is kind of creating a lot of the issues in our own lives. So I did that. I went out and bought a ton of different curriculum and none of it worked, surprisingly. Not really. But that’s because I didn’t even have the discipline in the first place to be able to teach my kids good character. And this is not against my parents, by the way. Part of is just my personality and my mom’s personality. And my mom was just struggling to get through raising these kids mostly by herself. I do have a dad, who’s a wonderful dad. But she felt like a single mom because he was an international airline pilot and he was always gone. Always gone. And when he was home, which I didn’t even think about until I was an adult, was the fact that he was jet lagged when he was home. So they were doing the best they could. But somehow some of the training kind of slipped away. And I didn’t get it mostly just because I did whatever I wanted kind of a free spirit. I got away with it. So as I started reading all these self help books and taking classes and all this stuff, I was just getting more and more discouraged as I went along. Because I’m like, “I am a reasonably smart person. I should be able to figure this out. Why is this so hard? Why is it so hard to actually homeschool my kids, and to keep my house clean, and to just stay sane? And as I was reading all these books, I was getting different bits and pieces here and there. And so I was improving but it was pretty slow. Pretty slow improvement. But as I did get through this, I did finally come up with some key things that really changed the way I thought about things. And how I could actually homeschool my kids without completely failing them and ruining them. And how I could actually have a house where I wouldn’t be completely embarrassed to have visitors come over. And where I could be happy and not always feeling like a miserable failure. And so that’s kind of what the message that I want — well, that is the message. That is the message that I like to share with people because there is hope. Like, if me, Miss Super Disorganized can figure these things out, you can too.     [00:25:05] Ashley James: And you’re no longer super disorganized is the point. You have really conquered these issues because – and so much so that you’ve mastered them after homeschooling seven children. And now this is what you do, you teach others how to do the same.     [00:25:23] Molly Christensen: Exactly I mean some people say your mess is your message. Which I love because, yeah it’s the mess that I had to deal with and figure out how to get over. And that’s why I want to share that with other people because it’s all about having hope. And the other thing, too, is I have not mastered everything in my life. Which is actually pretty awesome because it just means I get to keep learning. If I had mastered everything, I’d be done.     [00:25:55] Ashley James: We are never done.     [00:25:55] Molly Christensen: I’m not done yet. I am not done yet. And I am still homeschooling as well because I have these seven kids. So that takes a long time to get through them all. But I have my three oldest who have graduated from high school. And actually, the two oldest have graduated from college. The third has gotten his associates degree and high school degree. He’s 18 now. So I still have four left at home. So we’re still doing this project.     [00:26:26] Ashley James: Nice. Man, by the time you’re done with the last one, all your kids are going to turn to you and hand over your grandchildren to you. And say, “Mom, can you homeschool our kids too?”     [00:26:39] Molly Christensen: And I’m going to be like, “Nope. That’s your journey.” That is your journey. But I’ll help. I would love to help and encourage and support you along your journey. That’s what I do.     [00:26:51] Ashley James: That is what you do.     [00:26:53] Molly Christensen: Uh-huh. And actually, that is the key to what really changed my mindset. So this is actually probably a good time to share that. So when I started homeschooling, I thought it was all up to me to make sure that my son knew everything. And my poor son, being my guinea pig, number one. Let’s just say he actually turned out really, really awesome. And he doesn’t remember all the hard things those first few years. I was like, “Yes. He’s forgiven. And he’s awesome. It’s so good, it works.” Anyway, so I want to share with you – is this a good time to do that? Should I just do that? Share with you this pattern that I had come across that actually really changed the whole way that I thought about homeschooling my kids and just raising my kids in general.     [00:27:50] Ashley James: Yes. Oh, I’m so excited. Absolutely.     [00:27:53] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Okay. So I heard about this pattern of the Hero’s Journey, probably a good 10 or 15 years ago now. I don’t remember exactly. But I had heard about it and I thought, “Yeah. That’s pretty cool.” So what the Hero’s Journey is this this pattern that was discovered – or I don’t know if discovered is the right word – but noticed because you notice patterns, right? It was a pattern that was noticed by an Oxford English professor. And of course, right now, his name has slipped my mind. But he wrote a book called The Power of Myth. Anyway, he studied all this mythology of the world, you know, Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology, all the different cultures. And he noticed there was a pattern to all these myths. And he called it the Hero’s Journey, because while the details are different, you have this basic pattern. And then he also noticed, too – well, okay. We’ll go here. The basic pattern is this, you start with an ordinary person or at least a person who thinks they’re ordinary, who gets a call to action. A call to do something bigger than themselves and they don’t know how to do it. And so the next thing is they refuse. They’re not going to follow up on that call to action because they can’t do it. But then something happens and they decide to commit to the action and dive in and do it. Along the way on their journey, they will have mentors that will help them. They will have friends and allies who are on the same path with them. They also have enemies who try to stop them or tell them it’s stupid. And they’ll also run into test traps, trials, and temptations that may stop them if they’re not aware that they need to get around it. And that they need to continue on this journey because that call to action was so important that they need to finish the journey. And then as they get to the final conflict that’s really big and they finally get around it, they have success. And they are transformed and they are changed as a person, but also just as part of the journey and whatever it was they set out to accomplish has been accomplished. So when I learned that pattern, I started noticing it everywhere because it is. It’s in every movie that we like, so many good books, and it’s everywhere. And I thought, “Oh, yeah. That’s pretty cool. That’s a pattern. It’s everywhere.” But when it really became powerful for me was when I realized it was a pattern for our own lives and the lives of my kids. And so what it did for me is it made me realize that I cannot just fill my kids up with all the information that they need. Because that’s not the purpose of learning and education.     [00:31:05] Ashley James: Yeah. And it’s not how we really learn it.     [00:31:09] Molly Christensen: It’s not.     [00:31:09] Ashley James: I mean, school is really good at filling us up with facts that we can regurgitate. Like, when was the war of blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It’s like, “Okay. Great. You memorized that fact. But did you learn to think?”     [00:31:22] Molly Christensen: No. And I didn’t know how that knowledge applied to me. In fact, when I was in school, I hated history because it was so boring memorizing all the facts. It wasn’t until I started teaching my own kids about history where I was like, “Holy cow. History is amazing. Because it’s all just hero journey stories. How do people overcome.” And it’s telling us how to live life, what the success principles are. That’s what it’s all about. But we didn’t know that growing up in my AP – well, I didn’t take AP History. I took AP English. But whatever. In my history class, it was very boring because we didn’t know the stories. It’s all about the stories. And so the Hero’s Journey is the story of our own life. And most of us don’t know that. We don’t know that we are potential heroes who can go on the journey. We get calls to action do you think is greater than us but we listen to the refusals and then do nothing. And that’s why we don’t go on the journey of our life. And that’s why people feel discontent because we’re not doing what we should be doing.     [00:32:31] Ashley James: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, one thing I’ve noticed parenting is, I have this urge to jump in and fix things for my son and do it but I don’t. It is an uncomfortable feeling to watch my son struggle. And I consciously pull back and I just encourage him. He will get it. Encourage him. Let him do it himself. So like, we’re doing arts and crafts and he’s got to paint something. And if I just let him do it himself, it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be messy. Because he’s still learning how to do that. And it’s also going to be his own creativity. And I hold back and I let him figure something out, like how to tie that knot or how to – whatever he’s struggling with. But that look on his face when he triumphs, when he does something he didn’t think he could do, he has now learned. And he had that moment where he was struggling, he was failing. I was encouraging him. And then he figured it out. It clicked and it works. And that triumphant on his face, that neurologically set that lesson in place.  He now has that. Whereas, if I just did it for him and like, “Look what I’m doing. You do it this way.” There would be no emotion of triumph associated with the lesson for him. When we set up circumstances for them to have a challenge that they get to rise to, and struggle, and then learn from that, and then succeed, that has so much more emotion involved invested in the learning that it really solidifies the learning inside their neurology.     [00:34:18] Molly Christensen: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that’s exactly why it changed my whole perspective of raising my kids because I realized that I am not here to control them. It doesn’t work anyway. You can try it. You get power struggles.     [00:34:36] Ashley James: I definitely want to talk about power struggles because setting boundaries and getting kids to do their chores and what happens when the kid says no to you? Like, I definitely want to go there.     [00:34:48] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let’s go there in a minute. But I’ll finish this thought.  So what I realized is my role is not to be the bucket filler. But my role is to be the support team, to be the mentor, to be the trainer, to be the coach. So I heard this quote – well, I don’t know if it’s a quote but it’s kind of one of those things. But a pastor got up in church and he said to his congregation, “Are you preparing your kids for the path? Or are you preparing the path for your kids?” And I said, “Yeah. Wow.” There’s a big difference there.     [00:35:33] Ashley James: Because we can never- we won’t be around their whole lives. So we can never put padding and safety, whatever, make it safe for them. We can’t just go around and keep preparing the path for them. We have to give them all the tools because we want them to be independent.     [00:35:54] Molly Christensen: Right. And also, we don’t even know what their path is. They have a totally different path than mine is. It’s their own path. It’s their hero’s journey. And the hero’s journey is just full of things they need in order for them to learn to become the person that they are meant to be. So the other part of why that pattern was so powerful for me was not only did it shift my role, but it shifted how I thought about them. Because I think sometimes we think that people are intentionally mean or naughty or whatever. And you know, “You’re bad. You’re bad boy,” or whatever. But really, every human being was born with greatness within. Every human being desires good. Every human being has that inside of them. And when you shift your focus to believing that and focusing on the good intention rather than how it comes out, then it changes things. Your kid accept and this is, maybe, where we can go into more obedient stuff. It’s not because they’re horrible people or you’re a horrible person. It’s just because they are human. And they are learning how to become better and they just haven’t gotten there yet. And that’s actually a really good thing to remember for teenagers, especially. Especially when they start going, “Mom, you just don’t understand. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” And they get a little grumpy and all those hormones are going around. It’s not because they’re bad. It’s only because they do have all this hormone stuff coming up. They’re confused. They don’t always know how to manage themselves at all. They haven’t learned it all yet. But they are good people. They want good. They want to be kind to other people. But it doesn’t always come out that way. And so it’s always really good to keep that vision of who they are. They are potential heroes. I mean, they are. They have the goodness inside. They can go on the journey to get to the greatness but only if they choose not to listen to all those negative voices in their head that tell them why they can’t do it.     [00:38:13] Ashley James: So how do you help them to not hear the negative? How do you help them to focus on what they want – the positive and create the positive behavior?     [00:38:27] Molly Christensen: So it really had to start with me first. Because I was so sucked into that negative thinking. I had to learn how to start listening to calls to action and acting on them. Because the Hero’s Journey is a pattern for your whole life but you’re also getting calls to action all the time. You don’t even hear most of them. Because you rationalize them away. And when I say you, I mean me too. It’s a learned skill there. And so to get out of the negative thought patterns I had to lead the way in. And the beautiful thing about having kids is you love them so much that you actually change for them. Because you want to lead the way for them. I figured that if I’m not willing to go there, why would I expect them to,? Even though it’s hard. So I started working hard on me first. And so what I did one year, I had this thought pop into my head that I should make this blog called Kindness Daily, where I would do something kind every day. And I would blog about it. Now, the funny thing about that is, I’m not a disciplined consistent person. But my oldest son and I were just talking about how, with marketing or with a business really, people are attracted to people who can be consistent. Very consistent in their message, right? And so I blurted it out one day, I’m like, “Oh, you know, this would be kind of cool.” And he’s like, “Yeah. You should do it.” I was like, “Oh man, why did I say that out loud?” And as soon as I got that call to action to do this for 365 days, to write a blog, my brain immediately came up with all the refusals. And I sit and I said to myself, “I can’t do that. I don’t even know how to make a blog. And what if I can’t think of anything kind to do and I’m not consistent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” And, then I was like, “You know, I think I’m just going to try it. I’m going to do it.” I decided I was going to do it because I was at the point where I was like, “You know what? If I’m not going to do hard things then why are my kids?” So I thought, “I’ll give it a try.” So I started it. And the first few days, I was worried because – well, I wasn’t too worried. I just made cookies for the neighbors. But after like three or four days that I was just like, “You know what? I really cannot make cookies every single day. I’m not that kind of mom.” And it’s going to get out of control. So I’m going to have to come up with different things to be kind about. And I realized that I was getting thoughts to do kindnesses that I didn’t want to do. So I didn’t do them. So like one day – I know, right? One day, I had my neighbor’s kids over because she had to go to a doctor’s appointment. And I had this thought, “You know, you have to make dinner. Why don’t you just make her some dinner too?” And I immediately got these refusals in my brain that said, “Well, they’re not going to like what we’re having. I don’t think I have enough ingredients. I probably don’t have enough time.” So then I went, “Wait. That was a call to action with refusals. Oh, I should do it.” I did. I committed to doing it. And it turns out, I didn’t have enough gradients and I did have enough time. And she was – I don’t know if they liked it or not but it doesn’t matter. Because when she came home a lot later than she expected, I said, “Hey, I knew you’re going to be running late and you’re not going to have time to make dinner. So I just made it for you.” And she was just delighted. And she felt just so loved. So I learned from these experiences when I was doing these kindnesses every day that if I get three refusals, I darn well better do it. Because that’s part of my hero journey. I need to act on those things to become better to develop the character that I need to become the example for my kids. To go through this hero’s journey. To do the hard things that I’m asked to do. And so I did do this blog where I recorded a lot of my kindnesses. Some of the days were super – I mean, they were so uninteresting to write about. But other days were really awesome. And I was like, “Wow. This is cool stuff.”  And I actually ended up – I told you I wasn’t consistent, which was actually true. I was not consistent. And I did not do it for 365 days. But I did do it for 180 days out of the whole year. And I thought, “You know what? I have a choice here.” So I could look back at the year and I had a choice. I could look at it and think of it as a miserable failure because I did not do what I set out to do. I did not get 365 days. But I also could look at it and say, “You know what? I did do half of it. And I did learn so much just from the process of that.” I learned so much about how my brain worked, and how I was refusing calls to action, and how I could learn what calls to action I actually needed to follow. And so you asked me, “How do we teach this to our children? And then I went off on this big long story about how we have to lead our way – lead the way and figure it out ourselves first. And that’s actually what I did. So after I did these kind of daily challenges – after I started doing them, I introduced it to my kids. And I had them do the similar thing. I said, “Here’s a jar. And here’s a bag of pompoms. Whenever you think of something kind to do and you actually do it, you can put a pompom in the jar. And when the jar is full, we’ll go do a fun family activity or something like that.” And they started to realize that their heroes on this hero journey. They get calls to action and sometimes they really don’t want to do it. They get refusals. But they can listen to those and not do them. Or they can listen to the call to action and then hear the refusals and then say, “No. Those are not true. I’m going to do it anyway because it’s a good thing.” So that that’s been huge in teaching the kids how to overcome those negative thoughts. So that’s an awesome tool right there is really – because heroes – this is probably one thing I didn’t say earlier, but heroes are not in it for themselves. They’re not going on this journey just for all the honor and glory. Maybe some of them are in some of the movies. But they’re doing it because it’s for a cause bigger than themselves, is to serve other people. That’s why we’re here. And so that’s why – I’m sorry. I totally neglected to say that earlier. That would made more sense. But that’s why this little smaller scale hero journey works out so nicely and it preps them for the real thing. It’s a good training.     [00:46:04] Ashley James: Can you give us an example? Like, when working with your kids, an example where they did some – they came up with an idea and they heard the refusals in their head. But you encouraged them and they then did it anyway. And it was a project that served others.     [00:46:22] Molly Christensen: Yeah. For sure. My 16 year old daughter just the other day, she said, “You know, I had this thought that I should text this friend that I hadn’t talked to for a while and just say something nice to her.”  And she said, in her brain she heard, “No. That’s weird. You haven’t talked to him forever. And besides, what would you say if that’s a bad idea?” And then she’s like, “Wait. I got to do that.” And so she did. She texted this friend anyway. And it turns out that friend had been feeling really down that day. And when my daughter texted her she just felt so loved.     [00:47:03] Ashley James: I love it. Because when you first started sharing this, I immediately went to health related topics. So we’ve had Naturopaths on the show. Naturopathic doctors share that our body has a language. It speaks its symptoms. The symptoms of the body are the language that it speaks. So if you have a headache, don’t just go take a medication for it. Or if you’re tired, don’t just go drink coffee. But that’s the body actually speaking to you and saying, “Hey, there’s something I’m missing. Help me.” This is how it speaks to us. So when we think to ourselves, I want to run a marathon or I want to go to the gym. And then there’s these little thoughts that come up, like, “You can’t. That’s going to be too hard. You can’t do it.”     [00:47:53] Molly Christensen: I got a story about that one. No, it does. It’s the goodness inside of us that’s speaking. Because we are good. We do get those good thoughts. I got a call to action to run a half marathon. And I can tell you some of the refusals I got. My husband and my two sons had actually run it the year before. And I got the call. I was like, “Well, why don’t you run it within them the next year?” That was in my own brain. They didn’t say it to me. And my refusals were, “No way. I do not run. I am not a runner.” The last time I really seriously ran was when I was in high school, which was like 20 years before. And I had run a-mile-and-a-half for the PE test, you know, to show that you’re fit. And I passed it. But then I pretty much felt like I was going to die afterwards because I found out later that I actually had bronchitis. So I probably shouldn’t have run it. But they told us to. So I had that thought in my head that I was going to die if I ran more than a-mile-and-a-half for 20 years. And it was actually right around this time where I started experimenting with controlling my thoughts and my brain with the calls to action and everything that this call to run the half marathon came up. And I thought, “You know what? This will be a really good test. Let’s see if I actually have power of my thoughts in my head.” You know, can I actually do this? And so I had all these reasons not to. And I thought, “You know what? I’m going to do it anyway.” So the first day I get out there and I go running like half-a-block before I feel like I’m about to die. And my brain kicked in. Because our brains are there to keep us comfortable. When you’re trying to change, that is not comfortable. And so it’s going to give you all the reasons to pull you back to where you used to be. That was more comfortable for it. So my brain starts going, “This is a really dumb idea. You can’t do this. What are you thinking? You’re about to die after half-a-block.” So what I did was I just told my brain, “Thank you for sharing that with me because that’s good to know. I’m on the right path.” I’m getting refusals, which means that if I keep going, I’m going to grow. So thanks for sharing but we’re going to keep doing this. So I did. I kept running. And I kept going slightly farther every day until I got to a-mile-and-a-half. And what was really funny is I didn’t realize I was doing this to myself. But for about two months, I only ran for a-mile-and-a-half until I was like, “Wait a second. I can run a-mile-and-a-half and I don’t feel like I’m about to die. Well, why don’t I just go farther?”     [00:50:41] Ashley James: You had to bust through a belief system that you unconsciously created in high school.     [00:50:46] Molly Christensen: Totally did. Totally did. And so I just kept going. And I did run the half marathon. I did post a pretty good time for somebody who was never runner before. I mean, I was just over two hours. I was like, “Holy cow. Look what I did I could do that.” That is what you’re talking about, it’s that feeling of triumph, which is awesome. But I would have never got there had I not failed along the way.     [00:51:13] Ashley James: Yes. And listen to the first voice. I really love that you have deciphered this. The first voice is your authentic self. The first thought happens really quick. And sometimes it’s actually quieter than the refusals that come after. They can be pretty loud. But the first voice like. “I should go to the gym. I should do a juice fast. I should eat more broccoli.” Like whatever, right? The first voice, that’s your authentic self. That’s the part of you that wants you to grow, that wants you to live a healthy happy life full of lessons and learning and just joy. That is the authentic self. But that’s the self that wants you to go up against the wall and push yourself and to really grow. And then the refusals – You know, it’s interesting because I’ve had different interviews on about self-talk. And one Naturopathic physician, the whole episode was about self-talk. And she talked about how this voice, as you call, the refusals. She calls it self-talk that it is part of our survival mechanism because the pessimists are the ones that survived. All of our ancestors were the pessimists. If you think about the ancestors that were like, “There’s no bears in the woods. Let’s go frolic.” They were all eaten by the bears. It was the ones that were very pessimistic. And was like, “Fire burns you. Don’t touch the fire. Don’t go in the woods, the Bears are over there.” The pessimists looking for all the bad things that could happen were probably the ones that ended up surviving. So we just have this genetic predisposition to looking at conserving our energy as much as possible, which is talked about in the book, The Pleasure Trap by Dr. Lisle and Dr. Goldhamer. He talks about the evolution of our brain and what motivates us in an unconscious level to survive, which is to procreate, conserve energy, and consume food. So we basically want to be lazy as possible. Consume as much calories as possible. And we’re motivated by procreation. Because that’s just genetically what all animals do to survive and to carry on the species. So that little voice inside of us is like, “Don’t run a marathon. That would not be conserving energy.” That would not be part of fulfilling the genetic – this genetic programming. So on one level, it’s genetic programming. On the other level, it’s this voice in our heads that tries to keep us safe. But safe is not – there’s no happiness in safe. There’s no growth in safe. If being safe is being stuck in the gray zone of just – what’s that? – purgatory. It’s like purgatory. You’re just stuck. And that is where depression sets in. That’s where people end up self-medicating with drugs and alcohol and sugary foods. Because their life is so safe that they bring a pint of ice cream home. Because it’s like that’s the only joy they’re going to get. So that’s like when we’re feeling stuck in life, that’s because we’re listening to all the refusals and not the first voice.     [00:54:31] Molly Christensen: Right. And we also don’t realize that a lot of times we get stuck because we hit a wall or a tract or something on our journey. So when you start feeling stuck in the muck, that’s part of the journey. It’s got to happen. But if you can see in the perspective of the Hero’s Journey, you’re like, ” Oh, wait. I’m stuck. I don’t have to be stuck here. This is a journey. I can get out.”     [00:54:55] Ashley James: Like a Disney Princess. This is just the middle of the movie, right?     [00:54:59] Molly Christensen: That’s right. It’s just part of the journey.     [00:55:00] Ashley James: Right. I’m just hitting the wall. I need to overcome it. On an esoteric level, there’s a consideration that the refusals are the devil or the negative spiritual energy that wants to keep us down. Which it has no power over us if we refuse it. If we go, “No. I’m not listening to those voices. I’m not listening to that. That’s not me.” You know that t-shirt, Not today, Satan? It’s like, “No. That’s not me. Thanks.” But I like that you think it. Because that’s actually what the Naturopath that I interviewed does. She says, thank that voice. “Thanks for letting me know I can’t run a marathon because I’ll probably collapse. Thanks. I take that into consideration but I’m going to prove you wrong.”     [00:55:50] Molly Christensen: Well, and I think it because it’s letting me figure out where my blocks are, where my walls are, what’s keeping me stuck. Because now that I see seen it, I can do something about it. Talk about empowering.     [00:56:03] Ashley James: Yes. So when you hear the refusals, you go, “Hey. Thanks for letting me know where my blind spots are and what’s keeping me in purgatory.”     [00:56:12] Molly Christensen: Uh-huh. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, the whole journey is all really just a battle in your brain. Because it’s a battle about whether your bodily appetites are going to control your brain or if that goodness, your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to call it, is going to control your brain. Because it’s much easier to sit on the couch and watch TV. Not that I’m knocking that. Sometimes you got to do it. But it’s much easier to do that than it is to get up and go wash the dishes.     [00:56:46] Ashley James: Choose your hard.     [00:56:48] Molly Christensen: Yeah. I mean, so your bodily appetite is the one that’s dealing with easy. Your goodness is getting up and doing what’s right. Which one’s going to control your brain?     [00:57:01] Ashley James: I love it. I love it. So this is how you – you took this and designed your entire homeschooling curriculum around the concept of the Hero’s Journey.     [00:57:10] Molly Christensen: Yes. That is what I did. Because what I realized is knowledge right now in the internet age, anybody can get knowledge. It’s free all over the internet. You don’t even have to go to school, really, you could just Google if you just want to get knowledge. And what I did with my homeschool curriculum is I feel like, “You know, there’s a lot of great knowledge out there.” But unless it is relevant to you, unless you can connect it to you, it’s not really helpful. So knowledge is still important. I’m not saying it’s unimportant. But it’s knowledge that’s applied wisely that really makes your life better. And especially with little kids, they love to learn. They love to learn new things. But sometimes they get crushed down because we’re trying to force feed it to them. And so they’re like, “Well, what’s the point? Why are you trying to make me do this?” So what I did with my curriculum is I went through and I got all the basic knowledge in the different subject areas, you know, topics. And I created it so that you can just sit down with your kids, your family, however many you got. And then you just learn together but then you connect it to yourself through principles. So you’re using it as a vehicle to teach principles, like for success in life and for good character. And that’s how it makes it relevant. So we’re not learning it just to learn it to pass the test. But we’re learning it because it brings us together. It’s exciting. We can love learning because it’s so interesting. And then we can make connections. Because when you make connections, it sits those neurons firing off in your brain. And it’s like, “Oh, this is so cool.” A funny example is when one of my little daughters figured out that green beans and re-fried beans were both beans. Oh, my gosh. She made that connection herself. And she was so proud. And the more epiphanies you can get – and you get those from when you make connections – the more exciting learning is going to be. And the more excited you are about learning, the more you’re going to do it. And the more you’re excited about learning, the more excited you are to go on that hero journey, too, because you’re going to hit the obstacles. And those are all about learning. In fact, I call the obstacles, learning opportunities. Because that’s what they’re all about. And so we want to love learning but some of the learning is hard when you get stuck. But you have to look and go, “Oh, this is a learning opportunity. Isn’t this exciting.” So that’s the feeling I want – it’s more important to inspire this feeling. That’s the feeling I want to inspire. Rather than, “This is miserable and I’m not doing what mom says because it’s stupid.”     [01:00:10] Ashley James: So then they get really excited about their homeschooling because they’re taking charge.     [01:00:18] Molly Christensen: Yeah. I mean, you’re setting the environment by learning with them and showing them what it’s like to make connections and to just love it. And then they can take that off into the other parts of their lives, too, when you’re not there actively learning with them.     [01:00:37] Ashley James: Since you have so many children of different ages, you’re homeschooling different grades, right? Your different levels at the same time. Can you give us an example of what a day looks like?     [01:00:53] Molly Christensen: Yes. And it’s kind of funny because I actually did a Facebook Live on my day on Monday. And everybody felt very validated because it did not look as perfect as they were picturing for what my day might look like. So I can tell you the ideal and then I can tell you reality. Okay? So we do family style homeschooling because people are going to learn at whatever level they are on. They don’t have to learn at whatever level some expert says that they should learn on. Because it’s their own journey. If they’re not ready to learn something yet, then why am I trying to make them? So we do family style learning. A big part of our homeschool is actually training with learning how to be consistent. Probably, I might be – I’d like to focus on that just maybe because it was such a big struggle for me. For some of my kids, it’s not as much of a struggle just because their personality type is just different. My husband is excellent at being consistent at things and disciplined with himself. Every kid is different. They all have different personalities. But we do work a lot on consistency. They do a lot of chores. Or at least they think they do. I don’t. I want them to know how to work. And we also have a family economy system where my kids, when they turn eight, they have to purchase their own clothing. Which is interesting because they don’t get an allowance and they can’t really go out and get a job so they get creative. I will pay the minimum wage though. But this is probably a whole other talk. But I will let them work extra money for me to earn money. And people wonder how I afford it is because I don’t have to buy their clothes. Anyway, so we have systems in place where they can learn from real life skills that are going to affect them when they get older. And big ones, big challenges for people, for adults, for most adults are time and money. So that’s why we have those two systems in place for the work because that helps with being consistent with time and then for the money. So that’s a big part of our homeschool is just life, just living life and doing that. So we do, do like a morning devotional in the mornings most of the time. And we will have breakfast. And we will clean. And then if we haven’t gotten all distracted like, we will sit down in the morning and we will just learn together as a family for about an hour. Now, sometimes my older kids who are in high school and have other – when I say they’re in high school, they’re not really in high school but high school level. But they’ll have projects and stuff that they have to work on their own. And Austin, my older kid, will be in Co Op. So they’ll have classes that they need to take. So they’ll have homework. And so they start just self studying themselves. And so me and, usually, the younger kids and, sometimes, the older kids will join it, too, we will learn together. So we will read aloud and we’ll just learn things together. And there’s no pressure. There’s no homework on that. It’s like we just do activities. Today, we drew drafts. So that was fun. Some of them want to do it. Some of them didn’t. And that was fine. And we also usually eat a snack. Because snacks just make life better. I don’t know.     [01:04:39] Ashley James: Yeah. They definitely keep kids engaged.     [01:04:44] Molly Christensen: Yes. And it keeps their mouths full so they can’t talk as much if you want them to listen. I like them to talk but not when I’m reading aloud. So we always try to have a shared learning experience. Then in the afternoons, my kids play. I work so hard to protect my schedule so I don’t over schedule them. I want them to be able to play. I want them to run outside. Because play is such an important part of their development. And a lot of people think, “Oh, they’re just wasting time. Nuh-uh.” No. They are learning so much through play. And in he afternoons, if they do have classes, they’ll usually take those then. So that’s kind of the basics of it. That’s kind of the ideal day to kind of flow through that. Because, really, homeschooling is just life. But it’s not a free for all. It’s structured. But sometimes it might look like a free for all. And what I mean by structured is, I’ve thought a lot about how to set up the environment of my home. Like, what feeling do I want there and how do we get that in here and how do we flow. And I always got it adjusted because it never just stays that way. I’m like, “Wait. The feeling I want is not chaos. So how do we fix that?” You know what I mean? So there’s always things you can keep adjusting. But for me, it’s more about creating this environment of learning where they know that they are heroes and that they’re meant to have a mission in life where they’re doing good for other people. And so instead of me constantly telling them what to do and how to do it, it makes my life so much less stressful. And in fact, that’s how I get everything done is because I realized the only one I can control is really me. And I can control the household feeling and the environment. But I can’t control them. But I can love them.     [01:06:46] Ashley James: So what happens when you need to control them? Like they’re defying house rules, like, power struggles? And of course it depends. Obviously, a 16 year old and a four year old are going to be treated a little differently, I imagine. But how do you handle disobedience or power struggles?     [01:07:05] Molly Christensen: Yes. Okay. So the thing here is I’m still not controlling them. I’m training them because they’re heroes. I am training them for the journey. And that’s how I had to reframe it. And it’s the same principle whether they’re four or 16. I, here again, have to realize they are good. I have to remember that they’re good. And they’re not acting up because I’m a failure. They’re not acting up because they’re bad. They’re just acting up because they don’t know another way yet. So it just simply means that they need a little extra help in training and learning how to obey. Now, sometimes when I talk about obedience, I know there’s  two extremes here. You got some people who just don’t even believe in obedience at all. Because they’re kids. Let kids be kids. And then you got other people who believe in very strict obedience. I’m hoping that I fell somewhere in between. I expect that my kids are going to obey when I ask them to do something. And it’s not like I’m asking them to do unreasonable things. But I have to be very careful with what I’m going to ask them to do. And I’m going to also usually train more on obedience with chores rather than education. Because education, I want them – if I require it, then they’re going to do the bare minimum. You know what I’m saying? So, I want them to get inspired and want to do more. So I have to be very careful with what I require and what I ask them to do. So I do have to train them to be obedient. But I do it from that perspective that they are good and I am just helping them to become better. And I’m doing it because I love them and I know they’re good. But I just know that sometimes it’s hard to be obedient because you don’t want to do it. So I don’t get into a power struggle because I don’t get mad. And I set the expectation up front. They know, if you don’t obey, then we’re probably going to have to do kid training. And once I’ve done the initial kid training, they sometimes slip a little bit. And all I have to do is mention, “Oh, I’m sorry. You don’t obey right now. Do we need to do some extra kid training right now?” And they’ll be like, “Nope. I’m going to go obey.” So it also helps with teaching emotional regulation as well .Because if they’re going to throw a fit, that’s not obeying. Because they got to obey when they’re calm. So basically, when they’re younger, ideally three, four, or five, sometimes it goes into six and seven, it depends on the kid, I will just be very intentional about training them in obedience. And sometimes that’s what my homeschool days would look like is all I did was train in obedience. And I would have to keep myself very calm. And then sometimes go in my room and give myself a timeout.     [01:10:31] Ashley James: Mama needs a timeout.     [01:10:34] Molly Christensen: Oh, yeah. Yes. So I’d be very intentional. And if I ask them to obey and do something, I would expect them to go do it right away. If they didn’t, I would say, “Oh, I’m sorry. Just now I asked you to obey and you didn’t. So now we’re going to have to go into – now, you’re going to have an extra chore.” And if they scream or yell or whatever, I would have to say, “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re not calm enough to do that chore. So we’re going to have to go into level two where you’re going to get another chore.” And lot of times they still scream and yell until they know you’re really serious and that you’re going to actually follow through. And so we’d get to level three. And they’re still screaming and yelling. They don’t want to do it. And they got three extra chores. So you can’t blame them, right? It’s usually just little things that I could think of on the fly that they could do based on their age. And they can do fairly easily. They just have to be obedient to do it. If they got all three levels, I would just say, “Well, I’m sorry. We’re doing this kid training so you can learn to obey because it’s a really good skill to have in life. So right now you’ve lost all your privileges for the next day. So that just means you can’t watch any shows. You can’t have any snacks.” Just whatever you decide were privileges. You can only have the basics. You can’t play with friends. After doing that a couple times, although it depends on the kid, like some kids it only takes one time of getting that far. Other kids would take me like ten times because they’re very stubborn. But it was it was mostly just me, where I would just have to stay calm and consistent, which was really, really hard for me to do at first. But I just realized, “You know what? There’s no sense in making them feel like they’re bad.” You do it all in a loving way. Because they’re not. They’re good. And they have this journey. And it’s not like I’m a failure if they’re acting up, because this is just part of the journey. This is just part of what they’ve got to learn. It’s okay. And it’s really all about that consistent training at first. But it takes – your mind thinks it takes way longer than it does once you do it. Initially, it doesn’t take as long. But, like, maybe a week or two of just intense training. So it’s a lot more intense maybe than your mind thinks of it before you do it. But it doesn’t take nearly as many weeks or days or months as you might think. You know what I’m saying? So that’s how I deal with the obedience part. Because you do still need obedience in there. They need to know how to obey and how to make themselves obey. And they also need to know who to obey to and why.     [01:13:20] Ashley James: So you’re making it to be a lesson in obedience. Like you’re training if you’re training a hero, you’re the coach, or the trainer. And if they don’t obey, they get more and more chores until it’s like strike three. And then they have all their privileges removed. How do you get them to calm down though from that? I mean, if they’re in a power struggle and they’re really upset and they’re maybe throwing things or they’re just very upset at you and upset of the situation. How do you get them to the point where they’re like, they’re happy they’re learning the lesson of obedience?     [01:13:57] Molly Christensen: Their time doesn’t start for the loss of their privileges until they’re calm. So it’s their choice. I just tell them that, “You know what, buddy? It’s your choice. When you want to get out of this, I’ll be so excited when you get your privileges back. But we got to do this. We can learn how to obey.” And then I also teach them, too. It’s like we’re learning how to obey those voices in our head too. It’s the same principle there. Because the obedience pattern, it starts with learning how to obey in your family. You got to be your parents. And then you’ve got to learn how to obey the good. Your conscience, really. You need to learn to obey your parents first. Because that’s kind of the physical thing that they can see. And then you learn how to obey the more spiritual aspect of your brain. You got to learn how – right?     [01:14:58] Ashley James: So you’re teaching them obedience not because you are like a general and you just want some good soldiers. And children should just do what we say without question. You’re not coming from that at all. You’re coming from you want them to learn the life skill of self-discipline.     [01:15:17] Molly Christensen: Exactly. Yeah. It’s not because – yeah. It’s not because I’m so lazy that I want them to do everything for me either. Sometimes they’ll say that but no.     [01:15:27] Ashley James: Wow. That’s harsh.     [01:15:30] Molly Christensen: I know. Well, it’s just because that’s what their brains come up with as a reason why they don’t want to do it. You know what I mean? I’ve thought that before. So it’s not that. It’s not that I want to control them. It’s because it’s a life skill. It’s because we grow up as adults and we don’t know who to obey.     [01:15:53] Ashley James: I love it. You know, we weren’t taught how to listen to the first voice and how to deny the negative thoughts that tell us not to follow through. No one taught us the self-discipline or how to foster it. And I love that you made, like, manners and following the rules and obedience be a lesson in how they can listen to their authentic voice and then follow through with it. That’s really beautiful.     [01:16:36] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Isn’t it though? They don’t always understand that when they’re kids. But as we keep repeating it, they’ll get it when they’re adults.     [0:16:46] Ashley James: Are you seeing that now and your three oldest children?     [01:16:49] Molly Christensen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. They’re awesome. They’re really awesome at self-regulating. And following their consciences.     [01:17:00] Ashley James: Now, I’ve seen videos where you’re talking more about this. Is this part of your training as well? The training that you sell? Do you also teach this, how to discipline and ideas for different age groups?     [01:17:17] Molly Christensen: I haven’t got a specific program for this yet. But what I do have is I have a program for moms who want to learn how to become disciplined and create habits for themselves. Like even the habits they’ve never even been able to do before. Because a lot of times those habits that we wish we had, that’s a big call to action. But the refusals are so strong. And they’re just so hard to do because we tried them so many times and failed that we can figure out how to do them anymore. So I do have that program for moms and then a lot of moms take it and teach their kids how to do that. It’s really how to – like for me for example, I was such a night owl. I could never get to bed before, like, 2:00 in the morning. And I would rationalize that away. And whenever I would think about changing it, so I had the call to action, “I should go to bed earlier.” And then I’d be like, “Oh. But the kids are in bed and I’m getting all this stuff done, blah, blah, blah.” And I finally realized – well, I finally came up with all these different keys of how my brain works partly by doing that kindness daily blog. I learned so much about how my brain works and how it’s not just my brain that works like this. So I teach a lot of those brain principles from that. And also from reading other books and mentors and stuff, too. But I teach moms how to listen to what’s going on in their brains so that they can lead the way for their kids too. So if you want something that’s just going to fix the kids that way, I don’t have that program yet.     [01:18:54] Ashley James:Yet.     [01:18:55] Molly Christensen: Yet.     [01:18:57] Ashley James: But we have to be the example. Like you said, we have to be the example.      [01:19:00] Molly Christensen: Right. We have to lead the way.     [01:19:02] Ashley James: So as parents, we need to learn how to do that. And then we can be the example but also teach our kids.     [01:19:08] Molly Christensen: Exactly. And that’s what I encourage the moms – and I have some dads too – of how to do that, how to get control of your brain. And we do it with the vehicle of creating some of these good habits that you wish you had but could never figure out how to get.     [01:19:28] Ashley James: I love it. I love it.  So I watched some of your videos and they’ve got lots of free content as well that people can absorb and learn from you. And I did one of your webinars where I was – and even there was like a link to watch some videos on your curriculum. Because you teach a homeschooling – you sell a homeschooling curriculum that can be taught to all ages. Because the parent would then adjust it for the age level. And I loved it. I got so excited about it. Actually, I really want to do it with our son. You were showing how like day one, they’re starting reading about Egypt. And so they’re getting excited about learning about the cool things about Egypt. But they’re learning about geography and history. And then they’re learning about architecture. And it’s all kind of wrapped into one, which I love that whole learning where it’s not – they could be drawing and then writing at the same time. And it’s like art and language and science are all wrapped into one. It’s not like, “Okay. Well, put down your pencils now we’re learning math.: It’s like math could be part of that, right? So it’s all wrapped into one. And that’s how the brain learns so well when it’s a whole lesson learning. But I looked through your curriculum and I was inspired by it. And there’s so much of it as you turning to the child and getting them to share their creative ideas and to come up with new ones. And then they’re so excited about the lesson that they’re not bummed out about writing something or doing a writing assignment because they were so inspired by it.     [01:21:21] Molly Christensen: Right. Right. And that’s what the whole idea is, is because it’s all connected, they can make connections too. It’s like subjects are a new invention of the modern age. And we do actually have it broken up into subjects. Kind of funny. But even though I know it’s so much better when it’s all connected. But we do it in subjects just because that’s kind of – well, for one reason, the reason why I came up with subjects for industrial ages was just because it made it more systemized. And so that’s one reason why I just kept it that way. But all the subjects are interconnected.     [01:21:53] Ashley James: That’s what I meant. They’re all connected so that they get the connections. My husband and I are both very creative and smart. Not to toot my own horn. But we both struggled in school because we’re the kind of learners that need to know why do I need to know this. Before they’re just like, “You have to learn this”. And I’ve always found it so frustrating in high school when – I loved science. And I was in physics. And they hadn’t taught us the type of math that I needed to know yet to do the physics work. And I went up to my physics teacher, I’m like, “I haven’t learned this yet in my math class.” And he’s like, “Oh, we’ll go talk to your Math teacher.” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah. We’re doing that next quarter.” And I’m like, “You are just all not talking to each other. How is this possible?” And then I was writing my first history exam in grade ten. And it said, “Write the answer in essay format.” Never ever in my life had I heard of the term essay format. And my history teacher was so upset for me. And he advocated for me. I remember him grabbing my hand and storming into my English teachers office saying, “How is it possible she’s in grade ten and she has fallen through the cracks and she has never learned how to do an essay. This is not okay.” And it was like how many children are falling through the cracks that we’re learning these different – the separate subjects? Whereas, if you are doing homeschooling, for example, you’re talking about the middle ages. And then within that theme, then you’re learning some math, and then you’re learning some geography, and then you’re learning some history, and learning the science. But you’re using a theme that connects it. And that maybe even a project like, “Okay. We’re going to make a castle out of popsicle sticks. But we have to do the math and we have to do the architecture.” So it allows them to apply it and understand why they need to know all these things. And then they end up coming up with all their questions that they want to have answered. So it makes sense to their brains and then it solidifies the learnings.     [01:24:24] Molly Christensen: Absolutely. And also, if you think about the famous men and women of the Renaissance. They did not just limit themselves to going deep in one subject. They need all the different subjects. When you call a renaissance man a renaissance man is because they are well read in all the different areas. And that’s the kind of person that’s going to come up with the most creative ideas because they can make the connections. And that’s where they come up with the new things. So like our industrialized age, we go really deep and specialized, which is great if you’ve got somebody who’s a heart surgeon or something. I want them to be specialized. But if you’re going to be creative and come up with new ideas, you want to connect everything. So what I did in my curriculum is I just used history to connect everything. Well, not just. We used history and principle. So each month, you have new principles that we call the superpowers. Superpower principles, and they’re just like success principles, leadership principles. Because that’s what I wanted my kids to learn the awareness they’re getting until they’re a little older, especially. So I wanted to put it in my family style curriculum because that’s what makes life worth living is knowing how to go on your journey. So when you connect everything with history, it’s awesome because it’s the story of why and who we are and why we came up with things. So I loved the math part, especially because a lot of times we’re just throwing in all these calculations, which is boring.     [01:26:03] Ashley James: There’s no story.     [01:26:04] Molly Christensen: There’s no story.      [01:26:04] Ashley James: There’s no reason. And the thing is, when you get out into the real world as an adult, there is a story. I am balancing the family budget, there is a story. Because if I messed that up, we don’t have food on the table. So there’s an emotional –  when we’re out in the real world or doing math for our job, like doing payroll or something, there is a story. There’s always, always in the real world an emotional component and a story behind math. Or if you’re doing math for NASA, like people could die because you’re flying out to outer space. And that math needs to make sense. So there’s always a reason why we’re doing math in the real world. But when we’re learning it, it’s like just figure these situations out.     [01:26:50] Molly Christensen: Just do it.     [01:26:50] Ashley James: Just do it. Just do it. And that’s just not how math – that’s not how we do math. I the real world, we do math with a reason with our emotional component. So I love that you’re including that because it helps us learn and really solidify that learning.     [01:27:03] Molly Christensen: Well, and also, you look at, let’s say, 12 years of math, right? It took mankind 6,000 years to learn most of that math. So they had to figure it out for a reason and why. And so that’s the stories I’m including in there. It’s like, “Well, why did they have to figure this out? Where did this come from?” So it’s pretty fascinating that way. And it really does make kids pretty excited because it brings in the music of math. I mean, you still have to learn the calculation skills. But that’s just something that I use to practice consistency and discipline. Because that doesn’t require thinking so much once you got it – once you understand it. So it’s all about inspiring them to love it, to love it more so they think. But then also training them so they get the skills. And the training is just the stuff that they don’t have to think about. But just practice.     [01:28:06] Ashley James: I love it. Oh, it’s so cool. So in all of this because you, after seven children, have developed a really amazing curriculum that now you sell. And so many, many other families are doing it and sharing with you their success. Can you tell us a bit about that? Like, what had you – because you told us your story but you didn’t get to the part where you then sat down and taught yourself how to create an internet course. And how to make this replicatable. And it is so – it’s so good looking, by the way. It looks like you hired a company to put it together. It looks so good. It’s like a textbook. It looks so good. I could tell you really put a lot of work into it. So I’m congratulating you on the hard work because I know what it takes.     [01:29:00] Molly Christensen: Thank you.      [01:29:00] Ashley James: I know what it takes. But you thought, how can I then make this replicatable so other families can do it? And now you have had other families do it. So can you share a bit about that?     [01:29:12] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Sure. Okay. So another big part of my journey is the entrepreneurship journey, which anybody who’s an entrepreneur knows is a journey. But I mean, that too, is just another hero’s journey of life. I was always kind of entrepreneurial when I was a kid. But I also got tons of refusals. Like, “I don’t like to talk to people. People think I mean.” So I kind of just hobby entrepreneured. Entrepreneured, I don’t know if that’s a verb. But I tended to set it down because so many people think that entrepreneurship is bad. It’s a lot of people losing a lot of money and they’re kind of crazy and all this. I had to really just shift my mind said about entrepreneurs. But as I started developing this program, because I wanted this program for my own kids. To systemize it because you can follow rabbit trails if you want. But my brain, we get so distracted that I would never come back to earth. And I just wanted a simple easy system that I could sit down and just cover all the basics in an hour a day. I actually had a friend who said – well, where this really came up? I should back up a little bit. Is that I thought, you know, when our kids are teenagers and are Co-Ops, we do a really good job of teaching them leadership principles. Because we created that culture of teaching them that. And I thought, why don’t have something like this for the whole family and especially for the younger kids. Why not introduce them earlier to these principles?  And I said that to her. And she’s like, “Oh, that’s a great idea. You should do it.” And I was like, “No. No, no, no. I don’t have time for that.” And then all the refusals came in. You know how that goes, right? Now, you’ve seeing this pattern. And I said, “I do have a lot of experience though. Maybe I could do this.” I own every single curriculum out there since I bought them all in my days when I was insecure and thinking a curriculum would solve all my problems. But I thought – you know, I have researched a lot of curriculum and I’ve noticed there’s not anything like this out there. And so I just thought, “Okay. I will do this.” But as many homeschool moms are, I’m a real DIY-er, you know, do everything yourself. And one of the big things I knew I was going to learn on this journey was that I was going to have to allow other people to help me, which has been fantastic. I’ve done a ton of it myself, for sure. But I have had other people come in and help me with this. And I did have a graphic designer. I don’t know how to do that. Thank goodness.     [01:32:04] Ashley James: Well, it looks so professional. So good job. Good job.     [01:32:07] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Yes. So she came up with kind of the ideas there too. But I was like – we’ve been writing the content. I write the math and the science. My sister came in. She homeschools too. And she’s wonderful. And she’s been writing the history and the language arts. And as we keep growing, I’m hoping I can bring more people on to help with it as well. But it’s really been a wonderful journey to learn all this stuff and to learn how to let other people help you too. Because guess what? That’s another huge chunk of the hero’s journey. Because when I was describing that hero’s journey to you, I said, the journey includes mentors. It includes friends and allies who are going on the path with you. It also includes enemies sometimes. Sometimes you hear things that are just aren’t so nice. And you don’t worry about it because you just know it’s part of the journey. And you feel compassion for the enemies because you think, “Oh, I’m so sorry that you haven’t found your path yet.” And maybe they have. But it’s just different. So yes, really, it’s been an amazing project to do. And I love that I can share this with other homeschool moms so that they can see that, really, you can cover all of this basic knowledge in just an hour a day and to conspire them to want to go learn more. And to become the person that they’re meant to become. And to travel on their hero’s journey.     [01:33:38] Ashley James: So you just spend an hour a day homeschooling?     [01:33:43] Molly Christensen: Essentially, yes.     [01:33:44] Ashley James: And the kids are doing other things throughout the day like reading, and doing projects, and playing, and doing art, and stuff like that. But you sit down and you basically have a classroom for one hour a day. Is it seven days a week?     [01:33:59] Molly Christensen: No. We have a couch. Not a classroom. And the kitchen table. And no, we actually usually only do it about three or four days a week. Because the other – I definitely wouldn’t do it on the weekends. But I say three or four days because sometimes we’re going to go on a field trip or maybe we’re just running errands or something, you know. So yes, it takes surprisingly a lot less time than one might think to teach your kids because of this, we think it takes 9:00 to 3:00 like the public schools, but they’ve done all these studies about how much time is wasted there. But also, it’s because of the teaching style is different. I’m focusing on the feeling. If they have the right feeling, they’re going to learn it so much faster because they want to. Public schools, because there’s so many kids in there – and I’m not knocking public schools. It is what it is. And it’s a good option for many people. But they have to focus more on repetition. It does not take six years of grammar worksheets to learn grammar. It just doesn’t. If they’re ready and they have something they want to say, they can learn it really fast. And if they’ve been read really good books to, they have it in their brain when they read. A lot of the stuff they just pick up. I don’t even have to teach them because it’s like osmosis, you know. So it really is not as – it’s not rocket science as we think.     [01:35:31 Ashley James: There’s this type of school – is it called the Sudbury School? The type of school? Yeah. So I was looking – when we were pregnant, my husband and I – well, I was really motivated too. Because when you’re pregnant, you’re like – or at least with the first baby because I only had one – I was trying to consume all the information possible about my child’s future. Like, you know what kind of schooling and all this stuff. What are we going to do and how are we going to discipline, and what kind of birth are we going to have. And I came across this type of school called the Sudbury School. And it completely blew my mind. It is totally – I don’t know. I feel like I’ve entered – I’ve gone into a time warp but entered like 1969 and we’re surrounded by hippies. Because it’s basically a kid commune where you drop your kid off on a place with buildings and a few acres. And you leave your kid there and there’s no formal classrooms, there’s no teachers. There are adults and they’re called coaches or something. And the child is just allowed to do whatever they want. Of course, actually the children come up with their own rules. Because they come up with their own government. And the kids get to run the place. And the kids could actually vote to fire one of the adults should they want to. And so the adults really who are there because they love to share and teach. And so the kids, if they’re interested will go to the computer room and ask the adult to teach them how to do – how to make a video game, how to code. Or the child would go to the music room and say, “I want to learn how to play the guitar.” And I’ve watched a lot of videos of graduates of this system. And the they go on to college. And they say, for the first year, you might just – the kids might spend the entire time playing video games. And he says, “Yeah. They do.” They kind of get it all out. They get it out of their system. They do whatever they want and they get it out of their system. And then they start to look around and go, “How does this work? How does that work? Oh, man, I really want to try this. I really want to do this.” And they start getting inspired by things. And then they go ask the adults for help to learn those things. And then if they decided they want to – because they get so inspired, they go, “You know, I really want to become an engineer.” Well, they have to ask, “What do I need to do?” “Okay. Well, you have to learn this, this, this, and this. And in order to pass this test to go on to college.” And then they want to and then they’re constantly asking for help because they’re learning. So it’s like the Wild West there. And there are children who don’t excel in that environment because – for whatever reason. Bt there are children who excel incredibly well because their learning style is just, “Leave me alone and let me come to you when I’m ready. And I want to completely have my education be based on my motivation.” And that blew my mind. I think it blew a circuit in my brain. Because I was raised in the system of you, you shut up, you sit down, don’t talk until you’re spoken to. Children are seen and not heard. Raise your hand if you need to go to the bathroom. You have to have a hall pass. And really made to feel afraid of adults and afraid of the teachers. And education is not supposed to be fun. That was the system I was raised in. And I was always – I always had a belief that I was stupid because that was the system I was raised in. But then as an adult, I’m like,” I want to learn how to code. I want to learn how to make a website. I want to learn how to video edit.” And I found myself picking things up so quickly that I realized I am a really good learner. But it has to be something that I love to do, which is how our brain works. So that’s why – and so I think Sudbury is the type of that schooling or unschooling is this one end of the extreme. And then military school would be the other side of the extreme. But I like that what you’ve done is you’ve picked mindset and teaching them how to be the best versions of themselves as the core of your curriculum. So you’re building – like you said, you’re building the their character but you’re also building your own character as a parent, which is really beautiful.     [01:39:56] Molly Christensen: Yeah. You nailed it. That’s exactly what I wanted to do. Because I love the idea of Sudbury. But part of me wonders where does the character coming in especially if they’re being sent away all day. Plus, I don’t want to send my kids away all day. You know what I mean?     [01:40:12] Ashley James: Right. I imagine it like Lord of the Flies. You just get a bunch of kids together –     [01:40:16] Molly Christensen: That’s kind of what I would do.     [01:40:18] Ashley James: Oh man, Lord of the Flies. It just scares me. But it did open my mind and expand my mind to this idea of there are aspects of this unschooling that make a lot of sense or child led learning that makes a lot of sense. Not 100 percent of the time for me as a parent. But it opened my mind up to, “Well, how do we learn?” And I really want my son to want to learn and get excited about learning. And he is. And I don’t want to thwart that, which we do. By the time we send our kids to school, a lot of the school system thwarts their desire to learn because –     [01:40:55] Molly Christensen: Absolutely. And the comparison culture to. I mean, you even said you thought you were stupid. It’s like, none of those kids are stupid. They all have their own unique abilities. And they all have goodness inside. They just have different journeys. I’ve had some kids learn to read when they were four. And I have another kid now who’s eight-and-a-half and it just hasn’t quite clicked yet. It’s just about to though. But because I can let her go on her own journey, I can just keep saying, “This is awesome. You can keep working out. You’re going to get there.”     [01:41:30] Ashley James: Beautiful. Now, let’s talk about socialization. Because I think that’s on everyone’s mind. I mean, the fact that you did have seven kids so those kids are all working together so they’re not alone. But there’s a lot of parents that just have one or two kids. And so if they’re at home all day, how are they going to be amazing adults to connecting with people and knowing how to communicate if they’re those oddball kids who are isolated at home as we often think or that’s the mainstream media’s idea of homeschooling.     [01:42:03] Molly Christensen: Right. Well, what I learned really quickly was that basically children they model their parents. So if you feel like somebody else unsocialized, it could come from the parents. Sad to say. And we got unsocialized kids at public school too. The outcast. The social outcast. So for me, because I was worried about that, I was like, “Well, I guess I better lead the way.” So I am a total introvert. I went through high school and was I socialized? Did I learn how to communicate with people? No. Not really. I felt awkward all the time in high school. Like, why do we think that’s a good environment to learn how to communicate with people? I just mostly just felt awkward. And so I just decided I just need to learn how to love and serve other people. And I figure if we can do that, hey, we’re going to be socialized. We’re going to know how to get along with other people. So I just remember some of my first few Co-Op activities I took my son to. What I really want to do is just go sit in the corner and hide and he did too. In fact, he didn’t even want get out the car. But I just made myself go introduce myself to other people and get to know them. You know, what, people are amazing. People are great. And it was really like, as I practiced my socialization skills,  they followed suit as well. I was a little worried at first when he wouldn’t get out of the car ever. But he figured it about. He’s an amazing kid. And so, really, what socialization is all about is just loving and serving people. And you can absolutely do that in your home. You can absolutely do that and take your kids to other places and just love and serve people. And there’s so much of the other socialization stuff that comes from sending your kids to school that I didn’t want. Like, I mentioned that my son was bringing home some bad behaviors. I was like, “Why would I want that?”     [01:44:15] Ashley James: Bullying. And it’s really sad that the number two cause of death between the ages of 10 and 24 suicide right now. That it raised up to, I think, it’s 56 percent in the last ten years. I mean, suicide is at an all time high, basically, with our youth.     [01:44:38] Molly Christensen: Yeah. It’s horrible.     [01:44:38] Ashley James: And that’s something we have to stop and say there’s something wrong with our system. And I don’t think there’s only one thing. I don’t think you can only say that it’s the school system. Or you only say that they all have cell phones or social media. I think it is -and we have to look at everything. We have to take the shotgun approach. We have to look at everything and go there’s something wrong with how we’re addressing mental health, with how we’re addressing bullying, with how we’re addressing online bullying, with how we’re addressing it in the schools. There was a child – this is such a sad topic to bring up. There’s a eight or nine year old child just this week that committed suicide because he was knocked unconscious when beaten in his school. And it was filmed by one of the students. And the school tried to suppress it and deny it. And I don’t know what kind –     [01:45:31] Molly Christensen: He didn’t feel heard.     [01:45:31] Ashley James: So he didn’t feel heard. And then he killed himself. And that is so wrong and so sad. And we should all feel very angry and want to take action to fix this problem. I think that we all need to fix the problem. That we all need to take – we need to take personal responsibility because we can only change ourselves. So we need to figure out what can we do as individuals to make this world, to make this society, to make our community, a place where mental health can be addressed and what is the root cause of bullying. What is going on? The root cause of bullying and figure that out. We have to figure it out. And then we have to address it with our children, with our children’s friends, with all the parents that were around. We need to take action as individuals. Because we can’t wait for the government to fix it or the school system to fix it. If we just wait it’s going to just get worse and worse. And so that’s my little soapbox about this that we need to take responsibility for our own actions. And the first voice, the little voice that everyone just heard in themselves go, “That is wrong. And I want to help stop this. I want to help turn this around.” That voice was our authentic self. And then all the refusals that came after, “Well, who am I to do that? And I’m just one person. And I don’t know anyone -“     [01:47:08] Molly Christensen: What to do.     [01:47:09] Ashley James: “I don’t know what to do.” All those little refusals, that’s the party that wants to keep you safe. But we need to go. “Ah. Thanks for pointing out where I’m stuck in life. I’m going to break through that. And I’m going to prove those voices wrong. Listen to the authentic voice.” So all of us could just do one thing like you did your blog. You did 180 beautiful acts of kindness in a year. And what if we all just did one act of kindness dedicated to lowering the suicide rate among youth? We don’t have to know what it looks like but just start. Just start by saying, “I’m going to do something and be part of this change to turn the world around.” And I don’t know what it looks like yet but I’m declaring it. I’m declaring it right now. And then I’m going to go and talk to other parents. And maybe we’ll create a little organization or get them all together for tea and just brainstorm what can we do as individuals to turn this around. Because this is our mission. As long as we’re in service of others with love and service of others and being an example for our children, then we will have a positive impact.     [01:48:21] Molly Christensen: Well, absolutely. And I actually think that so many elements of the hero’s journey address this as well. Because I think our nation is a nation with an identity crisis. People do not know who they are. They don’t know that they have goodness inside because they have no purpose. They don’t understand so many of these principles. And I think this as long as we’re doing these kindnesses and we see people who are  lonely. We reach out and we teach people and love people. That’s what we can do.     [01:48:54] Ashley James: It’s so beautiful. Molly, thank you so much for coming today and sharing. This episode would help anyone. Although the formal topic was on homeschooling, you addressed some principles of personal growth that I find to be so beautiful and so, so, so helpful to everyone that wants to break through and to grow. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Of course, the links to everything that Molly does is going to be the show notes of today’s podcasts at learntruehealth.com. Your main website which is buildingheroesacademy.com is fantastic. Also, your book is homeschool get it done.com. And then your curriculum funnel is the number 3homeschoolsecrets.com. Molly, is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview? Is there anything left unsaid or anything that you want to make sure that you’ve got to share?     [01:49:52] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me. This has been great. And I love that you are sharing your message. And that’s actually another thing that many of us are called to do is to share our messages. But we have fears and we shut ourselves down. So I guess really what I want to end we’re with is just that, to remember that you are one of those heroes that we’ve been talking about on this hero’s journey. Everybody listening to this and Ashley, for sure. Because just knowing that just makes such a shift in your life. And I love the visual that that can bring to you so you can remember, when you do get down, when you do hit obstacles, it’s just part of the journey. And it’s a great thing because it just means that you are on the right path, that you are just going to be learning and growing. And as you’ve learned how to get through those obstacles and you’re changing so many lives as you go through because you are doing what you were meant to do. You were called to the action that you did it. And that’s really what life is all about, it’s just doing that so that you can serve people. So thank you so much for having me on. And I hope to talk to you again sometime.     [01:50:58] Ashley James: Absolutely, Molly. This is not our last conversation. This is just the first of many. Thank you. It’s been such a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.   Get Connected with Molly Christensen! Building Heroes Academy Building Heroes Academy – Facebook Group YouTube Pinterest Building Heroes Academy’s Curriculum Funnel Book by Molly Christensen How To Get Everything Done – Free Ebook Recommended Reading by Molly Christensen Teaching from Rest by Sarah McKenzie Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

Join the Facebook group and be part of the Learn True Health community! https://learntruehealth.com/group Website: www.happygutlife.com Book: Happy Gut -- The Cleansing Program To Help You Lose Weight, Gain Energy, and Eliminate Pain Promotional giveaway: www.happygutlife.com/gutreboot. This is a Free 3-Day Anti-Inflammatory self-guided gut reset that can easily be done over a weekend, with recipes, mindset, and all the guidance needed to reduce bloating, stop indigestion, and reboot your health in just three days. Practice website: www.pedremd.com. At my practice, I help the patient take a deep dive into their gut health and gut-related health issues using functional medicine and a mind-body-spirit approach to wellness.   Happy Gut https://www.learntruehealth.com/happy-gut   Highlights: What gut health is really about. Acid Reflux is not really having too much acid in our stomachs but actually less of it. Mindset id the first thing we should change when accepting the challenge of being healthy also goes with lifestyle changes. Having a healthy gut is the start of being healthy all throughout. How concussions can sometimes be the cause of gut dysfunction. The health of the body is really dependent on the health of your entire digestive system. Medication is not going to build good health for a person, it’s going to be lifestyle, it’s going to be the way they eat.   Sometimes we have to listen our bodies when it’s telling us that something is wrong. A certain symptom can sometimes present itself with a different root cause. In the instance of having an unhealthy gut, an upset stomach or maybe even heartburn can manifest towards when our bodies are fighting off the imbalances in the acids within. Dr. Vincent Pedre shares some of his expertise towards having a healthy gut in this episode we’re sure everyone is interested to know about.   Intro: Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s show with functional medicine doctor, Vincent Pedre. He has some amazing information about healing the gut and I know you will just love it. I wanted to share an email I got. I love emails from you guys, from the listeners. They often bring me to tears and this one from a listener that I’ve received a few days ago and I got permission to read it. I won’t share their name. They’re actually really excited for me to share because they wanted to spread hope. They say, “Hey there, Ashley. Hope the start of your holiday season is treating you and your family well. I just wanted to sincere thank you for the incredible impact you and your podcast has had in my life. After struggling with nervous system issues, digestive system issues for over 5 years, after a concussion landed me in the ER, after years of bouncing around to numerous practitioner and following countless protocols and spending way more money that I’d like to admit. It was two episodes of your podcast in particular that introduced me to the missing links in my healing process. I was able to locate an atlas orthogonal chiropractor in Seattle after hearing your episode with Dr. Patrick Gallagher. And I happen to see Eric Thorton who literally put my brain back in place. I imagine you get loads of emails like these but just wanted to extend my appreciation and gratitude for you and your work. All your shows are so jam-packed with valuable information that I will continue to listen, learn and pass along the information. Many cheers and hope you have a very happy and healthy holiday.” Thank you so much for this letter. I wanted to share this because this listener had spent years and years over 5 years going from doctor to doctor with all kinds of issues and they didn’t give up hope. They’ve kept educating themselves and through some wonderful episodes, they really unlocked and unlocked what they’re looking for. I’ve had similar emails recently saying that specific episodes were the missing links that they were searching and searching and something just clicked. That was the missing link. Sometimes its diet. Sometimes it’s really simple like removing something out of your diet. Sometimes it’s a nutrient deficiency. Something as simple as magnesium or zinc. Sometimes it’s taking the time to breathe. Something really simple. And sometimes it is a lot of things. It’s the shotgun approach needing to do many changes. If you’re suffering and you are feeling sick. You’re tired of feeling sick, know that there’s hope. Keep moving forward and every little change matters. You’ll look back and you’ll realize, today you’re better than the day before. That’s how I was. I was so sick for so many years and now looking back, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how sick I was because I feel so good now. It took me years to build this. It’s the foundation of health you’re building, it’s funny that this listener wrote this about having a concussion because in today’s interview, Dr. Pedre talks about one cause of gut dysfunction, is concussion. He explains that. Concussions are really common and often overlooked by regular doctors. When I say regular, I mean just like, run of the mill doctors. Not ones that have more advanced training like in functional medicine. So you go to an average doctor and they wouldn’t know when you’re having digestive issues to actually look at your brain health. Very interesting. So you’ll enjoy today’s interview if you have gut issues and that you’re looking to heal because Dr. Pedre has a wonderful book called, Happy Gut and he teaches some and brings us some great information in today’s interview. He’s going to come back on the show because even after 90 minutes we just got in the surface. I’m very excited to have him continue to come back and teach more and more. I want all of you to have wonderfully healthy guts. That doesn’t sound good. I want all of us to have wonderfully healthy tummies and happy healthy tummies and digestive systems. Enjoy today’s interview. Please share this episode with those you love who you also want to extend having healthy tummies with. That would be great if we could include all of our loved ones. Build happy healthy tummies with us. Enjoy today’s episode and have an excellent rest of your day.   [05:25] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 397. I am so excited for today’s guest. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and my gut. We have Dr. Vincent Pedre, who is an MD that specializes in healing the gut, holistically. Man, your bio, we could spend 2 hours just talking about your bio and your credentials. You have been on some amazing TV shows, you’ve hung out with Dr. Oz, you’ve done so many interviews. You’ve written so much great articles and books and your website, Happygutlife.com. I’m really excited for us to talk about this today because so many people complain. A lot of my listeners that they have bloating, they have constipation. That they’re on medications for heart burn that they just don’t know where to start or maybe they’ve been trying to do some diet to heal their candida, or heal their small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It’s such a long path and they’re not getting the results that they want to get. Gut health is the foundation. If we don’t have our gut health, we don’t have anything. Because if we’re not absorbing and utilizing our nutrition, everything falls apart. That’s where it all begins.   [07:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Totally. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I’d like to think of the gut as the root system of the body. The same that the roots are for a tree. They are foundational. Imagine the health of the tree is guided by the health of the roots. Same way, the health of the body is really dependent on the health of your entire digestive system.   [07:27] Ashley James: Absolutely. Yes. Then more recently, people have been talking about how they’re seeing a direct correlation between gut health and brain health. That the vagus nerve can become inflamed and they’re seeing that also in the gut. That we make some of our neuro chemicals in the gut and that even our T3’s converted, 25% of our T3’s converted in the gut. The gut is not just for digesting food, it’s also affecting our brain and our hormones.   [08:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Let’s say, metabolically active organ system that is involved in making if we include the gut microbiome in that picture, is included in making neuro transmitters. It makes it’s own hormone that affect things like your appetite also your sense of that you’ve already eaten enough. It control so many things, it regulates blood sugar. It’s a really integral part of the entire picture of what makes up our health.   [08:39:] Ashley James: Now you wrote a book called Happy Gut. The cleansing program to help you lose weight, gain energy and eliminate pain. I heard about the study where they took obese, I think it was obese mice and mice of a healthy weight. They did a fecal transplant from the healthy weight mice to the obese mice and then the obese mice then became, without changing their chloric intake, the obese mice became not obese. So they’re saying that even our gut health has to do with the obesity and since we’re seeing that that is one of the largest health problems occurring today. Would you say that gut health and that almost everyone doesn’t have gut health right now?   [09:28] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You could argue for that. That we are in an epidemic of gut disorders. Let’s say in gut related disorders all throughout the world. It’s fascinating because I teach – I’ve had the honor to teach in Australia and Mexico. I just came back from Peru. Obesity is a problem that is a worldwide problem and the rise in diabetes and metabolic syndrome which is a precursor to diabetes that’s growing all over the world. You could argue which is the chicken or the egg, what’s coming first. There has been so many changes in the way that we eat. Our dietary patterns are so skewed from our ancestral patterns because of the availability of food, but also just the preponderance of sugar-laden foods, the refined carbohydrates, packaged foods. All sorts of things that are convenient but they’re just not healthy for us and certainly not healthy for the gut microbiome which then regulates things like how your body processes sugars. That’s going to relate to how much fat you pack into the middle of your body because that’s regulated by the hormone insulin. You could argue, look at just the trends for example. The second most prescribed medication worldwide is a proton pump inhibitor, which lowers the acidity of the stomach. If you just look at this just as a late person. Even just like of an innocent child asking questions like, “Weren’t we made to have acid in our stomach for a reason? Is it okay to go in and alter that?” And think that we are solving a problem without a problem without creating downstream problems. That was my question in the 90’s when the proton pump inhibitors became the new panacea for gut issues if you’ve’ had acid reflux, let’s give you a proton pump inhibitor. You know, even back then, I asked the question, “You know, our physiology evolved to have a PH in the stomach around 3. We evolved to create stomach acid, why is it okay to change that? Are you sure that by changing that we’re not causing some downstream problems?” Early on in the days of the proton pump inhibitors, I swear if you spoke to a gastroenterologist, they thought it should just be added to the water and there were no problems with it. We know now, more than two decades later, that they lead to all sorts of things like calcium malabsorption, iron malabsorption. It could cause B12 deficiency. They lead to low bone mass eventually maybe to osteoporosis.   [12:46] Ashley James: Would it also lead to something like H-Pylori and allow for other parasitic infections to occur because if we don’t have enough acid in the stomach, like that’s our line of defense, it’s kind of a like a mote around it’s castle. It’s preventing stuff from getting in right?   [13:06] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. It’s initial line of defense, let’s say bacteria that might get through the food that we eat. Yeast for example. Candida has a hard time surviving stomach acid but if your stomach PH is raised and much easier than to colonize the stomach and really the small intestine and large intestine with yeast. H. Pylori’s a different story because PPI’s actually inhibit H.Pylori. Slow down the growth H.Pylori but they don’t eradicate the infection. They could actually perpetuate an H.Pylori infection at a very low grade but never fully get rid of it.   [13:52] Ashley James: That sounds like, you could insert that into almost any condition where chronic drugs we’re given to mask how the body functions. To sort of manage symptoms but not solve the problem. It persists. Something persists.   [14:10] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Exactly and for many people, we’re starting with stomach acid. For many people, acid reflux, heart burn is both an issue of diet and lifestyle habits, but it can also be an issue with not enough stomach acid production which is counter intuitive. Most people think that acid reflux means you’re making too much acid. For the majority of people what it means they making too little acid. They’re probably not making enough stomach acid because there’s different levels of malfunction they could be nutrient deficient so maybe they don’t have enough zinc in their diet. For example, they could have vagal nerve malfunction and thus they’re not getting the nerve impulses that would stimulate the stomach to produce enough acid to break down protein.   [15:06] Ashley James: What causes that? What causes vagal nerve malfunction?   [15:09] Dr. Vincent Pedre: The probably the easiest thing to understand that could cause that is a concussion for example. How many people have had concussions in their life where they lose consciousness and they recover for it. At least they think they’ve recovered from it but then something is not quite right after that. We know that if you have a concussion with loss of consciousness that within 30 minutes, you have vagal nerve malfunction and because of that you get leaky gut syndrome. The vagus nerve also regulates the gut barrier and the permeability of the gut. The other thing that I see in my practice that is more common that concussion that causes vagal nerve malfunction is stress. I would say that’s the number one reason people are – just think through a time where you’ve been really stressed and you eat but that food feels like it’s like a rock in your stomach? That’s because you’re not making enough digestive enzyme. They say you have to rest to digest. Or another word is you have to be in a relax state in order for your body to be able to digest foods. If you’re not into a relax state your body thinks that you need to be ready to run because something’s going to come and attack you. That’s the state of our modern lives. It’s maladaptive stress response because we’re not out in the wild. We don’t need to protect ourselves form some animals that going to try and attack and eat us. We’re living in a state as if it exists and we don’t resolve that state so a lot of people live in that chronic fight or flight response. That will then affect your vagal tone that reduces vagal tones and terms has cascading effects of reducing stomach acid production. You might get stomachaches, maybe you start getting some reflux and then you think, “Well, I’m producing too much acid so I should take some of the acid lowering medication.” For the most part, that is the wrong thing to do. Now you’re going to create new problems because once you’re reducing stomach acid, I’ve mentioned calcium malabsorption, B12. They’ve also found that people who take PPI’s long term so proton pump inhibitors, these acid reducing medications out there that they’re at increased risk for some pneumonia and for being hospitalized with a pneumonia. They’re also at an increased risk for an infection and infection that you never want to get which is C. DIFF Diarrhea which is caused by bacteria called Clostridium Difficile. Which is extremely difficult to treat has become more and more resistant to the classic antibiotics that were used for that because of the overuse of antibiotics. It’s something that you don’t want to get. Along with yeast overgrowth and potentially I had a patient who came in who develop C. DIFF as a result of being on a proton pump inhibitor.   [18:28] Ashley James: There just doesn’t seem like there any positive news that comes to taking these medications. They get temporarily relief but they’re going to have worse side effects down the road.   [18:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Right. It’s either the quick solution versus what is going to be a little bit harder work. Which is figuring out, “Okay, you need to look at yourself, change your lifestyle.” Maybe you’re coming home at 8pm at night. Eating dinner and then you’re in bed by 11. You haven’t had enough time to digest your food and then at nighttime that food is sitting there putting pressure and stomach acid comes up because you’re lying down. A lot of times it takes making some tough choices about changing lifestyle habits. A lot of people, they’d rather just take a pill than change lifestyle but honestly, the lifestyle’s going to have the most favorable effects. The other thing is not breaking down protein properly. We started talking about neuro transmitters and hormones, what not. If you don’t break down your protein properly, you’re not going to have the sub stream necessary to make the neuro transmitter that help keep you happy and help life feel satisfying. Then you know you can go down the path of depression and anxiety because you’re not breaking down your protein properly.   [19:57] Ashley James: I’ve been advertised to recently, Zantac which is an anti-acid and anti-histamine now there’s a big recall because it’s now linked to causing cancer.   [20:12] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Let me explain it. There’s an ingredient in there, the scientific term for it, it’s an inert ingredient that’s used as filler to make these tablets.   [20:25] Ashley James: So it’s not that anti-acids directly causes cancer.   [20:28] Dr. Vincent Pedre: No. It was an ingredient within Zantac and it was a lot of the generic manufacturers. It was actually a recall that affected other generics as well because I have patients that take blood pressure medication that was also within that recall and it’s because they found that it had an ingredient that had an increase suspicion of being increasing the risk of cancer for people. So it was basically not the active ingredient itself, but another ingredient in the – which is scary because there are over the counter medications that you can just go and buy without a doctor’s prescription. And it had a substance in it that had been found to increase the risk for cancer.   [21:17] Ashley James: We live in a world where we feel that because it’s been sold over the counter that it’s safe. But if we go to Costco, you can buy one purchase of cough syrup because they sell this both too so that there’s two bulk giant, it’s like half a liter I think or something. It’s some crazy amount of cough syrup and they’re strapped together but two bottles of this big cough syrup and if you were to accidentally, maybe you were just sipping on it or you have a cough and you don’t read a label, you could kill yourself. It has a lethal dose of acetaminophen in it. It’s sold over the counter like we can go to a drugstore and buy something that doesn’t seem excessive and kill ourselves. We have to like really be careful taking any medication at all and make sure that we’re talking tour doctor and doing our research and like you said, stopping and looking at lifestyle and diet.   [22:16] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. I think a lot of doctors are trained within the system. You know, I hate to say it but I was trained in that system. That in some ways and this is what really turned me off to medicine at the end of my training is that, we’re just glorified reps for the pharmaceutical industry. That’s the way they train us. We’re constantly being marketed to by the different companies and back in the day and the early 2000’s, we were wined and dined. They found that doctors that were visited by pharmaceutical reps with the newest most expensive drugs tended to prescribe those newer and more expensive medications. When maybe there were alternatives that were much cheaper that would have been out for the long time. Obviously, the push is always to sell the newest because those are the medications that are unpatented and the companies that are going to make most money with. It’s horrible to say but in some ways I feel like until you wake up as a doctor, you’re basically a glorified rep for pharmaceutical companies writing their medications.   [23:37] Ashley James: This is so refreshing because normally I’m the one that gets into the soapbox that starts ranting and raving about the allopathic medical system but I decided to just hold back and you just filled in everything. It was perfect. I love it.   [23:52] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I can say that now because what I do as much as – I’m talking about the system, medications can be lifesaving. They are definitely places where medications can help change the course of the disease that has gone too far to be able to make and immediate change by using natural means. Even when and even with because I sit on both sides of the fence as in internal medicine trained doctor but also functional medicine trained. I kind of mewled the two and there are places for each but I’m always regardless having a conversation with a patient about nutrition, about lifestyle, about stress management. Everything that I think builds good health because a medication is not going to build good health for a person, it’s going to be lifestyle, it’s going to be the way they eat. That’s what’s going to help build good health for people.   [24:58] Ashley James: Exactly. The thing is, by the time they go to get on the medication, they’re really sick of being sick and they’re sick of that symptom. They need some relief and pain is the biggest motivator. When we’re in pain –   [25:14] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Anything that makes us uncomfortable. Right? You know, thank goodness for podcasts like yours that are out there educating people because if you think about it, 20 plus years ago, pre internet age, the place that people got their medical knowledge was from doctors who were trained to prescribe medications and to treat disease with bandage rather than to look at the root cause. Now we’re in an era where information is wide and open. You would probably chuckle if you saw the sticker that’s on the side of my computer that faces my patients because I think it’s funny but I also respect the free flow of information and the searching that this is created in. It’s really the last 20 years I think empowered patients to see that they had played a bigger role in their health than they were made to believe by our paternalistic allopathic medical system. My sticker says, “Please don’t confuse your google search with my medical degree.” [Laughter] As I say that I still encourage people to be their own doctor and part of what I do with my patients is I teach them to listen to their body and to basically evolve their own intuitive awareness of what is right for them and what is wrong for them. I think a lot of people are moving through life and we’re talking about gut health here and just think the gut is the intuitive center of the body. It’s really about tuning into your body and seeing that if you eat this, how does it make you feel? If you don’t eat it? Do you feel better? Do you feel more clear headed? Some people are really not living by that level of awareness. They’re feeling horrible. They’re not connecting the two together that the way they’re eating is part of the reason they don’t feel that great.     [27:27] Ashley James: About 2 years ago, I started to get this sore throat and my glands were swollen and I went to my Naturopath and she did swabs for everything and everything came out negative. I’m so weird, I’m like, “What’s going on?” I didn’t feel sick other than my glands were swollen, my adenoids, and my throat was always sore just out of nowhere. It was around February so I thought, “Okay, I got to have something, some kind of bug.”  I was talking all this herbs and stuff for anti-viral and anti-bacterial and when again few weeks later, I said, “This is ridiculous.” I got to the point where I couldn’t do interviews because my throat was so sore, my voice was so sore. She was swabbing me checking again, nothing. Everything came back, all the cultures came back negative and she looks at me and she goes, “This could be heartburn.” I thought, “There’s no way this is heart burn. I eat so healthy.” Then she says, “Okay, let’s do a test.” She doesn’t think that Tums are a healthy thing to take but it’s an easy diagnostic tool. It’s the cheapest diagnostic tool. She was like, “Take Tums for 3 days and if you get relief and your sore throat goes away then we need to look at your diet. We need to look at what’s going on.” Sure enough, within hours of talking some Tums, my sore throat starts to subside. I thought, “Shoot. Are you kidding me?” That heartburn can appear as just a sore throat. It doesn’t have to be that classic, sensation in the tummy or in the esophagus. I figured out that I – because I was my husband went vegan like whole food plant based and I was trying to adapt to that way of eating so I started to eating tofu at every meal. Because I hadn’t really learned yet how to do this way of eating and my body was going, “What are you feeding me?” My body was giving me heartburn from eating tofu so I cut tofu out. I all went away and then I had to learn that I can eat lots of beans and peas and nuts and seeds and all other kinds of foods for fiber and protein and all that. Now I can eat tofu once in a while and I had absolutely no problem but it was sort of the daily eating at pretty much every meal my body went, “This isn’t happening.” I thought that was really interesting because if I had gone to an MD, I don’t know, they would started probably with anti-biotic. I had classic look like infected throat and maybe later on I would’ve been put on some antacids. Never looking at adjusting the diet whereas going to you, the functional doctor, you would’ve started with, “Okay, what’s going on with your life? What’s going on with your diet? What changes have you made? How was your stress level? What are you eating?” You know, you’re looking at the root.   [30:28] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Exactly. Definitely. We’re looking at a much bigger picture of where the symptoms are coming from.   [30:38] Ashley James: What can people do if they’re currently on anti-acids and they want to get their gut to the point where it’s making healthy levels of acid, they no longer have those painful symptoms. What kind of steps can they ate to get themselves so healthy so that they no longer need that crutch?   [30:58] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That is a really great question. It can be tough for some people. That ones that I’ve had that are the most challenging, part of it can be also belief system. If you’ve been on anti-acid mediation for over 10 years, you’ve learn that you can’t live without it. The first part of it is changing the mindset around that because there is almost like a psychological dependence around taking the medication because if you don’t, you’re going to have acid reflux. You’re not going to feel well, you’re not going to be able to eat but the way I used to do presentation where I showed a picture of hoover dam and that was my analogy of the PPI is that, it basically slows down the acid production. It’s blocking those proton pumps but the body has a response hypertrophies, the proton pumps so it actually makes more of them but then they’re all getting blocked right? Now say you stop taking the PPI, now you have more proton pumps than you had before. Guess what’s going to happen?   [32:21] Ashley James: Is it like a flood?   [32:23] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You’re going to start producing too much stomach acid. You stop the medication then you feel worse, and then you think, “Well, that means, I can’t be off of this medication.” Right? A lot of the work that I do with patients is that transition point which can be a multi-month process. It could be a 6 month process. A lot of times involves looking at full lifestyle because we started talking about the role of the vagus nerve and stress and how that affects stomach acid secretion. How acid reflux is probably for the most part, low stomach acid not high stomach acid production and yet yes, it does respond to going on a PPI because it raises the PH o the stomach acid so if it does come up it doesn’t bother the esophagus. You don’t get those heartburn symptoms in the same way. The transition can be tough for some people but very slow taper of the medication we don’t go from on to off knowing that there is a hypertrophy of those proton pumps that if you stop if suddenly you’re going to get a flood of acid. Then we work on giving them nutrients that help heal the gut barrier. A lot of people are zinc deficient and zinc is very important for the health of the stomach lining. We may supplement with some zinc carnosine. A lot of times use combination supplement with marshmallow roots, slippery elm bark, aloe, DGL, which is a licorice derivative. Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice. Then we might also start and this is so counter intuitive and hard for people to understand. I may start to introduce a hydrochloric acid supplement with meals where they’re eating protein. That’s to help them break down the protein better. A lot of times that’s the hard part for patient who’s been used to being taught and told that you’re producing too much stomach acid now I’m going to give you more stomach acid, like, “How is that going to make me better?”   [35:00] Ashley James: But they were taught a lie. For those who don’t know the physiology of the esophageal sphincter, isn’t that why they get GERD because they weren’t producing enough stomach acid so the sphincter wasn’t closing. The sphincter is triggered by a certain level of acid? Can you explain that?   [35:27] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That is part of the picture. Then you have to think about all the things that people might be doing that we can or relax the lower esophageal sphincter which is a protection from that acid coming up. For example, chewing gum excessively or eating too much chocolate or drinking a bunch of coffee or smoking. All of these things affect the tone of the lower esophageal sphincter. Then that can also allow acid to come up.   [36:09] Ashley James: Does stress or the vagal nerve malfunction also affect the lower esophageal sphincter?   [36:18] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I’m going to say that there’s stronger influence on what’s happening on the stomach. It probably has some level of defect because stress definitely can affect the ability of the esophageal sphincter to contract or relax but it’s probably the bigger role as it effects on stomach acid production.   [36:47] Ashley James: Got it. So someone stressed out one of the listeners, busy mom. Stay at home mom or a guy that one of the listener’s is a male and he rushes off to work or a female who has manage taking care of their elderly parents and a job. They’re basically burning the candles at both ends. They’re stressed. Maybe they’ve had a concussion in their past, who knows. Concussions are really common. They have that, they’ve got the stress. Maybe they’ve had in the past, a few years they’ve had some antibiotics that they’ve been on so their gut flora isn’t that great. Maybe they have like you said a nutrient deficiency of zinc so they’ve sent out his perfect storm. Maybe they’re sort off so tried that they’ve pounding back the coffee just to like be able to get through the day. Have some adrenaline going on. Now they start getting this heartburn so they start popping this over the counter medications, TUMS, whatever they’re doing which is lowering stomach acid because that gives temp relief but what that does is persist the problem of malabsorption of nutrients, might even allow for Candida overgrowth or other dysbiosis to occur. Now they’re having more and more symptoms. So then it just grows and grows and grows and grows.   [38:15] Dr. Vincent Pedre:  Yes. So you see like this is like a snowball or avalanche effect. It starts small and then before you know it, you feel sick. You feel fat. You feel like you don’t have you’re bloated and you don’t have energy for anything and you’re supposed to be this super mom.   [38:42] Ashley James: Yes. And it’s really hard because we, I can only speak from my experience as a woman. We will put the oxygen mask on everyone else first especially when we’re a mom. Especially if we have family member who are in need of help. Right now, so many baby boomers or even our grandparents who are still around need us. We’re taking care of a lot of people and then we have to pay the bills. We sometimes put our needs last and sometimes, we self-medicate.   [39:17] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Sometimes or a lot of the times. I have such respect for women do in the world. You have to hold so much space for so many things. We are in an era where it’s just in many ways so difficult because it would be much simpler if you’re a mom to stay home and take care of the kids but I have a lot of working moms that have a child. They’re giving 3 months maternity leave which in my opinion is not long enough. Then they have to say goodbye to their baby child, leave them with a nanny or in best-case scenario it’s the mom or family member. Go back to work and now they’re supposed to work full time, maybe pumping breastmilk. I feel like it’s a huge load on women because you have to be like superhuman. That is a huge stressor. Huge stressor. Then of course, you know we’ve talked about snowball effect of stress and how that affects the body. It affects the gut microbiome. It affects the way the gut functions from acid productions to digestive enzyme production to the permeability of the gut and also for the makeup of your gut microbiome. All of that is sensitive to the stress signals within the body.     [40:46] Ashley James: You know, so many listeners are really intrigued by, “What’s the perfect diet?” Like, “What should I eat to be healthy?” I keep saying there’s no one perfect diet for everyone. Right? Because if an athlete, 40-year-old athlete came in versus 70-year-old woman with osteoporosis versus a 20-year-old with the recent diagnosis of type two diabetes. Those three people might need a different nutrient plan, right? They have different needs. Their body one person might be in a histamine response and great amount of inflammation whereas the other person might have zinc deficiency and calcium deficiency. There’s not one perfect approach like a one diet that fits all but diet isn’t the first thing we should be asking. What you’re sharing is really gut health is the first thing, we should be asking. “Do I have gut health?” Because if I don’t have gut health, it doesn’t matter what I’m eating. My body’s not digesting and absorbing it.   [42:00] Dr. Vincent Pedre: It could be problematic because you could think that you’re being super healthy. Eating lots of salads raw vegetables and if your gut is disordered, you don’t have the right microbiome to break down those very difficult to break down plant cell wall fibers, then you’re not going to feel well. Perhaps in that moment in time, timestamped, you would do better with cooked vegetables, healing the gut microbiome. Healing the production of digestive enzymes then over time then Segway the diet back towards a mix of cooked and raw or maybe just lightly steamed. Even what is the right diet is not just what is the right diet for you as an individual but what is the right diet for you now. You know you almost have to put that out also in the timeline because the right diet changes. I do see general trends. We know that the more plants you eat, in my opinion and that’s what the science had showed its what’s better for you but then there are really interesting studies have been done. Like the Hadza people of Tanzania, the hunter-gatherers. Which is I’m so excited because I’m going to be travelling there to meet them next year.   [43:39] Ashley James: Wow. Cool.   [43:42] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Then there’s about little over a thousand of them but at least a quarter still lived in their more traditional way which is eating tubers, berries, the baobab fruit. They eat the seed, also the meat the pulp of the fruit. It’s very high in fiber. They also hunt. They eat large two medium sized animals. Sometimes bigger. They also eat honey but when I say that, you have to take your western mind out of it. It’s not honey that comes in a jar. They’re actually going and getting the honeycomb and they’re eating the entire thing including larvae inside. Their gut microbiome when they’ve done test, they’ve done PCR testing had a much greater variety than in one study they’ve looked at Italian group of control. You can imagine an Italian diet, pasta and meat dishes and lots of fresh tomatoes and vegetables from the garden. Their gut microbiome was not as diverse as the Hadza people. So you ask, “Okay. What is the missing element?” The Hadza are certainly not eating the diet that as varied as the Italian group. So why do they have such a diverse microbiome and probably part of it is their contact with nature and living out in the wild and contact with dirt. They’re not living in this hygiene, over clean environment. They’re not washing their hands when they come home from hunting. Maybe they have some blood in their hands before they hug or kiss their wives. That’s something else to look at is the missing element of just being connected with nature. Being out there. That’s part of what builds diversity in our microbiome and creates a healthy gut.   [45:54] Ashley James: I’d be really interested to know that what they incorporate in their – when you go there remember this question, what do they incorporate as an anti-parasitic because when we looked at traditional ancient cultures, they have like in India, Mimosa Pudica seed for example is used commonly to deworm eating pumpkin seeds deworms. That was normal. Like a hundred years ago, it was normal for farmers twice a year to deworm their animals and the farmers would take the same herb themselves. That was normal. So I’m wondering what do they do to deworm themselves. Like, is it honey? What is it that’s just cleaning them out because parasites they happen.   [46:47] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Exactly. Also, the question is are they living in a different state of balance with parasites than people in the west do? Because of a slightly different composition of their gut microbiome. I would keep that in mind. It’s so crazy to me that I will be out on the middle of the bush in Tanzania and get to live and spend a couple of days with them in this various small group. It’s going to be really amazing because I’ve been looking at their microbiome and the studies on that and seeing it’s just a big curiosity. Like, why do they have such a diverse microbiome and why do they have no diabetes, they do not have cancer.   [47:43] Ashley James: What do they die off? When it comes to illness, what do they die off?   [47:47] Dr. Vincent Pedre: When it comes to illness, they die of a lot of times from accidents. Funny enough. There might be some infant mortality but otherwise if they don’t die in the young age or because of an accident, they live into their 60’s, 70’s. Not as long of a life span that would think but still pretty amazing for hunter gatherer.   [48:17] Ashley James: I’d be really curious thought when they die in their 60s or 70’s. What illnesses do they die from? Is it all heart disease? Is it all infection like that? It would be interesting to see the correlation between their lifestyle and then what they die from.   [48:35] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That would be another question for my research when I go.   [48:37] Ashley James: Nice. All right. I want to have you back on the show after that trip because I want to hear all about it. I think that sounds fascinating. That is a true, average and all diet. That’s like if all of us were picked up some reality TV show and threw us on an island, that’s how we have to eat to survive.   [48:57] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Oh my gosh, can you imagine eating like –   [49:00] Ashley James: Larvae and honey?   [49:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Can you imagine eating honeycomb? That would be – [laughter].   [49:07] Ashley James: I think my 4-year-old would fight me for it. I think he would be so excited. He has this fascination with insects and I don’t think he would mind eating them at all. There has to be something primal in there.   [49:19] Dr. Vincent Pedre: There’s a lot of nutrition in the honeycomb that helps support the gut microbiome. It’s also interesting how- I’ve looked at their microbiome every time as they go from a rainy season to a more dry season. During those two different seasons, their diet skews in one direction and in the other. I see that there are parts of the microbiome that appear during the season because they’re being fed, let’s say the honey and when their diet skews in another direction that part disappears, seemingly disappears but then it comes back the next season.   [49:56] Ashley James: Yes. Isn’t there like a whole season where all they eat are tubers for a few months and that their microbiome adapts for that?   [50:05] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That is a really big part of, at least my understanding a big part of their diet. Also interestingly, when they wean kids off of breastmilk what they do is create a porridge of the baobab. The baobab is kind of really hard fruit. It’s got a lot of fiber inside. They grind that out and they make a porridge out of it. The kids are getting anywhere between 50 and a hundred grams of fiber a day. Their bellies will be bit extended because that amount of fiber is going to produce a good amount of gas which I think about because in the west, we don’t want to be distended. We don’t want to look fat. For them, it’s like yes, whatever it’s part of. In comparison, the average American gets about 10 maybe maximum 15 grams of fiber in a day just to put it in perspective and the recommended amount of fiber we should be eating is anywhere between 25 and 35 grams of fiber and yet the Hads are eating up to 50 grams of fiber per day.   [51:26] Ashley James: Can we eat too much fiber? Is there any point where it’s like, “Oh, 100 grams of fiber’s dangerous.” I mean, as long as you’re consuming enough water and you feel fine and you’re not hurting, it’s okay to have 100 grams of fiber?   [51:39] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. I have a feeling if you have a 100 grams you would be really bloated and uncomfortable. Yes, the danger is you get really stocked inside, constipated because you’re not drinking enough water with the fiber or maybe you’re not getting enough healthy fats to lubricate things and help move things along. I always think it’s important to be careful to make sure you’re balancing all.   [52:10] Ashley James: Right. I made this chia seed pudding. It’s amazing. It tastes exactly like pumpkin pie and my husband swears he can taste the crust in it too. It kind of something like Willy Wonka, would make where you can it tastes like an entire pumpkin pie with the crust and there’s a ton of chia seeds in it, like a ton. Your gut is getting so lubricated but it tastes just like pumpkin pie and it’s great for breakfast because it’s so filling. Such good fiber in it.   [52:46] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Oh my god, that sounds so good.   [52:46] Ashley James: I will give you the recipe. I’m launching a membership called Learn True Health home kitchen. Where we’re doing cooking videos and teaching people how to cook whole food plant based. For those who don’t want to give up meat entirely, they can just learn to have more vegetables and have more fiber and more whole food in their life but people who want to try to learn whole food plant based and experience it, they can jump in and do everything. That’s one of the recipes that I’m adding to the membership. We’re going to launch it soon. I got so excited because my son really wanted some pumpkin pie and I really wanted to make something healthy for him for breakfast. I was just like, “I’ve got a lot of chia seeds and  a lot of pumpkin, let me see what I can do with that.” Yes but I was just thinking, how much fiber is in it. It’s crazy. It’s a crazy amount of fiber but you feel so good afterwards. Obviously, it’s moist and it’s not dehydrating but you definitely want to drink a lot of water if you’re adding chia or flax to your food. I’ve learned that the hard way once. I thought I was safe to just adding some flax meal to my salads and I didn’t drink enough water and I found out pretty quickly that it’s not a smart move.   [54:04] Dr. Vincent Pedre: No and it just can kind of condense things in the gut and not let things move. You definitely want a mix of both soluble and insoluble fibers that’s also important. You think of insoluble fibers a roughage. Kind of like cleans out the inside of the gut. Gets things moving, provides a lot of the fibers that are fermented and the soluble fiber which are things like oats which then allow for control of how nutrients come into the bloodstream so they help slow down the sugars like the sugars that are getting broken down, carbohydrates from entering too quickly and causing an insulin spike. It’s important to make sure you’re getting a balance of both types of fibers. Apples are another great example. Organic apples.   [54:58] Ashley James: Organic apples are my favorite. The outside the peel of an apple is insoluble fiber and then the inside is soluble fiber.   [55:07] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. Basically you’re getting both types of fibers in an apple. I don’t know if your listeners know this but if you’re eating non organic apples they are sprayed with up to several different types of pesticides that have up to 40 something different neuro toxins. If you ever follow the environmental working group, the Clean15 and the Dirty Dozen, you know that apples are very high up on the list of the dirty dozen. Anything that has a thin skin like an apple that is sprayed with pesticide is going to be infused with that pesticide. You cannot wash it off. So you should never and if you can choose that, if you’re going to choose where do you spend your dollars on groceries, buy organic apples. Don’t buy non-organic. You can get them at them farm – you’re in Seattle so you’re like in an apple state and I’m in New York which also is a great apple state. I think it’s either pay a little bit more now or pay later for the consequences thereof.   [56:20] Ashley James: I’ve told the story before on the show but I’ll share with you. I was really sick in my 20’s. I was just eating the standard American diet, I had type two diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic monthly infections for which is was taking antibiotics monthly. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and told by an endocrinologist that I was infertile and I’d never have kids. I’ve spent my 20’s on medications and sick and getting sicker and sicker I ended up actually on medication for heart burn. I mean the whole thing and I remember watching – I was also completely stressed out to the max. I was in an abusive relationship. My mom had died, I was very depressed,   [57:02] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You sound like our talking patient. Like what we’re talking about.   [57:08] Ashley James: Exactly. I was going through the ringer. I found joy in the day-to-day things but I was just going downhill and I was gaining weight even though I was exercising like crazy and I eat like all the other guys in the dojo. I was doing martial arts 6 days a week. I would eat like all of them because they look healthy so I go to subway with them and get like whole wheat. Think that’s like super healthy, “I’m getting whole wheat subway sandwiches thinking, Oh I’m eating healthy.” Of course, then I immediately have heartburn after and then I popped my heart burn pills. This is my 20’s when this happened. I happen to turn on the TV and then there was this show, I guess a Naturopath and they were just some kind of talk show and she was saying, “If you have heartburn, it’s too little stomach acid not too much. Drink some apple cider vinegar and drink some aloe.” I threw away that box of over-the-counter meds, started drinking aloe, and started listening to my body a bit more. And my heartburn went away I’m like, “Whoa.” Then a few years later, it’s 2008 we watched the documentary on Netflix right when I started doing streaming of videos and it was some health documentary like Food Inc. or something. They said, “Shop the perimeter of the grocery store and eat organic.” At this point, I was so sick. I’d wake up every morning with a pounding headache. Feeling as though I drank a bottle of vodka and got hit by a mad truck the night before. I was out of control sick. I felt like a prisoner of my own body. I cried daily because of how much pain and suffering I was in because I felt like such a prisoner of a sick body. We did it. We went to whole foods and we shopped the perimeter of the store and we bought organic and within 30 days my chronic infections went away. I thought the only thing I changed besides, I probably cut out some sugar like accidentally because I wasn’t buying processed food. I’m still eating meat, I’m still eating dairy even. I was eating just fruits, vegetables, meat and I wasn’t even gluten free at the time. I was still eating grains but I was just eating less processed food and cutting out all the pesticides. It just hit me, I’m like, “Pesticides were the reason that I was getting these infections. It was the stressor on my body and in my gut.” When I went organic, that was the biggest shift that happened within 30 days. That’s what had me keep seeing how to heal my body. With food and lifestyle changes and supplements, I healed my type 2 diabetes. My chronic adrenal fatigue went away. I got rid of my polycystic ovarian syndrome. I’m now completely free of that. My numbers are amazing. I get regular bloodwork with my Naturopath. We naturally conceived our child who is almost five and he’s so healthy.   [1:00:10] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That is so great.   [01:00:11] Ashley James: So that’s what shifting to organic and then shifting lifestyle looking at stress, taking supplements to fill in those nutrient gaps. That’s why I do what I do know because I know my listeners are suffering and I want them to find the answers that they need so that they don’t have to suffer anymore because it’s possible. That healing is possible. That’s why I love the message that you give and what you teach because you’re showing people that they can be free of the suffering of the heartburn or the bloating, of the constipation or the small intestinal overgrowth. That they could be free of it.   [01:00:55] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I’ve always been, as much as I can be the type of practitioner that walks his talk because I also was subject to multiple rounds of antibiotics when I was a child. As a teenager and I didn’t realize at that time because I was getting 2 or 3 rounds of antibiotics. Every year the doctors, the pediatricians were telling my parents my immune system is weak. I couldn’t gain weight, I was super thin. I ate probably more than 3,000 calories a day but I was eating cereal with milk in the morning and maybe a sandwich at school or pastry. Then there was breaded dinner and maybe there was ice cream after dinner. A lot of times I used to go and get a milkshake on the way home from school. It’s crazy how much sugar and wheat and dairy that I was eating. I can look back and now say that the multiple rounds of antibiotics was probably the instigator of the dysbiosis of the balance of the good and bad bacteria in my gut. Then lead to leaky gut and allowed me to become sensitive to wheat, gluten and dairy. It was over the years figuring that out because by my 20’s I’ve had IBS and I just thought this is just the way my life is going to be. I’m always going to have sensitive stomach, I’m not going to be able to tolerate a lot of things. I had to be careful when I ate out. I never knew what is causing what. It wasn’t until I discovered and started making changes in the diet but I was always even though when I was in my medical education and not being taught nutrition I always had a gut intuition, pardon the pun, that nutrition was a big part of the picture. I was always trying to hack, it’s perhaps a little bit selfish on my part but I think it guided a lot of what I’ve strived to learn. Then what I do with my patients was I – just back in my early 20’s wanted to hack, “Why do I get sick so often and how can I not get so sick so often?” I was in medical school, experimenting with my diet. Reduced the amount of dairy in my diet and then immediately noticed that I wasn’t getting sick as often. Without anybody teaching me back then, there was not teaching around dairy and it’s inflammatory effects. I just kind of concluded by being an observer in my own body that dairy was problematic for me and I had to be careful about consuming dairy as much as I loved in my 20’s, ice cream.   [01:03:53] Ashley James: Who doesn’t? [Laughter]   [01:03:54] Vincent Pedre: I know. It’s still a weakness. Thankfully now, there’s vegan ice creams and coconut –   [01:04:01] Ashley James: You can get a vitamix and make your own ice cream.   [01:04:04] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Exactly. I’ve made avocado ice cream.   [01:04:08] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, that sounds crazy.   [01:04:09] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. Over the years, there was one point when I was in my residency training in New York. I was going out with my friends and late nights and eating out and I wasn’t feeling that great and I was dragging. I just told all of them, I’m going to disappear for the next month and I’m going to do some self-care and I went to the supermarket. I bought organic, I started coking for myself more often. No more take out and within, I kid you not, in two weeks I felt so different. Just eating food that was more vital. In 4 weeks, I felt great. At that time, I had also been doing yoga and had started meditating. I was meditating 5 days per week and when I went back, and met up with my friends they looked at me and like, “What did you do? You look totally different.” All I did was reduce my stress by meditating and eating right. That was it. I was listening to your story and thinking, you know, I have a very similar story. But even then, I had not completely hacked the gut issues and it wasn’t until I ran into a functional medicine and started learning functional medicine and understand the role of the gut and the gut microbiome and really the complexity of all that. That I was able to heal my gut. Because of that, I had such a big fascination with gut health and patients who came in with gut problems because we’re really not taught in western medicine all the potential root causes of gut problems. We are taught – let me clarify it. We’re taught from the perspective of western medicine but we’re not really taught the root root causes which could be yeast overgrowth. Which could be dysbiosis, which could be low stomach acid, which could be not enough leaky gut with damage to the brush boarder in the small intestine then affecting your pancreas ability to produce enzyme because it’s not getting the right signals. I got a much more complex understanding of gut health and all the interconnections and how it’s connected to allergies, asthmas, migraine, auto immune disease and that became a fascination for me and working with gut patients was just something that I enjoyed. Of course, when you enjoy something, you want to do more of that. Just accidentally one gut patient would get better, they would refer a friend. The friend would get better. A friend would refer another friend. It wasn’t like I was out there saying, “I want to be a gut expert.” It was more like, “I’m just pursuing my passion. My passion is helping people heal at the root.” It turned out that had to do with even my own plight growing up with gut issues. That was where my book Happy Gut was born from. Was from my own struggles figuring that out and working with patients and seeing them improve and seeing what a dramatic influence you can make in people’s lives by healing their gut health.   [01:07:36] Ashley James: I love it. How long have you been practicing functional medicine?   [01:07:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: My first conference was in 2006 and soon after that, I started learning and I dove into their advanced practice modules starting in 2008. The institute have not had a whole certification program built out and they came out with that over that time period and then I started doing the advance practice modules. Over 10 years that I’m integrating that into my practice. Obviously, you learn it in theory but then you have to practice it, you gain a lot of experience by dealing with a bunch of different patients and scenarios and then as you become more of a recognized gut expert which I am now. You then get the more difficult cases.   [01:08:38] Ashley James: Nice. Very cool. So my listeners who have really or the difficult cases, I have listeners out there who feel that they’re complex, can they see you? Do you take consultations over Skype? Or could they come see you in person?   [01:08:56] Dr. Vincent Pedre: They could come see me in person. I take very few patients now because as you can imagine, I’ve got a pretty full practice but my plan is to, next year to bring in a functional trained nurse practitioner who can train with me and start to see patients. Because I recognize it’s just funny how you go from not being known to known and then everybody wants to come in and see you and you realize, I just can’t serve everyone. That’s part of the reason why I wrote my book because I realized there are so many people out there who need help that I can’t possibly ever see in my lifetime. Because there’s just – I’m very much into balance and I’m very much into also my own self-care and bringing my best foot forward which means that I don’t work a 12-hour day. I don’t see patient every 15 minutes because I believe in quality over quantity and I think that’s what the people who come see me know that I’m about is I’ll spent significant amount of time with you. To me for any doctor’s practicing functional medicine, it’s a collaborative effort. It’s me and the patient both facing the path into the future together. It not the old paradigm of I’m a fatherly doctor, you come in and I give you this medication and you just take that and you don’t have to do anything else and you’ll be better. No. I give my patients homework but realizing that it’s impossible for me to see all the people that I would ever want to help in my life and I wanted to have a bigger impact that why I do things like interview with you and give this information for people to hear this and then think maybe they could do things a little bit differently. Or maybe there’s something that they could change that could help them heal or at least start a conversation with their health practitioner with, “What is really going on here? Are we really addressing the root cause?” That’s why I wrote my book because I realized partly honestly I don’t know if you have felt this but even from the early 2000’s, I started getting this feeling inside that I had a book in me that had to be written. I didn’t know what that book was. If you look at my files in my iPhone, I’ve got so many book ideas that have been written down but it wasn’t until I landed on this idea that was also connected to my own story. That it felt authentic enough for me to put the work in because doing a book is like running a 50-mile mega marathon. It is a toil. It is a labor of love. It is not for the weak hearted. Yes, I mean you could produce a really short book but for me, it was like my manifesto was like me putting all my work everything that I had learned together to teach people how to have healthy gut. Why did I get sidetracked on that?   [01:12:41] Ashley James: Oh, well your book, it’s a marathon and you have more books in you. By the way, you’ll definitely going to write more books but that Happy Gut is you’ve poured your passion into it, your over 10 years’ experience of helping people heal their gut but also your own story, healer heal thyself. You healed yourself and you walk the walk.   [01:13:10] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You’re always a better healer I think when you have to face your own challenges that have made you human. The hardest thing about being a doctor is being put on the pedestal and people think that you’re like this super human. We were talking about super women and supermoms, in some many ways walking the walk of the doctor sometimes being that super human but we are also human. I have been so grateful in my life for all the challenges that I’ve had that have really condensed me into just being a grounded human and understanding things not just from theory, from learning in the book but from having lived it myself. One thing, I don’t know if you ever watched Grey’s Anatomy?   [01:14:04] Ashley James: I do.   [01:14:06] Dr. Vincent Pedre: There was an episode where the chief of surgery I think was speaking with the woman doctor that was also in surgery. It was about being a parent and he said, this was I remember seeing this episode when my son was probably two or three years old and he said, “Being a parent makes you a better doctor.” I totally connected with that because having a child was that first moment of, “Wow. It’s not about me anymore. It’s not just about me anymore. It’s about this new life that has arrived.” It really puts you in a place of service. I looked at for me, my work with patients is almost like a in some ways, I almost feel like it’s almost like the service that a priest does. It alike vocation. Sometimes I think of my patients as my sheep. It really does require a great deal of sacrifice on our part but with that sacrifice and kind of tied back into the important or realizing that at some point, the balance can shift too far and you have to come back and look into the mirror and realize, you also need to take care of myself. Put your oxygen ask on first, then put on everyone else’s oxygen mask. Because what you don’t realize is when you’re not doing that, yes, you might be taking care of everyone, you’re not doing it as well as you could if you are in your best light.   [01:16:09] Ashley James: Right. We absolutely don’t take care of those we love best if we’re neglecting ourselves just like, I mean it’s funny, people will take care of their car more than they take care of themselves. They’ll make sure it gets an oil change. All the foods are topped of. It’s clean.   [01:16:25] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I have patients who will cook an entire dinner for their kids and then just order in for themselves. Or they’ll cook for their dog and then their dogs eats better than they do. Okay, if you’re taking trouble to do that, let’s refocus here. Let’s see how can get care back to self and that was part of the reason that I named the program, when I was trying to come up with an acronym for the program. That would be like the system that I used for healing the gut, I called it Gut C.A.R.E. Care being an acronym for cleanse, activate, restore and enhance. It’s a whole system for healing the gut that I wrote in my book but in the bigger picture it’s also care. Caring for self. I think it’s so important because the commonality I find in patients that come in with gut health issues is a lot of times, they’re really putting themselves last.   [01:17:33] Ashley James: Yes. I love it that you started at the beginning of the interview talking about how the first thing you do to help someone get off a medication and heal the gut to the point where they no longer need that crutch is mindset. I think a lot of people will go, “Pfft, mindset. Whatever, okay.” Really that is everything. We can actually create a placebo effect or a nocebo effect based our belief system. Based on our mindset.   [01:18:00] Dr. Vincent Pedre: This is a crazy fact. Patients who feel more connected and liked their doctor have better results than patients that don’t.   [01:18:12] Ashley James: That’s the nocebo or the placebo effect. If you like your doctor then you think it’s going to work even if you got a sugar pill –   [01:18:22] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Just think of the blue zones around the world and the factors that affect the reason that people lived past a hundred and part of it is a sense of community. Being together and that’s a very important part of I think for humans healing is to feel like they’re in community connected. Whether it’s with family, with friends, for some people it’s church. For other people it’s their CrossFit box. Whatever it is. It’s a sense of having community where you feel you belong. I think that’s a very important human need and something we don’t often talk about in health is that importance of community. If you think about it, each individual is a community. We are the this symbiotic organisms that some people argue couldn’t not exist without the metabolic byproducts produced by the gut microbiome because some scientists say there are not enough genes in the body to encode for everything the body needs in order to function optimally. That you also need the microbiome and the genetic pool of the microbiome which is hundred times greater than our own genetic pool to create metabolic byproducts that regulate and help support the body. That to me is super fascinating because if you only thought that your gut microbiome is one of the most complex eco systems on the planet, think of it that way. How would you treat that? Now that you know that within you, you have this treasure. This really great treasure that is evolved over centuries with us passed on from human to human through our environment. Through our interaction with nature that helps support health or it can be a detriment to health. Depending on circumstances like antibiotics. Over use of antibiotics. How do you treat your body? What would you eat if you know you have this really important internal garden. I think that there is a lot of mindlessness that happens with people. A lot of unintentional eating, they’re not really thinking about how they feel and how things affect them. I think that’s really important.   [01:21:19] Ashley James: I was just grabbing a few studies that are printed out on my paper on my desk that’s why I was making some noise because what you said goes exactly with, I love the serendipity of this. I’m holding in my hand some studies on the gut biome and that they’re seeing that the signaling in parasitic nematodes that there’s a psychochemical communication between host and parasite and the indigenous molecular transduction pathways governing the warm development and survival. That was one. The other one was parasites nutrition and immune response in the biology of metabolic tissues but in these, they talk about not only are they talking about negative pathogens, like negative stuff in your gut but basically the gut biome which could have parasites. Not all parasites are worms, right? But parasites are good bacteria, bad bacteria. Anything living in the gut is sending their seeing that they’re sending signals. There’s these studies now that show that they can see that their psycho chemicals being created by whatever it is in your gut. Let’s say you want fast food every day, that’s the gut biome you created. You created the Homer Simpson of gut biomes. That is signaling to you. The gut biome is actually telling you to feed it more fast food because that’s what feeds it.   [01:22:57] Dr. Vincent Pedre: And the most blatant example of that that I see in practice is when someone has yeast overgrowth or candida. They have an irrational craving for sugar or for refined carbohydrates. It could be sugar or it could just comfort foods like potatoes, pasta, rice. Yes, that’s another really blatant example of where it’s like who’s in control. Is your brain in control or is your microbiome in the gut in control?   [01:23:35] Ashley James: Yes. Who’s craving? Who’s having the cravings? Right. A dear friend of mine is going through a parasite cleanse right now because she was having very strange symptoms around the full moon for about 4 months now and I kept saying, “Dude this is parasites. You’ve got to look at this.” She was having heart palpitations, mood swings and just feeing totally off but it was only during the full moon. Which of course someone might think that’s hormones. But she was like, it was pretty consistent around the full moon so she started a parasite cleanse and she can tell a difference and that is just very interesting that the parasites and even gut dysbiosis can cause crazy symptoms in the body but it an also tell us what to eat to feed it. That’s what I noticed when I started eating whole foods plant based. I didn’t like love vegetable but I admit I hate them and now, when I see kale I actually have a pavlovian’s response. I actually stare salivating. I started getting a little excited. Just like someone might get exited if they see Krispy Kreme donuts which I will have like a revulsion towards now. Not even interested but man if you made me a kale salad, I’m like I’m getting a little happy actually salad my mouth is getting watery just thinking about it. Just because the gut biome I created over the last few years is like super happy with eating that way. I get almost a high off of eating these leafy greens.   [01:25:14] Dr. Vincent Pedre: For me, because I travel a lot and sometimes to foreign countries, when you’re missing the amount of greens that I’m used to eating on a regular basis, you started to crave it. It’s almost like you’re  – that’s yet another level of that intuitive awareness where you sense a craving but then you actually honor it. You realize, oh it’s because my body needs this.   [01:25:46] Ashley James: Now we’ve got to catch ourselves now because if we’re having that craving for processed sugar of –   [01:25:51] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That’s a whole different – I was going to say actually I’m glad that you come back to that because I was going to say that, what I’ve seen with patients and it was amazing because you can take a person who feels like they cannot live without sugar and if you can put them on a sugar cleanse. You take all processed sugars out of the diet and keep them on that. The first day or two they’re going to feel horrible. They’re going to feel like they’re not going to make it through the day. By day 3, they’re a little bit better. By day 4, they’re really not needing sugar and by the end of 7 days, they’re off of sugar.   [01:26:34] Ashley James: It’s like getting on heroine.   [01:26:36] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. We know sugar has the same effect on the brain as cocaine. It affects the dopamine pathway which is the reward pathway in the brain that makes you feel good when you do something. So, of course. Everyone wants sugar. The interesting thing. I know you don’t eat processed sugar, eat a lot of sugar. I’m the same. I find that I’m also dogmatic but I also allow for fussy boarders because I think that in my own eating because I think if we just are strict all the time, that can get a little too much and that becomes a stressor. You know, I might be travelling and someone offers a dessert but they didn’t tell you if there’s too much sugar. I actually feel horrible. I can’t feel it immediately. My heart rates goes up as soon as I eat it. I have the reverse effect like I’ll have sugar and I’ll realize, you know what, this is not worth it for me. You heard me unwrapping this earlier was my dark chocolate form Peru.   [01:27:45] Ashley James: Right. I was like, “Is that a candy wrapper in the background? What was going on?” And you’re like, “Well, let me tell you about my 85% Peruvian dark chocolate.”   [01:27:57] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes and that is my go to because it’s low in sugar. It’s not going to bump my blood sugar. It’s not going to give me sugar cravings and it satisfies a little element of sweetness. There’s we were talking about dark chocolate with stevia. You know, sometimes I need that little bit of sweet but I also know if I have something too sweet it’s going to actually feel pretty horrible for me because once you get your body accustomed to being cleaner it actually tells you when you don’t, when you step outside of that.   [01:28:33] Ashley James: Yes. Just yesterday we are filming for the Learn True Health home kitchen and we made brownies. Whole food brownies. And it’s sweetened with yams, with sweet potatoes and there’s raw organic cacao powder but when you bake them your whole house smells like brownies. Now they’re not as sweet as store bought brownies because obviously, they’re whole foods but they tastes really good and my son loves them. He thinks they’re the best thing in the world. If you can get a 4-year-old to eat something that’s healthy and love it, oh man, you’re hitting a home run. He likes that. That’s his new go to food. Between that and the chia seed pumpkin pie pudding.   [01:29:25] Dr. Vincent Pedre: What is the base for the brownie?   [01:25:26] Ashley James: It is yams. I call them sweet potatoes but they’re orange yams. They’re organic. The big bag of them from Costco is really cheap right now and we make them in the instant pot and then we blend them with cacao and vanilla. You can put in some maple syrup if you want. Or stevia if you want. If you need more sweet because sometimes you need more sweet if you’re first of all giving it to people who are neuro adapted to eating no sugar. Just help them transition or if sometimes yams, sometimes they’re really sweet or sometimes they aren’t so you just got to play around basically taste the batter. We just blended it and then we –   [01:30:15] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Japanese yams.   [01:30:16] Ashley James: Yes. Oh my gosh, seriously. Yes, you can play around with the different kinds of sweet potatoes and yam because some of them are sweeter than the others. Then you bake it for an hour and that creates that brownie crust as wonderful. Very moist and it really does feel like there’s flour. There’s no flour in it.   [01:30:37] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That sounds like a dream. Last year I tried and failed. This was my first try to make black bean brownies for the holidays. Needless to say, my family doesn’t share the same zest for healthy renditions of things as I do and I thought they were actually pretty good but they did not.     [01:31:02] Ashley James: I love black bean brownies but one thing I’d say is, do one can of black beans with between 1 and 2 cups of yams. That really balances it out.   [01:31:16] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. To keep it a little more sustenance.   [01:31:19] Ashley James: Yes and you can add some vanilla powder in there. There’s a few things you can add in there like some cinnamon. You can play around it and then lots of the cacao powder which has caffeine in it so don’t eat it late at night. I learned that the hard way. I’m like, “Why am I so awake right now?”   [01:31:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes, I have to be careful because usually my desire for dark chocolate is right after dinner. By the way the benefits of dark chocolate partly and due to the microbiome. They’re processing of the I believe it’s an endemite in the dark chocolate. You need the microbiome to convert the chemical in there to a version that is antioxidant for the body. It’s kind of a little fascinating fact.   [01:32:16] Ashley James: That is so fascinating. It’s amazing the microbiome is needed to convert so much of what our body needs. It really is that garden in our body. We have the most complex garden inside us. It’s somewhere between I heard between 4 and 6 pounds of bacteria living inside us. I have so many more questions for you. We have to have you back on the show. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s been so much fun.   [01:32:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I know. How did this fly? How did this go by?   [01:32:44] Ashley James: I know. It’s just amazing.   [01:32:45] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You’ve got to have me back after I get back from Africa.   [01:32:48] Ashley James: Please. Yes.   [01:32:50] Dr. Vincent Pedre: The Hadzas, that’s going to be so wild.   [01:32:52] Ashley James: I’m so excited. When are you going next year?   [01:32:55] Dr. Vincent Pedre: February.   [01:32:56] Ashley James: Awesome. Okay. I need to get you on the calendar when you get back and after you’ve recovered from the wonderful trip. While you’re still on the glow of how amazing it was I have to get you back on the show. I think I’d be wonderful. I’m definitely going to make sure that links to everything that Dr. Vincent Pedre does is in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learntruehealth.com. Dr. Vincent’s book, Happy Gut making sure the link is there as well. We should all get it for Christmas and give it to each other. What a great Christmas gift. Let’s all give each other the gift of a healthy gut.   [01:33:28] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That sounds like a great idea. [Laughter]   [01:33:32] Ashley James: Awesome. Of course, your website is happygutlife.com. You also have PedreMD.com. That’s P-E-D-R-E-M-D.com   [01:33:45] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That was my practice website.   [01:33:46] Ashley James: Got it. You know I see you hiring five nurse practitioners and maybe like 12 certified health coaches. You should just hire a bunch at once and train this whole team, it’ll save you time. Instead of training one person at a time you should just hire a whole team.   [01:34:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. Well guess what, you’re ahead of me but I have already shot the video for and I’m going to be rolling out probably quarter two of 2020, a health coach certification in Happy Gut.   [01:34:22] Ashley James: Awesome. Well you know what, I’ve got a ton of health coaches as listeners especially a lot of IIN graduates. I’m an IIN graduate as well. I know a lot of my listeners who’d be really interested because we have a lot of health coaches and a lot of holistic health professionals that are listeners that would love to take your course. When you come back and tell us about your trip, you’ll also going to tell us about your Happy Gut health coaching training.   [01:34:50] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. Can I briefly end with a funny story?   [01:34:54] Ashley James: Yes, please do.   [01:34:56] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. I was just with my family in Washington DC for Thanksgiving. It’s my sister with my niece and nephews and obviously, the kids, a lot of their high school friends get back there. My niece is 25 years old. So she was with a friend of hers and she was raving about this book and how it changed her life and how she had IBS and now she’s followed the diet plan and it took away all her gut issues. They’re out at a bar and she pulls our my book, and it’s like, it has notes and bent pages and she’s got marking everywhere and she says, “I never travel without this book.” She didn’t know that my niece was related to me and my niece tells her, “You know, that’s my uncle?” Because my sister she has a different last name and so she says, “You know, my uncle’s in town if you want to meet him.” and she’s like, “Oh no, I don’t think I could handle it I think I would faint or something.” I thought, it’s so funny, I told her, “Yes, if she wants to meet me. Yes, I’m in town.” I thought, that why I did this. To help people that I probably maybe would never have the opportunity to meet but to be able to change their lives in that way. That’s why I did what I did. That’s why I continue to do things like these, be on podcasts and interviews. I just want to help as many people as possible.   [01:36:45] Ashley James: I love it. That’s my mission too. We’re right in alignment. We have a really active Facebook group, the listeners. The Learn True Health Facebook group. I know that my listeners after they get your book and they start reading it and loving it and writing notes in it and everything. They’ll start talking about it in the Facebook group and we’ll start having some wonderful discussion about it. I can’t wait to have you back on the show. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful. I love this topic. Can’t wait to continue exploring happy gut and gut health and how to balance ourselves naturally in our next interviews. I can’t wait to hear all about your trip. Have a very safe and very enlightening trip. I can’t wait to connect with you when you come back.   [01:37:31] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I look forward to it. Thank you.   Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.   Get Connected With Dr. Vincent Pedre Pedre MD Happy Gut Life Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Book by Dr. Vincent Pedre Happy Gut

Get the CBD Holiday Special for Learn True Health listeners! Go to MedTerraCBD.com and use the coupon code lthholiday to get the extra bottle added to your order of $50 or more.    Listen to my interview with the founder of MedTerra CBD: https://www.learntruehealth.com/cbd   Kellyann's website: https://www.platinumenergysystems.ca 15% off LTH discount on PES Music:   Finally by Loxbeats https://soundcloud.com/loxbeats Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download: http://bit.ly/FinallyLoxbeats Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/fGquX0Te1Yo   "Uniq - Japan" is under a Royalty Free license. Photo of the license: http://bit.ly/2sTETUQ Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: https://youtu.be/MAiHpRUbc0k   EMF And Heavy Metal Detox https://www.learntruehealth.com/emf-heavy-metal-detox Highlights: Medterra CBD, medterracbd.com Platinum Energy Systems, platinumenergysystems.ca 5G, heavy metals, and WiFi, and EMF exposure Exposure to EMF, heavy metals, high acidity is clogging up the lymph system Three primary metal toxicity: lead, mercury, and aluminum Edema from heavy metals Cells, organs, and tissues, thoughts, and emotions have a specific frequency Manmade electromagnetic frequency Create a healing environment inside and outside your body Set the tone within your being to vibrate at this higher frequency Take mastery over your emotions and your thoughts because we are all exposed to all this content every day Health is putting the right stuff in and getting the wrong stuff out. Illness is putting the wrong stuff in and not getting the wrong stuff out   In today’s episode, Kellyann Andrews and I will discuss and share about what EMF does to our body and how we’re exposed to it. We will also tackle heavy metal toxicity and how we can get rid of it to promote a healing environment outside and inside our body.   [00:00:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m excited for you to hear today’s interview with Kellyann Andrews. She’s back on the show with us. She’s been here for a few episodes teaching about heavy metal detoxification, and how to alkalize the body, and how to test our pH. She’s shared so much wonderful advice in past episodes. So we’re continuing our great conversation with her about detoxification and promotion of optimal health. To promote your optimal health, I have wonderful news. I just heard from my favorite CBD company, Medterra CBD, that’s medterracbd.com. I interviewed the founder a while back. You can find that episode by going to learntruehealth.com and search CBD to find my interview with the founder of Medterra CBD. He shares how they source their hemp to make sure that it’s organic. And the different processes it goes through to extract the CBD in the healthiest way possible. Now, it is not a whole hemp plant extract. Meaning, you will pass a drug test if you take it because there is no THC in it. It is pure CBD. I’ve used a lot of different companies trying out different types of CBD from cannabis plants and from hemp plants. I really like their CBD. I don’t suffer, fortunately, with chronic pain but I do. notice that for me it really calms me down. Sometimes I get really wound up after a great interview and I need to wind down a little bit. It really calms me down. And I could see their CBD being a fantastic replacement for alcohol. If you’re the type of person that wants to come home and have a glass of wine at night, I can see this being absolutely very healthy replacement. Because as we know, alcohol is a poison. It’s a toxin for the liver. And over time it does do liver damage. It also drains our resources and drains our minerals in our body. Whereas, CBD is so healthy for the nervous system. And that’s something that we’ve discussed in our episodes in our CBD interviews. So you could go to learntruehealth.com, type in CBD, learn more about CBD. But if you’re interested in it for pain management, for sleep, or for stress reduction, then check it out. Go to medterracbd.com and use the promo code they gave us just for December. It ends December 31st. When you purchase $50 or more, they’re going to throw in a free 250 milligram tincture. So you get a free bottle which is so cool because you can throw that in your purse, or in your car, or you can gift it to a friend. So for every purchase, you’re going to receive an additional bottle by using a coupon code LTHHoliday. Our normal coupon code is LTH. And that gives you the listener discount. And then right now we’re getting this additional promotion which is LTHHoliday, all one word. So go to medterracbd.com and put in the coupon code LTHHoliday. Check it out. If you want to just to try and see what’s the hype, what’s CBD all about it. It gives me the same amount of relief that, like, a glass of wine would. But it doesn’t create a buzz in your head. It doesn’t make you stoned in any way. It doesn’t make you feel high in any way. It just is wonderfully calming for the nervous system. And a lot of people have reported that it’s really helped them with their pain, and also with their anxiety, and also with their sleep, which is excellent. Just a wonderful news. Than you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing the Learn True Health Podcast with those you love so that we can help as many people as possible. If you want to join the email list, go to learntruehealth.com, wait for the pop up. It happens after about five seconds. Put in your email. I promise not to spam you. I just send a few emails a month. And also join the Facebook Group. It’s an active wonderful community. We’re all helping each other answering each other’s health questions. If you just want a tribe of really great and positive people that love helping each other, then you absolutely will love the Learn True Health Facebook Group. So you can just search Learn True Health in Facebook or go to learntruehealth.com/group and you will be able to join us. I can’t wait to see you there. Awesome. So remember, medterracbd.com, using the coupon code LTHHoliday. Get your free bottle. And let me know what you think. You can chat about it with all the other listeners in the Facebook Group. Or you can email me, ashley@learntruehealth.com. I’d love to hear from you. Enjoy today’s interview. Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 396. I’m very happy to have back on the show with us Kellyann Andrews. This is your fifth time being here, Kellyann. You were in Episode 292, 293, 329, and 330. Kellyann is the co-founder of Platinum Energy Systems. And their website is platinumenergysystems.ca. I love your – we call the PES for short, right? I love the PES. Many listeners have – I think, like, over 60 or something listeners have purchased a PES and have been sharing with their friends and family. I’ve shared it with many of my friends with outstanding results, really interesting results. I originally – and please, listeners, go back and check out the first episode, 292, because I share my serendipitous experience of how Kellyann and I met shortly after I interviewed Dr. Klinghardt. And I was on a mission to figure out how to detox my body of heavy metals. Because I realized that my liver – my chronic liver inflammation one of the problems was heavy metal toxicity. And I was looking at all the healthy things I could do to remove heavy metals in the safest way possible. And Dr. Klinghardt says in our interview, that this ionic foot bath is a thing he highly recommends. And I thought, “Man, I really want to get one of those.” And then that’s when I met Kellyann. And it was just, like, perfect timing. And it turned out that, Kellyann, your system is the same one that Dr. Klinghardt uses in his clinics to help very ill patients regain their health through removing these heavy metals in a safe way. So I started using the PES. It has to be over a year that I’ve been using it now. I should go back and look at the exact date I started using it. And I noticed right away really positive results for myself. My liver inflammation went away. I no longer taste heavy metals in my mouth. I was having issues, my immune system was reacting to the heavy metals as well. And I’m not having those issues anymore. So it is a shotgun approach because I also use the Sunlight and Sauna, and I soak in magnesium, and I eat chlorella, and I take supplements and I exercise, and I juice, and I eat eight cups of vegetables a day. You know, I do all kinds of things for my health. So I’m not saying it’s just one thing but I did notice that what really helped is when I added the PES system to my life, I got great results. So this episode though is not strictly about the PES system. I’m just in prefacing the wonderful guest we have on today. I wanted to share that I love the work that you do, Kellyann. I love the PES. And I know that my listeners who also have one would agree. As I’ve heard from many of them that it makes a big difference. But today you’re here to talk about something that I think instills a lot of fear in people. And there’s a lot of fear around 5G, heavy metals, and WiFi, and EMF exposure. Especially when we start to look into it and realize that there is a really big problem. And that’s something that Dr. Klinghardt talked about in our interview. He talked about how he’s able to reverse autism. And he does it regularly. And one thing he says is the first thing he does with autistic children is he gets them away from WiFi, because the WiFi vibrates at a certain frequency that vibrates the heavy metals in their brain. And it’s like putting their brain in a microwave. And it, like, short circuits the brain. And when he removes autistic children from WiFi – 100 percent removes them out of WiFi, there’s a difference in their behavior. And then he gets them on a gentle heavy metal detox. And that’s his next step. Including the PES. Just recently, I had a friend come over who has a son who has developmental delays. And it’s very difficult to understand what he’s saying. He’s four years old. And when he speaks, you really want to understand him because he has such enthusiasm. But really, I rarely understand a word he says. And we have video footage. His mom filmed it. After one session in the PES, he spoke clearly. And the mom was beside herself. She had never heard him speak so clearly. He was able to communicate. And it was just amazing. That was after his first session. So I’ve seen wonderful things happen when we help the body to pull heavy metals out and detox. Now, Kellyann, I know that you want to make sure that we start today’s interview by setting a tone. Not a fear based tone. But a tone of hope and bringing in actionable steps and showing the listeners the things that we can do in our daily life to support our body’s ability to heal itself and to protect our body. So I want to make sure that you get a chance to set this tone. I know that you don’t want to be fear based and you want to make sure the listeners feel that they can do something. That they’re in the driver’s seat of their health.     [00:11:04] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. Exactly. You know, I’ve watched as we all have and listened to so many podcasts especially around health issues. And there’s a lot of them that just really portray almost a doomsday kind of mentality and mindset. By the end of it, it’s sort of like watching a horror show. You just don’t feel good. That’s where I love being with you because you just set such a different tone. And really focus on the solution orientation and what people can do to decrease the fear. Because the fear has everything to do with hyper acidifying your body causing a sympathetic nervous system overdrive response to fight and flight. A trapped feeling you’re in the box and there’s no doors, all that kind of thing. And I think there’s just a huge amount of that going on in the world today. And people are just stressed beyond their capacity. And people are having meltdowns on not only physical levels which we’re seeing if anybody ever has to go to emergency. I mean, the poor people who work in the emergency rooms now, they need to get treatment almost because they are so overwhelmed by all that’s coming at them. But it’s not just on that level. It’s on the emotional and the mental level as well. So in this podcast I want to give your listeners the insights of what I have. I was the field biologist at age five, six collecting the tadpole eggs to watch them change to tadpoles and then the frogs. So I’ve always had a watcher kind of interest and curiosity and fascination. And so during the journey of my own detoxification of heavy metals and other toxic content, then expanding that into other practitioners and their patients and then family members, and just sort of the ripple effect outward. And then working with medical clinics all over North America. I began to see a pattern occurring in what was happening, like the Platinum Energy System seem to somehow be hitting a reset button for people. And that in itself fascinated me. But what occurred as we went through this journey of watching people’s recovery was the pattern that started to emerged, what I’ve watched when they had their sessions. Initially, they released a lot of lymphatic clog up. So this fatty substance, sometimes it almost looked like molten lava being released on the surface of the water would come out. And until that content came out, the heavy metals didn’t. But when that content came out, like in the previous podcast I told about a woman who came to us in a total state of dimension. Didn’t know where she was. And I don’t know who she was. But she released like an inch or two of goop into the base and that looked like chicken soup stuck in the fridge overnight. But once that content came out, boom, out came some other content. In which then we began to realize that all of these patients were suffering from some version of what the Chinese called stagnation, where there was a lack of flow of energy. And that the various circulatory systems in the body were clogging up. Whether it was a systemic entire broad view of the arterial system or whether it was a localized issue of sinus congestion. So wherever the congestion was, then that’s where the issue was primarily showing up. But I always use the analogy of an aquarium. And if it’s in one corner of the aquarium, it’s through the whole aquarium. So then what we began to see was just like if you have a lack of exercise, the blood and the length don’t flow. And that is so vital. But behind the stagnation was a high level of pH. And so the things that we saw in the pattern of the clients history was that they all came to us usually with mold, microbe, and parasite issues, infections. But behind that was heavy metals. And behind that was an exposure to EMF. And that combination along with high acidity was clogging up the lymph system. In the podcast we talked about previously the issue with copper and nickel. So the listeners can just go back there and begin to see how those are complicating human physiology. But in our testing, what we did was we were fascinated to see what was being released and what was the content. So when we did the water analysis, we ran the system with no feet and then we ran with four different patients. So we compared the control with no feet in the water as opposed to patients. And so for example, in terms of lead, one of the things that we’re seeing is just the majority of people are coming to us with lead, mercury, and aluminum toxicity are the three primary ones. So in the control, what we saw was lead was 1.7. But the last patient who was a commercial artist, she had 30 units of lead released in one session. So then we looked at the blood. So we had a 50 year old male come to us who had the flu. And his pH was 6 at the beginning. But at the end, it was 7.5. And he released a lot of heavy metals. But you can see in the photographs of the blood that he had total stagnation in his blood. His blood cells were all stacked together. But yet after the session, they opened up and started to move and you could actually see the difference in the red blood cells.     [00:17:31] Ashley James: You mean live blood cell analysis. Just for people who don’t know what it means in the photos of his blood. And I’ve had live blood cell analysis done back in ’99. It was fascinating. And I wish it was more readily used because I think it would be so convincing to go to the doctor’s office. They take a prick of your blood and they put it under a microscope and they project it onto a computer. And you can see right there, your red blood cells and the health of your red blood cells. You see so much just by looking. When red blood cells are stuck together, they get clumped stuck together like a Congo line. And you can see the way that they’re stuck together, they’re not functioning correctly. They’re not able to fully release oxygen and grab on to what they need to grab on to take stuff away from the cells. They’re not able to really bring the nutrients to the cell. The blood isn’t able to work correctly. So you can see it’s like sludge. You can see big fat globule. You can see Candida floating around. You can see how the white blood cells are responding. And it’s interesting, if you eat a cheeseburger and an hour later go and get your blood cell analysis done, you can see your blood turns to sludge and there’s big globs of fat floating around in your blood. And then if you do stuff like this kind of frequency work, I’ve seen live blood cell analysis done after being on a Beemer mat, where they use specific frequencies or a PES system using the PES detox system. That the blood looks and acts differently just minutes after, like before and after the sessions. And it lasts. It’s a lasting effect that lasts all day. But you see that the red blood cells are no longer clump together. That the cells are more viscous. Everything is moving and able to function correctly.     [00:19:43] Kellyann Andrews: And you know what makes that difference, Ashley? Electricity. So what happens with all diseases – and this is why the photographs are so fabulous – because it showed what the Chinese called that stagnation, which is what you’re just talking about. The blood cells all stuck together. So the reason they were stuck together is because they had no electricity. And so once the heavy metals were removed, now the blood completely opened up and moved. It was just so beautiful. I mean, another artist looked at and she said, “I don’t know anything about blood.” But she said this top picture, which was a picture of them all stuck together, like as you said, salmon roe or salmon eggs, she said, “That’s a picture of chaos.” And then she saw the bottom picture after the session and after a series of sessions, she said, “My God, that’s the picture of harmony.” And that’s why I want to bring this this topic in because I’m going to show you why that is occurring in terms of heavy metals and EMF.     [00:20:49] Ashley James: Now, to clear up a confusion. EMF is electromagnetic frequency. And you’re saying that the energy from a PES, for example, it’s a positive – it’s a healing frequency. But that the EMF we get from being around electronics is a harmful frequency.     [00:21:09] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. And I’m going to go into full detail about that just a little later on. But just to mention the last one – because this was really significant – was we then tested urine. A medical clinic that we were working with had two patients that tested the urine. And neither of these patients had any intervention, which is really interesting before because that’s an unusual case. But the first male had lead at 73 – sorry – at 23. And after six sessions had a 50 percent reduction. But lead on the second male was at 79, which was an astronomical score. And after ten sessions, released 50 percent. But what we watched was how the pH change in all of those cases with all those patients. Now, what’s interesting about lead – I don’t know if you realize this – but I was quite shocked when I checked into it. Lead pipes – at least in Canada – were not outlawed until 1975. Like, that is so close to where we live now. I mean, you know, it’s not that many years ago. But no lead soldering in the pipes wasn’t outlawed until 86.     [00:22:34] Ashley James: So many of us could be living in homes with lead pipes or lead soldering.     [00:22:38] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. And the person that released the 30 units of lead into the base and in one session, she was a commercial artist and did stained glass. What do you use to hold the glass together? Lead soldering. And so then you could see it. So now we had another patient, it was sent to us from clinic. Now, she was in her 50s and she had Lyme. And she had really severe pain in her face. And she said the pain in her face was almost at a constant five or six but it had spikes up to ten. And she felt very nauseated and her pH was six. And she had had a lot of dental fillings and a lot of dental work done. And when they tested her, she had high levels of mercury, lead, and aluminum. But she said – and we see this often with heavy metals – because you see heavy metals in the body, because they are heavy. Of course, gravity takes them down to the feet. She said when she walked on her feet, she felt like she was walking on glass. And her whole body was tight. And her description of her own body was that she felt like she was constipated through her whole body. And her ankles were swollen with edema. Well, of course, heavy metals when they joined together make a perfect log jam Beaver Dam. And so then they totally create the flow of blood through the body to be logged jammed. And then of course, it just builds up and becomes edema. But she said that her brain felt like a veil was in front of her all the time. And she had very poor level of memory at the time. They discovered that she lived in a house with mold and she actually had to leave the house and move and leave all her possessions behind. We have many patients that have that, where they can’t even take anything out of their house because it’s all contaminated. But here’s the key, is that she grew up on a farm with well water. And that iron content was so immense that she couldn’t wear white because it would stain all her white clothes orange. So that’s where her original contact was. But after she had a session and a series, she released those heavy metals. And she said that her water smells like iron. And her feet weren’t sore anymore and they’re lighter. And she could feel the difference in her feet that she didn’t have that stagnation occurring anymore. And I mean, her energy levels sore. But the greatest thing was to listen to her before and after. And that’s what I just absolutely love is all these people who are liberated. I mean, she sounded so joyful and perky. She sounded like a chirping Robin. Now, when you talked about Dr. Klinghardt before, he is very keenly focused, of course, as you say, on the electromagnetic sensitivities of people. And he ends up with people that are so extreme in the sensitivity that a lot of these people have a hard time detoxifying because they want to overwhelm so easily. But there is a huge correlation with electromagnetic frequencies affecting them with those high metals in their body. And they all seem to have -all the ones that come to us from Dr. Klinghardt’s clinics is they all have that mold exposure and the heavy metals. There’s a huge correlation there. And so the recovery started to occur when the heavy metals were released. And so we just sort of watched this pattern of stagnation and hyperacidity disappear once these heavy metals came out of the body. And they’re so affecting the central nervous system of the human body. I mean, the artists who had 30 y units of lead released in the session, she came in walking on a cane. Her mobility, I mean, she was just like a stiff robot when she came in. But I had to run out to the car to give her cane afterwards because she forgot. She forgot her cane. That was so funny. But I want to give you an example of a city – a small town, actually, that’s in the United States that will not be named. But in this city – and we won’t name the company either. But there’s a huge chemical company in this town. And this chemical company, as we know, is just the source of a lot of not only bad chemistry, but heavy metals. And also of course, then a lot of these companies are having to use sophisticated technologies. And so they’re a big emitter of electromagnetic frequencies. So in this town, they are the main employer in this town. And everybody in the town is either connected with it by being employed by them or family members employed or somehow there’s a connection back to them. But the whole entire town is sick. So this clinic came to us with the, focus on detoxifying their people in the town. And so people started coming in for sessions to get detox with Platinum Energy. And the patients all started having different recoveries in all different systems of the body. And so that was sort of the fascination. But if you go back to the concept of the heavy metals, the hyper acidity, and the stagnation, their symptoms are just showing up where the sites of stagnation are. So for example, one woman who had a thyroid issue. Sso the glands and the organs of the bodies get clogged up with this content. And then, of course, it can’t function properly. So once you started to detox and the heavy metals came out, her scores on her thyroid improved. Her brain, she said, felt like it was working better. She feels better in general and looks better. But what was interesting was that the men and women that are coming in, they’re now thinking clear. They’re not as cloudy or foggy. They’re feeling lighter. And their feet are feeling lighter. And they’re very, very relaxed. Now, I’m going to tie this all in with the science later as to why these people are experiencing these very specific symptoms to begin with and then why the releases are related. And so the clinic told me that they’re all leaving feeling revitalized and things like joints aren’t hurting. The joint pain is diminishing and they’re no longer got restless legs syndrome. I mean, how many people do you hear about restless leg syndrome? And that’s hugely related to stagnation, heavy metals clogging up the arterial system in the legs. And neuropathy, we talked about that already. So here’s an example, people need to realize that, for example, we had a husband come to us who was a welder. So of course, a welder is dealing with metals all day, right? Well, his wife when their blood tests were taken – I mean, when their urine challenge tests were done – now, that’s a really good point by the way. People will go and have their blood tested for heavy metals. Now, it will show up an acute exposure in the blood. Like, if they just had something happened and one of these mining disasters where the wall breaks and all the content comes down into the city or into the water or whatever. So that’s an acute exposure. But what happens when the people get it chronically is that they got to test the urine. And so when you test the urine – both husband and wife were tested – she had as much heavy metals as he had because she washed his uniforms in the family laundry.     [00:31:24] Ashley James: So how did you figure that one out?     [00:31:27] Kellyann Andrews: Well, because of the fact – I’ve got this investigator mind. And so I was like, the fact that she had as much as him and she didn’t do the welding and yet he did, there was some form of pass it forward, which wasn’t a good story. And so then I was like – I just asked her, “Are you washing this uniforms?” And she said yeah. And so then it was being put in with all the clothes and it was just contaminating the next person.     [00:32:00] Ashley James: And they both were very high?   [00:32:01] Kellyann Andrews: They were very high in the metals that he was working with – in the exact metals he was working with. And so we see this a lot in industry where people are coming to us. I remember one person who was working in a factory in Calgary and it was pop cans, so aluminum. She was so full of aluminum. She was like off the chart. And she was totally debilitated. I mean, absolutely debilitated. But as she started to unravel the extreme levels of heavy metals, her health started to come – rebound. So we had a stockbroker who came to us. Now, you think – I always ask people right up front what is their industry so that I can start to see where the toxicology issues are in their lives. So this man was a stockbroker. So boom, immediately up comes, “Okay. Lots of exposure to electrical.” I mean, I don’t know if you ever been on a stock broker room. But they’ve got the band thing go on across the ceiling that’s telling what all the numbers are. They’re all in this small room with, God knows, how many computers going off at the same time, phone’s going off, everybody’s on a cell phone walking around. It’s just got to be an electrical nightmare in those kind of rooms. So what happened was eight years before he came to us, he had a complete nervous system breakdown. And when they analyzed his metal levels, he had high mercury because we’ve been having a lot of dental work done plus he had a lot of lead. What had happened was that he had the experience of really strong current running through his entire body. But he said it created a violent sensation. And his heart was beating completely out of rhythm. And when he tested his pH and the before session it was six. And I had him test his urine as well and his urine was 5.5 and like norm. The blood should be 7.35 to 7.45. So we’re seeing a huge correlation with these people with low level levels of alkalinity but high levels of acidity. So he has a series of sessions. Now, he feels lighter, he’s more flexible. He released – what I always jokingly say which isn’t so great really – but it’s the mother lode of heavy metals. But after this oily content came out, so he was all clogged up. So again, stagnation. So the lymph system gets all clogged up. Now, a lot of people are doing diets in which they’re doing a lot of animal protein and they’re also doing high fats. Well, it amazes me in our modern times that we don’t learn from our history. But the Pritikin diet, I mean, Pritikin himself didn’t last on it. But it clogs them up. And so they get clogged up in the lymphatic system. And we see this hugely especially with the – you know, we need protein. Granted. I agree absolutely really need protein way more than we’re eating all these carbs. But too much protein especially from an animal source and too much oil is completely logged jamming the lymphatic system. So that’s where with his heavy metal content and high levels of acidity were hugely affecting him. So after a series of sessions and releasing this heavy metals, boing, his urine comes up to a 7 and so does his saliva. Now, he’s sleeping deeper, his energy levels up, his stamina is up, his mood is up, he feels mellow, and he’s more present and alert. And wait to see how this ties in with the electrical system of the body and the EMF and all of that together. So I’m going to get to that. But I want people to understand there is a pattern here that’s emerging. So now we have people that have a very high level of electromagnetic sensitivity. These people can’t go near computers .They can’t use phones, especially cell phones. So we had a patient who was sent to us who if she touched a wire, her heart would go into extreme palpitations. In other words, beat very, very fast. But the great thing was – and she knew she knew how much heavy metal she had in her body. So she knew she couldn’t go near anything electric. But once she released those heavy metals, a month later, she could touch the wire and she had no heart palpitations. And she was so joyful. Because people when they get in these states of health, as you’ve seen and experienced, and we’ve all experienced, is the trouble is when you get into – what I call – a low tide position. You become very fearful. And it’s a now experience. But the human body when not happy, gives very strong signals. And the trouble with the human thought form or mindset is that then you project that to be eternity. That you’re always going to feel this. And if there’s one message that I could get across today, is to realize it’s just a moment in time. And the fact that it continues, if it’s more than a moment in time, is because of the body is clogged up and it needs to release this content. But once you release the content, rejuvenation occurs. But in these states have the debilitating, degeneration is occurring. But that is not an eternal position. It’s just a temporary focus if you address the core cause.     [00:38:30] Ashley James: I noticed that when I did – because I’ve taken the PES machine and used it with many of my friends. And I noticed that the first few sessions were thick black tar that when we were done in the session, it would be very frothy and it would be oily. And this is stuff that came out of their feet. What is it? What is this stuff that’s coming out of our feet?     [ 00:39:01] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. Well, it’s the same content that would come out of the colon or the urine. We’ve just created a different door of exit. So what we’ve done is we’ve gone directly to accessing it straight out of the lymph system. But the body is intelligent. The whole discovery process – and it was just such a an interesting journey of trying to determine and be able to answer your question – was what was occurring here? Why were some people experiencing complete relief on a sinus issue or a joint issue or digestive issue or a bone issue or whatever? So it’s like how can this technology knowing exactly what it is that the body needs? Well, it’s the body knowing. So the technology joins with the body wisdom. And your body has thousands of years of wisdom on how to survive. It is absolutely completely program for survival. And if there’s anything that I could get also across today is to test it to trust – trust and also test – you might as well test it too – the intelligence of your body to give you the signals that it needs to tell you whether something is good or bad for you. Well, that’s exactly what’s happening in the process of release, is the body knows what is most toxic at this time, which is most running interference with its metabolism, its ability to function. So it will release that per session. The body’s wisdom is understanding we are just creating a new outlet for which the content can be released.     [00:40:47] Ashley James: So after the first – it depends on the person, I’ve noticed. But after the first one to three sessions, the water changes. And I’ve done it with – it’s not the machine. It’s, like, with each array. I know it’s not because if I run the array in just plain water with a little bit of salt like you’re supposed to without feet in it, it’s different. I noticed that for the first three sessions that someone does. It’s like this weird frothy water. And then after a while, it becomes clearer and clearer and clearer. And you said that even when the water is clear and doesn’t have the oily frothy film that’s coming out of us, that when you have the water tested that they see that there’s still high levels of lead, mercury, or aluminum coming out of the people. Because we don’t necessarily can see those particles in the water.     [00:41:42] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s the thing is people try to – especially the imitation models are all into the look of the water. And so we completely try to diminish that whole fascination. It’s like how does your body feel as a result of that session? But you’re right, the content will change over time. Now, when you have the lighter purges, that is usually current levels of toxicity, especially hyper acidity. So what we noticed with people are really releasing a lot of acid in the session and usually heavy metals with that, is that – I don’t know if you ever noticed the feet exfoliating, the dead skin coming off of the feet. That’s when you know you’ve had a really big acid download into the water. But that’s why we tested the pH to see then how pH is rebounded. And usually in those cases, you can see it. But I had a dentist phone me up the other day. I always get the greatest questions coming at me. And she goes, “Why was it that at the beginning of the session, the patient’s pH was 7. But at the end of the session, it was 5?” Because people were expecting it to start at 5 and end at 7 t the end of the session. And I said, “Well, that’s because whatever they ate or drank before – ” because she’s a holistic dentist and she’s dealing with lots of supplements and nutrients and alkalizer. I said, “Whatever they ate or drank before they came in for a session, hyper alkalized them so it reborns their alkalinity. But that’s not their native score. Their native score, their real score was that after score. So 5 was what they had.” And that’s what we’re classically seeing with all of these sick people is they’re down in the 5 and 6 range on pH when they first come to us. And they’re just, like, on their knees with some kind of issue in the body.     [00:43:51] Ashley James: Right. And then in our past interviews, you’ve talked about these test strips which are so affordable that you can use is to test your saliva and your urine pH. And you explained in a previous interview exactly how to test your pH in the morning and then throughout the day and to understand what it means. And it’s a good indicator of where your body is right now.   It’s funny, the first time we used the test trips, my husband had just eaten a big glass of blueberries. And so of course, his pH was, like, 8. It was perfect. It was like the best pH ever. And then he had a big smile on his face. But you’re right, whatever we eat or drink can affect the pH, whether we took our supplements or ate some food that was alkalizing. So it’s best to do it several hours away from food or first thing in the morning to get a baseline of where we are. And it’s interesting though that it changes. I’ve seen pH change for the positive after people have done a session. But let’s get into this idea of how EMF is affecting us. Because I know you’re painting a picture. I know you’ve been preparing us mentally for understanding what you’re here to teach us today.     [00:45:18] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. So that’s why if we just keep in that idea of the stagnation and the cells being all stuck together because they didn’t have any electricity. So that correlates with hyper acidity. So that’s where the tie into that is. But it also ties into heavy metals. But then will lead into how the energy in the body is affected externally by external sources as well. So of course, we know the body is made out of atoms. Now these atoms produce [inaudible 00:45:50] and receive electricity. And there’s a very specific frequency for health. All of our cells, organs, and tissues, and even your thoughts and emotions have a specific frequency. So they create as a result of that frequency an electromagnetic field. And so we’ve all seen pictures of that energy field that is emitted from beyond the physical skin. So there’s an energy field that’s emitted. And actually, I saw just this morning on something where when the astronauts got out of the shuttle on to the moon, that there was this glow of light around the astronaut. And so it’s actually portraying that electromagnetic field. But even things like chanting which is really interesting. And of course, that’s taking energy into the body through the oxygen. But even chanting something like Om, O-M, will actually create a Mandala pattern around the body and they’ve been able to see that. So what happens is the body requires certain things. It requires water, minerals, a flow as opposed to stagnation, and a pH of 7.3 to 7.5 – I mean – sorry – 7.45. So now if you start to think of the body as an energy field, and just for an example, think about a tuning fork. When you ding the first tuning fork – so you got two tuning forks. Ding the first one and it vibrates at whatever that frequency is. Then you bring it up against the second tuning fork and you’re not dinging the second tuning fork. You’re just holding the vibrating first fork near the second one. The second one will start vibrating at the same frequency. So it synchronizes to the first tuning fork. Now, we just begin to realize that the human body is the same as the tuning fork. That our internals – this is an expression I coined – how our internals are affected by our externals. So now we look at things like solar flares and geomagnetic activity on the earth. So solar flares cause an imbalance in the brain and hearts synchronicity. So I don’t know – did you know this, Ashley? I found this out recently. And I was quite astounded. We all think of the brain as sort of the control tower at the airport. And it’s giving off all of the signals to the airplanes kind of thing, you know, the messages in the body. So we think of the brain as the major communicator in the body. But they found that in actual fact, the heart is communicating more to the brain than the brain is to the heart.     [00:49:15] Ashley James: Yes. Yes. Something like – I heard that recently that the brain receives between six and ten more signals in that it puts out.     [00:49:29] Kellyann Andrews: I just thought that was so fascinating. And so, to me, that is so classic. Because I mean, you and I operate at the physical level, like we all do. But my fascination is to go up a few levels to the spiritual and to see how that correlates. So the heart, of course, in western medicine is the center of everything happening. Granted if your heart is not pumping, then nothing’s happening. So the heart is the center of the energetic aspect of the body. And so define that the heart is the one who’s the master communicator, I just thought was so brilliant. So basically, what happens though is that solar flares – to bring it back to the energy level. Solar flares will affect things like our blood pressure. It will actually even affect reproduction in our immune systems. It affects the heart. It affects all neurological and causes neurological problems. It can even cause mental and emotional disorders, even as much as depression and suicide. So solar flares are doing that. Now, on the earth itself, there is a natural frequency on the earth, as you know, the Schumann frequency. And it is 7.8 hertz. So what’s really interesting is – I’m going to tie that back in with the brain frequency in a minute. But basically, what happens with geomagnetic storms and solar flares is that it affects – it has an effect on the body on the frequencies to our internal parts and functions. So it will alter the actual heart-brain synchronicity and it will change even the brain’s level of melatonin.     [00:51:28] Ashley James: I just had a complete aha moment. You mentioned that the – so I mean, hold that thought about melatonin. That’s also interesting. But what you said just made me go, “Oh my gosh. What if? ” Okay. So you talked about solar flares increase suicide rates. It affects us on that level. You reminded me of back in the fourth grade, I read a paper and it always stuck with me that during the times of the Santa Ana winds, the Santa Ana Hills near LA, the wind would blow and it would create – because it was so dry, it would create positive ions which are not positive. They’re very bad for us. And they would increase the positive ions. The positive ionic charge of the air. And it would increase the suicide rates in the area. That they could see the suicides would go up when the Santa Ana winds blew because it would increase the ionic charge in the air. Again, affecting us on an energetic level. We are electromagnetic, right? That’s how we work. You know, when you go to a hospital, you get hooked up to machines to read your energy, right? That’s how they read your heartbeat and read – they put all these – you know, the EKG and then then EEG and all these machines on your head and your heart, their reading the energy of your impulses of your brain and of your heart. So, of course, of course that makes sense. And it just hit me because lately I’ve been seeing how much all this information about the children ages from 10 to 24 – I know 24 year olds are children – but this particular generation, in the last ten years, the suicide rates went up 52 percent. It is the second leading cause of death among those ages 10 to 24 right now. And thinking about how much exposure they have to EMF, I’m wondering if – and of course, the bullying on social media and that, obviously, plays a role in the fact that they’re given an overly toxic world with 80,000 more chemicals in their food than we had when we were 10. Far more medications. They’re even putting infants now on antipsychotic medication. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. It’s a toxic world. It’s way more toxic than was when we were kids. I agree that it’s not just one thing. But to then think, “Wait a second.” If exposure to an electrical frequency that is disruptive for the body can increase suicide rates. Is it possible that the EMF exposure that this generation has had since they were born, if that is also playing a role?     [00:54:53] Kellyann Andrews: It is hugely playing a role. I mean, here’s the subtlety. When we find that solar flares are effective, the Schumann frequency at 10 hertz will speed up body reactions. But at 3 hertz, it will slow it down – megahertz. And so they actually been able to witness this on EEG patterns, like brain patterns. And what it’s doing is it’s affecting the calcium iron uptake in the brain.     [00:55:29] Ashley James: Interesting. So when it speeds up the calcium and iron uptake in the brain, what does that do?     [00:55:35] Kellyann Andrews: Well, that was just the illustration of how low these frequencies are actually having an effect. But here we go on to realize that solar flares is so far away. Schumann frequency is so subtle. But what is occurring is we’ve got this electromagnetic frequency, manmade, that’s right up close. And when they originally came out and they said how cell phones were okay and they didn’t cause any damage and all that kind of stuff. It was an infrequent use of them. But that’s not what’s happening now. What’s happening now is you can’t go anywhere and not be exposed to it. I went into the grocery store and everybody’s on their iPhone, either sending a picture back of some product to say, “Is this the one you want?” Or talking to somebody on it. Or you’re in the lineup or you go to the doctor’s office and everybody in the waiting room is on a cell phone. I mean, you just can’t get away from it. So what is occurring is that these frequencies, when it’s a natural frequency, like Schuler, it’s a resonance in that frequency is a natural vibration. So the body has its own natural vibration. So the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system of the human body, vibrates at a certain level. And so you have your parasympathetic and then you have your, sympathetic. And what is occurring when they get around manmade frequencies is that is altering, the pattern is being altered. So, for example, we got the brainwaves. So you have delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. So delta is like, 0.5 to 4. And they theta is 4 to 7. Alpha is 8 to 12. Now, remember when I talked about Schuler’s frequency, that’s why people feel so mellow when they’re in an alpha frequency. Because it’s Schuler’s frequency. But what is happening, which is what you brought in and especially going up into the suicide level, even on the extreme level, is that these kids are resonating like the tuning fork at beta and gamma, and that is 12 to 30 and 30 to 100. Well, what they found with autism is the children cannot settle into an alpha pattern. So they’re remaining in a ADHD or hyperactivity level because they can’t settle the brain. Because I used the analogy of the dribble or the mouse on the wheel. And that’s what happens with the brain when it gets hyper acidic. So when you got too much heavy metals in the brain, and of course, the noggin fillings are right next to the brain and other things are getting there as well through other sources. Now, you got hyper acidity, you’ve got heavy metals which put off chaos frequency right next to the brain and a higher frequency, is there any wonder why people can’t settle? And we saw, from what I talked about earlier with the melatonin, that if solar flares are affecting our melatonin level – my God – it’s not surprising to see that this electromagnetic manmade frequency is causing people to be completely insomniacs.     [00:59:40] Ashley James: And remembering that when they approved cell phones for safety back in –  gosh, was it the 80s? I don’t know. It must have been the 80s, yeah.  When they did their tests, they tested it for, like, a two minute phone call or something. Because back then you paid, like, $12 a minute for cell phone use. And so why would anyone have more than a two minute phone call? Back then it was like you called because you need to ask if they – your wife needed to bring eggs home. And that would be, like, $12 to make that phone call to ask. So it was we really did not use them very frequently. And they did a test and they held a cell phone up to a man’s head or whatever. And they figured that it didn’t – it heated up the brain a little bit but not enough to cause damage for the two minutes. And then they approved it. And they haven’t done – it’s not required for them to do any safety tests now for someone to have a cell phone on their body or using a cell phone 24 hours a day.     [01:00:5] Kellyann Andrews: Let me add something to what you just said because it’s so important. Is that the man they tested was a 210  pound male, six feet tall. You said it was a two minute phone call and it heated up his brain, I think, two degrees and went in three centimeters or whatever. But anyway, so now they’ve retested it using thermography, heat sensory to see what it’s actually doing to the brain. Or like an MRI or CAT scan kind of situation. So they’re able to see – what these people did was – God – I can’t imagine being the subject of this person doing this. But anyways, they put him with a cell phone to see what was happening. So with someone like that guy who’s got probably a lion size head, it was going like, say, a third into his head. But then as the heads got smaller in terms of your children there, it was going further across the head. So that when you got a little kid who was, like, eight years old, it went from one ear to the other all the way across his head.     [01:02:11] Ashley James: Uh-huh.  And heating up the whole brain. I had a guest on the show – I can’t remember his name right now. But an expert in this field said that they found that having a cell phone – holding it in your hand or whatever the cell phone was basically close to within a two inch range, the mitochondria in those cells would go dormant for hours afterwards. And when you have a cell phone up to your brain, the mitochondria in your brain are going dormant. Those are the powerhouses of the brain. No wonder we’re feeling fatigued and not ourselves. But we’re surrounded by this. We’re surrounded by WiFi. We’re surrounded by by cell phone towers. We’re surrounded by computers. I’m in front of a computer right now to be able to talk to you. So we are surrounded by – and we have to be in this  –     [01:03:00] Kellyann Andrews: Yes. The reality.     [01:03:00] Ashley James: That’s the reality. I mean, there’s these measures we can take. I know like we had Robyn Openshaw on the show in the past talking about the kind of measures that we can take to reduce our EMF exposure. And there’s smart things we can do. My husband and I never have the WiFi on. We have a little switch on the back. And we just turn it on only when we need it. Like, when I use the sauna, because it’s WiFi and then we turn it off.     [01:03:28] Kellyann Andrews: And the routers, what you can do with the routers which is what my husband has done. You put a timer on it. You can actually have it turned off and turned on by a timer. And so that just is wonderful because it will make the difference. But along this level, you said something that I just really need to have the women understand is – for God’s sake – do not put the cell phone in your bra. They actually showed on something I was looking at where cell phone – she had a tumor in her breast and it was the exact shape of her cell phone. But the other thing women really need to understand is nobody should be wearing wired bras. That completely changes the whole electrical around your mammary gland – your breast glands and also the heart. The heart is so close to that whole area and sending into different frequency. Now right back in 1920s, they said that every disease has a frequency. So here’s the facts on the frequency. Disease body start at 58 so cold and the flu. Now those pictures that I was telling you about before the person had the flu – the blood pictures. So the person had the flu and the pH was 6 at the beginning. Now colds and flus frequency start at 78 to 60. Candida overgrowth is 55. Receptivity to Epstein Barr is 52. Receptivity to cancer is 42. Notice how the numbers are going down. And death begins at 25. So it’s the frequency of the body is being brought down, that’s where the life of the cell. And that’s what you talked about the mitochondria, the more and more the body is going into a lower state of frequency –     [01:05:35] Ashley James: The sicker we become.     [01:05:36] Kellyann Andrews: The more unhealthy we are.     [01:05:38] Ashley James: Yeah. That’s something that Robyn Openshaw brought up almost two years ago. I believe I had her on the show about two years ago. I know this because right after the episodet my husband went vegan. He went he went basically from eating Atkins. He only ate meat. And then after hearing – I mean this was kind of a compilation of many things he was hearing. But this was the straw for him – the final straw to break for him to decide to go whole food plant based. That he heard that the healthier you are, the higher your body vibrate. Actually, our bodies vibrate at a certain level and that they can hook you up to a machine and say, “Oh, you’re vibrating at, you know, 80 hertz. Oh, you’re vibrating at 100 hertz.” But when we are sick that we go lower and lower at 60 and lower than 60 is disease. And then death is around – like on a deathbed is, like, 40. And she said – she started listing off the hertz of different – or the frequency of different foods like broccoli and these healthy foods very, very high frequency, like 200. The frequency of certain a vegetable is 200. And she said, “How much you think pork is?” And I think we had just eaten pork sausages for breakfast that morning.  And she says it’s six. And I nearly fell off my chair. And she said, “Yeah. There’s this – “ Her whole book was called Vibe. And it was about this concept of we’re either putting foods that lower frequency into our body or putting foods that raise our frequency into our body. And she’s not trying to make people go vegan. She’s just showing you when we eat dead animal flesh, we’re eating a very, very low frequency food. And when we eat vegetables and fruit and raw foods, we’re eating incredibly high frequency food. And they’re seeing that the people who eat more low frequency foods that just lowers their body’s frequency into the frequencies that create disease. So if we’re looking if disease starts on an energetic level, then this is it. You know, what can we do to raise the frequency? And raising the frequency of the body can also be exercise, breathing, praying, meditating. The things that can bring us into that alpha state. The things that calm us down. Unplugging from the WiFi. Unplugging from the EMFs. Eating foods that are vibrating really high. Juicing smoothies. Getting tons of vegetables into us. And that brings the whole body up because you can’t be sick and be vibrating at 100 on this frequency scale. You can’t. The sick people always are vibrating at that lower level. So it just made so much sense, if we’re looking at disease from the energetic standpoint, like Rife was able to discover in the 1920s. And that book about him which is, you pick up that book, you’ll finish the entire thing. It’s a very short book. But you will absolutely can’t put it down. I got it on eBay. You have to get it – I don’t think it’s in print anymore. It’s called The Cancer Cure That Worked. And it’s about Rife’s research and his discoveries in the 1920s. And how he discovered that he could turn off disease in the body, basically, explode viruses by using frequencies.     [01:09:26] Kellyann Andrews: He would send back their own frequency to them and that’s what exploded them.     [01:09:29] Ashley James: Yeah. He figured out what the frequency of cancer was, for example. And he was able to just explode it. It was like a sine wave that neutralized it. And then the government came in and destroyed everything and stole it all because that is bad for business to be able to end disease.     [01:09:49] Kellyann Andrews: Well, they tried to buy it first. He wouldn’t sell it. And so when he wouldn’t sell it. But to go back to your food thing, just it’s a really important point, processed food and canned food, guess what vibration that is? Zero. Zero. No vibration. And then you think of all those people that are eating that kind of – it just makes sense, you know. It totally makes sense. So yeah, it’s such an interesting world. But when you realized that –  for example, in Europe. When we go back to the EMF focus, in Europe, they call it electrosmog. And when you think of that, it’s so true. Like, microwave and radio wave sickness is recognized as an occupational disease in Soviet Union. And then out of a group of 17 men who worked on an experiment, experimental electromagnetic pulse experiment generating system in 1967, five of them died of cancer in the following seven years. But the University of Colorado, the medical research found that death rate in certain cancers such as leukemia was higher than average in homes that were 130 feet or 40 meters from a high currency power line.     [01:11:28] Ashley James: Can you say that again? So 130 feet?     [ 01:11:31] Kellyann Andrews: 130 feet from a high current power line.     [01:11:35] Ashley James: That’s not the regular ones, like the regular lines on the street? But the really big ones that buzz.     [01:11:41] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. The buzz. Yeah. If it’s a buzz, it’s not a good thing. I was thinking this morning because I loved your analogy in the other talk that you did with Robyn when you said it’s too bad it doesn’t create a burn. You know, like a sunburn. Sun is lovely, it will do things for you. But too much exposure isn’t great. So I was thinking about if you just think of anything electric like a beehive. But think of it, especially the cell phone as like a swarming beehive, in all of your sensory perception that’s built into that beautiful intelligence in your body, you would never go stand by a swarming beehive. Just think of everything electric on that kind of level. And so what’s the answer? The answer is distance. How far away you are to it. So like holding a cell phone up to your head. But the other thing is, is that you also got to watch out that all the iPhones, they not only are doing an antenna. The actual electric aspect is coming from the whole body of the phone. And that’s what’s making a difference. But anybody who’s using YouTube –  what is it called? Bluetooth. Bluetooth is putting an antenna right in your head. It’s putting an antenna right in your head. So what they found at University of California – this was a real shocker – they had this monster – well, not so monster. But it was a cell tower. And so the cell tower was on the campus right beside this building. And what they found over a period of time was every single professor in every one of those classrooms ended up with brain tumor.     [01:13:40] Ashley James: No.     [01:13:41] Kellyann Andrews:  Yeah. And so why are we not hearing about the adverse effects? I mean, you and I are because we investigate it. And then we also do deep research to find it. But what’s happened recently – and I’m sure that you’ve been telling people – but Google has been completely muffled. And so people like Mercola, The Truth About Cancer, even Green PubMed, I mean, all of these people have been knocked out by Google. And even on Amazon, Amazon is restricting what can be sold through Amazon because they’re all been bought out by pharmaceuticals. And so people need to realize why are they not hearing about it because the media is being muffled.     [01:14:30] Ashley James: You know, iTunes, which most listeners – like, 95 percent of listeners listen through iTunes. iTunes has not suppressed the information yet. Knock on wood. Good for iTunes. I know. I’m really happy of that. Because they spent the last year optimizing their search engine. iTunes now basically transcribes all the audio for all the podcasts. So that when you search for things, like if you type in something very specific, it’s going to bring up a better representation for you. Because it scans through the content of what’s said in the podcast. And then brings up what you really want to find. So they’re not – as of yet, they had not suppressed any holistic information. Whereas Google, about six months ago – you know, a year ago, you could type in natural cure for – I don’t know – for yeast infection. And you would get all kinds of wonderful blogs by Naturopaths. And great, great, great information. Now, the first five are going to be medical – pharmaceutical based medical things. And you have to go several pages – which no one ever clicks on page two. It’s something like 1 percent of people click on page two.     [01:15:49] Kellyann Andrews: I go to five.     [01:15:51] Ashley James: Well, you’re in the top, top, top 0.01 percent of people. Most people go to the first few in the search. But Google has also made it so that some websites are completely unlisted now. It won’t even show up in a Google search. And these are good, holistic websites. So yeah, there’s a war.     [01:16:15] Kellyann Andrews: So have you told people about DuckDuckGo?     [01:16:18] Ashley James: I have not. But that’s something that you could definitely let them know about.     [01:16:22] Kellyann Andrews: Well, it’s another search engine. And apparently they’re, shall we say, more open minded that you can find things through that one. So DuckDuckGo is another option for people to access through. But you just need to keep digging deeper to find the answers nowadays. And yeah,it’s really interesting because I have a medical background. I was trained as a nurse. And so I can see a lot of what is occurring and what’s being presented. And have that understanding of the filter that is going on presently. But the awesome thing – and that’s why I really want to acknowledge you, Ashley, is you’ve gone out on a limb to create this entire environment in which people can find the truth. And the truth is, as my husband says, EMF is what he calls inconvenient truth. People don’t want to hear about it. They don’t want to know that their cell phone isn’t great. And having your cell phone on in your car is like being inside a microwave oven. So people don’t want to hear that part. But the thing is, is that your audience is so awesome because they are open minded. They are seekers. They’re truth finders. They’re walking the talk. They’re doing what it takes to change it around. And that’s such a big, big thing. Because the way things are on the planet, especially at this moment, is quite chaotic. And it’s so easy to get disillusioned. And when your energy goes down, your emotions go down, your mind starts to think all the bad things. And you just go into a negative spin. But like Ashley said at the beginning of the call, you just do the domino effect in the right direction. So you take your nutrients, you drink your water, you do all the things that bring your electric up, you dance, you sing, you do exercise, you move your body, you listen to positive influences, and you allow positive influences into your body, your being and your world. And it becomes a whole different orientation. You don’t have to resonate at that low frequency that the world is vibrating at right now. A bunch of us can just have a party and resonate at a whole different frequency. So let us all be high frequency tuning forks and we’ll all resonate together.   [01:19:15] Ashley James: I love that. Teach us how can we resonate on a higher level?     [01:19:21] Kellyann Andrews: First of all, its mindset. It is definitely a mindset. You need to just absolutely want to live that other life so that you’re willing to move into action steps on what you can do. So you need to have a mastery mindset. You need to do what it takes. And number one is to create a healing environment inside and outside your body. So identify what you want. That’s the first step. If there’s anything that’s really important is you got to know what you want. If you’re going on a trip, where are you going? People spend more time and attention on their vacations than they do their lives. So what is it you want and then you create the actions to achieve it. So number one is to protect yourself. And number two is to nourish yourself. And these are not just physical. These are emotional, mental, and spiritual. And on the physical level but also on all of those levels as you purify yourself. So if you have someone that’s in your world, if they’re your family, it can be kind of interesting. But if there’s negative influences in your world, you got to be – this is the one example that we’ll use. It’s an office and asset on a computer. You can hit the minus screen. Minimize, minimize that influence in your world. So the number one thing we need to do on a physical level is be smart. We have such incredible brilliance designed into us biologically, intelligently, and universally. We just connect with that wisdom that is so part of our nature. So on an electrical level, obviously, you distance yourself from the electronics. You time or dosage, you turn down the dosage level and how much you go on it. And obviously, there’s an aspect to the intensity of it, too. But here’s the key of life is the contrast between expansion and contraction. Is your life expanding or contracting? And just think about your muscles expanding and contracting. So well-being – so expansion is relaxed. It’s having an attitude and latitude of gratitude. And then there’s a sense of ease that comes with that and allowing. You are allowing your world to expand. You’re allowing your health to expand. You’re allowing yourself to feel good. So many of us, especially as women, I think are programmed to not feel good. That we’re supposed to be in service to everybody else. So I deal with all these women. They’re completely exhausted because they’re the caretakers of their – they’re the hubcap of their entire family. And nobody’s taking care of them. But more importantly, they’re not taking care of themselves. So there’s an allowingness that self-care is a priority in your life. So the opposite is contraction, where there’s a whole sense of resistance. There’s resentment. There’s anger. There’s struggle. And there’s blocking, blocking energy. And that’s low frequency way to go through life for sure. But the attitude and gratitude is so important. One of the things that I do every day is I spend the day literally all day saying thank you. I get the parking place or someone I connect with in the lineup at the grocery store or wherever I’m doing my errands, we just have a wonderful interaction. And you may never ever see that person but you just have the soul to soul connection and three minutes space of time. And it can change your frequency. And then focusing on ideas and inspirations. I spend all of my meal preparation time listening to inspirational kind of things. There’s one that I’m listening to right no and it’s about breathing. And it’s like, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. So there’s all these positive affirmations that are beginning. And so you literally like breathe them in and then you send them out. And so that’s why I always sort of see myself as the sunshine presence of taking the light in and then sending it out. And having an attitude. This is a beautiful mindset to have that everything today is falling into place. My day is harmonic. Everything around me as harmony. And so it’s so important because I am one of those who truly believes in God, the angels, and miracles. And all day long, I will thank all those sources for setting everything up in my world to work. So I surrender to all that works is the most beautiful mindset and affirmation. And so as if something derails in your world, you just say, “Okay. That’s just a momentary time. But I am returning to all that works.” And because I am Irish, I have a strong thing about signs. So I always ask for signs to be given to me. And it’s amazing how many I get in a day. And it’s so important to ask for help. Not only from humans but from all sources, spiritual and above, to just come along. Because the thing is you got to set the tone within your being to vibrate at this higher frequency. So let me give you an example of fear. So I was going from Victoria to Vancouver. And on the way, because I was focusing on putting this together, what came into my awareness 100 percent was all the cell towers. So on the first trip to Vancouver, I saw these cell towers and I was just like a rabbit. I was cringing every time I saw cell tower. And it just set off all of this absolutely sympathetic nervous system fight and flight response in my body. So my heart beat got faster. My adrenaline was racing through my body. My respiratory level was higher. Everything was sped up inside of me. And so I had all of this fear every time I saw cell tower. And so what I realized on the second trip to Vancouver was that that wasn’t doing my body any good. So in the second trip to Vancouver, I decided ask the four archangels to go surround each cell tower I saw. So I put all this light around the cell towers and then violet flamed them. And I did all this spiritual stuff. And you know what was the most amazing thing, Ashley, was that I ended up feeling awesome. I felt so great. So when I said, “Oh, there’s another cell tower we need to heal.” So I send all this healing energy to the cell tower so it couldn’t radiate all this negativity. But what happened to me in the process of doing that was that I started feeling phenomenally calm, more centered, my breathing went deeper, I felt more relaxed.     [01:27:41] Ashley James: Sure. Because you weren’t perceiving it as a threat.     [01:27:44] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. So that whole cell danger response, people need to watch out for that. Because what happens biologically in the moment is when the body feels danger. Now, that can be on a physical level, mental level, emotional level. When it feels danger, it goes into that fight or flight cell danger response. And it will physiologically change all of your body to gear up as if it was an espresso coffee.     [01:28:17] Ashley James: Uh-huh. Right. Any perception of a threat or a potential threat causes the body to go into that fight or flight response.     [01:28:27] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. Exactly. So some of the things that you can do to help the body and its frequency, of course, is to be conscious to reduce your exposure to toxins, EMFs, and all the above the cause the danger response, and to decrease the heavy metals. Number one, you see, we can do all these things in life. Like, if you have a thorn in your finger and you can put a Band-Aid over it, you can put iodine on it, you can put rescue remedy on it, you can do all these things. But if you don’t take the thorn out and address the core issue, then you’re still going to have the problem. And that’s why it’s so important if people don’t want to be a walking antenna that they need to get the heavy metals out of the body. So for those that are really interested and want to test their levels, a client of mine actually has a lab and she is brilliant at at labs and understanding the physiology of lab work and what is actually portraying. She goes into a very deep level with it. So her organization and company is called My Labs For Life. So for those that are interested in knowing what their levels actually are, I would highly recommend that. And then to do what it takes to decrease your body burden. Because through input of diet and output of releasing through either the urine, the colon, the detox organs, or using the PES system, you’ve got to get that content out of the body, like the thorn in the finger. Until you release it, you’re not going to feel excellent. So another thing people can do and I talked about this in the last podcast was slippery elm. Slippery elm is really great because along with increasing fiber, which tends to absorb toxicity in the body and seaweed which also helps to create a slippery mucosal level like Slippery Elm does. All of these will help so that you decrease leaky gut. Because leaky gut is a huge problem. Because when the protein molecules get across the body in too large of form, the body will go into that danger alert thing. And it will start to attack those. But what happens is heavy metals will start to be attached to those molecules as well and the body will go into immune responses because it knows. The people have the immune issues and diseases. Those are because the body’s intelligence is at work trying to attack that foreign content that is on the tissue or the organ or the cell or whatever. And so we need to get that content out of the body to calm the body down. And that’s what we see with these autistic children when they have a session. I mean, it’s just so amazing to watch what happens with these kids that are so hyperactive. The moms say to me, “How am I going again to sit for 30 minutes in a foot spa when they can’t sit for three seconds?” I said, “Put them in and see what happens.” And they completely chill out. Like, this one child was only four years old and very, very hyperactive. The mother called him the Tasmanian Devil because he was such a whirlwind. Anyways, but when he had a session, he would sit through the whole session very calmly. So they were seeing the body is shifting from that danger response that’s making them very hyperactive. The heavy metals and the acidity in the body is causing the pH to be a very acidic level. And then the EMF are amplifying to make the body an absolute antenna. So that’s why the kids are beyond hyper state. And with the little autistic kids, apparently, when they knock their heads on the floor, the reason they’re doing that is they’re trying to numb their brains. And that’s why they’re doing it. But when we’ve had whether it’s little ones are very elderly. One of the examples was kidneys. Now, I don’t know if you realize but glyphosate, which everybody is well talking about these days, round up, did you realize that Roundup has 11 metals in it?. And pesticides, every pesticide they tested had, like, 22 metals in them. So now you have people who are walking around in bare feet and exposed to all of this on grass. The other day somebody phoned me up because their client phoned them up, because he had just gone outside in Florida and walked on grass. And he absorbed all this glyphosate through his feet. So what they found in Sri Lanka was that there was a huge correlation. They actually banned glyphosate because we found there’s a huge correlation to kidney disease.   [01:34:26] Ashley James: I had Dr. Stephanie Seneff on the show. That is definitely an episode worth listening to. I had her on twice. And listeners can go to learntruehealth.com and search in the search box for any past episodes when you want to listen to them. But Dr. Stephanie Seneff is a PhD MIT top research scientist with a team of researchers has been trying to decipher what’s going on with autism and the huge spike. When I was a kid – I’m 39. I’m going to be 40. So it’s not that long ago. But when I was a kid, there was one in 10,000. I never knew an autistic child growing up because that’s how rare it was. And granted, they’ve changed how they diagnose autism. So there’s more of a spectrum. And now, maybe children they would have perceived as hyperactive back then might be put on a spectrum now. But however, that does not account for – and if you talk to teachers who’ve been teachers for 40 years, they will tell you the children have changed. They’re not the same. Now, it is one in every 30 or 40 children are diagnosed on the spectrum. So literally every classroom has someone on the spectrum or potentially could have someone on the spectrum because that’s how common it is. And that wasn’t the case back then. So Dr. Stephanie Seneff with these amazing research scientists have put together this information because they’re looking for what happened in the last 40 years to cause it to go from a rare event to a common event that our children have autism. And what she saw – what these scientists saw was that glyphosate is present in the MMR vaccine. Because they used some kind of  – they used an extract from bovine – a bovine material. And she explains it. She explains how does Roundup get in the vaccine and she explains how. But basically, what she describes is that glyphosate – and she didn’t even talk about the fact that Roundup also has 11 metals in it. She said that glyphosate itself is a key leader. Meaning it binds to heavy metals and washes them away. Well, this particular molecule and how it works, glyphosate will bind to a heavy metal. So let’s say, aluminum. And then it will release. It lets go of kind of like losing a static charge, losing a bond. It lets go of heavy metals when the pH changes. And she says where in the body does pH change? When fluids cross over from one kind of fluid to another. So for example, blood becomes urine, pH changes. Blood becomes cerebral spinal fluid, pH changes. And she said, what’s happening with the glyphosate when we eat it? So let’s say our children are eating it. It’s very high in cereal. Non-organic cereal and I’m not going to mention which brands but they’re circles, little holes in them, look like donuts. And all kinds of other cereals out there on the market are tested very high for glyphosate. So we eat glyphosate. It binds to heavy metals and releases them, deposits them in our kidneys and in our brain. And they’re able to see this. And that’s what Dr. Klinghardt sees as well. And that’s how he’s able to reverse autism. Because what we’re seeing, the majority of people on the spectrum now are not actually autistic. They have all the same symptoms as autism. It’s not actually – the one in 40 that we’re seeing now is not autism. A true, true autism is still like that one in 10,000. What we’re seeing is toxicity in the brain, heavy metal toxicity in the brain, and overexposure to these frequencies like WiFi, which are stimulating the metals in the brain. So this is what Dr. Dr. Klinghardt says. And then he backs it up by completely reversing autism. He gets children who are rocking, beating their heads, and nonverbal to be able to talk again, completely function in society, be happy, be healthy, and go to school, and later go to college. He talks about in our interview that the children he’s worked with for so many years because he’s been a doctor for over 40 years are now – he has children that are now professors and PhDs and composers and very intellectual and wonderful positions. And these kids were rocking and nonverbal when they came to him. And so he says, it’s not autism. And the thing is, we are allowing the first – we’re allowing this blanket diagnosis to then prevent us from seeking the answers. Like, “Well, why?” Right? Why is it? So it isn’t vaccines is what they’re saying. Because you can’t just say it’s all vaccines because what they’re saying is it’s actually the glyphosate. And that, although vaccines do have heavy metals in them, which is like you’re directly depositing heavy metals in the body. The delivery system into the brain is the glyphosate. So that’s what these scientists are proposing. And then what do we do? That’s the next question. Because as individuals, we can’t stop them from spraying glyphosate. We can choose not to buy it. We can choose not to buy those products. I even know listeners who have called up their organizations around them, like the schools, and the golf courses, and their neighborhoods, and convince the communities to stop using glyphosate. So there are there are things that we can do at individual levels. Unfortunately, we can’t change everything. We can do what we can do. But what we do have control over is our day to day choices. And so there are things that we can do for ourselves and our children on a day to day level to ensure that we minimize our exposure to these chemicals that are rampant in our environment. I wish there was some kind of special goggles we could put on to see all the chemicals. You can’t see glyphosate when it’s in your food. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we put on – remember that that sci-fi movie. I love sci-fi movie. I love sci-fi anything. And there’s that sci-fi movie, it was called They Live. Where he puts on the glasses and he can see all the aliens that are living among us. Imagine if we could put on these glasses and see the damaging EMFs and see the damaging chemicals. And then look and see the healthy foods that aren’t contaminated, that don’t have radiation and pesticides, and they are healthy vibrating, and on a good frequency. Imagine if we had that ability to –     [01:42:31] Kellyann Andrews: Well, you do have the ability. Because if you go into the grocery store and you see the produce that looks like they put it out four weeks ago, that will tell you the unhealthy state of the lack of energy in that food. But in the markets when you go in the summertime and you see the food that’s just come out of the ground, its color, its vibrancy. That is one of the things where you can tell how high the level of minerals are. And minerals in the body create the electricity. So if the food is this brilliant, like a carrot, just imagine the most vivid color of orange that you can ever imagine. And then you look at a carrot that looks like it’s been bleached because it has, then you get which foods are the best ones for you. And then you start to look around but your body will queue you to all of that if we just tune into that. And that’s what’s so brilliant. I want to give an example because you brought up Dr. Klinghardt. Here’s one of his clients, an eight year old boy who had a brain injury and was in total agitated behavior. When he first came to us, his pH was six. And so again, that agitation was being antagonized by that pH. But when he had a session, it would boil up to 7.5. But here’s the way I want to share the story is that he became so calm and relaxed. And I was on the phone with his mom. And I was asking for his feedback at the time. And he goes, “I love my foot spices.” And then he says in the most beautiful voice, he goes, “I feel so good.” And you could just hear the joyous tone. And then we had another five year olds – because it’s always so awesome when you can connect with the kids. Because as you said, they’re the ones that’s been most exposed in their lifetime. So there was a five year old and she was very, very hyperactive. And if not on the spectrum close. But anyways, she went to kindergarten and the teacher asked her and the whole class to draw their favorite family activity. And she drew herself having a foot spa and mom putting the water into it. Isn’t that awesome? But what was so lovely was that the mom told me after her sessions, she noticed how her daughter became more affectionate and would hold eye contact now. And she would become more articulate like your friends then. But here’s the interesting thing which we didn’t mention before to give insight. Heavy metals affect the humans in this way. They create headaches and migraines. And we talked about that in the podcast on copper, especially. Fatigue, stress symptoms and responses, dizziness. So how many people have you got ringing in the ear and that kind of thing and sleep disturbances. So skin issues, GI issues, muscle cramps and aches, and joint pain, and stiffness. A lot of people phone me up and say, “How come I’m now experiencing this one? I’m 40. And I’ve never experienced this before. ” And the answer to that is the accumulation factor. And they’re also experiencing things like numbness. But to turn that around is just so awesome. I’ve got to give you this example because we were talking about the glyphosate. So here’s the example that I was bringing up because I want people to realize there is an answer. There is solutions. It’s not, “We’re doomed.” So here’s the sunshine coming up and dawn. So we had a famous wildlife photographer – sorry – artist. He was a photographer but he also did artwork. Originally did artwork and now he does photography. He’s in his 70s and he was in complete renal failure. And the Nephrologist was hounding him like crazy to go on dialysis. But he didn’t want to for all the reasons that most people would understand including having to sit next door machine that’s – anyways, we won’t go into it. So anyways he goes and has – because his doctor recommended it to him – has sessions in our system. And he has not had to go on dialysis. As a matter of fact his Nephrologist, the kidney doctor, and for other Nephrologists have all told clients of ours that they have never ever seen kidney function improve. And these are old time docs. They’ve been in business for decades. And so they said,” I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing it.” But that’s why in this illustration, the whole thing is, you’ve just got to get the toxicity out. So by doing the fiber and the water and the minerals, and also, of course, B vitamins. Because the B vitamins create healthy nerve cell growth. And then iodine, iodine, we talked about mitochondria. By the way, I don’t know if you know, mitochondria in the cell creates energy .So it creates energy and that’s ATP. Now ATP in the cell creates energy. But ATP outside the cell actually is part of the alert signal of the danger. So that’s kind of interesting. But anyways, going back to solutions, iodine. Iodine feeds the mitochondria. Now, when you were born, Ashley, everybody was using iodine for any cuts or scrapes. They’re using it for surgery preparations. You saw people being prepped, shaved, and then iodine put all over their belly when they’re having whatever operation. And so iodine used to be part of our entire culture. But it has completely disappeared in our era. But it actually is a mineral. So we think of iodine in the holistic field is feeding the thyroid. But in actual fact, it feeds every cell in the body because it’s a mineral. And the mitochondria needs it to function. So you talked about before when the EMF puts the mitochondria in a state of shock and goes offline for a while. Here’s how to bring your mitochondria online. And then as you mentioned earlier, too, breath work is so important. And when you breathe through the feet, because we’re all spinning too fast because we’re multitasking, our days are requiring us to do more in it than then there’s time. And that creates pressure internally. So we need to ground ourselves. So just go through your day and breathe through your feet. So not only will that oxygenate your body and bring energy into your cells, but it will also ground you. Then the other thing that’s really, really important nowadays is Bach flowers. So Bach, like the musician, B-A-C-H. Bach flowers help to balance out your emotional and mental realms. And there’s 38 different remedies and you can just get in at the health food store or look it up online, whatever.     [01:50:26] Ashley James: It’s like homeopathy for emotions.     [01:50:30] Kellyann Andrews: And thoughts. Yeah. So it’s like, mindsets. And so it takes rescue remedy is the most famous one. And veterinarians, like animals, will use it for the distress of the animal. And when it works on kids and animals, it’s not just the placebo effect. And so that one’s a really great solution. But the others is to smile. The big thing is you got to get oxygen up into the brain by smiling. You’re literally relaxing the muscles around your neck. And that opens up the arterial system to the brain. So we want to get that oxygen and nutrients up into the brain. And so by smiling, you open up the arterial system. By frowning, you close it down. So think – because we’re at Christmas time, think of the difference in the face of Santa Claus and Scrooge. And that will show you what smiling and gratitude does. Because Santa is grateful for all those little elves. And Scrooge has got a totally different mindset. So look in the mirror every day and look to see what your face is looking like. And you want to get your face to have that permanent smile and not the permanent frown. So one of the things that I really want to focus on and it actually was a book that I have sitting in front of me every day. Because what I do in the morning is I choose to get up and immediately go exercise . And I do shi bafa. And that is S-H-I-space-B-A-F-A. And this was designed by the Chinese to keep the Chinese out of the hospital. So it’s like stand up yoga kind of posture. Some people think I’m – like, when I’m waiting for the ferry, I’ll do it in the terminal and they go, “Oh, are you doing Tai Chi?” And I said, “Well, it’s sort of similar or Qi Gong. And it’s sort of similar to that too.” So it’s movement with breath and intent. But it actually opens up the physiology of the body. So while I’m doing that, at home, I have a book that’s in front of me and it says, “And this is your message for today. Love only today. Breathe more, stress less, and choose love.” Because that will keep you in a parasympathetic mode. And then the last thing is, treat your body as your best friend because it is.     [01:53:31] Ashley James: No kidding. We need to step back and look at the thoughts we have about ourselves. And look at how we treat ourselves. And then and think about how we treat our best friend or how we treat a loved one and start treating ourselves like we’re worth. We’re worth being put first because if we put everyone else first, we won’t be here to take care of them.     [01:54:02] Kellyann Andrews: Oh, yes. You know what? I just was going through my notes as you were saying that, one of the things going back to the electromagnetic solutions. Things to do is reduce the amount of sources of EMF in your life, reduce your time exposure, increase your distance from it – the beehive concept – use wired accessories. Now, there’s a whole test that you can do with a cheap AM radio. Because a lot of these you know gadgets that will test the level of output from an electrical thing do sort of tend to be pricey. But here’s something you can do on a easy level. Get hold of a really inexpensive AM radio. Now, not AM/FM, just AM. Turn it on and you can either have it on the station or in between the station and it will create that kind of noise. But take it up against an electronic thing and it will amplify the closer you get to it. So you can go around. Now, my friend who has that My Labs For Life, she will do this when she goes into hotel rooms. And she will go up against the wall to see where the wiring is. She’ll go up close to the bed to see anything that’s active there. She’ll unplug the alarm clock, radio. And so you can actually go up to all the electronics in your house and you can see what kind of intensity they’re putting out. And one of the suggestions is just unplug all – well, obviously, you can’t unplug your fridge or your freezer but the appliances that you’re not using so it’s not putting things out. But here’s another one that that is so easy to not do is, when you go to the grocery store or even London Drugs or Costco or whoever has them, do not use one of those scanners. self checkout. They’re putting out major stuff. I back away anytime I see that light. And my body has that response. And even when you’re fueling up your car, make sure you’re breathing the opposite direction of the field.     [01:56:27] Ashley James: Just hold your breath.     [01:56:29] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. Yeah. Usually when you fill up your car, you can’t hold it that long. But just try to catch the wind in the other direction. And then just listen to your body’s alert signals. Your body is awesome for understanding what, what you need in the moment. And just tuning into its wisdom is so wonderful.     [01:56:54] Ashley James: Absolutely. And I’d say that more specific advice on decreasing heavy metals in the body. Dr. Stephanie Seneff and Dr. Klinghardt both go into this. But I’ve had firsthand experience with it having spent the last two years working on – or more than two years, actually, working on decreasing my heavy metals. And obviously, I love the PES system. I’m having great experience with it. I sweat in my Sunlight and Sauna. I eat the chlorella from ENERGYbits. And that is my favorite brand because she has it tested twice. And it’s all about purity. There’s a lot of chlorella out there that has lead in it. And hers does not. I’ve had Katherine Ornstein on the show several times sharing about the benefits of LG. But chlorella specifically, is a key leader. And then taking herbs like parsley and cilantro and putting them in a blender, maybe like a Vitamix. You can throw in something like a handful of spinach or kale and blend it with some water and drink it. It doesn’t need to taste good. I mean, if you want to make it taste good throw in an apple and some ginger to make it taste good. But it’s really not about taste because you just kind of chug it and get it into your body. But the cilantro is very effective for gentle chelation as well. So those are daily gentle things. Now, there’s also a whole form of homeopathy that are homeopathic chelators. And that would be worth going to. And I’ve used them in the past. It will be worth going to a Naturopathic physician or homeopath to get access to those as well. But these are all the things that we can do gently that are very supportive of the body that don’t have side effects. Like, if you were to go get actual chelation therapy, IV chelation, that unfortunately also strips all the really good minerals out of the body as well. It kind of washes – it’s kind of like taking antibiotic. It takes the good with the bad.     [01:59:17] Kellyann Andrews: And you do need to watch out for that one. Especially calcium, if they don’t get the calcium levels right – I mean, they’ve actually had people not be on the planet after that experience because the calcium levels were – so that’s why a lot of Naturopaths will not choose that methodology to do that. Now, what was really interesting was we have an acupuncturist and other therapists who use our system. And they said that what they’re finding nowadays, Ashley, is that people are not able to naturally release their toxic burden loads. Because it’s just coming in too quickly. And so she actually – this one acupuncturist – had a patient who he worked in the industry of – he was actually an inventor. So he worked with a lot of metals and a lot of chemicals. Silly soul. He didn’t put gloves on. So he had for 20 years pain at seven out of ten. And she was doing a lot of the different methods you just mentioned and she wasn’t able to shift the sky at all. And so finally, the detox foot spa with him and, boom, the water just turned completely black. The guy was just so full of heavy metals. So some people are getting good results through this methodologies. But if you’re using those and finding that you’re not getting it, it’s just because your load or burden level is too high. And so that you need to then do a more efficient methodology. And that’s what we found was just, the older someone is, the higher levels they have. And the higher levels they have, the more they’re a walking antenna. And so they’re more feeling the effect. But with all of those methodologies that you mentioned, just to highlight it again. Please, please, make sure that you’re drinking lots and lots of water to help the flushing process after doing any kind of therapy.  Because otherwise you’re just going to get it reabsorbing in your body.     [02:01:32] Ashley James: I love doing things to stimulate the lymph system. Not a lot of people understand what the lymph system is. So we have our circulatory system, which we understand that there are arteries and veins and that blood is circulating through them. Lymph is everything else. Lymph is the fluid in between every single cell in interstitial fluid. This fluid is part of the immune system. And also it delivers nutrients to the cells, it helps remove toxins away from the cells. And it’s like our cells are coral reef. They’re stationary animals, in a sense. They’re stationary creatures. And that the lymph system is like the ocean bringing nutrients to it and removing toxins away from it. And so the lymph system doesn’t have a heart to beat it. It does and of get sucked back up. Re-brought up back into our circulatory system so that the liver can flush – can clean it so that those toxins can be brought to the kidneys as well. But our lymph system doesn’t move if we don’t move. And the only way it actually pumps, because it doesn’t have a hurt to beat it, is by moving our joints. And because at each joint in our body, there are lymph nodes. And the nodes kind of squeeze and pump this along. So with this day and age, we’re not moving like we’re designed to move. We’re sitting all the time.     [02:03:11] Kellyann Andrews: Stagnation.     [02:03:13] Ashley James: We’re being stagnant. Right. So I love a Rebounder which is a small – and you should get an adult one. I tried using my son’s one, it does not work. Get a small Rebounder. I have it actually linked on my website. At the top of learntruehealth.com, there’s like Ashley Recommends and it goes to Amazon and my favorite health gadgets are there. But there’s an adult Rebounder. And you’re not supposed to jump on it to the point where your feet leave the mat. It’s actually just very gentle. Your body is only moving three or four inches up and down. You’re just bouncing gently.     [02:03:48] Kellyann Andrews: Rocking chair motion rather than roller coaster ride.     [02:03:51] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. You’re just bouncing gently up and down. Kind of like if you – imagine if you’re holding a baby and you just want to bounce the baby. But you’re bouncing your whole body on the Rebounder and do some deep breathing. Just do it for five minutes, put on a good song – one or two good songs and you’re done. Do that a few times a day, that’s flushed your entire lymph system and flushed all the fluids. Now, of course, going for a brisk walk, doing weightlifting, doing cardio, all that would help as well. But if you’re at an office or at home and  you can’t just leave and go for a brisk walk for 15 minutes a few times a day, then jump on a Rebounder. And I noticed that when I do a Rebounder before a PES session or before soaking in magnesium or before going in the sauna, that I get better results during my detox. Much better results. It’s very interesting. Just a few minutes of stimulating the lymph system, how that kick starts detoxification.     [02:04:51] Kellyann Andrews: It is. It’s amazing how that works. And here’s a great visual for the lymph system is just a volcano and you got the molten lava at the core of the mountain, and you want to release it to the surface. So in the human body you’ve got the toxins stuck inside the cell and it needs to release. So the lymph system is the portal to get it out of the body. And so just image the lymph system to being like lava tubes.     [02:05:19] Ashley James: Oh, yeah. Lava tubes throughout the body. Right. Sure. Sure. Yeah. So we’ve got this sludge, we’ve got this stagnation, we have this heavy metal buildup through many different sources. But it’s no longer a problem that only welders have or only people who’ve worked directly with heavy metals. And now we’re seeing that, like you said, entire towns. If there’s a company that’s emitting heavy metals into the water in the air and the soil, that the entire town is sick from it. And the sickness is going to show up as different symptoms depending on someone’s genetics.     [02:06:08] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. You know what I just found out which is just horrible, is that in Canada they are starting to test the water. And the water in many of the Canadian cities was worse than Flint, Michigan.     [02:06:23] Ashley James: The water in the tap?     [02:06:25] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah.     [02:06:26] Ashley James: So you said water and I imagined lakes. I was like –      [02:06:29] Kellyann Andrews: No. The tap water.     [2:06:31] Ashley James: So I was just for Thanksgiving several of my friends got together and we had like a friends giving. American Thanksgiving just happened, for listeners who are not in the United States. And it’s different than Canada. But basically last week, I was at a friend’s house and we’re all very health conscious. It was a whole foods plant based Thanksgiving. It was great. We did bowls. And everyone, there was, like, 40 different things that we could choose from. It was so delicious. It was amazing. So, so yummy. And we had all our kids there and we had a really, really great time. The kids were on one side the house and adults were on the other. It was fantastic. It was wonderful. Yes, it was great. We had little adult time. And I was helping to prepare some of the food and I noticed that there was, like, these black flakes in the keen wall, like, the water. We put the water in the keen wall and at first I thought it was maybe some food particles of something else that got washed into it. And then I realized it was these big black flakes. So I was picking it out. And then I go to use the sink and black flakes were coming out of the tap. Big black flakes we’re coming out of the tap. And it’s an older house in Seattle.     [02:07:44] Kellyann Andrews: Lead.     [02:07:45] Ashley James: Is that what that is? I was like, what –      [02:07:47] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. Actually, anything – that’s what’s so amazing. Anything prior to 1975, that’s not that long ago. So that’s the thing, is that we’re – just to bring it back to solution. So you get exposed. so you can’t freak out about what you’re exposed to every day. That will just ask from your body more. Keep your body in sympathetic overdrive, cell danger mode. That’s why you got it take mastery over your emotions and your thoughts because we are all exposed to all this content every day. But it doesn’t mean that it has to cripple you. It doesn’t mean that it has to cause illness in you. You do the dominoes in the right direction. And you move it out. But the most important thing is your mental attitude and your mindset. So be your body’s own best friend. So if you have something that derails your day, some event that causes you agitation that puts you in a sympathetic focus, catch yourself in that moment. And just absolutely breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Just hear me saying this to you breathe in, breathe out. And reset. Hit your reset button by saying to yourself, “Now, if this was happening to my best friend, what would I tell him or her to do in this situation?” Because you’re brilliant at giving awesome wise advice to others. So now, you just need to give it to yourself. But the key here is you’ve got to do whatever you advise the other one to do. Amen.     [02:09:49] Ashley James: Right. We’re so good at giving advice. We can start taking our own advice.     [02:09:54] Kellyann Andrews: Because your objective when it’s someone else’s story. But you lose that clarity when it’s your own because you go to hind brain fight or flight. So I’m bringing it to the front part of your brain. And you can even tap on the front part of your brain, like right up by your hairline, and that will bring you to your creative centers of your brain. And you can go back into a thinking mode. But when you go into fight or flight, you go right into the back of the brain and you shut down all your creativity in that moment.     [02:10:22] Ashley James: Well, here’s what happens. Someone goes, “I should eat more vegetables.” Or whatever it is. Whatever it is that they decide they should do. “Oh, man. I should turn off my WiFi.” Or “I shouldn’t have my cell phone on me.” Or, “I want to make these changes.” And then there’s this other voice in the head that goes, “but, but, but, and excuse, excuse, excuse.” “Oh, but the kids won’t like that.” Or. “My husband doesn’t eat that way.”     [02:10:48 Kellyann Andrews: You rationalize.     [02:10:49 Ashley James: We rationalize our other ourselves back to status quo.     [02:10:55] Kellyann Andrews: I know. I know. And that’s where you got to catch yourself. So that’s where the word mastery. We’re all on this planet to learn mastery. That is why you’re here. And the first mastery you need to accomplish is over your thoughts and your feelings and your reactions. So I always find it very fun in a day to have my human experience and my spiritual experience is happening simultaneously. So I feel how my emotions are wild like a dog with hackles over some injustice or something that’s happened or someone almost hits your car, whatever. And so I feel the reaction happen. And then I’m also watching the reaction happen. But in that moment, I can just choose to breathe. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. That’s sort of the reset button and rethink button. And then you can choose how you respond instead of react.     [02:11:57] Ashley James: Thank you so much for coming on the show today and bringing this awareness. I’m sure many of us have heard of these different things. But we go back to that status quo. We let the excuses come in. Or sometimes we just like to go unconscious. And right now is the perfect time to become conscious again. We tend to do it right around the New Year. The most amount of gym memberships happen right around the New Year. And then by March, the attendance drops down by, like, over 70 percent. So it’s how we are. But if we could, this time around, especially since we’re coming into a whole new decade 2020, we can really kick into a different gear and never go back to the old complacency. Kick into a new gear by taking Kellyann’s advice. Start by get out a journal. Get out a blank piece of paper and ask yourself, “What do I want? What do I want? What kind of health do I want in my body? And what do I want to do about it?” And and if you ever find excuses, if you ever here the little voice go, “but, but, but.” “I’m too tired in the morning to go to gym.” Or, “I don’t like cleaning up after juicing.” Or, “My kids don’t like eating that way. I’m going to have to cook for two different -” whatever. All those little excuses, right? You can write them down on a separate piece of paper and just keep writing down the excuses because get it out of your head. I find that when we get the mess out of our head, and that’s why working with a health coach really helps, working with a counselor really helps. Someone that is not judgmental, doesn’t have an ulterior motive of like, maybe, if you talk to a friend or family member. They would have an ulterior motive. But someone who’s a sounding board. And then you get the chaos out of your head and you start to see it for what it is. And those excuses stop having power over you. And I’ve heard this from so many people, the little excuse in the head, “Oh. Vegetables don’t taste good. I don’t want to eat a stir fry. I don’t want to eat a salad. I don’t want to have a green smoothie. That doesn’t taste good.” That little voice in the head is trying to convince us not to do it. But the second you put that first bite in your mouth of that salad or drink that smoothie, it’s like, “This is good. My body’s buzzing.” Today for breakfast, I had a green juice. And my son drink it too. And my husband drink it. And our bodies were buzzing until after the gym we came home and had lunch. It was just like we were buzzing. We felt so good. But you bet, that little voice in my head first thing in the morning when I woke up was saying, “Can we just sleep in longer? We don’t have to go to the gym. I want waffles for breakfast. I don’t want to have a juice.” That’s the thing we’re fighting against is either the status quo in our own head. Or we make up excuses for that other people wouldn’t like it. Like, “Oh, my husband wouldn’t like it. So therefore, I’m not going to do it.” Or we think about, “Oh, the children wouldn’t like it. So therefore, I can’t do it.” We don’t even talk to them about it. We just decide that there’s going to be too much turmoil. And therefore we’re just going to stick with the status quo. But the status quo is going to continue to give us the ill health that we have right now.     [02:15:29] Kellyann Andrews: Low frequency.     [02:15:31] Ashley James: Right. So let’s get ourselves to a new frequency.     [02:15:33] Kellyann Andrews: Let’s get to a high frequency. And so one of the things I do, like you just said, is all day long, I look and I surround myself with high nutrient food. Whether it’s chlorella or wheatgrass or minerals. Or my drink that I love to do, which is, turmeric, Goats whey, mineral matrix – and what else do I put in there? The Slippery Elm and sunflower lecithin and then I’ve been adding collagen into that. So I just created a drink or something, some form of nutrients that are easy for you to literally absorb. And when you take that into the body, you just make your body sing, yourself sing. And that’s what is so lovely is when your bodies are singing like a chirping robin in springtime, you’re at a higher frequency. Your thoughts are clear. Your emotions are balanced. You’re feeling like singing. And you have energetic sunshine presence. And so one of the things that I wish for you in this next year of 2020 is that you completely open up to receiving all the blessings the this wonderful world has to give you. And that you allow us to support you and to surrender to the highest blessings you could ever imagine. Just literally open up your hands right at this minute and just say, “I surrender to God’s, the angels -” or whatever it is you honor – “support and I receive your blessings today. And I will then pass them forward.”     [02:17:37] Ashley James: Beautiful. I love it. Thank you so much, Kellyann, for coming on the show and getting us aware. Because the first step is awareness. Just like in AA, the first step is being aware.     [02:17:49 Kellyann Andrews: Awake. Awake.     [02:17:50] Ashley James: Being awake and conscious. We are awake and aware and conscious. And then we need to know what we want and write it down.     [02:17:58] Kellyann Andrews: And make a choice.     [02:17:59] Ashley James: And make a choice.     [02:18:01] Kellyann Andrews: And make a conscious choice, just what you were talking about.     [02:18:04] Ashley James: I have a whole interview, this was done a while ago, maybe close to three years ago. So you can look it up on learntruehealth.com. About how to install healthy new habits. There’s a way to utilize how the brain works to create new habits. I mean, you could listen to that whole episode to get all the steps. But the takeaway is, grab a habit you already do and piggyback a new habit onto it.     [02:18:34] Kellyann Andrews: I call it the domino effect in the right direction.     [0 2:18:36] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. So if you always – I use coffee as an example. If you always brew coffee in the morning, what can you do while you’re brewing coffee? What new habit? And so my husband took these exercise bands and we do exercise. This is back when we brewed coffee. He would do exercises. It’s like – I don’t know – five minutes. And he’d really feel it in his legs, you know, burning. Because we do these leg exercises until the coffee was done. If you brush your teeth every morning, what could you do right before or after brushing your teeth? So you grab a habit you already do, that you never forget to do. And even during vacations or weekends, you still do.     [02:19:16] Kellyann Andrews: The one with the brushing of the teeth – let me add that – is you look in the mirror at yourself and you say, “I love you.” And you look into your eyes and keep doing it until you can totally open up to receive that love back.     [02:19:36] Ashley James: Beautiful. So we think about the different habits and we install things like that. So it might be how can we get our eight cups of vegetables in every day? How can we get our 80 ounces or more water in every day? Get our supplements and minerals in every day. Get some kind of exercise that stimulates the lymph system every day. Get some kind of green smoothie filled with those greens that I had mentioned before that are amazing. Get them in first thing in the morning because they will replace the need for coffee. You get a good greens, get in some alive food, juice or make a smoothie. It feels amazing.     [02:20:23] Kellyann Andrews: I suck on chlorella tablets all day long.     [02:20:27] Ashley James: Yes.     [02:20:30] Kellyann Andrews: I have them as a candy.     [02:20:32] Ashley James: Well, my son loves them. He calls them green crackers. And some people complain that they’re dry and they get stuck in your teeth. I just chew them with water. And it just dissolves. So I don’t have a problem. But you can also take the chlorella tablets and put them in a smoothie if you want. So there’s just – it’s little habits. But if every day, we switched a few negative things into positives, it will exponentially grow. And we want to look at decreasing our exposure to the heavy metals into the EMFs. And we want to look at everything that we can do to support the body’s ability to not have that stagnation. I know you told told me about shi bafa. And I’m going to go look it up on YouTube. Also, you mentioned that you listen to these motivational talks while you’re doing your food prep. Where do you get them from?     [02:21:30] Kellyann Andrews: It’s on YouTube. So if you look up, I Am Affirmations. I Am Affirmations. And the one that I love the best – he does a ton of them – and just put in I Am Affirmations-Miracles and Gratitude. And it just has the most soothing music and beautiful visuals and fabulous things. So I just listen to that when I’m doing the meal preparations every day And then just take that in and then focus on your breathing. Because that was the other one that I added on recently, doing the affirmations and just breathe it in and breathe it out. So like you’re taking it in and you’re giving it out, breathe it in and breathe it out.     [02:22:19] Ashley James: I love it. Awesome. Kellyann, is there anything left unsaid to wrap up today’s show?     [02:22:24] Kellyann Andrews: I think just for people to be gentle on themselves. Because we always got that parent voice in our head of all the things we didn’t get done today or the derailments that happened, it’s so easy to focus on them. And just at the end of the day and throughout the day, to take pauses of time where you just sit and do nothing but breathe. Just literally sit in a chair and just completely relax your body so that you go into that parasympathetic nervous system. And so the summary of the whole entire topic today is health is putting the right stuff in and getting the wrong stuff out. Illness is putting the wrong stuff in and not getting the wrong stuff out.   [02:23:10] Ashley James: And putting good the right stuff in.     [02:23:12] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. We want to definitely put the right stuff in.     [02:23:16] Ashley James: Right. Higher vibration.     [02:23:18] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. Everything. Whether that’s on a physical level or mental level or emotional level, especially spiritual. Because the spiritual can transform all of the the others so quickly. And it’s so important to connect into that realm.     [02:23:37] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Kellyann, for coming on the show. And listeners can check out your website.     [02:23:46] Kellyann Andrews: Platinumenergysytems.ca. CA is Canada.     [02:23:47] Ashley James: I was going to say PES.     [02:23:49] Kellyann Andrews: Right. That’s right. Platinum energy, you know, people are so fun. They go, “Platinum?” And I said, “Yes. Like the ultimate credit card. That platinum. The platinum energy. That’s what you want is the ultimate ,the highest frequency energy.” And so platinumenergysystems.ca.     [02:24:11] Ashley James: Great. Excellent. Thank you so much, Kellyann. And listeners, definitely check out the past episodes as well, Episode 292, 293, 329, and 330 It’s a pleasure to have you on the show. And I can’t wait to have you back again. Thanks so much.     [02:24:26] Kellyann Andrews: Well, it’s so awesome to connect with you always, Ashley. And thank you so much for being such an amazing person yourself. And willingness to be who you are and to be a beautiful circle of influence on this planet this time. Because your message is exactly what we all need to hear, that there is a way forward. And then we just need to all pass that forward.     [02:25:00] Ashley James: Yes. Yes. Let’s turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to learn what it is like to have true health.     [02:25:08] Kellyann Andrews: And to feel worthy of it. There’s something on humans level, especially women. There’s a psychological aspect that just is, why wouldn’t you choose the food that is the highest vibration? Why wouldn’t you choose to stop doing the things that make you feel not great? So I give you absolute full permission to be your own best friend and to put into your body and your being all those things that make you feel your best.     [02:25:44] Ashley James: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend that you check them out. You can Google Institute for integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learnttruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices. You can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children to be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success in their health goals. There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon.  The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.   Get Connected With Kellyann Andrews! Official Website Recommended Readings by Kellyann Andrews Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton Quantum-Touch by Richard Gordon The New Human by Richard Gordon Power of Now+Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle A Return To Love by Marianne Williamson Check out other interviews of Kellyann Andrews! Episode 330 – Holistic Habits And Success Stories (Part 2) Episode 329 – Stories of Success Through Detox Episode 293 – Balancing pH Episode 292 – Creating Wellness

Check out IIN! LearnTrueHealth.com/coach Try the supplements Ashley loves: TakeYourSupplements.com Join the Facebook Group: LearnTrueHealth.com/group Elissa's Site: https://elissagoodman.com/ Services/Products: -One-on-One counseling (both in-person and virtual via Zoom) -Cancer Hacks book: https://elissagoodman.com/cancer-hacks/ -SOUP Cleanse: https://elissagoodman.com/soup-cleanse/ -7-Day RESET Cleanse: https://elissagoodman.com/7-day-reset/ -Super Seed Bars: https://elissagoodman.com/product/super-seed-bars/   Preventing Cancer And Healing Autoimmune With Whole Foods https://www.learntruehealth.com/preventing-cancer-healing-autoimmune-whole-foods Highlights: Getting second and third opinions are important Emotional healing is just as important as physical healing and mental healing Healing cancer holistically: emotional, food, supplements, exercise Pay attention to what we eat and what upsets our digestive system Increase fiber content to flush all the toxins in our system Adding fruits to juices increases sugar, better to eat fruits whole Sleep is crucial to healing Increase water intake Avoid processed foods, go for whole foods Going organic is important if you have health issues but not all things have to be organic   In this episode, Elissa Godman shares with us how she reversed and healed her cancer and autoimmune condition. She shares that getting enough sleeps helps in healing our bodies. Eating the right foods for our body is very important. She also shares distressing helps in healing too. [0:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another episode of Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love our guest today, Elissa Goodman, and everything she has to share about healing the body, preventing cancer and reversing and healing autoimmune condition. We have such a great conversation and she shares such amazing advice. So you’re going to love it. As you’re listening, if the thoughts come into your head like, “I wish I could do what she’s doing. I wish I could help people in that level.” Consider looking into the institute for Integrative Nutrition. That’s where I got my certification as a health coach. It’s a wonderful program. It is designed to be done online and paced in a way that even busy, working men and women are able to do it, are able to complete it. I interviewed the founder of that company, Joshua Rosenthal, who’s also one of the instructors there at IIN. He shares that he designed it so that busy stay-at-home moms, while having to manage the entire household and their kids, they’re also able to get the certification and then start their ability to work with clients from home and they can write books, they can teach people how to cook, they can see clients in person. There’s many opportunities. Now, with the new legislature that’s brought into place, health coaching in 2020 will be covered by insurance. So, there’s so many opportunities. This is the fastest-growing field, fastest-growing career in the health field, in the health space. There’s a huge demand for health coaches and there’s going to be an even bigger demand next year, starting very soon in a few months when it goes into full effect and that health coaches will be covered by medical insurance for those in the United States, which is so wonderful because health coaches make such a huge difference as you hear when Elissa shares the kind of work that she does with her clients. She describes it perfectly what it feels like to be a health coach. To use her words, she helps her clients tune, she tunes them back into themselves because deep inside, the client themselves, at the unconscious level or at the level of intuition, their body knows what it needs. Health coaches help to begin to listen to your own body’s ability to heal itself, begin to listen again to your body crying out the intuition of your body telling you what you really need. Sometimes, we have too much chaos going on and we can’t tap into it. Health coaches help us get there. So, as you’re thinking about as you’re listening to this episode, as you’re learning from Elissa and my conversation in this interview and you’re thinking, ”I’d love to do that as a career,” call up IIN. Just google IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Give them a call. I organized a discount for all my listeners because it made such a big difference in my life. I knew I’d be talking about it. I know my listeners would want to participate and become certified as health coaches. So I got a discount. It’s $1500.00 off. It’s a huge discount. More recently, they just launched a brand new payment plan that’s a more affordable payment plan, a payment option. So if you think, “I couldn’t spend thousands of dollars.” You don’t have to. It’s about as much as a credit card payment. You can do it and because after six months of the program you’re seeing clients so you start to pay it off within six months and then the year-long program. So some people even have it totally paid off before they even graduate, which is really exciting. So if you want to become a health coach, look into IIN. Come into the Learn True Health Facebook group and ask me and ask the other listeners who have also participated in IIN about our experience. I love to share more about my experience with you. If you have any questions you can reach out to me through Facebook or you can email me, support@learntruehealth.com. I’d love to share with you. You know what, there’s a ton of IIN grads in the Learn True Health Facebook group and I’m sure they’d love to share with you as well. So come join the Learn True Health Facebook group and check out IIN. You can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach to get a free sample class to see if it would be something that would interest you. After taking that sample class you’ll have a really strong idea as to whether you’d want to take that program or not. So go to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach or you could call them up and ask them some questions, ask them to send you some more information. Make sure you mention the Learn True Health Podcast with Ashley James to get the listener discount. One more thing, Elissa talks about supplements. I want to let you know that my absolute favorite, favorite supplements are with TakeYourSupplements.com. When you go to TakeYourSupplements.com it’s not like other websites where you buy it without talking to someone. In fact, the only way to get them is to talk to someone. Her name is Jennifer Saltzman. I’ve known her for coming on nine years now. She’s a wonderful, wonderful health coach. She works with a variety of different supplements. These supplements are what my family and I have taken for the last nine years and I absolutely love them. They’re very high-quality minerals. A lot of them are liquid so the body absorbs them really well. They’re all plant-based and they’re all whole foods based. So they’re really wonderful. A lot of them are very very high quality and I recommend checking it out. Talking with her, talking with Jennifer Saltzman at TakeYourSupplements.com. Just fill out your information. She’s not a salesperson. She doesn’t push. She’s not high pressure. She was never trained in sales. She is a health coach so she’ll talk to you and ask you questions about your health. It’s a free consultation. She’s talking to you for free and then she’s helping you to order the right supplements for you, for your health needs, and for your budget. They’re high-quality supplements that have a 30-day money-back guarantee if you don’t like them, which is unheard of that’s why I love the company that she works with and the quality of then supplements which are designed by naturopaths. I love that she provides that service. She could absolutely charge for her time but she doesn’t because she really wants to help people. She believes that the more people she helps, everyone benefits. So go to TakeYourSupplements.com and talk to Jennifer Saltzman and get on a really wonderful mineral, trace mineral. It’s life-changing. It was for me especially if you are deficient in trace minerals, you feel it within days. It feels really great. She has a liquid multivitamins so if you think you might be low in your B-vitamins, just try it. Try it for one month and see how you feel. Everyone that I’ve seen get on this supplements has had more energy and more mental clarity and it helps us and do things like make better choices like have more energy to cook healthier food, to get out there and exercise. So if you’re wondering where you should start, baby steps, one step at a time. Elissa gives lots of great information in today’s interview. One thing that’s really easy that you can implement right now is a great liquid multivitamin, multimineral that you take every day that just helps saturate every cell in your body with the nutrients they need so that they can continue to build healthier and healthier cells. Thank you so much for being a listener of this show. It’s made such a difference in my life to participate in creating this show for you. It’s a labor of love and I love being here for you guys and learning from all these wonderful experts. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group if you haven’t already. It’s a really supportive community of health-conscious people who are looking to help each other and also grow their health themselves. Excellent. Enjoy today’s interview. Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 395.   [0:08:27] Ashley James: I am very excited for today’s guest. We have with us, Elissa Goodman, who has an amazing story. You’re a certified holistic nutritionist, is that right?   [0:08:40] Elissa Goodman: That is right.   [0:08:41] Ashley James: Yes. We’re going to love learning from you. It’s very timely. I didn’t tell you this before because I wanted to tell you and the listeners at the same time but this interview is dedicated to my friend Barnetty who passed away on the 2nd. I was with her in the hospital. She passed away of –   [0:09:09] Elissa Goodman: Are you saying December 2nd?   [0:09:11] Ashley James: December 2nd, yeah. I was with her a few days ago. It was standing room only in the hospital, surrounded by friends. We watched her pass away very peacefully. When she was first diagnosed with cancer, I was with her. I was with her for the biopsy. I went to all her doctor’s appointments with her for the first eight months. After eight months of doing holistic medicine and she was on the really, really good path. She totally had stopped the growth of the tumor. It had just completely halted. It was a very aggressive form of breast cancer. After eight months she decided to go chemo and then after chemo decided to radiation and she regretted that so much because the cancer had completely gone away and they convinced her to keep doing chemo and radiation and then all of a sudden it was in every organ system of her body. She fought and fought and fought. She regretted so much going down that path. It was amazing to watch the amount of fear that the doctors instilled in her and they convinced her. She said, “I just want to do, I want to stop and just see and monitor and see what happens.” They said, “If you do this it’s going to come back and we have to do radiation, we have to do more chemo.” There’s a side-effect. There is a potential side-effect. Chemo and radiation has a potential side-effect of causing cancer and the cancer that ended her life was likely that. So there was a regret for her but she fought for four years. So when I looked on my calendar because I’ve been a little dazed recovering from losing her, I looked at my calendar and I saw that my next interview was with a woman who healed her body from cancer. I   [0:11:03] Elissa Goodman: That’s interesting.   [0:11:05] Ashley James: Yeah. You know what, the universe does that many times. It’s been serendipitous many many times. Because people book themselves, they choose the dates. I’ve had on multiple occasions where I’ll get three interviews in a row about heart health and I’m like, “I didn’t schedule that way.” It’s really neat or I’ll get three plant-based doctors in a row. I’ll get multiple kind of just the same topic. I’m sure the listeners think I’m trying to make a series on this one topic. I just invite a bunch of amazing guests to come and they choose when they book themselves and it always seems to work out. It’s funny because I’ve had listeners write me and say, “I cannot believe timing of this conversation. I was just looking for these answers.” So I know that there’s divine universal intervention and the fact that you are my first interview since losing Barnetty to cancer.   [0:12:07] Elissa Goodman: Wow. It does give me the chills.   [0:12:09] Ashley James: It does give me the chills. I’m sure she would love, she would have loved hearing your story. So, with that, I just want all of us to take a moment to think about everyone we love and give them all mentally big hugs and gratitude because all of us eventually will not be here. That’s just life.   [0:12:35] Elissa Goodman: Right, right. Cycle of life.   [0:12:37] Ashley James: We get to determine the quality of our lives and we get to determine the quality of our deaths, hopefully. If it’s not like from an accidents but if it’s from illness we get to choose that based on our daily choices. So you’re going to teach us some amazing things today. The daily choices that we can make that’s going to improve the quality of our lives from years to come. Hopefully even the quality of our death. I was just watching last night a video, a cardiologist that passed away at 104. He stopped working as a cardiologist at 95 but the interview he did was he was 98 years old. He has been a vegan since his 50s. He ate no processed foods, no oil, no salt. He just ate whole foods. He said, “I could still be working right now but I just chose to retire so I could spend more time with my family.” He passed away so peacefully at 104. I wish that on all of us. I wish that on every listener that we are – he was gardening up until he was 104. He was healthy as a horse. That level of quality of life. His family said he was lucid and awake to the moment he passed away. That he was completely here with us. He didn’t have dementia, he didn’t have heart disease, he wasn’t degenerating. That’s what I want for all of us. That level of health   [0:14:05] Elissa Goodman: That’s remarkable. I need to know that –   [0:14:09] Ashley James: I’ll send it to you. I’ll post it in the show notes. It’s a great video interview. I’ve seen other clips of this man but he’s one of the cardiologists, the early cardiologist who following like Dr. Esselstyn who I’ve had on the show, this movement of doctors that believe in the whole food, plant-based diet no oil, no processed food at all, no salt, no sugar. They reverse heart disease all the time. They reverse four clogs in the heart. They’re completely gone with diet. They’re going against the grain because they don’t believe that the drugs are helpful. They’ll blatantly say it and these are cardiologists, the MDs. Dr. Esselstyn is in his 80s and is still actively working as a cardiologist in the Cleveland Clinic. So we have to get, always get a seconds opinion, always look to the body’s ability to heal itself, and always believe that the body has a miraculous ability to heal itself. We just need to support it and give it what it needs. Drugs have their place but the problem is we often will get swept up in the fear-based mentality that some doctors like to instill upon the patients. So I want to empower all of us, myself included, to always support the body’s ability to heal itself with every choice we make. I know, Elissa that you have some amazing information having healed your own body of cancer and then went on to become a holistic certified nutritionist. I know your life goal is to teach all of us how to get that level of the quality of life that we could all live to be 104 gardening in our 100s. Come one. Let’s do it, Elissa. Let’s do it.   [0:16:00] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Amen sister.   [0:16:01] Ashley James: Yes. Tell us your story.   [0:16:04] Elissa Goodman: Well, my story started, interestingly I talked to a lot of my clients about this too, is when I came into the world I actually had a low white blood cell count. So my immune system was compromised at an early age. I remember growing up getting sick all the time. Just everything that was out there if it was tonsillitis going around school or strep throat or mono or just constantly never getting a pass. Always feeling sick. When I was young I had to get blood shots because my white blood cell count was low so I had to get blood shots every 28 days for years. I was in and out of the hospital at an early age. So I came into the world not strong in my immune system but I also came into the world with two parents who were very successful, very type A, were taking on the world by storm. So that culmination I feel, looking back, was hard on me because I wanted to be where they’re at. I wanted to have the energy and the ability to get the things done that they did in a day and what they’re able to accomplish, which I couldn’t because I was always tired, not feeling well. I was always the behind the eight ball. So it was really rough growing up like that even though I love my parents and I love my childhood but there was that underlying situation going on with my immunity and my emotional well-being. I didn’t feel good enough. I didn’t feel like I could keep up. I didn’t feel like I was worthy. So it was just at an early age, it was a constant battle between the two of them. Then I actually followed in their footsteps with my job and my career. I would move to New York and worked in a fast-paced advertising business. I thought that’s what I wanted because that’s all I knew and I was always sick also with that because it was late nights. A lot of partying, a lot of just not taking care of myself. I was very addicted to sugar, caffeine, carbs. Also in the days in the 80s and 90s it was all about low-fat cookies and no sugar drinks even though it was all chemically-based. So I’m sure that didn’t do any good things for me. It wasn’t about, in those days, really whole foods and organic things. It wasn’t organic when that was happening. Even when I was diagnosed there wasn’t really organic.   [0:18:51] Ashley James: Right. Well, there was 50,000 or 80,000 less chemicals in our environment though.   [0:18:56] Elissa Goodman: That’s true. Yes.   [0:18:58] Ashley James: There wasn’t organic food in the 80s. Although you could go to maybe a farmers’ market or if a friend had a garden but we didn’t know what organic was in the 80s. But there was significantly less chemicals in our food.   [0:19:14] Elissa Goodman: Exactly. Yes, we still had food dyes. We still had some of those unhealthy fats and hydrogenated oils in our food. We still had too much sugar but you’re right. The chemical pesticides on produce wasn’t as bad. You’re right, that was happening. So what happened was I was living in New York for almost ten years and I met husband there. We are both in the advertising business climbing the corporate ladder. Just we decided we were ready to start a family. We had gotten married and I was like I can’t see myself commuting out of the city on the train an hour back into the city for work. It didn’t feel healthy for me and also I just kind of want to get back west because I grew up in the west coast in Arizona. So I said to him, “I really want to investigate maybe looking at California, Arizona to have a little bit of a simpler, better life than this crazy New York life that we are living.” We did end up moving to Los Angeles. At that time I ended up getting a job with Vogue magazine, which I thought was a dream job, in the marketing-sales area. Then six months after the job with Vogue magazine I ended up getting diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I always do that. My husband had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had a Hodgkin’s lymphoma.   [0:20:46] Ashley James: Is one worse than the other?   [0:20:48] Elissa Goodman: It just depends – they say non-Hodgkin’s is a little worse because it has different stages of lymphoma like large B-cell, follicular. There’s combinations of lymphoma cells that are combined for the non-Hodgkin’s where Hodgkin’s is just disease in lymphatic system. It doesn’t have the different forms. So it just depends on how far along either of these because I know people who have passed away from both. I had an early stage but I didn’t know what my symptoms were because basically I always felt crappy. So I was getting a massage from a woman and I was sitting upright. She was massaging my neck and my collar bone and she felt a lymph node in the crevice of my collarbone. She’s like, “Wow. You’re really not supposed to have a swollen lymph node there. You should just get that checked out.” So a week later I did go to the doctor, just a general practitioner. He felt it. I’ll never forget this moment because he felt it and he was like he’s face just went completely blank and it was like, “Oh my God. This could be cancer.” That’s what he says to me. I was just like, “whoa.” Doctor’s really don’t have a great bed-side manner a lot of times to throw that out there into your face without having further knowledge of anything. I did end up going to get a biopsy and it was an early stage of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But just the way that I was treated along the way with the oncologist, with the general practitioner, it was very fear-based like you were talking earlier. It was like, “Oh my God. Oh my God. You’re going to have to do chemo, radiation and you haven’t had kids yet so you’re probably going to have to freeze your eggs. Do you have a donor because we might have to do a stem-cell transplant with a donor?” This was way before this was staged. It was just like, “Hold on you guys. This is way too much information for me to absorb.” I’m already freaking out that I have cancer. Secondly that cancer instills the fear that you could die. Thirdly, all of these treatments that I know nothing about really at the time are scaring the living daylight out of me. So I had seen two oncologists. Then a friend said, “I want you to go see a radiologist at another hospital in LA.” I’m like, “Oh my God. I can’t go get another third opinion.” I was just so done at that point. She’ like, “Please, please. Go see him.” I did, reluctantly. He sat me down. It was staged at the time. It was an early stage. He asked me, “Are you happy? Do you love what you do? What’s going on in your life? How stressed are you on a scale of 1 to 10? Emotionally, what’s going on?” I was like, “Oh my God.” I burst into tears. No one had ever asked me that really. I was like, “I’m miserable. I’m in a job that’s over my head. I don’t feel very well. I never have. I have all these emotions sort of stirred up inside me. Those feelings of insecurity and not feeling good enough.” It was just the flood of emotion happening in his office and he just hugged me. He goes, “You know what, we need to get you into therapy.” I did. I went into therapy at that time. He basically just helped me on the emotional component, which was so big. Then I jumped into reading everything I could about just healing holistically with cancer. I knew I wasn’t going to go completely go holistically but I decided to not do chemo because it really scared me with my immune system I was petrified of it. I did half the radiation that they recommended. My oncologist that I was going to fired me because he said, “You’re not doing what I recommend and if this comes back it could be lawsuit material.” I’m like, “okay.” So I went to find an oncologist, a radiologist and he did the radiation. My gut instincts are like, “Baby, I’m going to kick this sucker. It’s an early stage. I’m going to change my lifestyle. Deal with my emotions.” That’s when a lot of things changed for me. I started juicing. There was one juice place blocks from where I live in Los Angeles. There was Mrs. Gooch’s which is Whole Foods today, which was a grocery that was so beautiful. The produce was beautiful. Things were healthier. There was a lot to offer in LA at the time. So I just dove into all that. I went to see a naturopath. I went and got [unintelligible]. I’m an Aries. Aries kind of like they just dive in and they do everything they can and sometimes without thinking. But I was determined. I got into yoga. I did a lot. I did too much basically but I did heal. I basically healed and then I went on to have two healthy girls. Not without some complications because after the radiation because they radiated my thyroid, I got hypothyroidism Hashimoto’s. That took three-four years to diagnose. So that was a little tricky. I had gut issues. I had a lot of stuff after the treatment. But I did have two girls and then 11 years later my husband, at 43 ½ was diagnosed with non-Hodkin’s lymphoma.   [0:26:49] Ashley James: Can I stop you right there? I got questions about your – so you went for chemo and radiation?   [0:26:59] Elissa Goodman: No. I decided not to do the chemo. I said no to the chemo and I did half the radiation they recommended.   [0:27:06] Ashley James: So what happened? You were like, how many sessions was that? Like six sessions?   [0:27:11] Elissa Goodman: Six sessions. Yeah.   [0:27:13] Ashley James: So you did six. What happened on your sixth? Why did you stop?   [0:27:16] Elissa Goodman: Well, no. I just decided – basically they wanted me to do it right. They wanted me to do 12. At six my lymph node was completely gone. I just decided that, the radiologist was on board with me with the six sessions. So it wasn’t like I was just going. I wasn’t going into the wild wild west without any help and guidance. My radiologist that I had taken on was on board with me in regards to not completely frying myself. When I didn’t need to.   [0:27:51] Ashley James: When you were doing the six radiation sessions that made the lymph node go away, you had also implemented all these other things at the same time right?   [0:28:00] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. I did.   [0:28:01] Ashley James: How do you know it was for sure just the radiation or you think it was a combination of everything? Or you’re like, “Okay. I’m good. I’m just going to keep doing all these natural stuff.”   [0:28:13] Elissa Goodman: No. I mean I don’t recommend people just going natural of course, I won’t preface that.   [0:28:20] Ashley James: We should always work with the doctor that we trust and get second and third opinions. It’s just the question when we do the shotgun approach, which we often do when it’s something, when it’s a serious illness, right? We want to do the shotgun approach but there’s always that question of what worked? If someone had just done radiation and not worked on all the emotions and not started eating healthy and not changed anything of their lifestyle that led to the cancer in the first place would the radiation have been effective with six sessions or they needed 12 or would they needed that and chemo and the would’ve died anyway. So the question is –   [0:28:59] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Good question.   [0:29:00] Ashley James: What really helps the body heal cancer?   [0:29:05] Elissa Goodman: Well now years later, many many years, I’m working with a lot of cancer clients I could tell you what does heal the cancer now. Then I wasn’t sure. But one of my favorite cancer books that came out maybe two-three years ago is called Radical Remission. Do you know it? It’s by Kelly Turner. She did her PhD for ten years. She interviewed stage IV cancer cases. They all healed holistically. None of them did western meds. She came up with ten modalities. Seven of them emotional. The eighth one was food. The ninth one was supplements. The tenth one was exercise. So, in a nutshell, I think it comes down to when working with clients and seeing what happened with my husband who passed away a year and a half after his diagnosis and what you are saying with the fear factor, I think that what it is – we have, our subconscious is fully downloaded by the age of seven. So we operate, you and I operate today 90-95% out of our subconscious. So if we had any trauma going on in those early years and it doesn’t potentially have to just be those early years. But that subconscious is fully set on those early years. If we had death, divorce or people saying you’re not smart enough or you’re not pretty enough or could just be depending on if you’re a sensitive soul and you come into the world or people are slighting you that could be traumatic for you. There’s all kinds of things that go on in our lives when we come into the world. Maybe it’s not a safe household and parents are not getting along. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on. It depends on the person too that our subconscious is consistently sending us messages. We’re not good enough. We’re not good enough. We’re not pretty enough. We’re never going to be smart enough. It down-regulates our immune system. I think in a nutshell.   [0:31:14] Ashley James: Yeah. Every time we’re triggering the sympathetic nervous system response going into fight or flight, any stress or emotional, anything perceived as a threat. Even a cultural threat or a community-based threat. So that unconscious fear of being rejected from the tribe because that meant death to us. So even being bullied on social media. So it can totally emotional but that would absolutely trigger the stress response and thus affect the immune system.   [0:31:50] Elissa Goodman: Absolutely. I think it’s that in a nutshell or living in fear consistently. Or it shuts down the digestive system when you’re stressed as we know. Even if you’re drinking healthy juices and eating kale salads you might not absorb nutrients from that healthy food.   [0:32:10] Ashley James: If you’re in stress mode because we don’t digest when we’re in stress.   [0:32:14] Elissa Goodman: Exactly. Yeah. Liver doesn’t work properly to detox the toxins out of the system or to turn them into a safe form to get them out of the body. Yeah. Everything kind of shuts down. I lived in fight or flight my entire life. I was always in that mode. Yeah. I was still in fight or flight when I dove into all these things. I mean, honestly I feel grateful and I think I was just really lucky that I don’t which of those things really did help me. I think a combination of them did. But I think I also dove in and went on worth living because my life is worth it and I have a lot of years to live and I definitely want to live them. I wasn’t ready to go. I think that’s a big thing. I think my husband who passed away, his dad died of two of cancer of melanoma. I will never know to this day if that was in his subconscious that he just thought cancer was death and that was it. But he was in a fear-based mode for a year and a half and never got out of it. I don’t think he thought that he could live. I think there was a part of him that was like, “This is going to get me. I’m going to try not to let me down.” The same thing happened to him that happened to your girlfriend. In a year and a half he had two stem-cell transplants, his own and a donor, which is really unheard of. Every time that cancer came back in his blood he was getting hardcore chemo. He did of fungal pneumonia. He didn’t die of cancer. He died because his immune system was compromised. So these treatments, yes they can work but I think the biggest thing we have to focus on these days is the love we have for ourselves, the self-worth we have, the honoring ourselves that we’re good enough, and that we’re worth of a really beautiful life because I think a lot of clients and myself included didn’t feel that way. I didn’t even know what loving myself felt like. When I ask my client these days, “Do you love yourself?” 99% say no. What does that look like? What does that feel like? They don’t even know.   [0:34:53] Ashley James: Early on when I first started this podcast, it’s way back, somewhere in the first 20 episodes, I interviewed a mental health counselor. Actually I interviewed two mental health counselors. It’s like four interviews in total. I did two interviews with each. So it’s way back in the first interviews of the show. One of them said, and it just floored me almost fell off my chair, “If you were to look at your relationship with yourself, like a relationship a couple has, you’d call the cops on yourself.” I was like, “You’re right.” He goes, “You would never talk to a love one the way you talk to yourself.”   [0:35:33] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. True.   [0:35:35] Ashley James: When we really look at it, how much compassion are we giving ourselves? We’ll self-medicate to help us feel better. We’ll binge Netflix late at night instead of giving our bodies the sleep it needs or drink wine or eat sugar or whatever way to numb emotions instead of face them. We’ll make excuses for not going to the gym or we’ll make excuses for eating out instead of eating a home-cooked meal. But if we had a child that we are taking care of we’d be like, “No, I’m not going to feed you fried restaurant food every day. No, I’m not going to let you stay up until two in the morning binging Netflix. No, I’m not going to let you eat a pint of ice cream. Of course I’m going to take you to the park so you can get a lot of exercise.” We treat other people better that are in our charge than we do our own body and our body’s in our charge as well. Then the body’s like, “The only body we’re going to have this lifetime.” So it’s like the coat we put on and we have to take care of this coat for 104 years, right? We have to make it last. We really need that wakeup call, myself included, why are we treating ourselves this way?   [0:37:00] Elissa Goodman: I mean, I don’t mean to laugh at it. It’s just we get on an airplane and we’re told to put the oxygen mask on first. I wonder if we’re in that situation if we really would do it.   [0:37:11] Ashley James: Well, that’s what they have to tell us. They actually put little cartoons on the thing that show you doing it. It’s just like because it would go completely against our instinct. We would be making sure everyone else has an oxygen mask on first and then we pass out. That makes us a danger to others around us.   [0:37:34] Elissa Goodman: Yes. It does. It does. I know today that with having a family and having a second family, if I’m not in a good place emotionally and if I’m stressed and not feeling well and not sleeping and all of those things, the rest of the household just really pays the price. Everybody is off kilter. Because women, yes women a lot of times and I’m not saying that men don’t, but a lot of times a woman do set the tone for the house and how happy it is, how safe it is, how calm it is. We aren’t doing that these days. We are creating an unsafe very stressful environment. We are really doing it to service to our kids and to even our love ones. I mean I think that we’re brought and we still are being brought up that we are supposed to take care of everybody else before ourselves. It’s really not okay at all. There’s no part of that that is okay. I know I still struggle with it at my age, at 59. I have never felt better in my entire life. Because I have started to take care of myself and love myself and honor myself and really be selfish but hopefully not in a selfish way where I’m disregarding the people that I love in my life. I see the benefits because I just have so much energy. I don’t get sick. I’m very mentally clear. I sleep really well. I have really beautiful intimate relationships. I just love life. But it took me a long time to get there. So my goal of course these days is to help people get there sooner than I did. I didn’t live a healthy life for many years. But now at 59 I feel fantastic. So, I’m trying to tell and teach people like, “You can get there. Yes, you don’t feel good now but that’s not your destiny. Yes, you have cancer now but that doesn’t have to be your destiny. Cancer doesn’t mean death. Cancer doesn’t mean that your life is going to be endlessly health issues. Your body can heal itself. I mean, if stage IV cancer can heal holistically, you can heal from these ailments. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen clients heal. I’ve seen clients go in for radiation and not get radiation and the tumor shrink.”   [0:40:22] Ashley James: I’m sorry. Can you say that again? They went in for radiation but they didn’t get the radiation?   [0:40:28] Elissa Goodman: They didn’t. It was a placebo effect. It’s studies that have been done. I mean placebo is all over the place. We know that if we think we’re healing most of the time, we are healing as we are talking about with the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. If we’re in rest mode we are healing. If we are not in rest mode we are not healing. So it can be as simples as that. If we are constantly pumping out cortisol and adrenaline from our adrenals, we are not in the mode to heal. Bottom line, I try to teach people that it doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t mean that it has to be a hyperbaric chamber in your house or an infrared sauna. Expensive things. What helps us heal is getting back on our body and teaching ourselves to distress whatever manner that might be. If that’s doing yoga or doing mediation or it’s doing breath work or it’s journaling. There’s some beautiful things out there these days where we can get out body to be definitely relax our central nervous system and our vagus nerve and get ourselves back into a place where we’re back into our body. A lot of times, I see my clients where their head is disconnected from their body. So, to get us back into feeling our intuition and our gut instincts because they’re very strong because we know what to do for ourselves. We know when we’re stressed. We know when we need sleep. We know when we need better food, right? We came into the world with incredible instincts. We just lost sight of them but they’re still there. Sleep is crucial because our body resets between 10 PM and 2 AM but we don’t get to bed at 10 PM usually. We’re up until two watching Netflix or binging on the Netflix or something. We lose those four hours of resetting. We can’t regain those. That’s the problem. We can’t sleep in until ten and hope that it’s going to help us. That doesn’t work like that.   [0:42:54] Ashley James: It’s not regenerative sleep. Even if we did sleep in it’s not the kind of regenerative sleep we need.   [0:43:00] Elissa Goodman: It’s things that the stress is crucial, the sleep is crucial. We’re such a dehydrated society but then we have all these bottled water out there and all the bottled water we’re buying but we’re drinking it and peeing it out because we’re not absorbing it because we don’t have the minerals in our body to help the water go into the cells. We’re very dehydrated. We get up and we go right for that coffee in the morning. We don’t even drink water after our body’s been detoxing and cleansing throughout the night and it’s super dehydrated. Just getting up and drinking two cups of water is a beautiful thing before you drink your coffee or any caffeine drinks.   [0:43:45] Ashley James: That’s the catch 22 is that’s the self-medication because we are so dehydrated, lacking sleep, lacking minerals, lacking nutrients, full of stress. So then we need to self-medicate in the morning just to get started. That masks the symptoms our body’s trying to. The symptoms are the language of the body. So many naturopaths have said that the body whispers to us first. We need to listen to that language of the body. If we listen to these symptoms, for example my friend Barnetty a year before her cancer diagnosis her body started giving her some really weird symptoms. Sometimes we ignore these symptoms. My mom passed away of liver cancer when I 22 was years old. She ignored her symptoms and she chalked them up to things like post-menopause, I’m stressed because she had just closed her business and retired early. She was in her 50s. She retired. She moved. She sold the house then moved to a condo then we sold the condo and then they moved to Florida. It was just like so much that stress. But she was chalking up all her physical symptoms. My mom was so healthy. She was always physically fit. She exercised six days a week. She did step classes, spinning, pilates, weightlifting. She took supplements. She went to naturopaths. She did all these healthy stuff and then her MD talked her into a bunch of meds to get her to go to sleep, meds for hormones, which were non-bioidentical hormones. As she was dying in the hospital, those meds were taken off the market. The hormones that her doctor had her on were taken off the market in Canada for causing too much cancer. So maybe if she was not in a stressed state, maybe if she had taken a more easy, maybe her immune system would’ve been stronger and not have gotten cancer. That’s possible. Maybe if she had not gotten on that med and not listened to that doctor and instead maybe taken her hormonal advice from a naturopath who would’ve given her some herbs, maybe… So there’s so many maybes, right? We can always hindsight it. But her body was telling her symptoms for a long time before it led to cancer but we often will override them by self-medicating or by writing it off, brushing it off as normal. We drag ourselves to the mud and we just drag our bodies through the mud putting everyone else’s needs first and downplaying our own needs. I was just helping a family member, take them to the emergency room about a month ago. The doctors said there, “Why didn’t you come in three days ago when your symptoms first started?” Not in a mean tone at all. He’s very nice. He just wanted to know why. She said, “You know, I thought it would get better.” He said, “That is the number one thing I hear.” He asks every patient and the number one thing people say is, “I think it might get better and I just wouldn’t want to go to the hassle of going to the clinic or going to see a doctor about it.” Because you don’t want to be that person who’s like, “My toe hurts,” and then the doctor looks at you like, “There’s nothing wrong with you. Go home.” Which some doctors might do even if there is something wrong so that’s always good to get second opinion. But this is where listening to your intuition like you said, tap into your intuition and don’t be worried about being a bother. Some people are worried that it would be too troublesome. “I’m going to bother the doctors and I don’t need to and they’re going to think I’m silly.” Forget it. Your body has these symptoms for a reason. If your car made weird noises, you’d take it to a mechanic hopefully. It’s the listening in when it’s still a whisper.   [0:47:54] Elissa Goodman: Right. That’s why I was saying, intuition, those instincts because they were really strong when they were born. We lose sight of them because when we grow up we have people in our life saying, “Oh no. You shouldn’t feel that way,” or “No. That’s not the way it will happen.” We do know, I do know honestly when I’m making the right choice or not making a right choice. It doesn’t mean that I make wrong choices but I know. My instincts are speaking very loudly to me even with food now because I’m so tuned in to it because of what I do. I can drink cashew milk for instance but if I have a handful of cashews, my stomach is a mess. Sometimes I’ll just crave those nuts and I’ll have a handful of cashews and I’ll be a mess. I’m like, “Damn, girl. I know better.” But if we tap in more often than not it doesn’t mean we’re going to be perfect. Yes. Our body is speaking to us. It totally is telling us everything we need to know. I basically love where medicine is going a bit more these days because the integrative functional naturopaths are really incredible because they’re doing blood tests and they’re actually spending time with their clients. Mind do here in LA. Finding out about the emotional well-being and their upbringing and if they’re natural childbirth or C-section because sometimes we know that the gut plays a large part in our immune system of course. Also what happens with our serotonin and our mood. Sometimes C-section babies, they don’t have enough microbiome. But they ask these questions. It’s like, “Wow. That is amazing.” Because we can go way back and see what the history is like. Is the immune system not been that strong? Is the emotional stress been intense through their life? Have they taken some hardcore drugs like you were saying? Maybe it’s the birth control pills have wreaked a lot of havoc with gut bacteria. It’s Accutane that kids take for the – even over the counter drugs: Tylenol, Advil, Aleve, they’re all causing havoc with our microbiome. Even anti-histamines are some of the worst. So today, it’s very cool that a lot of doctors are knowing that these things have some issues and they can ask clients and I can ask clients, “Give me your history. What have you done over your lifetime? Have you taken a lot of these things?” We could kind of get to the more, to the root cause of why they’re having certain symptoms. Maybe even why they have cancer. I do believe we have microscopic cancer cells in our body. I just think that. We have toxins. We have pesticides. We have heavy metals probably and some mold and parasites. Not to scare anybody.   [0:51:04] Ashley James: It’s okay. We talk about parasites all the time on the show.   [0:51:07] Elissa Goodman: I think that they are just lying dormant there. Viruses, they lay dormant in the body and then when sort of the perfect storm happens, they can raise their ugly. That’s when these things come to fruition and you’re like, “Holy. Why wasn’t I taking better care of myself for those years?” Sometimes, people just don’t know how to take better care of themselves. They’ve never been taught. They don’t know what it looks like, right, Ashley?   [0:51:39] Ashley James: Right. Right. My dad was an Aries so I know he was like you. He was just, “Go, go, go, go, go.” He had this thing where he believed that the mind-body connection was so strong that when he was six, so he got a cold or a flu or whatever, he would tell his body he wasn’t sick. He would tell his body he’s healthy and he just plowed through it. He’d be lying in bed with 105 fever just delusional being like, “I’m fine. I’m just going to get up tomorrow. I’m just going to sweat it out and get up tomorrow and I’ll be fine.” He really believed in the mind-body connection, which is a mind-body connection. We can have a positive belief system about our healing. He would use it in a more negative way to deny his body care that it needed and he wouldn’t actually sit and rest. His brother, my uncle, died suddenly in our family factory. He completely shut down. His body just shut down. He got pneumonia. He needs to take six months off. That was the first time I ever saw him take a break in his life. He was just so depressed. He would go, go, go, go, go A-type personality and then he hit a wall. His body said, “I can’t handle this. You can’t keep going at a millions miles per hour and have these emotions. You just have to shut down.” So that was my example. Then my other example, growing up we look at both our parents for lessons. So on one hand I’m looking at my dad like, “You can just rule yourself healthy and go, go, go and just eat your emotions and ignore your body. Your mind is so strong you can plow through it. Just have coffee and keep going. Who needs sleep anyway?” Then my mom, Taurus, A-type personality, slower than my dad but driven, a bull. She going to just push through slowly. She had a routine. She was fierce. She would get up at six in the morning. She would do the same thing every day: have the protein shake, do her makeup or no. She would go to the gym then do her makeup, go to work for like 12 hours because she ran her own business, then come home super late at night totally exhausted and do it all over again day after day after day. So I watched both of them and then they’d crash on the weekends. Weekends were like they were just dead. Back then there was no internet. You couldn’t actually work on the weekends. If they could’ve worked on the weekends they would’ve kept going, right? This is my example of health. It’s just you go, go, go, ignore your body, you’re a machine and then you just crash. So when it came to like have vacation, we would take three weeks off in the wintertime because that’s when their businesses, no own was working. So thank God. No one was working so they couldn’t work because they both own their businesses. The first week of vacation was just them totally collapsed. They couldn’t even enjoy themselves, right? It’s like, how much enjoyment are you getting out of life by just plowing through it and ignoring your body? My mom died at 55. My dad died at 62.   [0:54:48] Elissa Goodman: Wow. So sorry. You’ve had a lot of death around you. Whoa.   [0:54:55] Ashley James: I share it because –   [0:54:59] Elissa Goodman: And it’s too young.   [0:55:00] Ashley James: It is very young for me to lose my parents. They were very passionate. I carry on everything I learn from them. I’m using it as an example because we can look at our own lives and look at how we treat our bodies and look at the room for improvement because no matter how much self-care we do, I think there’s always room for improvement. There’s always blind spots. My parents had blind spots. I’m sure they would differently if they had the hindsight. They really believed they were going to live well into their 80s. Genetically, they could have. I have family members on both sides that are almost 90. Genetically, they could have done it and that’s where lifestyle comes into play. Genes are just the blueprints. The nutrition aspect, like you said, we have to have the minerals to get the hydration into the cells, right? If you don’t, it doesn’t matter what kind of genes you have whether your whole family has cancer in the history or not. It’s about the level of lifestyle and nutrition you’re dealing with now. Obviously, you had this tragedy you losing your husband. Where did you go from there? You were obviously in shock. That was very quick to have lost him from diagnosis to his death was, did you say was 18 months?   [0:56:34] Elissa Goodman: Yes. It was a year and a half. Yeah.   [0:56:35] Ashley James: So it’s very quick and he was fighting but you saw that it is belief system. He didn’t work on his belief system. That he sort of had this belief that this is a death sentence.   [0:56:45] Elissa Goodman: Yes. I think that he was very type A as well and was also one of those that power through like didn’t watch his symptoms, didn’t pay attention. So there was like months and months went on where he had swollen lymph nodes on his neck, didn’t take care of them. So, yeah. I’m not that. If he had taken care of it potentially at the beginning maybe it could’ve been a different outcome.   [0:57:18] Ashley James: All we can do is learn. All we can do is learn from the past. We can’t hold ourselves to this regret. For so long after my mom’s passing, I blamed myself for her death, which is crazy to do for a 22-year-old. To think, “If only I had done this for my mom.” I was just grasping at straws because I guess I wanted to make sense of it and I ended up feeling guilty for her death and blaming myself. I did a ton of emotional work. I’ve spent years in the healing and gaining great perspective. I feel very healthy about my childhood, about my past and about my relationship with my mom and her death. I feel like I’ve come to a very place now because I’ve done that work. I can see that even now at Barnetty’s passing, I caught myself going into that, “I could’ve done this. I could’ve done that.” I just become the observer and seeing that self-talk and not letting it take hold of me but just observing it. Going, “Isn’t that interesting this thought process. It’s not the truth.” What do they say? Feelings aren’t facts. It’s just the thought. This thought isn’t true. It’s okay, I can have this thought but I’m not going to let this become a truth for me. I could not control her like I can’t control anyone, I can only control myself. I couldn’t have controlled the outcome no matter how much I wanted to, obviously.     [0:58:51] Elissa Goodman: Same. Same with him. That’s the same. I mean, I tried to bring in some holistic things into his regime but it was hard because the doctors were speaking another language. They’re like, “Yeah. That’s not going to help. None of that healthy food, the juicing, all that stuff. That’s not going to help.”   [0:59:11] Ashley James: “Nurturing the body, giving it all the raw building blocks it needs to build healthy cells. That’s not going to help. You need hardcore drugs and chemicals.”                                                    [0:59:19] Elissa Goodman: Right. To just demolish your body and demolish all the cells, the good, the healthy and the not healthy cells. I know. Interestingly afterwards, a girl friend of mine was into the EMFs, the magnetic frequencies. He wanted to come over the house after he passed away to actually test the house. Because we had taken an old home in Los Angeles and we remodeled it. She just have this feeling that she didn’t feel right about the, there might be too many EMFs in the house. She was actually completely right. She came over with her meter and shockingly, when we tested it on his side of the bed, the EMFs were off the chart. We’re not sure of course exactly what caused that. I do know that we had built on our master bedroom. Sometimes what happens is his wires aren’t grounded properly. There’s all kinds of things that go on. So interestingly, yes, on my side of the bed it was normal. On his side of the bed, it was off the charts high.   [1:00:33] Ashley James: I’ve interviewed a few building biologists. I’ve had some handful EMF interviews. Sal La Duca was the first one I did. He’s like a PhD electrician or something. His credentials are off the charts and he has some amazing stories to share about the home and EMFs. How he’ll be invited into a home and just like you said, on one side of the bed will be cancer-causing EMFs or something similar. But he’s had some amazing experiences but he can actually explain why it happens. Because he’s an electrician or like an electrician engineer or something like that. I know I’m saying his credentials wrong but it’s very academic and can absolutely explain the science why. That so many homes that we think we’re safe but it can be whole neighborhoods. He says the problem can actually start at the transformer for an entire neighborhood. So a transformer, I guess we’re naïve. We assume our food is safe, our home is safe, our electricity is safe. But he shares many horror stories and also the resolution of them were the transformer. The problem is outside the home but it was effecting every single home in the neighborhood and that everyone’s health was affected. If you’re again ignoring your body, you’re self-medicating with coffee and sugar and alcohol or whatever, then you’re not listening to your body. You may not realize that you feel worse when you’re at home and better when you’re away from the house.   [1:02:20] Elissa Goodman: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I know. I agree that all this stuff – even with the mold issues with the people homes. I definitely see a lot of that too. Thank God we’re making them aware of these things, the EMFs. Trying to talk to people about 5G which is really sort of detrimental to our health. The mold issues and let’s say the heavy metals. I’m constantly having my clients get tested for pesticides and heavy metals and molds just to see if there’s any underlying currents that we need to take care of because those underlying currents are what cause inflammation to happen and a lot of times too causes the body to go into that mode that the cells won’t actually replicate in a healthy way. Plus getting nutrient deficiency tests done to see what nutrients not just piling on all the nutrients and going out and buying all these millions of supplements that there are today with fillers and synthetics, which drive me crazy as well. Just really finding out at the root level what nutrients you are deficient in and taking care of that. Just by doing that and doing a really a deep-dive in your blood counts, your thyroid, your adrenals, your hormones, what’s really going on with your cortisol, your vitamin D can be life-changing. In those days when I was going through all these and when my husband was going through it they didn’t do any of that.   [1:04:05] Ashley James: Yeah. Something as simple as vitamin D. Having healthy levels of vitamin D is a huge cancer preventer. They’re seeing that people who are chronically low in vitamin D are far more likely, I don’t know the statistics but it was shocking, far more likely to get cancer if you have chronic low vitamin D. It’s also an indication. Early on I have an episode. These episode have been bumped off of iTunes because iTunes only last for 300 and we’re approaching 400 but they’re all on my website LearnTrueHealth.com. I have an early interview early on all on vitamin D, the entire episode by a naturopath all in vitamin D. It’s fascinating how our body makes it. I just thought it was like sunlight hits our skin and then we have vitamin D. I didn’t know anything else. That our liver’s involved, our kidney’s involved, our cholesterol levels are involved. Obviously, sunlight being that final step. Our body needs sunlight on direct naked skin but that’s if we have kidney issues or liver issues or not enough healthy cholesterol, those are all factors that need to come into play to make vitamin D levels. Then we have to look at like what if low vitamin D is not the problem but the symptom of a problem? So coming back even before that, why is the body not producing enough vitamin D? Besides the fact that we’re not getting enough sunlight, even in the summertime people are vitamin D deficient. So what’s going on is the body deficient in the healthy cholesterol. Why is the body deficient in healthy cholesterol? Are the kidneys functioning correctly? Is the liver functioning correctly? What other the co-factors are missing? Kind of creeping back and trying to go sort of upstream, what is actually causing? Where is the beginning? What is this dysfunction? Where did it all start that has this? Because we’re just doing a blood test of something and we’re treating just take the vitamin D supplement. Well, if your underlying problem is a kidney issue or a liver issue or the low healthy cholesterol, I mean great to take a vitamin D supplement but that’s again just masking a symptom. That’s not digesting the root cause.   [1:06:21] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. I know. I think what it feels scary these days for a lot of people and for me too sometimes is the internet and Google. That’s very overwhelming. I mean, I know when I was going through all these I didn’t have that so it had to be searching through books or talking to doctors. Google can really screw us up. Because you can just go on and plug in what are the symptoms of low vitamin D. You have some of these symptoms and buy the vitamin D. Even go on, you know, watch me on Instagram and I’m like, “Hey, everybody. Vitamin D is really important because of these reasons.” Then a lot of my followers will go out and buy that buy that vitamin D. I’m like, “Maybe you don’t need it. Have you check to see,” like you were saying, “if you really do need it and what’s going on with you an what are the other factors happening for the reasons why you might think you might need it?” We’ve done a disservice. There’s a [bend] through ourselves with all the information out there too because people are very confused at what direction they should be going these days and what is going to make them healthy and what isn’t going to make them healthy. That’s a whole other. The supplement market is just really out of control. The super foods that are out there. The combinations of things. A lot of them have fillers and synthetics in them that aren’t so great for you.   [1:07:58] Ashley James: Well, I would propose that the pharmaceutical industry is out of control and that people are desperately seeking less poisonous. Anytime that there is a demand, people are going to try to fill that demand. There’s companies that are ethical and companies that are looking to make a profit off of us because it’s the wild west out there but we want it to be. If the supplement industry was regulated, which it’s not, if it was regulated then it would be completely controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. We want to protect our ability to gain access to supplements. We just have to be educated consumers. So we have to find the supplement companies that are ethical, that don’t do skip-batch testing, they test every batch with a third-party lab, that they publish those findings. Like you said, they don’t have the fillers. That they’re willing to be that open book and show us that they’re ethical. There are out there. There’s supplements out there. Then you go to Walmart or whatever. You go to some kind of Bartells, Walgreens whatever and you’re just like, “Oh. Here’s vitamin whatever. Let’s pick it off the shelf.” I have a friend who is doing his premed in Michigan. He in one of his classes did a really fun science experiment. They went, it was for chemistry or something, but they went out and they bought vitamin C off of every brand they could get. Any kind of over the counter so went to a bunch of pharmacies. Went to a bunch of big box stores and bought every single kind of vitamin C, every brand they could find. They went and they tested it. They had equipment that they could test the purity of it. There were brands that had zero vitamin C in it that claim that it’s a 100 mg tablet or whatever, 1000 mg tablet. There’s some that have no vitamin C that are just all flavoring. There are some that have half the amount of vitamin C. None of them were pure and none of them were what they actually said was on the label. I know that they’ve done a study and you could Google this that they were studying gingko biloba and they found that most of them had lower levels than were published on the label and some had no gingko biloba, which is an herb. So it is buyer beware, which I agree. I think it’s coming from a demand that the consumers are sick and tired of being sick and also sick and tired of being given drugs for absolutely every symptom. We’re kind of just like blindly flailing our arms grabbing at whatever we can and sometimes it’s low-quality supplements. Then people say supplements don’t work and they’re given a bad rap, which is unfortunate because really high-quality supplements are life-changing. They have been for me.   [1:11:06] Elissa Goodman: Yes. They are for me too. They absolutely are for me too. I know. There are some really great ones. I’m a supplement junkie for some reason. I got into all of that years ago and just over the years I’ve love to try everything. I’m always searching the highest quality products and companies. Yeah. I do. They have been life-changing for me. Definitely. Certain supplements I feel that are important for us to take because I’ve noticed over the years with working with clients how well they do on them on some of the simplistic ones like a probiotic. I mean I think we all need a better beneficial microbiome. There’s controversies about the probiotic. Do they work? Do they not work? I’ve seen year after year with people putting them on really good high-quality probiotics, their digestive issues go away. They digest their food better. Their weight is affected, their sleep, their mood, everything, their immunity. So there just really are things that are important out there that people should be taking but making sure that they are the highest quality.   [1:12:24] Ashley James: Yeah. I know the controversy about probiotics is interesting. They say that after 30 days of taking a probiotic that they couldn’t find the actual probiotics culture in the gut. Because we thought, “Just take a bottle and it will repopulate your gut and it will always stay there.” But they’re actually finding that after you complete a course of probiotics, that they don’t live much longer in the gut after we’ve taken it. I had a naturopath, he’s in research side of things, on the show talking about probiotics. But he said that doesn’t mean they’re not beneficial. They play this amazing role in helping heal the gut. He doesn’t think that people should be on them forever and you should cycle through and take different strains. It’s helping to crowd out the bad bacteria while you’re taking it and also helping digest while you’re taking it. But then, it kind of creates this healthy space that when you stop taking it for the good bacteria. But to also accompany it with eating a variety of fermented foods at each meal, small amounts of fermented food at each meal.   [1:13:37] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. I agree. That’s what I do. I love fermented food. I have a cleanse that I actually cook and deliver to 100 people most months in Los Angeles. 150 people on about 3 or 4 months out of the year. For five days I put them on a reset. The morning drink is a detox sonic for your gut and it is coconut kaffir, which is fermented coconut water and it is full of beneficial bacteria. Then we have a liquid aloe vera and lemon and ginger and apple cider vinegar and a liquid probiotic. People love that drink. Their guts are so much better in five days. Just seeing adding a probiotic and adding coconut kaffir or even the yogurts out there that are great or sauerkraut, kimchi. Those fermented foods are amazing. I know that a lot of clients don’t eat enough of the fermented stuff so I kind of have to push them more down that road.   [1:14:41] Ashley James: Yeah. Well. We used to eat fermented foods all the time. But now we’re kind of obsessed in the last, I don’t know, 50 years we’re really obsessed with sterile foods. Maybe it started around, I don’t know, when we learned about germs. Then we made all these cleaners for bleaching germs. Maybe we started thinking we should sterilize our food. Or right around the 1950s when we have the TV dinners. It became this idea to have package sterile foods would be really good for us. We lost that connection with living foods. Now we’re seeing that, there’s about six pounds of good and bad bacteria, depending on the dysbiosis that’s occurring in your body, but there’s about six pounds of bacteria that are in our gut that we need. That we absolutely rely on. If we were sterile, we could not digest that the bacteria’s that’s digesting our food and helping us assimilate those nutrients. So it’s phenomenal that we are this giant petri dish. We need to support the petri dish, the good bacteria. You have mentioned –   [1:16:03] Elissa Goodman: We are bacteria. We’re made up of bacteria’s. So we have more bacteria in our body than we do cells.   [1:16:10] Ashley James: There’s more. It’s like 10:1 ratio I read. The other day I was reading about that but the bacteria cells are much smaller but it is a 10:1 ratio meaning for everyone, and we have 37.2 trillion human cells in our body and then it’s ten times more bacteria. So we are a home to these, we’re a host to this symbiotic relationship. It’s kind of like do you want to be a ghetto and have the street gangs in your body or do you want to have the leave it to beaver kind of family. I don’t know, I’m just trying to make –   [1:16:47] Elissa Goodman: White picket fence. The white picket fence.   [1:16:49] Ashley James: Yeah. We want the white picket fence. We want to be that home. We wanna have that very peaceful, no one arguing. We want all the good bacteria. We don’t want the violent gang bacteria in our body that’s creating the dysbiosis and the candida and the parasites. So we have to create that environment. Then that also directly affects our immune system which then would either help us create cancer or avoid cancer.   [1:17:14] Elissa Goodman: Absolutely. As well as depression, anxiety, all of the above. 90% of your serotonin is produced in your gut. Then your gut, you need that microbiome to actually absorb the nutrients from your food and also help with producing B12, which is really crucial, another crucial vitamin for the body. If we don’t have proper microbiome in our ilium, which is the lower part of our small intestine, we’re not going to produce B12. So that’s a little bit intricate. That is crucial for us with energy and mental fog and all of that.   [1:17:59] Ashley James: I also learned recently that 25% of our T3 is converted in the gut. So someone might end up having low thyroid hormones on their blood panel and then be put on some drug. And the doctor was just freaking looking at the symptoms, just looking at the blood test, looking at symptoms and then treating the symptoms with the drug rather than going – they’re treating the smoke not the fire. Can you imagine if firefighters only treated the smoke and left the fire burning? That’s what doctors are doing by treating symptoms and not kind of backtracking going, “Why is it that your body has less T3?” If we could go back, what helps create T3 and is it because you’re missing the precursors? Is there something wrong with the HPA axes or the HPT axes? What’s going on? Doctors just ask more questions and try to go back further and further to the beginning, they could actually help treat the root cause. But that’s not part of their training. Their training is to deliver drugs and manage symptoms of the body. Unless you go to a holistic doctor or holistic nutritionist like yourself who gets really curious and wants to help us get to the root cause. So if you heal the gut and that is the problem then all of a sudden the thyroid levels are normal. That person never needed to take medication for their thyroid because their thyroid was healthy. It’s just the gut was not converting the T3.   [1:19:24] Elissa Goodman: That thyroid medication is going to affect the microbiome. It’s going to deplete it. I know, it is really crazy. I mean, the whole thyroid Hashimoto’s whole thing is also pretty enormous. I mean, it’s sad that cancer is not getting any better and Hashimoto’s is one of the fastest-growing autoimmune diseases today, which is related to the thyroid. I mean, it is sad what is happening these days. What you’re talking about exactly what we need more of is to have people out there that are educated, that are talking the talk like you’re saying about the T3 and the gut because we’ll put on thyroid medication that’s only T4. If you have Hashimoto’s you won’t convert T4 to T3 and T3 is what is really the driving force behind your thyroid. Even the endocrinologists don’t talk about that. They don’t even check your gut. They don’t check for celiac or what’s going on in your gut. Is your microbiome not healthy? It’s really crazy. But I think that what is great that, yes like I said, people like myself and lots of people like myself and great functional doctors and people who are really diving into all these and getting to the root and knowing what to do when someone comes in and has these issues and can do a blood panel or a gut microbiome test or stool sample or whatever it needs to be to see what is really going on at the root level. Not just taking the symptoms and band-aiding them because we’re not getting anywhere. Like I said, we’re not getting anywhere with the cancer or the Hashimoto’s or the thyroid. I mean, thyroid is just rapid in terms of the number of people. The younger generation that are having thyroid issues. So this is really crazy and we can reverse it. I reversed it after 25 years on medication, I went into remission for Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism and my numbers are all perfect.   [1:21:35] Ashley James: I love it. I love it that you’re saying that because I’ve talked to so many people who say they really believe it’s a life sentence that they will have their autoimmune condition for the rest of their life. I will scream it from the rooftops, autoimmune condition is not a life sentence. It’s not like type 1 diabetes where you have to have it. That’s unfortunate we haven’t found a cure for type 1 diabetes. Maybe with stem cell therapy they’ll be able to regenerate the pancreas. It’s simply the pancreas is gone. It’s not working. Type 2 diabetes, easily reversible within three months. I reversed mine. I’ve helped so many people reverse theirs. Type 2 diabetes is not a life sentence but if you go to an average doctor, they will put you on meds and say we have to manage the diabetes and never talk about cure, never. The average doctor will tell you that you have your Hashimoto’s for the rest of your life and just help you manage it. Tell you you have your autoimmune condition for the rest of your life, help you manage it. Now can you recreate it? I can recreate diabetes. I can go right now to some fast-food restaurant. I can eat absolute crap, change my diet and I could recreate diabetes because that’s genetically or whatever. My body is going to go in that direction if I fill it with crap. If you fill your body with crap, and I can eat the same crap food, you may never get diabetes but you may get Hashimoto’s again. You may get cancer again. Your body is going in that direction. The stressors putting stress in your body exhibits in that disease. That’s what breaks down first. It’s like every car, if we drive for a million miles, the different parts will break. It’s just we put the wear and tear on the car, different things break. For me, my body’s going to go type 2 diabetes. That is the first thing it’s going to do if I eat crap for three months. But you can reverse it. You can 100% reverse autoimmune condition. I’ve seen so many people 100% be in remission, no longer have it, no longer worry about it. I’m glad you’re saying that today because I want those who have autoimmune to know that there is so much hope. That the body can heal itself to the point where you no longer have it. It is possible. So after 25 years of having Hashimoto’s, did you all of a sudden do something differently to heal your Hashimoto’s and what was it? What was it?   [1:24:05] Elissa Goodman: It was kind of fascinating because I do love all these science aspect of things and I do try to dive into that as well. But I’m also a little bit of a – I’ve seen energy healers for ten years. I love [raky], I love just that all of the other holistic modalities that you don’t potentially have a lot of science behind it. So what happened was three years ago, I basically read the medical medium, he’s name is Anthony William. I’m sure you’d know about him. I read his first book and I put it down. I was like, “Ha. This is interesting.” He’s talking about all these viral issues in the body that lay dormant. I had chickenpox and I had mono twice and strep throat and tonsillitis and I even had shingles. So I probably had a high viral condition that’s probably laying dormant in my organs. So I just was interested like wow, no one’s talked about that. So I did a session with him the following week. I got lucky to do one and he was on the phone and he basically over the phone said, “You have Epstein-Barr in your thyroid and your liver and if you don’t do something about it asap, you’re going to have some serious health issues.” Who knows? He just is telling me over the phone. So you take it for a grain of salt. I’m like, “This is interesting.” He puts me on a protocol to lower my viral loads. So he puts me on [biractisilver] and concentrated liquid zinc, high dose of Ester-c, lysine. Things that I knew about too that lower viral issues. Licorice root extract. I did a little bit of concentrated iodine for my thyroid. Swear to God in three months, I went into hyperthyroid mode because I was still on my thyroid medication and then basically my doctor weaned me off of the thyroid medication slowly. That’s three months to four months after doing this protocol I was like felt fantastic. That was the beginning of my journey. I ended up finding out that I had celiac and I had a parasite. I kind of like just dove into all these and I took care of both of those things by healing my gut and by getting rid of the parasite. I stayed on his protocol for probably a year. Then I ended up just diving into more meditation. That’s when I discovered my self-love aspect. I really just tried to go down this road of what I have been preaching but also potentially not necessarily doing really well myself. I knew better and so I did. I dove into taking care of myself better. Because I was already eating really healthy. I still do. Since I’ve got into this practice I eat really well and I’m more plant-based but I didn’t really dive into the crux of what was underneath it all like the potential parasites I had and the celiac and some of the nutrient deficiencies that were happening within the body.   [1:27:30] Ashley James: My issue with celiac is so many people can be diagnosed incorrectly because not the entire small intestine is affected and they take a biopsy and look at it under a microscope. They’ll take a few different biopsies and they’re just, you know, guessing. Someone could absolutely have celiac and it might come back as not. So the thing is for me is, and I have been working with people for the last seven-eight years now, I get 100% of them to try no barley, wheat, rye or oats. I know a lot of people will go, “Well, there’s no gluten in oats,” or “but these are gluten-free oats.” Oats contain gliadin, just consider it a similar enough protein to cause the same damage. People who react to barley, wheat, rye also will react to oats. So many times it’s worth just taking it out, see what happens. Oats also really spike the blood sugar. I had the author of wheat belly, who’s a cardiologist that heals heart health and other diseases by creating healthy blood-sugar basically. He’s like, “Oats are just, they’re kind of junk in that they really do raise blood sugar. They’re not really great for many people.” So anyway, barley, wheat, rye and oats. Avoid them for 30 days and then do a test day. Just eat pasta and pizza and just eat all your favorite, eat a bagel. Just fill your life with barley, wheat, rye and oats that day and see in a few days how you feel. My husband and I, we’re going to do this challenge. This is back in 2011. We were told to do this challenge with a naturopath we were working with. That was hard because we were eating somewhat still the standard American diet. We’d already gone organic. We’re shopping the perimeter but to be told to cut that out, some people they just don’t know how to shop or how to cook without barley, wheat, rye and oats. So we said, “Okay. We’ll do the challenge. We’ll do what you said. We’ll take it out and then we’ll do a challenge day.” By the fifth day we’re like, “We are never eating these foods again. We feel so amazing.” I lost 25 pounds of water weight. I know it wasn’t fat. It was 25 pounds of water weight from the inflammation. My husband, I don’t know how much he lost, he lost a bunch. Then our rings started flying off our fingers. We had our rings sized for us when we got married. We had been married since 2008 so they were well-fitted rings. They weren’t too tight. They were just perfect. They started flying off our hands. We decided to get them resized after a few months because I didn’t want to, what if this was temporary and the water came back? So after a few months we went to get our rings resized. I went down 1 ½ ring sizes and he went down 2 ring sizes. That’s just from cutting out barley, wheat, rye and oats. So we were never diagnosed with celiac but we didn’t have to be. We were convinced after day 5. We didn’t even had to do the challenge day. We did not even want to do the challenge day. Since then, there’s been a handful of times where I was like gluten-poisoned either by choice or by accident. I got a tummy ache and get kind of bloated but it’s not life-threatening, thank goodness. It’s just a day-to-day inconvenience. So my day-to-day life is barley, wheat, rye and oat-free. It’s really interesting when I eat it and I don’t know I’m eating it by accident and then I start feeling ill and then I look at the ingredients. It’s like, “Oh. Yeah.” When I was eating it every day that was my norm. When we’re eating something our body’s reacting, imagine if you eat cashews every day.   [1:31:29] Elissa Goodman: I know.   [1:31:30] Ashley James: Right. And it’s just your norm and you don’t know it’s the cashews because it’s your norm. The average person out there would eat what they’re allergic to and then take some kind of, I don’t want to say some brand names, but take some kind of drug to mask their digestive upset and just keep plowing through life and not knowing that every time they ate that food it actually disrupted their gut biome, disrupted their ability to convert T3, disrupted their immune system, put the body in a stress response, fed the wrong bacteria. Basically cultivated a stressed state for the body to create cancer and other diseases. It’s so easy to cut something out and replace it with something else. People are like, “What do you eat? Oh my gosh. You’re gluten-free. What do you eat?” I’m like, “Anything I want. Just not barley, wheat, rye and oats.” There’s so many foods. There’s so much.   [1:32:25] Elissa Goodman: There’s so many other things that yeah, you can eat. I know. I know exactly. It’s so true. Like I said earlier in our call is it’s not supposed to be hard, all of this. We’re supposed to learn how to destress. We know sleep is important for us. We know that we need to be hydrated. Then when it comes to food, we know that we need to feel good after we eat. We do not to be bloated and have digestive issues. That is not normal. So paying attention to that and eliminating those that do give you the upset can be life-changing. Just trying so hard not to eat the processed foods and going for the whole foods as much as you can is really the ticket and going organic, especially if you have a health issue. But not all things have to be organic. Just really especially soy and like you said oats and wheat that do have that [unintelligible] issues and corn, that’s usually important. Just trying to eat whole foods and real foods. I tell people that, try to teach people how to meal prep for the week, to roast some vegetables and stick them in a glass Pyrex dish and have them in the fridge. Just having maybe sweet potatoes. Some kind of grains of complex carbs, not necessarily grains but that do have minerals in them. Roasted carrots and roasted beets and all of those things. Maybe wild rice or black rice that don’t have the gluten or sensitivity to the gut. Having those in a Pyrex dish. I go more plant-based. I’m a soy girl so I do love organic soy. Edamame or tempeh or lentils or chickpeas and having those in a Pyrex dish. Then I have them have a lot of greens and then they throw them all into a bowl and a great dressing and you’re a home run, a piece of cake. You could have that for the week setup or you can make some easy pureed soups because that’s what my cleanse is. It’s a lot of soups and salads and it’s a soup cleanse. I have recipes where it takes 15 minutes to make a parade soup. You can pull that out and make a salad and be on your way to health.   [1:34:54] Ashley James: You’re talking my language. Bowls. That’s exactly how I eat. I just make batches of different foods then you just pull them all out. I have bowls. That’s what I had lunch for today. Lunch yesterday, lunch today, dinner the day before. I like doing a combination of raw and cooked. So I love, love – my favorite raw foods to put, because you want the enzymes form the uncooked foods. I love purple cabbage. It is so delicious. My son, my 4-year-old who has become quite picky, also loves purple cabbage. He doesn’t like it cooked. He only likes it raw. It’s crunchy and it has this great flavor and it’s so wonderful. It’s so colorful to sprinkle on top of your food. So I love making sure that there are some cut-up purple cabbage ready to go. I get the Instant Pot out and I make a whole thing of potatoes or wild rice like you said. Wild rice is not like any of the other rices. It’s a totally different starch. It’s non-reactive to the immune system. It’s actually the highest amount of antioxidants. I was reading an article recently that talked about that women who ate wild rice one to two times a week had a significantly lower risk of heart disease and cancer. I can’t remember the exact numbers but something like 30% or 40%. It was low enough to be like, “Yes. I now give myself permission a bit more money,” because wild rice is a bit more expensive but it still less expensive than eating out at a restaurant and very, very, very healthy. I love it. I love that. I want to share a sauce since we’re talking about bowls, I’ll share a recipe that was shared with me, and it’s kind of been passed down from whole food person to whole food person. It’s called 3-2-1 sauce. It’s three parts balsamic, two parts mustard, 1 part maple syrup. But I don’t know anyone who likes it that sweet. So although the name is 3-2-1 sauce, it’s really more like 32.25. You just put a tiny, tiny bit of maple syrup. It does not need that much. Sometimes with a sweet balsamic it doesn’t need any. You mix those three together in any ratio that makes you happy but it’s supposed to be 3-2-1 but for me, like I said, 32.25. Balsamic, mustard and any kind of mustard you want, any kind of balsamic you want, of course always organic. Then any kind of maple syrup. Hopefully real maple syrup. Mix the three together. You can have it in a jar or something and then you take it to the restaurant with you. If you want to eat really, really clean but you want to go out, Thai restaurant in the back of the menu, there’s a section called side dish, you can order steamed vegetables. Sometimes they have black rice, sometimes they have brown rice. You can get a whole bunch of steamed vegetables and then pour your 321 sauce on it. So good. Most restaurant will do just plain steamed vegetables. I love steamed cabbage. They often, the Thai restaurants will often do steamed cabbage. It’s so good. I’ve been filming with one of my friends, Naomi. We both went plant-based for health reasons and have seen great results. We noticed that a lot of my listeners want to be healthier but don’t know how to cook. So we’ve been filming videos on how to cook. I’m about to launch a membership site that’s going to be affordable for everyone where they learn how to cook. I’m saying, listen, people don’t have to give up their meat. That’s their choice. I’m not a high-pressure vegan salesperson. I’m not trying to convert. I went kicking and screaming because I loved meat and now I can’t believe how good I feel when I stopped eating it. Stopped eating eggs, stopped eating meat. I already cut out dairy and I feel like a millions bucks within days of not eating meat. I could not believe. But there’s this part of my brain that was screaming, yelling going, “Where’s the meat? Where’s the meat?” For me, I went kicking and screaming. My husband went vegan overnight and he’s coming up on his two-year veganniversary. He went from eating basically 100% Atkins all the time to zero meat. He just gave it up cold turkey. Me, I weaned off of it. Took me like two years. Now, I love cooking these foods and bowls is totally the answer, like you said. So my thing is, we’re making all these videos to show people just how to eat more healthy food. They just add it. If they want to still do meat that’s fine. They can just add more healthy food to that. If they want to try this they can try it. I love that it’s accessible. It actually saves time and saves money to eat this way especially with exactly what you said, which is the food prep.   [1:39:58] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Absolutely. I have a dressing on the cleanse that’s called, it’s really called, the detox herb vinaigrette. You could put it on salads and bowls. It’s a little different than what’ you were talking about. It’s a handful of parsley, cilantro and basil and garlic and apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper and olive oil. It goes into a Vitamix. It is to die for. It is so delicious. You just put a little bit of that in a bowl or your salad or even you can put it in chicken if you want to eat meat or fish. It’s so good. You’re right to have these really good dressings in the fridge to make it all come together. There’s also an herb salt that I live and die by. It’s sea salt with fresh herbs in it. It’s called Herbamare, H-E-R-B-A-M-A-R-E. That’s also a lifesaver. You put that on to spice up any kind of bowl dish. It’s fabulous too. There are some great things to do out there. I know. I’m definitely, I’m not total plant-based vegan but I’m 80%. I’m more of a pescatarian. I do love fish and I feel like I can’t get enough calories and enough oomph from my vegan lifestyle so I do have to add in some of the animal. Like you’re saying, my husband who passed away, he was a big Atkins guy and he was a sugarholic. He had to have sweets after every meal. A little dessert, a little sweets and then in his office was the crappy candy in the bowls.   [1:41:41] Ashley James: He just ate meat and candy.   [1:41:43] Elissa Goodman: Candy and sugar kept him going. I know. He was watching his weight with the Atkins, whole thing. He did lose weight and looked great so no one would have ever known.   [1:41:54] Ashley James: Which we know just call it keto. We don’t call it Atkins anymore. It’s basically the same diet with a different name because people who do Keto wrong end up just eating Atkins. Because Atkins is mostly protein and Keto is mostly fat. Most people don’t actually keto and they think they are, they’re actually eating Atkins because very, very few people eat 80% fat. They’re just thinking they can eat butter and cheese and meat. They think they’re doing Keto but they’re doing Atkins. Either one, not healthy long-term. Not a healthy long-term diet. You’re missing minerals, you’re missing nutrients, it’s very acidic for the body. We could go on and on. I love that you’re listening to your body. That’s another thing I want to emphasize is that there is no one diet that’s right for anyone. There’s no diet dogma. You might turn around tomorrow and check-in with yourself and your body might say, “I need more fish. I need no fish. I need eggs. I don’t need eggs. I need more broccoli. I don’t need any broccoli.” It is about listening. Getting to that point where you could listen to that body and then make some adjustments and be willing to experiment. Be willing to do the eliminations. Be willing to go egg-free. I discovered, eggs were the last thing for me to kick to be 100% plant-based. I started to get heart palpitations which was so weird because I’m like, “I am so healthy. What’s going on?” I even saw a cardiologist. He’s like, “Your heart is super healthy.” He said something really interesting. He said, “The heart is so strong and so sensitive that any stressor in the body the heart will respond to.” It could be emotional stress, mental stress, it could be physical stress. The heart is resetting. So my heart palpitations were from the heart resetting and I thought, “That’s really weird.” So then I cut out eggs and my heart palpitations went away. Then I reintroduced them and my heart palpitations came back like while I was eating them. So, over and over again, I could basically turn on and off my heart palpitations by whether I ate eggs or not. So I just went no eggs whatsoever and they haven’t returned. That was, I don’t know, almost a year ago. Interesting that the body will speak to us. If we listen, listen to the symptoms and then make adjustments in our diet and be willing to experiment to figure out. You know what, there was a time when eggs were really healthy for me. There was. My body really responded well to them and then there was a time that it wasn’t. So there might be a time when cashews really work well for you.   [1:44:27] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Worked fine. Yes. And then now they aren’t.   [1:44:28] Ashley James: But we have to be willing to change our belief system about food to shift. Now, what happened in your life that had you go to become a certified nutritionist? When did that happen in your life story?   [1:44:42] Elissa Goodman: Well, it was two years after my husband passed away. Because I really felt like I had two girls that had two parents who had cancer. So I really needed to do a deep dive into figuring out how to keep myself healthy and them healthy because I was worried about them. I really thought they’re going to think they’re going to have cancer because of us potentially in their mindset. I needed to be around for them for a long period of time because at that time, they only had me. So I just went back to school like learning for that reason not to become a nutritionist. There was no part of me that was looking at going into a nutrition career. I just wanted to learn as much as I could about just how to be healthy and strong. Then also emotionally. How to release these traumas that we had gone through and to help the girls with all that. It was so spectacular. I mean I fell in love with it. I just couldn’t get enough of it. Still, to this day, I can’t get enough of it. Honestly, I go a little overboard of like everything that I read and investigate. When I graduated. A friend of mine had brought this restaurant from northern California called Café Gratitude, which was a vegan restaurant down to LA. She asked me to do a cleanse together for them. So I was like, “A cleanse? What the hell is that?” But I had a marketing background and an advertising background. Their food was really healthy. So it was fun and easy. I did that. I ran that cleanse for Café Gratitude for like three and a half years. A year after she asked me to do it for them, this macrobiotic restaurant in LA called M Café, asked me to do a reset for them. For them, similar. Their food was cooked and raw. So I did that for about four and a half – five years. Then a natural food market in LA, Erewhon, which is the premier health food store in the country. I absolutely love this place. It’s crazy out of control in terms of its prices and what’s going on in the health world. But it’s pretty cool because it has everything, the latest of everything. They asked me to put a cleanse for them too. So I did that for a little while. So I’ve got involved in this whole cleansing world but what it was it was just really resetting your body and healthy eating for five days. Then six years ago I designed my own. The rest is history. I’ve been cooking and delivering food to people for six years. Getting ready next year to probably expand into being able to service more people. It’s all delivered in glass and it’s organic and it’s homemade. It’s just is a lot of love and nurturing goes into the food. These people just keep coming back for it and we sell out every time we do it. So that’s really my story. I honestly have to pinch myself at the fact that I’m here and that I’m doing what I love. When I sat down on this course I never thought I would love it. But also, that does help to keep you healthy.   [1:48:00] Ashley James: It’s kind of sad that a cleanse is just eating healthy for five days. I mean really, “Why can’t we eat that way all the time?” I mean really. That it’s just like, “Why can’t we eat that way all the time?”   [1:48:10] Elissa Goodman: I know, I know, I know. I’m trying to get people to incorporate some of this food into the all the time. Because when you see how you feel after five days and you’re sleeping better and you’re stress is better and you even lose weight with eating a lot of food, it’s a lot of food we give them. Because I don’t want them to starve or be deprived. So then they hopefully get the bug and they go, “I want to feel more like this more often.”   [1:48:39] Ashley James: A hundred calories is nothing when you think about, people think 100 calories is maybe a snack, right? A hundred calories is nothing. But eat a hundred calories of broccoli, that’s a pound. That’s like two and a half cups. You eat two and a half cups of broccoli, you’re good. You’re good for an hour. That’s only 100 calories. So yeah. You can feel them up. Non-starchy vegetables are 100 calories a pound. Starchy vegetables are 300 to 400 calories a pound. Calories isn’t everything but it’s just like gaining perspective. If someone’s eating 1500 calories of fruits vegetables and some kind of healthy starches. That is a huge portion of food. They’re probably eating more fiber in one day than they do in one month. So they’re going to feel amazing. Fiber binds to the toxins and pulls them out of your gut, helps remove them from the body and also feeds the microbiome. So you’re really helping them with that reset. But it’s kind of like, if you look at it, it’s kind of like we’re all alcoholics and we just stop drinking alcohol for five days. It’s like, “Here, I’m going to give you a cleanse. It’s call drink water and nothing else. Don’t drink anything except for water. No alcohol for five days.” You feel amazing – we probably feel bad for the first few days because you’re body’s like, “What is happening?” then the fifth day you’re like, “Oh my gosh. I can think again. My liver stopped hurting.” We need to start eating healthy. This is good. This is good timing. I mean, I keep saying we, I eat healthy but I always look and go, “Why am I letting this in my life? Why am I running to that?” And I just become the observer going, “That’s interesting that I’m making that food choice. Where is this really coming from?” I think so much of our food choices are this unconscious emotional whether it’s a reward. “Oh. I did something. I had a really hard day I deserve this.” Or “I had a really great day. Let’s celebrate.” Or “I’m really stressed out. I don’t want to feel this way anymore.” We run to, we justify. That little voice in our head justifies because we’re addicted to the dopamine response, the pleasure response we get because we’re trained from kids to get treats. I always see more infections after Halloween in people. That’s what happened to me when I was 13. I was really health from age 6 to 13 because I saw a naturopath when I was 6. We cut out sugar and cut out a bunch of food and I took supplements. I was really healthy from 6 to 13. Then at 13 I rebelled. I was very upset with my parents. I was 13 basically. I did normal 13-year-old stuff but I ate an entire bag of my entire Halloween collection of candy, an entire bag of candy in one night. That was the first time I ever needed antibiotics. Very shortly after that I had an infection that was a chronic infection that lasted from Halloween through Christmas. To this day, I think back and I go, “How many people eat way more sugar than they used to do on Halloween then within a month they’re sick?” They don’t correlate the two because sugar – actually there’s really something interesting. I can’t remember the exact white blood cell. One of our white blood cells goes dormant when we eat sugar. It also feeds the candida, feeds the bad microbiome.   [1:52:17] Elissa Goodman: I didn’t know that about the white blood cell. Interesting.   [1:52:19] Ashley James: Yeah. A naturopath I work with, he mentioned. I’ll go figure out which one it was he was saying. But there’s one white blood cell that goes dormant when there’s too much sugar. The too much sugar being exactly what we consume when we eat any kind of sugar would be enough. But when we eat a whole food that doesn’t happen.   [1:52:41] Elissa Goodman: Right. Right. With its fiber intact. That’s interesting. I sort of thought all the white blood cells go dormant when we eat sugar, the crappy sugar.   [1:52:57] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. It definitely affects the immune system to the point where people get infections. I just wonder, we call this time of year flu season. Think about how much sugar we consume in the summertime versus right around now. We have Halloween, we have Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s. These are four times where people on average are drinking more alcohol, eating more pie, eating more sugar, making excuses or reasons, eggnog. Just think of all the sugar we’re eating more so this time of the year than we would in April or any other time of the year. I just wonder how much of a correlation there is between the types of food this time of year and then people getting sick come January and February and you know, the flu.   [1:53:49] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. That makes sense. That does. Then maybe vitamin D levels going down because you’re not outside as much.   [1:53:58] Ashley James: Stress growing up, we’re not dealing with our emotions, we’re on our family’s.   [1:54:02] Elissa Goodman: Yes. Very true. I know.   [1:54:09] Ashley James: Having so much experience helping people for so many years, I’d love for you to teach the listeners something that we can actively do today. Some actionable homework or steps that we could take to begin to build a healthy body that prevents cancer.   [1:54:28] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. I would love to. So I would say that the first thing is to really tap into managing your stress. There’s some great apps out there that you can listen to. Unplug has a great one, Headspace, Calm.com. Like Headspace and Calm.com are the big ones where it can really help just relax your brain, stop thinking for a bit, not that you have to go brain dead but just to calm down the brain. I think putting one of those apps on your phone, I use Calm.com, listening to some of the music or the waves of the water just for five minutes. Is huge for the system. Absolutely amazing. Lowering cortisol levels like that is huge. Then there’s a study that has come out where drinking even half of your body weight in water is not enough. So they’re basically saying 90 ounces of water or liquid that doesn’t include caffeine.   [1:55:42] Ashley James: When you say half your body weight, because we don’t want them drinking pound or kilograms of water, you’re referring to for every pound you are you drink an ounce. So if someone’s 200 pounds, they would drink 100 ounces.   [1:55:55] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Drink 100 ounces. Yeah.   [1:55:57] Ashley James: Because some people might go, “I have to drink how many pounds of water?”   [1:56:00] Elissa Goodman: Yes. You’re right. Ounces. It’s really important, like I said, get up in the morning and drink 16 ounces is the minimum mandatory amount. That would be life-changing. If you put a little bit of lemon in there to alkalize the body and to clean out the intestines, that also is pretty amazing. So it’s the stress, it’s the hydration. For me, what I find is really really been phenomenal in my life is I’ve been a juicer ever since I was diagnosed with cancer. I have a Breville Cold Fountain Plus, not expensive.   [1:56:37] Ashley James: I’m so glad you brought this up. That’s so funny. I’ve been doing research to do a whole segment on juicing. That is so funny you brought this up because I own I think every juicer on the planet except the cold press, the kind that goes in from the top. I have all the old school cold pressing ones but I don’t have the ones from the top. I’ve been watching tons of review videos trying to decipher, “Is this just a new mouse trap they’re trying to sell us or is it really better?” Is it really better to do the cold press, the slow masticating juicer with the top loading vegetable or do the old school masticating juicers work just as well?   [1:57:20] Elissa Goodman: I think the old school works just as well.   [1:57:21] Ashley James: Okay, good. Because I own like seven.   [1:57:26] Elissa Goodman: I juice and drink right away. So it’s really easy and it work really fast because those cold press ones don’t work very fast unless you’re going to get a high-powered one that’s like extremely expensive. Those ones that we’ve had on the market even when they’re heating a heat source still I think work just as well. I’ve seen incredible results from it. I do a lot of green juices. I just do simple juices. It’s non-expensive. I do celery and cucumber and lemon and ginger. I was doing romaine because of the salmonella I’ve gotten away from the romaine. Parsley, which is a heavy metal detoxifier and cilantro. I just thrown in these greens that are not expensive. It really is a liquid IV of vitamins and minerals into the body. They go right into the cells.   [1:58:25] Ashley James: You know what tastes amazing? Cucumber and lemon. Just juicing cucumber and lemon. Get four to six big cucumbers and one lemon. Juice the whole lemon. Make sure it’s organic juice. The whole lemon including the rind because of those wonderful essential oils that come out. Here’s a tip for saving money. Go to your local coop and ask if they give a case discount. I was just on the phone this morning at PCC, which is a local coop here. They’ll give us a 10% discount if we order a case. Then the produce manager, talk to the produce manager is willing to help me with case size. She’s like, “I could make a case 10 pounds to 40 pounds.” She’s willing to make it a smaller case to make it manageable. 10% off groceries, heck I’ll go for it. She’ll even help me source the freshest. She’s like really geeks out on it. So find a produce manager at a health food store that’s willing to work with you because with case discounts and buying in bulk, you can save so much money. One of the naturopaths I studied with her passion is to help women who are on food stamps who are in need, in poverty, help them eat healthy. She shows them how to use their food stamps in a way to buy bulk brown rice, beans, vegetables. She goes, “Get a kiddie pool even if you live in an apartment. Get a kiddie pool. Fill it with dirt. Put it on your balcony and grow your own kale or grow some micro greens.” You can do it on a budget and get your greens into your everyday. Because her thing is six cups of greens no matter what every day. However you get them in you get them in you. She talks about when you’re in a budget here’s what you can buy that’s not organic kind of thing. That buying in bulk can really save you a lot of money. I’ve done this before where I go with another family or even two families and you can buy in bulk, bulk apples right from a farmer. Find bulk deals. So if we ended up having to buy bulk broccoli or something, two other families could split it, right. That helps you save money. There’s ways. They’re creative ways. If you’re dedicated to your health and it’s the number one most important thing, we don’t let money stop us. We just get creative and figure out how to do it. It’s not that we can’t do it. It’s just how can we do it? Building those relationships with produce manages. I have a friend, I don’t know how he does it, he’s a raw vegan. He lives on romaine lettuce and mangoes and all kinds of raw foods. He will often post on Facebook. He gets the most amazing deals. He just becomes friends with all the produce managers. He just talks to them. He’s nice to them and tells them what he does and they will give him screaming deals. Like screaming deals on big cases of food. It’s just getting creative. But I love that especially with juicing because we need a lot of it. Our Costco has a lot of organic foods. So I get the carrots by the giant bag of carrots and sweet potatoes all organic.   [2:01:51] Elissa Goodman: Which is beautiful. I am personally a purist so I do not juice high fruit even vegetables. So beets and carrots are no go for me because I think we get enough sugar in our diet and I don’t need to have all this sugar shooting into my bloodstream. So I eat carrots and beats and then I roast them. I absolutely think they are crucial. They’re very anti-cancer. I do six of the greens and lemon, ginger. No apple in my juices unless it’s summer and it’s super hot outside. That’s a different story. I mean, because you burn off the sugar. Definitely a little better when it’s hot like you said, not in the winter but in the summer and you’re out in the heat. Juicing has been amazing. For the readers, upping your fiber content. Basically we need fiber to flush all these toxins in our system and we’re getting barely 15 grams of fiber and we need to be getting a minimum of 25, really 35 a day. So that fiber is crucial. Even flax and chia seeds and also all the legumes are high fiber. We need definitely to be focusing on – and even don’t know if you know, even a cup of raspberries is like eight grams of fiber.   [2:03:27] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s so great. If you have to strain it all in the toilet. If you have to strain at any point then you’re not getting enough fiber and enough water. If you’re not getting enough water and fiber, you don’t need to bring your cellphone to go sit on the toilet. You basically sit down, number two happens and you’re done. It’s just so fast and it’s perfectly formed. I have an entire episode on healthy poop. It was so funny to do. Dr. Heidi Semanie, the same naturopath that did the episode all on vitamin D. It’s how to have the perfect poop. Really amazing how little fiber we eat and how much fiber our ancestors ate and how much fiber we really should eat. I’ve tracked it before and now I eat about 50 grams a day.   [2:04:13] Elissa Goodman: Wow. That’s fantastic.   [2:04:14] Ashley James: I mean, it’s really amazing. I know, right? But I feel amazing. On the days that I don’t eat enough fiber, I really feel it the next day. It takes your health to a whole new level when you’re getting that fiber.   [2:04:27] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. It does. Absolutely. That’s really crucial and we don’t think about that. That’s the simple thing too to add and make conscious of it in your diet. I think I am a believer that animal protein, eating too much of it is a precursor for cancer. So I say, cut back on your animal protein. Eat animal protein one time a day I try to get my clients to do not three times a day. Incorporating more plant-based proteins into your diet on the other two if you eat breakfast and lunch and dinner. That’s really my take. I think that really watching your sugar. We’re only supposed to have 25 added sugar per day. If you do juice a green juice and you put an apple in it like 16 ounces, that’s 18 grams of sugar in that one green juice. Then let’s say you have a bar like an RX bar that has 12 grams of sugar, your one bar and one juice you’re already over your sugar allotment.   [2:05:33] Ashley James: What if someone were to eat the apple and instead of RX bar, which is processed, what if they ate three apples a day? Are you saying that when it’s in its whole food form it isn’t considered added sugar?   [2:05:45] Elissa Goodman: Yes. Right. Right.   [2:05:48] Ashley James: I’d rather eat the whole apple.   [2:05:51] Elissa Goodman: Right. Yeah. It’s always better to just eat the real food always than doing anything that’s processed. Even I think with the protein powders. I know they’re super popular and I do use them in a pinch but a lot of times I try to go with maybe a couple tablespoons of hemp seeds, organic soy milk or some cashews or almonds or almond butter like real foods.   [2:06:21] Ashley James: Pumpkin seeds are so full of protein that you can blend them. You can get pumpkin seed protein which is ground pumpkin seeds which I’m not sure about because once you grind another see, you’re exposing the fat to oxygen and it becomes rancid. But pumpkin seeds themselves you could grind them and then add them to a smoothie or just throw them on your food. I like to do that, just a handful of pumpkin seeds thrown on the food. They’re very high on protein as well.   [2:06:51] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Very. They’re awesome.   [2:06:53] Ashley James: I really believed when I first started this podcast, it will be four years next month that I’ve been doing this.   [2:06:59] Elissa Goodman: Wow. Congratulations   [2:07:00] Ashley James: Thank you. When I first started this, I mean if listeners go back and listen to episode one and follow my journey because I’ve been on a health journey for many years before I started the podcast, I also believe we’re never done. No matter how much we know we’re never done. I’m sure if you were to check back in with you at ten years from now, you’ll be like, “I can’t believe myself back in my 50s. What was I even thinking? I learned so much.” I’d love to have you back on the show and hear the – basically old me when I first started this podcast just almost four years ago, I really did not believe that I could go a meal without meat at all. That was just, “Are you kidding me?” that wasn’t even healthy. In my mind, that wasn’t even healthy. You should eat meat at every meal. Then I interviewed, this was very early one like maybe episode 30 it’s like very early on in the podcast, Suzanna McGee, and I still remember her name. She’s a wonderful woman. Has a beautiful accent because she was raised in four or five different European countries so you can’t quite pin-point but she just has the most beautiful melodic accent. She’s a pro-athlete raw vegan in LA actually, near Venice beach. One of the things she does she teaches tennis. She looks 20 years younger than she is. She acts 30 years younger than she is. She talks about what she eats in a day. She swears by adding, she takes a handful of pumpkin seeds and throws it on everything she eats. She swears that. That is her protein source. She never runs out of energy. She trains people out in the hot sun day after day teaching tennis and plays tennis matches and just is go, go, go. Always with lots of energy. She swears by the pumpkin seeds, handful on everything. She always believes in one big salad a day, which she’s a warmer climate so she can do that. I think colder climates I’d rather do like you said souping. Do some soup which is just a hot smoothie basically.   [2:09:07] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. It is. It basically is a hot smoothie. That’s what I say too. Any way that you can get a juice, a smoothie with a green spatter or all with greens and a pureed soup because it bypasses the digestive system and get those nutrients into your cells, home run. So, that’s what I would say.   [2:09:30] Ashley James: Get more fiber. Get more water. Fill your body up with whole foods. Try to decrease meats with one meal a day you’re saying. You are pescatarian. You get your animal protein from fish. So people can experiment see how their body feels. It’s interesting, I just interviewed Cilla Whatcott. She actually worked on healing her breast cancer and her naturopath who’s a naturopathic oncologist did her DNA, and said, and I don’t know about these markers but she said, “Your DNA says you need meat.” She had gone basically vegan after she was diagnosed with cancer. Then she added a little bit of meat back. Nowhere near as much as the standard American diet but just a little bit. It was free range all that good stuff, organic. The chicken was very happy and lived a good life and no pesticides and all that and lived out in a field somewhere. Then she started to feel really good after adding that back which is interesting to me because some people respond very well to no meat. Some people respond very well to a little me. We don’t know until we try. We have to try. You’re saying get to bed before ten. You’re saying fall asleep –   [2:10:59] Elissa Goodman: Let’s get to bed by ten. Get to bed by ten. Well, that’s the ultimate. I mean, you know in the old days when we didn’t have electricity and the sun went down, we start to unwind and melatonin kicked in. We were able to go to sleep earlier. Just try to get into bed. I mean, I got to give my clients a leeway to fall asleep by 11:00 is just what I say.   [2:11:21] Ashley James: But optimal. Optimal. Let’s say we all had a cancer diagnosis and we’re like, “You know what? We’re going to beat this.” We need 100% change our life. Give me the optimal. There’s no room for, I don’t know, there’s no room for just being… What’s a way of saying where it’s just like, “I want to treat myself. I’m going to go have some chocolate ice cream. I’ll go to the gym tomorrow.” What is that? There’s no room for that. We’re putting our body firs.t we don’t need that dopamine form the food. We’re going to get it in another way. We’ll go hug our family or go do something fun. We’re not going to poison our body to get some dopamine. We’re not trading our health for some dopamine high. We’re not addicts. We can do this. So, if we were to optimize our health to completely heal our body. What would you say we should do?   [2:12:24] Elissa Goodman: I would say, completely optimize, the sleep is crucial. Sleep is absolutely. That’s when we reset and regenerate. We do need to calm down our central nervous system. That’s absolutely crucial. Then focus on fruits and vegetables because that’s where all the nutrients are. That is really really crucial in terms of getting that into our cells, into our mitochondria. There is a lot to all of this. Then the stress part. Just I was saying, trying to figure out how to best destress your life.   [2:13:18] Ashley James: It might be looking at going getting a counselor. Finding one that you really really work well with. There’s an old mentality, an old belief system that we go to counseling because we are broken or there’s something wrong with us, that we’re abnormal. People who are walking around with stressful lives go, “Well I don’t need a counselor I’m not abnormal.” That’s the old way of thinking about counseling that only abnormal or broken or mentally unhealthy people go to counselors. The new way of thinking, and I think millenials are really really adopting this because culture is change that we go for optimal health. You wouldn’t wait to get sick to go to a naturopath. You go to a naturopath and then they help you to stay healthy. You don’t wait to completely mentally breakdown before you see a counselor. Go see a counselor especially behavioral therapy where we’re looking at how can we create healthy boundaries, what kind of actual step in relationships to support ourselves and how can we get a new perspective? I have a girl friend who’s very busy. She owns her own business. She’s a personal chef in Seattle. So she just drives around everywhere cooking for all these wealthy families who have totally different diet plans. She has a young daughter and a boyfriend so she’s got a busy life. She said on Facebook once, she goes, “Everyone asks how I keep my stuff together. How do I keep it all together because I’m always happy and I’m always on top of everything? I’m a great mom, a great girlfriend, I have a great business. How do I do it?” She goes, “I go to a therapist three times a week. If I didn’t do that, because I don’t unload on my friend, my clients, my boyfriend. I don’t unload on people. I go to my therapist and I work stuff out. That is how I stay on top of my health.” I was like, “Oh man. I love that.” We could think about going to a therapist as a way of distressing, as a way of helping our physical body by helping our mental, emotional body. So I love that you brought that up.   [2:15:26] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Yeah. Nowadays there’s also great healers that you can talk to and coaches and things that actually have the ability. Some really good ones that can go in and really see what kind of stressors are causing you issues to really kind of tune in to you and some of the good ones and say, “Hey. This is what I’m picking up from you. Because sometimes we can’t tap into our own stuff. Then we can start thinking about, “Wow. That really does make sense. That has been on my mind and that is bothering me. So maybe going from there to figure out how to release it from our body.   [2:16:08] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s great to a perspective on the blind spots. We all have them. No one’s perfect. It’s those who are in action that are going to get the traction they need. So you have so many resources available. People can work with you one-on-one. You have a book. You have a Cancer Hacks book. You have the soup cleanse, the seven-day reset. Tell us about all. Then you’re working on an autoimmune book. When’s that coming out?   [2:16:43] Elissa Goodman: So, probably next year. I have an autoimmune hacks pdf on the website. If you sign-up for my newsletter you’ll get the download for free. I’m actually trying to figure out how to put it in my website so you could get it for free anyway if you’re already someone who gets my newsletter weekly. But I do weekly put out a nutrition and a recipe that I test. We test a lot of recipes. I’m always trying to give out nutrition information and I’m on social media and all of that. The autoimmune thing has been rally fascinating to me as well like the cancer was and still is because the idea that I was able to overcome the caner and then overcome the autoimmune just feels so empowering to me. I just want to be able to help people and tell people then believe in themselves that they can do it. It’s just the best feeling ever to be able to do that in my life. I’m one lucky lady.   [2:17:48] Ashley James: I love it. Well. You’re going to have to come back on the show when you –   [2:17:51] Elissa Goodman: Thank you, Ashley.   [2:17:52] Ashley James: Yeah. When you release your book you’re going to have to come back on and dive totally into the autoimmune nutrition protocol, which is your book that’s coming out. Did you pick a name for it yet?   [2:18:07] Elissa Goodman: It might be called Autoimmune Hacks just like the Cancer Hacks. So probably going to be more about my story and how I healed through the whole process. So it’s going to be more personal.   [2:18:20] Ashley James: Awesome.   [2:18:21] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. It’s been fun talking with you. You’re a wealth of information.   [2:18:27] Ashley James: Well, this was great. Tell the listeners more about how they can work with you. So your website is your name.com. It’s so easy, Elissa Goodman. Of course the links to everything else she does is going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Tell us about what it is like to work with you virtually?   [2:18:46] Elissa Goodman: Virtually? I love the virtual. It’s shocking. I used to think I would love the in person but I’ve been doing a lot of Zoom calls and I’m probably going to go more just to Zoom because it feels like you’re right there with the person. You’re sort of like right face to face with them and it’s so fun. I really get to see their personality and also learn a lot about what I was saying earlier about, how they came into the world and what was the birth like? Then their mom breastfed them. Do they have any traumas in their life? What kind of health issues do they have and how they eat. I really do a deep dive into getting behind the psyche, the emotional components, what might be happening physiological in the body and just really finding out also what drives them? What wakes them up in the morning? What’s their passion and their purpose? All of that is what is going to tell me why they’re where they’re at. The interesting thing is, by the end of the session, they’re telling me why they’re where they’re at.   [2:20:00] Ashley James: Yes.   [2:20:02] Elissa Goodman: So it’s so cool because it’s like, “I already knew why I have digestive issues or sleep issues.” At the beginning you’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I’ve got that. I don’t know why that’s going on.” But we talk and we talk and then I’m like, “You just answered the reason why you have digestive issues. Did you just hear yourself? You honestly came to that answer and that conclusion on your own because your instincts were right on.” They were probably right on before the phone call but you didn’t just trust them. That’s the cool thing. This job doesn’t feel hard to me because of that. Because just being able to tune somebody back into themselves is like watching those light bulbs go off for them and then having them institute a few things that they make changes on. Then life starts to unfold in so many beautiful ways. You’re like, “Wow. That is the ultimate.”   [2:21:11] Ashley James: So awesome. I love that you said tune them back into themselves.   [2:21:16] Elissa Goodman: Yeah.   [2:21:18] Ashley James: That’s amazing when we get to see a health coach and it’s just they become that reflection that also the open listening to allow us to empty out and then allow us to sort out that chaos that’s been our lives and been in our head and then start to see your lives clearly. So you are helping them sort that out just by being there listening, asking the right questions and definitely being the one asking the right questions. Then tuning back into themselves. It’s beautiful. I love that you put it that way. Awesome. Well, the links if listeners want to connect with you, get your free pdf, make sure that they’re following you for your autoimmune book. All those links are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Elissa, it’s been such a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so much for being here and also for scheduling exactly when you need to schedule. Perfect timing. I think it’s wonderful. I’d love to have you back especially for the launch of your next book. That would be wonderful.   [2:22:27] Elissa Goodman: Absolutely. Thank you. It was a pleasure. And I can’t wait for it to come out.   [2:22:32] Ashley James: Me too.   [2:22:36] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program. Get Connected With Elissa Goodman! Website Instagram Facebook Cancer Hacks Book Soup Cleanse 7-Day Reset Cleanse Super Seed Bars Recommended Reading By Elissa Goodman Radical Remission by Dr. Kelly Turner

Learn True Health Home Kitchen is COMING SOON! Join the FB group for first dibs! LearnTrueHealth.com/group Watch Cilla Whatcott's 3 Part Documentary Movie Series for Free This December. Visit Realimmunity.org Song: Skylike - Imaginary (Vlog No Copyright Music) Music promoted by Vlog No Copyright Music. Video Link: https://youtu.be/u4NkGLPUF1E   Choosing Real Immunity https://www.learntruehealth.com/choosing-real-immunity Highlights: Dr. Cilla’s documentaries Homeoprophylaxis is 90% effective in terms of disease prevention Hope4Cancer Center (Mexico, Tijuana, Cancun, Thailand, and Colombia) Role of mental attitude and meditation The support of those around you and your mental attitude are two huge factors Importance of clean living Fasting, the unsung hero of healing Homeopathics theory – it’s all about susceptibility It has to be our decision what we’re going to do with our body Homeopathy for cancer The Truth About Cancer documentary Influenzinum vs. flu shot The Type C personality Indiscriminate inflammation is what causes autoimmunity   In this episode, Dr. Cilla Whatcott will share with us how homeoprophylaxis aids in disease prevention, the choices that we make based on our needs, two huge factors that affect our health,and what it means to have real immunity.   [00:00:00] Intro: Hello, true health seekers. And welcome to another exciting Episode the Learn True Health podcast. I’m so excited for you to hear today’s interview with Dr. Dr. Cilla Whatcott. She is a regular guest on our show. She has been in Episode 137, 155, 228, and 305. So this is her fifth time being on the show. I highly recommend you go back and listen to our past interviews, especially the first one, 137, where she shares her story. So we jump right in to the interview without going into her story. But just a little bit of background, she’s a PhD in Homeopathy, specializing in homeoprophylaxis. She shares with us some amazing information about her battle and her winning her battle with triple positive, a very aggressive form of breast cancer. And her documentary series which is coming out in December and you can watch it for free, all three movies, that she has produced. Tons of amazing information from experts around the world who are wonderful doctors that help people to gain healthy immunity. So whether you have a chronic illness, whether you’re battling cancer, whether you’re a parent and you’re wondering how you can support your children in fighting infections, whether you have an autoimmune condition, this Episode applies to you. Basically, if you breathe and you have a pulse, this Episode applies to you because we all want to avoid getting influenza. We all want to avoid catching colds, or having a diagnosis of some kind of worse infection, or cancer. And today we cover some amazing information about supporting the body’s ability to heal itself and boosting the immune system with holistic medicine.  Please stay tuned. I’m launching a membership site that’s affordable to everyone. And it teaches people how to cook a whole food plant based diet. But what that means is you will learn amazing recipes in the kitchen that tastes phenomenal. And the focus is on healing food. So super foods and healing foods to heal the gut, to heal your liver, to heal your immune system. People who choose to still eat meat, you can still eat meat. You’re just going to learn how to add more wonderful nutrient dense foods to your life. If you want to try going totally whole food plant based, we teach you how to do that too. And we teach you how to do it for busy families, for people on a budget, for people with no time, for people who don’t even know how to cook. You’re going to learn everything you need to learn to be an amazing cook in the kitchen cooking healing foods that are delicious for the whole family. Even kids love these recipes. I know because I have a four year old. And my partner, Naomi, has three boys who are all very picky. And we both have husbands who also have different palates. So we’re having to constantly cook for many different palates. And so we bring our experience. And we do have some guest contributors as well. So we all bring our experience of how to cook on a budget, how to cook quickly, teach people how to cook with little experience. Wherever you are in the spectrum, we will help you to eat healthier and cook these delicious meals to heal the body. That’s the goal. How can we make it so that food tastes absolutely phenomenal, and is healing your body, and saves you money and saves you time? That’s exactly what you’re going to get from the Learn True Health Home Kitchen membership. We’re launching it soon. So stay tuned. Join the Facebook Group, Learn True Health in Facebook. Or go to the website learntruehealth.com and jump on the email list to stay tuned because it’s coming out soon. Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener. And thank you for sharing these Episodes with your friends and family so we can help as many people as possible to learn true health. Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 394. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show with us PhD Dr. Cilla Whatcott. This is your fifth time here. You’re like a regular.   [00:04:38] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: That’s right. That’s right. It’s great. Thank you for having me.     [00:04:42] Ashley James: Absolutely. It’s such a pleasure. I’ve enjoyed every interview with you. Listeners can go back and check out all of our different interviews around immunity, homeoprophylaxis, and using homeopathy, Episode 137, 155, 228, and 305. Now, I feel like I’ve been with you for the last three years along your journey wanting to spread this information about immunity, and what is immunity, and building real immunity. You decided that you were going to get this information out there. Your own public service to the world. Interviewing experts on building immunity. And you’ve created a three part docuseries. Is it like three separate movies?     [00:05:40] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yes. Three separate full feature documentaries. They’re each an hour and a half long.     [00:05:46] Ashley James: Awesome. Awesome. And I’ve watched the first one because you released the first one. And we talked about that in a previous interview. But now, finally, the day has come we’ve been waiting. That in December, you’re launching all three movies about building real immunity to the public for free. And you’re here today to teach us a bit about that. And share some of the details from your three movies that you’ve made about building real immunity. And do some myth busting, like fevers and vaccinations and whether, you know, our babies or children are immune, and how do we support their immunity. And if you’ve been exposed to something, does that mean you’re immune. And so you’ll go through some of the most common FAQs when it comes to what immunity is. And I know you’ve also been on a personal health journey with cancer. And I’m very interested for you to share your story. Because I know it’s an inspiring one. And you’ll also give us some great information, some great tools. Because when we don’t have a choice, it’s a dilemma. It’s a dilemma when the only thing we have is one system of medicine. And I love it when guests come on the show and share, “Hey, you may not know but there’s this other system of medicine and there’s actually hundreds of other systems of medicine that may help you.” And so I love to hear your story. Tell us about these movies that you’re doing. Dr. Cilla Whatcott’s website is realimmunity.org. Listeners can go there to sign up to receive the emails and the access to watch the three movies that you’ve created, these three documentaries. So tell us about these documentaries that are going to be released in December.     [00:07:47] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yes. So the first one is Quest For Real Immunity. And it’s the very first film in the series. And it’s basically dispelling the fear about childhood illnesses, fever, viruses. And taking a deeper look into intuition, a mother’s intuition and how that is responsible for so much of our survival, basically. So we’ll look at fear, we’ll look at intuition in that first film. And hear from a lot of experts, pediatricians, immunologists, researchers. Andy Wakefield is in the first film. Paul Thomas, the well-known pediatrician on the west coast is in the first film. He’s a wonderful guy. And in the first film, it’s fascinating because we’ve gone into his childhood. His history when I asked him what’s made you the person that you are. So we take a look back into his upbringing in Africa. And that will be the first weekend in December, the 6th through the 8th. Forty-eight hours of free launch. And you just have to sign up through realimmunity.org or the Facebook page, Real Immunity. And then the second weekend, we’ll be launching Passage To Real Immunity. And that film takes a look at the 200 year old method of homeoprophylaxis. And this has been around for all that time. Very, very safe. About 90% effective in terms of disease prevention. And it’s utilized in India, Cuba, South America. And there’s a lot of families now using it in the US for childhood diseases. There was a 15 year study that supports it with children from Australia. And we’ll hear also from Dr. Wakefield in that film. And a number of parents who have utilized homeoprophylaxis and what their impressions are. As well as some doctors from India, some doctors from Europe, and a researcher from Australia, Dr. Isaac Golden speaks in that film. And then the third weekend is December, I think, it’s the 20th of the 22nd, Friday through Sunday, 48 hours. And it’s called Choosing Real Immunity. And this film took a turn in content when my own diagnosis came in January of this year, 2019. The universe has a way of taking us to task when we say things. Right, Ashley?     [00:10:30] Ashley James: Yeah. You’ve been preaching immunity and holistic medicine. Then in January you get a cancer diagnosis.     [00:10:37] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Time to walk the talk.     [00:10:39] Ashley James: Yeah. Walking the talk. Now you were probably left in that little – that point of bifurcation where you could have gone into fear mode and run to the Allopathic doctors for chemotherapy and radiation surgery. And looking at their statistics on survival, they think if you live for five years after a cancer diagnosis, that’s success. And that you die at the end of five years. In talking with an Oncologist who I interviewed with one of my friends who has cancer, she said, “You know, I recommend X, Y, Z chemotherapy.” And I asked her what are the side effects. Potential side effect being leukemia. And she says it’s very small. It’s a very small percentage. And it turned out that it was like 2%. And I’m like, “You know, that’s not actually small.” If you think about how many people get this kind of chemotherapy, it’s not that small. It’s actually kind of like a large percentage of – it’s thousands of people end up getting leukemia if you think how many people are getting on this kind of chemotherapy. And I don’t know, I don’t want to put something in my body that has a 2% chance of causing leukemia. So that’s where my mind goes. So you had this moment. I definitely want to hear about it. I definitely hear about that moment where you had to walk your talk.     [00:12:24] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. So it interweaves with the content of this third film, Choosing Real Immunity, because I had to choose. I completely trashed all the content that I had lined up and ready for post-production, re-interviewed a number of different individuals, which I’ll share with you. And the entire movie switched to kind of my journey in a way inadvertently. It wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the star of the third film. But it’s about how do we choose real immunity and what are our choices. And initially, I was struck with fear. But at the same time, Ashley, I had this intense sense that it was a sacred blessing what I was being served up. Because it was an opportunity for me to make necessary changes in my life, an opportunity for me to walk the talk that I’ve been teaching and preaching for the last decade, and a learning opportunity. You know, one of the things that I regretted when I got so busy in my practice was I wasn’t open to learning as much because I was so busy treating and serving other people. And one thing I had to do was cut my practice back about 70%. And I made the choice to go to Mexico, to a place called Hope4Cancer. And they have clinics in Tijuana, Cancun, Thailand, and Colombia. I went to Cancun. It’s a three week program. You stay in a hotel. A van picks you up with the other patients at 7:00 a.m. You’re in the clinic until 3:00 p.m. They serve your meals, all organic, natural, they juice, they cook vegetarian. There’s a chef there. And then you go back to the hotel at 3:00 p.m. Have dinner with your spouse or whoever came with you. And then go back to the clinic the next morning. Six days a week. Sundays were free. And I was there for three weeks. My program includes two follow up visits, which one I took in June and when I took an October just recently. And then it includes home care for one year after that.  Where you get a phone call every three weeks but you have access to them to call them up or email them at any time to ask questions and receive home care. And they do send you home with lots of supplements, therapies, some equipment, everything comes home with you. So it’s a very inclusive program. It’s not a one size fits all. It’s very individualized to the person and their form of cancer. My breast cancer was stage two, but it was an aggressive form. It had a 40% proliferation rate. And it was triple positive.  And that means estrogen positive, progesterone positive, and HER2 positive. So after about eight, nine months, nothing had grown, nothing had changed, which is a win. That’s a success in itself with the type of cancer that I had. But it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to see it going away. And of course, fear is always in the background when you have that kind of diagnosis. And I actually opted to have surgery at that point. So my integrative Oncologist I was seeing, Nasha Winters. And also I was having dark field microscopy, which is looking at the blood under a microscope to see at the cellular level what’s happening. And both my labs and my dark field microscopy were stable and improving. So clearly I was improving at a cellular level. And everyone agreed that having surgery at that point would not be disruptive. It would not cause the cancer to spread. So I did opt to have a mastectomy at that point and remove the tumor itself. Because every time I felt it, I knew it was there. my focus was on it. And if I learned anything during this journey, it’s that what we focus on enlarges. And we give it energy. Whatever we focus on, we give energy. So roundabout June, after my initial three weeks at Hope4Cancer, I recognized what a large role my mental attitude had in the whole process, my thought processes And I decided to do a week long intensive seminar with Dr. Joe Dispenza in meditation. And it was intense. Some days we meditated as much as seven hours in a day. And they were all guided meditations that he did with lots of explanations and data about brain waves, about pineal gland, about all of the aspects that he was promoting with his education about meditation. And it was life changing. And learning how to focus one’s mind and keep it focused in the right direction. And how you can change outcomes with visualization, with focus became very, very important to me. So I’ve been meditating 45 minutes a day ever since June when I went to that conference – that seminar. And also interviewed Dr. Joe Dispenza, who is in the third film, Choosing Real Immunity. In the film itself, I chose to interview different individuals, Dr. Tony Jimenez, who’s the medical director of Hope4Cancer, about how he chose this path. He’s an MD but how did he choose this path to take? And how do people make the choice to do something alternative? I interviewed Dr. Joe Dispenza, about children’s minds, and how they form, and what’s happening in brainwaves in children, and how we can choose to raise our children in order to be aware and be conscious and raise their level of consciousness. I interview another gentleman who talks about the levels of consciousness themselves based on Dr. David Hawkins work. And how we can raise those levels. I interviewed Torako Yui, who’s a Japanese homeopath. She was in corporate industry and was very, very sick, almost died. And met a homeopath who saved her life, turned her around, and she chose to become a homeopath and start a homeopathic school. So I’ve also interviewed a medical doctor who has become a homeopath. Another woman who started homeopathic school. Just lots of interviews about people making choices. Why do people choose the other road, you know, the road less traveled? And how do we do that? Because, Ashley, my biggest goal is to inspire people to know they have choices. And they can make their life what they want it to be. And to rise above the herd, basically, and make choices for yourself based on what your needs are is really what it’s all about. So Choosing Real Immunity focuses on those concepts and they spring out of my own experience.     [00:19:57] Ashley James: I’m so excited. That sounds so cool. So that’s the third weekend of December?     [00:20:05] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: That’s right. I think it’s the 20th to the 22nd, Friday to Sunday.     [00:20:09] Ashley James: Very cool. So when you started the meditation, was that before you got the surgery?     [00:20:19] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yes. Yes. It was in June that I did the seminar.     [00:20:23] Ashley James: Did you notice – so you’d gone from never meditating to meditating 45 minutes a day every day?     00:20:30] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Pretty much. Yeah.     [00:20:32 Ashley James: Did you notice a difference? Because you were focusing on your health so intensely at that time, was there a shift in your health after incorporating meditation?     [00:20:47] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Initially, it was very difficult to meditate. Because I always considered myself someone who couldn’t. That my mind was so busy. And then initially when I started meditating, a lot of disruption came up. And a lot of depression, tears, angst, anxiety came up. And it wasn’t until I went to the seminar and really got a better handle on what the goals were and lowered my expectations of myself that I could meditate more effectively and just relax into it. And the biggest impact was on anxiety and clarity. Because the anxiety is always there. When you get a diagnosis like this – I’m sorry – fear becomes your bedfellow. And you wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts. So it’s inevitable. And it’s not like you ever step off the path because there’s always that question of whether you’re doing everything you can so that it doesn’t come back. So it’s really your mind you have to control. Because I’m a huge observer of human nature and read and read and read voraciously about people’s cancer stories and their experiences. And what’s the difference between someone who goes into complete remission and someone who doesn’t. And meeting people at the Hope4Cancer Center and my own clients who chose one way or another way. So I became very curious about what contributes to that. And I have to say that support of those around you and your mental attitude are two huge factors. Huge. So I needed to get a handle on that. I’m a fretter by nature. And I just had to get a handle on that in meditation.     [00:22:45] Ashley James: And when we’re in anxiety, we’re triggering the stress response and we are decreasing our body’s ability to actually get into healing mode. Because we’re in the sympathetic response instead of the parasympathetic response. So when you start to meditate and get good at it, and start to relax into it, you’re putting yourself into healing mode. After maybe a few weeks after you started to get more practice and more proficient at meditation and you realized that you were in the healing mode of the autonomic nervous system’s parasympathetic response of rest and digest, did you see any changes to labs or to markers? Did you see, “Because I added meditation daily, I can see this X, Y, Z.” Like you can see it as a result, was there anything specific that you could point to and say, “I believe this is because I added meditation.”     [00:23:51] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, my labs have consistently improved over the span of time. But I’ve been doing many, many things. So it’s hard to fair it out exactly what the introduction of meditation did because I’ve been doing multiple things at the same time. So lots of supplementation, coffee enemas, ultrasound to the tumor, infrared light, GcMAF injections, IV vitamin C, UVBI, which is Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation, all of these – hyperbaric chamber, hyperthermia, whole body hyperthermia. I would get my internal temperature up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. So all of these things were being done concurrently with the meditation. So it’s hard to say which one was doing the most. And honestly, I tried to apply my intuition. Because some things I would eliminate or reduce. And it was a matter of just getting quiet and asking myself, is this really important for me right now? Or can I cut back on it? Do I need to replace it with something? And that’s kind of how I’ve worked. And I will say, Ashley, to that, I think the hardest part for most people is it’s very comforting to have somebody drive the bus. And somebody to say, “This is what you need to do. This is going to work. You must do this.” And there’s a relinquishment of your personal agency in that. And it’s like they’re going to fix me. And I could never do that. I would love to be able to but I couldn’t do that. So I have reached out to colleagues. I’ve reached out to my integrative Oncologist. I see her once every three months by phone. I reached out to the Hope4Cancer doctors. But then I have to take all that information and crunch it up and decide what I’m going to choose. And I’ve had to make the final decision, which for some people I understand is daunting. It’s very challenging to do that. And that’s what I saw in my practice. Like I’ve had different clients in my practice with cancers, different breast cancer or other cancers, who have chosen one way or the other way. And I’ve watched because those who choose the conventional way, it’s mostly because their families pressured them. So that’s the support system. And their doctors convinced them it was the only way to survive. So it’s the mental piece and it’s the support piece. And if you have family, loved ones, around you saying, “You have to do this. We want you to do this.” It’s very difficult to resist that. As opposed to having people around you who support what you choose.     [00:26:50] Ashley James: So you chose to not do chemo and not do radiation. And you spent eight months doing holistic treatments. And you stopped the growth of the tumor in its tracks, which is very hard to do because of how aggressive it is. It did not spread because everything that you were doing, all the natural medicine you were doing. And then you had decided after eight months of being you’re in a good spot, all your labs are showing that you’re in excellent health, everything’s improving, you decided, “Let’s just get it out.” And you got clean margins. It’s been removed. How many months has it been since the surgery?     [00:27:34] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Early September, I had the surgery. So it’s just been two months.     [00:27:38] Ashley James: And what is considered – like, at what point will you go, “Okay. That was a success.” At what point do you say, “I’m done.” Obviously you’re cancer free and all your scans are clear. But do you wait a few years? Are you able to just go live your life now?     [00:28:03] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Honestly, it’s a little hard to just live your life because you’re always living in the specter of that diagnosis to a certain degree. Let me digress for just a minute, cancer produces stem cells. And it’s a known fact that chemo radiation, those therapies don’t kill stem cells. So that’s why you can kill the original tumor. And then two years later or three years later, you’ve got it cropping up in another organ because the stem cells went out and proliferated somewhere else. So the only way to address stem cells is at a cellular level with your real immunity. You boost your real immunity and it can mitigate the spread of those stem cells. So that’s my insurance. And I will always be kind of on my case about maybe my diet, maintain my supplements, getting exercise, getting strength training, make sure I’m not working too much, all of the factors. Hope4Cancer talks about seven principles of healing. And to apply those seven principles always for prevention. So that’s going to be my insurance going forward to always be applying those principles.     [00:29:23] Ashley James: Are those principles taught in your last documentary, the Choosing Real Immunity?     [00:29:33] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I don’t elucidate the seven principles. I talked with Dr. Tony and he has a recent book out which he shows in the film. And the book does go through the seven principles.     [00:29:45] Ashley James: Okay. So it’s like a whole book?     [00:29:48] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a whole book. Right. Right. It’s a lot easier and more straightforward than one would think. It’s clean living. It’s your diet, your exercise, your thoughts, your support system, your environmental toxins. I mean, all of these things are what contribute. You want to reduce the toxins, you want to increase the support, you want to increase nutrition, you want to get rid of baggage. So you look at your past. You forgive who you have to forgive. You move on. All of those aspects really clean your system so that you can move forward in a more healthy way.     [00:30:36] Ashley James: You mentioned diet, What is your diet right now? What is the beat and prevent cancer diet that you prescribed to?     [00:30:44] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: There are a lot of differing opinions on this. She laughs. Yeah.     [00:30:50] Ashley James: That’s why I’m asking. Because I’m like, “I’m very curious.” There’s so many diets out there for killing cancer.     [00:30:57] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: So many opinions. Yes. At the Hope4Cancer clinic, it was all vegetarian. Organic, of course. A lot of juicing. And that was good. That was great. They do a nutritional consult with you. But I’ve also, with Nasha Winters, my integrative Oncologist, she’s looked at my genetic snips. And she has said to me, “You must eat meat. That you’re genetically not wired to only eat vegetarian.” So I add chicken and some beef and fish. I stay away from grains. I stay away from gluten. I stay away from sugar. So those three things. And I try to do intermittent fasting. So intermittent fasting has been – I can feel it in my body making improvements. So I’ll fast for anywhere from 13 to 18 hours a day during the week. And then the goal is to do a 24 hour fast at least once a month. In the beginning, I did a four day fast. And it was difficult. And I can feel the difference in my level of strength. I am much stronger now. I have much more energy now. And that’s a little bit of my barometer for whether I’m on the right diet and going in the right direction.     [00:32:26] Ashley James: Yes. I’ve had some interviews, really interesting interviews on fasting. And one man, Troy Reicherter, he’s done $20,000 with the labs. He does one big fast a year. And he’s been doing all these labs to determine how much pollution is in his body. And whether fasting works. And what he’s seeing is that fasting has a lasting effect. It’s not something like you do your four day fast and then two weeks later, it’s not affecting you. It’s like, it is still affecting you even months later. And he shows that even a year after a 21 day fast. His health benefits are there. And I’ve had other people like Robyn Openshaw shared this that they’re finding that fasting has lasting health effects or very long term health effects. And also Episode 230 with Dr. Alen Goldhamer, who runs the TrueNorth Medical Center. And he does water only medically supervised fasting. He had a woman come in -he published this actually. He had a woman come in with end stage cancer. The Oncologist told her to go home and die. And 30 days after her fast, she was completely cancer free. And all the scans showed it. So he published that and he talks about it in the interview. So the fasting is such a powerful tool. I’m curious why you don’t do long fasts.     [00:34:07] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I need to get back on it. I just been distracted. I’ve been doing so much traveling back and forth to Mexico. And it’s been life. It’s gotten in the way. But I should. You’re inspiring me to do another long fast. And actually my integrative Oncologist, Nasha Winters, that’s how she started her career. She was 19, diagnosed with ovarian cancer end stage. They told her to go home and die. They couldn’t do chemo. They couldn’t do anything. And she fasted for a month. And this is 20 years ago.     [00:34:37] Ashley James: Oh my, I got to interview her too. Wow.     [00:34:41] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. She’s a great interview.     [00:34:43] Ashley James: Cool. Go to the TrueNorth Medical Center. They just take care of you. It’s like going on vacation and then you fast there. So I find it challenging to fast in my house. There’s a kitchen here and I have to feed people. I mean, it’s doable. I’ve done it. But the TrueNorth Medical Center is in California and it’s very pretty. And I’ve talked to many people who’ve gone there. And I’m planning on going there. I’ve just got to save up the time and money to do it. But I’m absolutely – it’s on my life bucket list to go spend, like, a month there. It’s quite affordable. It’s a nonprofit, which is wonderful. And if I win the lottery, I’d definitely donate to him. And it’s now sort of become a teaching clinic. So there’s all kinds – and these aren’t, like, new doctors, like, residents. These are doctors that have been doctors for many years and they want to then learn this system. So there’s a ton of, basically, doctor students that are there. But they’ve all have great amount of experience. And they come and learn from Dr. Goldhamer. And so it’s about the cost of a good hotel. So it’s something like $170 a night kind of thing. And it includes a very nice bed in your room. And your meals when you’re not fasting or you’re re-feeding and all that. And then they have classes and socialization. So you’re never bored. And lots of fun things to do. And you’re doing a lot of resting also. And then you have doctor visits basically in the morning and in the evening. And all the medical staff are there in case anything happens. But I’ve talked to several people and I’ve heard that it’s an amazing place to go. But I love that you brought up fasting because I think it’s this an unsung hero of healing, right? Because I think when we – it’s free. Essentially, you could do a short fast at home. Like, a three day fast doesn’t require medical supervision. Anything after three days, it’s better to be medically supervised is what Dr. Goldhamer says. Or if you’re doing like you’d you do, 18 hour fasts, you can still go to work. You can still even maybe do light exercise like walking. It’s not that disruptive. But when we get into longer than three day fasts, that’s when we really should take the steps to be monitored. So I like that you bring this up, because I think that when things are free, we don’t really value them. Like doing a hot shower and then a cold shower and then a hot shower. The things that we could do that every day. Or we can go for a walk or we can do meditation, these are free things. And I think it’s part of our mentality is to is to not think that they’re that great because they’re free. But when I hear that it’s made a ton of difference for you and even helped your Oncologist to heal her own cancer 20 years ago, that’s so cool. I love hearing that. It’s interesting because I thought that your docu series was sort of going this route of vaccines versus natural medicine. And I know you’re not overtly saying this isn’t my antivaxxer movement. You’re not going that route. But I kind of got the feeling that it was more about immunity. Like, don’t get the flu shot, go do things to just be healthy and boost your immune system, for example. And you bring up cancer, obviously, because it’s in your experience. But it made me think, “You know, I think we think cancer is so different.” It’s so different from catching something like the flu or polio. But it’s the immune system, right? Is cancer a failure – is getting cancer a failure of the immune system?     [00:39:05] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: You bring up a very good point. And first, I want to address your comment that, yes, initially, it was all about using homeoprophylaxis as a safe method as opposed to vaccination. And early on, I realized I couldn’t jump in that pool too quickly. First, I had to lay down a foundation of what is immunity and what are the experts saying. So the first film came out as kind of laying the groundwork. The second film was about homeoprophylaxis, saying, “Look, here is an option. It’s viable. It’s safe. It’s effective.” The third film was going to then wrap things up and summarize everything. And that got waylaid into down a new path. And to answer your question, the realization is it doesn’t matter if it’s a cold or if it’s cancer. It’s all about our immune system. It’s about what is self and not self, basically. And the conventional thinking about cancer is that it’s this foreign invader that you have to kill or fight. And no, it’s you. It’s you gone awry. It’s your immune system that’s not functioning properly. And all you have to do is reteach it how to function properly and it will take care of the situation. So it’s really truly right in line with everything else about real immunity. And that’s the big misconception about cancer. And the way it’s been treated conventionally with chemo, radiation, chemo, radiation. Insurance will pay for. That’s all Oncologist can recommend. It’s just this mantra in the conventional field when the Reality is, every person’s cancer needs to be treated differently. And I’ve watched how individualized care has been applied to each person that goes through Hope4Cancer. Because I’ve formed this relationships with other people, patients there, and watched how if they’re not moving forward, they introduced some other methods. And they just keep applying different methods because just like the immune system has intelligence, that aberration of the immune system will keep trying to find a workaround. And you have to address it in a way that it hears – listens so that your system can then move in the direction of health. So not everybody’s treatment is the same that Hope4Cancer. We start out the same with certain nutritional IVs and coffee enemas, et cetera. But then it becomes much more highly individualized as time goes on.     [00:42:00] Ashley James: So you said that Oncologists are only allowed to legally recommend radiation, chemo, and surgery. And I’ve heard this many times before. And I think that when the law doesn’t let a doctor let you know about other treatments that are proven to help, then it’s like, “Who is the law protecting? Is it protecting the drug cartel? The big pharma?” Who is it really protecting? Oncologists are highly intelligent that they’ve spent a decade studying. And you go to one and they’ve probably been working for like 15 years in the field. They’re very intelligent. They’re really good at reading studies. Why are they given the freedom to also look at alternative methods and go, “Well, we’ve seen – this group over here has seen improvements when they eat this way and use this herb and do this sauna therapy.” It’s just, really? We’re not allowed to say that that is good. Now, how is it that your Oncologist is practicing and recommending alternative medicine?     [00:43:31] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, she’s a Naturopath, first and foremost. She’s not an MD. She’s a Naturopath. But I’ll answer your question, Ashley, with a question back to you. And that is, if you went to medical school. And you had to have $200,000 in school debt. And you were indoctrinated into this program where you were taught that anything alternative is baloney. And that the conventional way is the only way. And then you sold chemo drugs that you then upsell to your patients and make an additional revenue. How easily could you admit that there’s another way?     [00:44:11] Ashley James: I like that you brought that up because when I heard that, that was the nail in the coffin for me. That when an MD prescribes every round of chemotherapy – every dose of chemotherapy, they get a kickback. They get thousands of dollars. That’s their boat payment. That’s their child going to another college class like that. They’re being bribed to prescribe chemotherapy.     [00:44:42] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, I like to see this positive reinforcement. If you got an m&m every time you did something. It’s positive reinforcement. It’s very difficult to do something different. But some of them are humble enough that they’ll recognize maybe there’s another way. I’ve run into too much arrogance in that field and it’s difficult. It’s really difficult. Because those of us who want to explore unconventional things in alternative medicine are viewed as crackpots or idiots. Anyway, that’s another topic we could delve into.     [00:45:27] Ashley James: So when we develop a tumor,they say that it’s been like four or eight years in development. It’s not overnight. Although might feel overnight. But it’s actually been a long time coming that the body went from having a few cancer cells to just so much that we’re seeing it for the first time. When we grew a tumor – I mean, the body is clearing out cancer every day. Little tiny mutations the immune systems sees it and clears it out. What happens that the immune system didn’t clear out yours or didn’t clear out other people’s cancer? Why does it? What happens has the body not recognize that that’s a cancer?     [00:46:17] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, to some extent, it’s what you said earlier about sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It overcomes the system. The system is not in the healing phase enough hours a day to do its work. So we’re always on a trajectory. We’re always by virtue of the choices we make each day, do we get enough sleep? Are we drinking water? How are we eating? We are on a trajectory. Either we’re static or we’re getting better or we’re getting worse. So if you take enough days going down that trajectory and getting worse, it allows your body the leeway to build up those aberrant cells and proliferate those cancer cells. Because they’re sending out millions of stem cells, a tumor does, daily. So those can go park in other organs. And if you’re compromising your system with your diet or with stress – stress is a huge one – or with excessive toxins in your environment, then it gives your body the opportunity to proliferate those cells.   [00:47:27] Ashley James: And have you seen – I know you didn’t do this for your own cancer,  but have you seen any therapies that turn the immune system back on to the point where the body now recognizes a tumor?     [00:47:43] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, some of the studies show full body hyperthermia is enormous. The main things that were used to Hope4Cancer, heat, light, sound, and oxygen. Those four things. So heat, when you raise the core temperature that engages your immune system and turns it on high alert. So there are documented cases of people getting measles and having a brain tumor disappear. Or some acute disease which then ameliorates the chronic disease. And this is documented in the literature. Because the acute is event for the deeper pathology. So by getting a fever, it charges that immune system. Now, apparently the literature shows that doing it intermittently for short bursts is effective. But much of what I’ve read and been familiar with are cases when it’s a longer term acute illness, like measles and there’s 103 fever for a week or longer period of time with a high fever. But at Hope4Cancer, we went into whole body hyperthermia where you have heat above you, heat below you. And they ramp up your internal temperature. They keep taking your internal temperature. Mine was up to 108 degrees.     [00:49:13] Ashley James: For how long?     [00:49:15] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Maybe ten minutes. And then it takes a while to come down. You just can’t tolerate it much longer. And I had the freedom to get out when I needed to get out. But I would try to stay in as long as possible. But it’s ramping up your immune system. The other thing is a hyperbaric chamber. So you’re forcing oxygen into the cells. And cancer does not like heat, does not like light,and does not like oxygen. Those are three environmental conditions where it can’t live. So we would do heat therapy. And it was just like a wand with heat on the actual tumor for five minute just on the tumor itself. Infrared lamp on the tumor. Laser lights on the tumor. They would do infrared where they take 100 milliliters of blood out. Inject that hundred milliliters with ozone, which is oxygen. Run it past ultraviolet light. And back into your body. So now you’ve irradiated the blood and oxygenated it and returned it to the body. That’s a great therapy.     [00:50:32] Ashley James: Can you explain why ozone and ultraviolet directly to the blood, why that is a great therapy? It doesn’t kill the white blood cells or red blood cells.     [00:50:44] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: No. But it kills all the parasitic infections, viruses, the comorbidities of cancer. Typically people with cancer have comorbidities. They have lyme. They have Epstein Barr. They have parasites. And the question is, did those things open them up to be more susceptible to cancer? Or did the cancer compromise their immune system in such a way as to take on those other afflictions? But regardless, the UVBI can help to address some of those comorbidities, which that’s essential in treating cancer. So I forget your original question.     [00:51:30] Ashley James: I was just –     [00:51:31] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Specific therapies you were saying.     [00:51:32] Ashley James: Yeah. No. We’re on a tangent and I like the tangent. And that’s okay. I interviewed Dr. Tullio Simoncini, who is an Oncologist in Italy. And he, I believe had his license taken away for curing cancer. How dare he? how dare have the audacity to cure cancer naturally? But what he saw when he cut open tumors is that they would look like yeast. The inside of a tumor looks like yeast. And he thought, “This is so weird.” And he had someone – and I apologize for not remembering all the details of the story. But listeners can go listen to the Episode because it’s fascinating. It’s Episode 136. And he had a patient who was sort of on their deathbed and it’s kind of like last ditch effort. So he took sodium bicarbonate which he says it kills Candida, it kills yeast. And he took a solution and injected it into the — no. He washed their colons. It’s colon cancer. He washed their colon with it. Kind of like a colonic. That was his first attempt and it worked. And then he had another person that, I believe, was a child in a coma. And it was like they have hours to live because the tumor was so big. And he took sodium bicarbonate, injected it into the vasculature right before the tumor. So it fed straight into the vasculature of the tumor. Sodium bicarbonate, if you inject it into you, the solution he had would not hurt anyone. But it would kill yeast or Candida. And then he went on break and he came back and the child was sitting up and laughing with the mom. And he just freaked out. So that’s what led him down this road of treating cancer with sodium bicarbonate. But the problem is you can’t just drink it or put it up your bum like he did with that one person. You have to have a surgeon, he says. Because you have to have it injected straight into the vasculature of the tumor to be effective. And he sees that he’s had a very high success rate. Because my thing is like, “Well, is it all tumors or only some tumors?” And this is interesting that you’re bringing up co-infections. I’ve had many lyme experts on the show talk about when someone has a lyme infection so they have Lyme disease, they always have other parasites. It’s like at least three. We start to see that it’s a Catch 22, what came first? Did the person have co-infections? Did the person have these parasites and have these multiple infections sort of hanging around the body because the environment of the body was a perfect storm, a perfect petri dish –     [00:54:36] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Environment, yeah.     [00:54:36] Ashley James: – for these infections? And then Lyme came around and their body was amazing petri dish for the lyme to propagate. Whereas, other people might have been bit by that same tick and the body clears out the lyme.     [00:54:51] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Exactly. And it’s all about susceptibility. That’s homeopathics theory. It’s about our susceptibility. We could all be in the room with someone with Ebola or measles, some will catch it, some won’t. It’s about your susceptibility. And that’s the terrain.     [00:55:05] Ashley James: I had Dr. Heather Wolfson on the show. I’ve had both Wolfson’s.  The husband who’s the cardiologist and the wife who’s a chiropractor. And she’s even more than a chiropractor, which many chiropractors are because they know so much about nutrition and healing. And she said, if you had 100 people in a room with polio, 95% of them would be asymptomatic. And that blew my mind. Because I was raised to believe that polio is incredibly dangerous, deadly. It’s like Ebola. Everyone’s going to get it. But no, it’s not the case. I mean, obviously, it’s not like, “Oh, yeah. Let’s all have a polio party.” It’s not what I’m saying. But it’s just looking at when you have really healthy people and you really have a cleansed body and the body is not a good petri dish, it’s not a good environment, it’s alkaline, it’s balanced, you’re in a parasympathetic state as much as possible, it’s not a good environment to host illness. And so it’s interesting that I’ve never heard someone bring this up that you say that when we look at people with cancer, even before they had the cancer, they can see that they actually had other infections going on. They had Candida or Lyme disease or parasites but they their body was already a petri dish building up illness.     [00:56:42] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. Right. But these days who doesn’t have all of those infections? I mean, seriously. You know what I mean? The world is a crazy place and people are sick. Because of our environmental toxicity, we’re just bombarded.     [00:57:01] Ashley James: It’s the rare person who is of optimal health. But we all strive for it. So that’s why we’re here. We want to learn for you. How long were you vegetarian during your cancer therapies?     [00:57:17] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Probably from when I first was diagnosed in January until the end of March, April, May, somewhere there.     [00:57:28] Ashley James: Okay. So like, maybe, four months. And then your Naturopathic Oncologist told you to add meat back. Did you notice that you felt better after adding meat?     [00:57:37] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Oh, yeah. I feel I had much more strength, much more vitality.   [00:57:42] Ashley James: I really I really liked that she looked at your genetic markers for this. We have a Facebook Group, Learn True Health Facebook Group, there’s 3,300 listeners in it. And I love the wonderful discussions. And she’s been a listener for a year. She’s passionate about it. Loves the show. And she’s probably listening right now. So hello. But she said that she was concerned that I was leaning towards sort of anti-meat. And I feel like in every Episode, we talked about diet, I say – I feel like I’m just a parrot saying the same thing. I don’t believe in diet dogma. You have to figure out what your body needs right now. Cilla, you might find in a year from now you need to go vegan or raw vegan. And then next year, you might find the right to go carnivore. But you have an open mind and a willingness and you’re not buying into any dogma. You’re looking at your labs. And you’re looking at your genetics. You’re looking at your own body’s ability and how you’re feeling. And I think that when some people get – for example, they go keto. And they’re eating. And it might be unhealthy keto. Maybe they’re eating bacon and avocados and cheese all day. And they lose some weight and then they buy into the dogma of it. And then they are upset and unwilling to look at anything that opposes keto. And that’s a problem, when we buy into any diet and are unwilling to look at the rest of the information out there. Because our body is constantly changing and its needs are changing. Me, I have done well over 30 diets to heal my body. And I’m willing to make these changes. And what I have found working for me this last year on my blood work – I get my blood work done every four months. And I have never been healthier. I almost cry every time I go to the Naturopathic office and get my blood results and have my next follow up and get my blood taken again. Because I’m on the best path for me and it’s because I’m on a whole food plant based, no oil and no salt and sugar diet. And that’s my health. My path. I’m not imposing that on you or on anyone. But I’m passionate to share what’s working for me. And I’m happy that I’m on this path. And I love that you’re sharing that. It sounds like you’re doing a more paleo style eating. No greens, you’re eating, obviously organic free range, and you’re focusing on a ton of vegetables. And that is working best for your health. So I honor that. And I’m really glad that you got to share that.     [01:00:20] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Thank you. Yeah. It’s tricky. I think it’s been the most challenging part of the healing journey because I wanted somebody to tell me something was the right way to go. And I have to figure it out myself and that’s hard.     [01:00:37] Ashley James: I love that you brought that up. It’s hard. We just want to hand over our choices to an expert. We want to feel like a child again and have a mother take care of us. But we’re adults. And especially if we have a health issue, we need to take the reins. And it’s okay to lean on our doctor experts that we put on our team. That we get to hire our Naturopath or our Oncologist or whoever we have on our team and bounce things off of them. But ultimately, it has to be our decision what we’re going to do with our body. That level of advocacy will allow us to listen to our intuition and steer the ship in the right direction. Do you have any resources? Obviously, people need to go to your website realimmunity.org and they need to watch these documentaries. Do you have any resources that you highly recommend listeners check out for –     [1:01:46] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Definitely the Hope4Cancer clinics. Their website is hope and then the number four cancer.com. And they have some excellent – they have a third party researcher doing their stats on survival rates. And I was just speaking with the director in October and they were amazed when their stats came in and asked them to recheck them because they couldn’t believe it. Conventional medicine for stage four cancers, lung and pancreatic, the survival rate after four years is 2 to 3% for stage four of those types of cancers. Hope4Cancer, the survival rate after four years, stage four pancreatic and lung 44%.     [01:02:36] Ashley James: I would love to see like a third one, which is people who choose to not – they get the diagnosis and they’re like, “I don’t want chemo radiation. I’m just going to go on a road trip and see what happens.”     [01:02:54] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. go live my life.     [01:02:57] Ashley James: Go live my life and see what happens. I mean, obviously, you know, there’s people out there that do that. And it’d be cool if we could see the statistics on no treatments and just living life. Maybe how the treatment is, like, being happier versus cut, burn, and poison versus intense holistic therapies. I’m guessing the bill for the Hope4Cancer Center is like in the tens of thousands.     [01:03:28] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: The cost? Yeahh. So I think it’s different depending on which therapies they’re recommending for you. Mine was $50,000. It includes the three weeks there, including food and hotel, and all my treatments. It includes everything going home for three months of a home care program, supplements, equipment, injections. And then it includes two follow ups coming back and a year of home support.     [01:04:00] Ashley James: I mean, I know that’s a lot of money. But it also sounds kind of reasonable when you think about –     [01:04:07] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I know. Well, here’s a comparison. I had a needle biopsy done in the beginning. Which I struggled with because I didn’t really want to interrupt the tumor but I wanted proof of exactly what kind of tumor I had. And our deductible hadn’t been satisfied yet. So we had a large deductible. That biopsy cost me $10,000. A needle biopsy. I’m still paying $500 a month for it.     [01:04:38] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.     [01:04:39] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. That’s the condition of conventional medicine. It’s shameful.     [01:04:47] Ashley James: So where does homeopathy play a role when someone has a cancer diagnosis? Obviously, you’re a homeopath. You love homeopathy. Because there’s no homeopathy for cancer. It’s because it’s not about treating the –   [01:05:07] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Oh, yeah. No. There is.     [01:05:09] Ashley James: There is?     [01:05:09] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: There definitely is. And there are studies. The  Banerjee Clinic out of India has studies in coordination with MD Anderson Cancer Center.     [01:05:18] Ashley James: You’re blowing my mind right now. Okay. Tell us more about this. Tell us what the study is. I want to know.     [01:05:20] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the main study is with a gliomas, like brain tumors. Some very significant studies. And there’s a method called the Radha Krishna method. I’ve used it on a number of cancer patients. There is definitely homeopathic treatment for cancers. I didn’t rely entirely on only homeopathy. I used the shotgun approach of probably too many therapies, you know, everything from –     [01:05:51] Ashley James: I would be right there with you. Because, to me, it doesn’t matter which one works. They all work. They’re all going to work because I’m going to heal this. So as long as you’re okay with doing all of them, I wouldn’t be upset about it like. If it’s something little – like I don’t know – if it was Lyme Disease and someone wanted to try one therapy at a time because maybe budget or maybe they’re just scientific and they want to see one thing at a time. Lyme disease you have time. Whereas cancer, it has that sort of potential of metastasizing. And we want to address it as fast as possible. At the same time, we want to take enough time to figure out what our steps are and not be rushed into anything. So we do – I love that they teach this when watching the docu series, The Truth About Cancer. Which I’ve had Ty Bollinger on the show before. All the experts there on this docu series say, you have enough time to slow down, get out of fear mode, and make a plan of action. And they say if you go to an Oncologist, they’re going to try to rush you into your therapy within days and not give you any breathing room to second guess. Or to even get a second opinion. And so all these experts or these Oncologists on Truth About Cancer said get a second opinion, slow down, make a plan of action. But once you have the plan of action, then then rush into it and do it. So you did the shotgun approach, which is great. But you did use some homeopathy because there are studies. Tell us about the studies in India.     [01:07:36] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, the Banerjee doctors are generations of doctors. They have a very large clinic in India. They see thousands of patients a day. It’s an amazing clinic. It’s homeopathy applied in an allopathic way because they apply it based on diagnosis. So it’s a little bit different than the classical approach. There’s some different schools of thought within homeopathy. But nonetheless, it’s viable. It’s applicable to many different conditions. And the study with MD Anderson Center was specifically on gliomas. So different brain tumors and the use of homeopathic remedies. And they saw good results.     [01:08:21] Ashley James: Do you remember what the numbers were?     [01:08:24] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I can’t recall the numbers off the top of my head. But I know they were positive.     [01:08:30] Ashley James: So much so that you remember it. That you remember that it was a worthwhile study and that it was better than chance.     [01:08:39] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Exactly. And the fact that MD Anderson would be open to doing something like that is interesting.     [01:08:45] Ashley James: Cool.     [01:08:47] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: So homeopathy is a deep curative form of system of medicine, a whole system of medicine.     [01:08:54] Ashley James: Yes. And we’ve talked about it before in the show and other people talk about it. I think, it might have been the last time you came on the show, you talked about what we can do instead of the flu vaccine. And I love your homeopathy for the flu, the Influenzinum. We used it in our entire family – it’s been a year. We’ve used it for the last year. And our entire family has not gotten the flu. We were getting it – and we have a toddler and he is a germ magnet, you know, because they bring home everything. And I know I could also contribute to the fact that I’m on a healing journey. So my body, obviously, is healthier today than it was a year ago. But I was getting the flu at least once a year. And I haven’t had a flu. And the whole family. And I haven’t had a flu in the last year and none of us have and we’ve been using your Influenzinum. So I’m very excited about that. What else do you want to make sure that we cover that we make sure that listeners know about?     [01:10:07] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, the films, of course, because it’ll be launched free and those will be available. But also the homeoprophylaxis programs. I mean, the programs that we provide through realimmunity.org, they’re based on Dr. Isaac Golden’s 15 year study in Australia. So he saw a 90% effectiveness rate with this particular program. And more than just protecting from disease, it exercises the immune system and matures it in a way that supports the natural development of children. So it’s an amazing program. And my goal really, Ashley, is to change the paradigm. Not just to sell a widget or a product but to change the paradigm so people understand the power of their immunity and how supporting it is the best thing you can do. And homeoprophylaxis is an amazing way to support it. And I’m overcome with grief when I see the new normal cropping up and people accepting asthma and chronic conditions as normal. This is not how children are intended to be. And my families that do homeoprophylaxi, they rave about how vibrant their children are. And how their speech is miles ahead. Their cognitive skills or developmental leaps, it’s amazing. And this is how kids are supposed to be. So I can’t say enough about the HP programs. I would urge anyone to look into it and see the value of it in terms of shifting that paradigm. The other thing we’re going to do at Real Immunity is we’re starting these empowerment groups. So the goal is to support groups of parents who think like this but feel like they’re alone. And media would have us think that everybody wants to vaccinate and everybody has these certain ideas. It’s simply not true. And part of my goal in making the Real Immunity series was to support those parents who are thinking clearly but they think they’re alone and they’re afraid to speak up. So these empowerment groups, we’re going to be starting them probably just in the beginning of 2020. What they are is an opportunity for people to get together and view segments of the films. They’ll be divided into three segments each. And then there’s discussion questions. There’s mechanisms for support. It’s a whole process of empowering this group so their consciousness gets raised to a certain level. And we know from one of the interviews in the third film, that people operating at a certain level of consciousness have the capacity to bring up tens of thousands of other people in their consciousness. So what we’re doing is we’re replacing outmoded ideas with truth and with a new paradigm of real immunity. And that’s what the empowerment groups are intended to do.     [01:13:16] Ashley James: Oh, fun. Very cool. Well, you discussed homeoprophylaxis in Episode 137 in a detailed way that made me incredibly passionate about it. And I really feel that this is a tool that should be in every single parents tool belt to train the child’s immune system so that it’s responding in a healthy way to these infections should the child be exposed to them. And when you cited that in India, for example, they’ve had millions of people go through homeoprophylaxis. And they’ve seen success n Australia, in India, in Cuba. It blew my mind that they don’t have side effects and they have incredible success. Whereas, we can’t say the same for vaccines.     [01:14:17] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right? Absolutely.     [01:14:20] Ashley James: You’ve talked –     [01:14:23] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: And they’re so easily distributed. There’s no cold chain. It’s inexpensive for third world countries. It’s not species specific. It’s not gender orage specific. I mean, there’s so many benefits to be utilized worldwide. Why not? Except it doesn’t bring revenue to pharma.     [01:14:41] Ashley James: I just read, there’s a Pacific Island, that – small Pacific island that had three babies – three infants instantly die after getting a vaccine recently. And it turns out that the vaccines were made incorrectly. I mean, whereas you won’t find that using homeopathy. And then this is something new to me that something, like 85% of our vaccines now come from China that or manufactured in China. And I believe it was recent. It was very recent that in congressional hearings, the FDA said that they do not – China does not need to disclose the ingredients of the vaccines. I was reading this article and I was shocked.     [01:15:42] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: That’s shocking. I’m not familiar with that information but I would believe it.     [01:15:48] Ashley James: Well, you bring up the quality. So I’ll have to pull it up and find it. But you bring up the quality of the chain of custody and all the things that go into ensuring the safety of a vaccine vs. homeopathy. One is, with a vaccine, there’s so many chances that something could go wrong. Whereas, with homeopathy, it’s inert. It’s energetic medicine versus molecular medicine. We’ve had a few people in the Facebook Group talk about not wanting to get the flu vaccine. One woman last year wrote she was very upset. She had recently had the flu vaccine and became so sick. She never been that sick in her life. She was contemplating going to the hospital. She was that sick. She says she felt like she was dying. And she was so upset at herself. Because she bought into – we have a constant bombardment, “I go to the grocery store, you can get 20% off your groceries if you get a flu shot at my local grocery store – near a grocery store near us.” Every very place I go into I feel – like even Costco, there’s a big sign, “Get your vaccine. Get your vaccine.” Every time I go- not the Naturopath, of course. But other doctors offices, they’re asking me several times if I want a flu shot. So we’re constantly having it offered to us. And maybe we buy into the – it’s easy to buy into the fear and go, “Well, we should get this because we’re protecting ourselves. We’re protecting others.” You know, buy into this fear. And she was really upset that she did that because she didn’t want to buy into the fear. And she realized she had. And then others have shared in the Learn True Health group that they want to choose a different way. Can you share with us – if you could just bust some myths about the flu shot. We’re taught that it is protective. We’re taught that it will ensure that – or at least really significantly decrease our chance of getting the flu. And for some, the flu is fatal. So that it’s really smart to get the flu shot and we’re really stupid if we don’t get the flu shot. Can you bust some myths about the flu shot versus Influenzinum, or example, which is the homeopathy version of the flu shot.     [01:18:19] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. Right. So initially I’d send people to the Cochrane Collaboration. The Cochrane Collaboration is a group that’s unrelated to pharma and does meta analysis. They take lots of data. They crunch it. They look at it. And they come up with analysis of that data. And what they have said is that under the age of two, flu shots are no more effective than placebo. They don’t work. For the elderly, they don’t prevent transmission of the flu. And they don’t reduce hospital stays. And then we know for a fact, because the CDC comes out with a percentage how much they’re working. I’m not familiar with what it is this year. But I think they said it was lower than it’s been in many, many years. So we know it’s not that effective to start with. Then I would point people to a study by Cowling and Fang from 2012. And that study showed us that what it does, it compromises TH1, which is your innate arm of your immune system. So you may have protection about whatever particular strain has been targeted for that year. But what’s happened, you’ve compromised your immunity to every other virus going around. So these people get sicker with other viruses. Another study that’s out, and I can’t quote the authors on this one. It’s not on the top of my mind. But study that shows us repeated flu shots makes you more susceptible to catching the flu as well. That the efficacy wanes. So from many different angles, we see that flu shots are not what they’re trumped up to be. When I was growing up the only people that were recommended to get flu shots were those in nursing homes closed communities. But never for children. So Influenzinum is something that’s made from a variety of historical flus. So flus are ancient viruses. They continue to mutate over time. They’re a life form. They’re going to find a way. So they mutate and change. And they reside many times in fowl, you know, birds. And then come into human hosts. And the Influenzinum is a combination of a variety of historical flus. So it covers all the mutations because homeopathy is based on treating it’s symptom picture. It’s not the actual species or a type of flu. So any mutation is going to be covered. It’s completely safe. You don’t need a new one each year, from the Influenzinum that I use. Some of them are being sold because they’re selling a product so there is a new one each year. It’s based on the flu vaccine basically. But mine has the historical flus. And then mine has Tubercalinum, which covers the [inaudible 01:21:30] tendency to be susceptible to lung infections. So very, very safe. It can be taken every week during flu season. I take it when I fly, always. I take it when I’m going to be in public, in a group, like at a conference or a large group, or if I’m in my office and a child comes in sneezing and coughing and drooling. I’ll go home and I’ll take a dose just to protect myself. So just recently, my husband was at a social event and people were sick. And he felt like he was coming down with something so he came home, he took Influenzinum. That night, he felt like he had kind of a fever. The next day, it abated. And after that, he was totally fine. So I mean it simply engages your immune system in a way to recognize these viruses and then mount its own immune response in a healthy way.     [0:22:28] Ashley James: The way you said that made me think of cancer again. To get the immune system to recognize it and respond in a different way. I wonder.     [01:22:44] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. And we actually use Carcinosin. Ashley. There’s two types of Carcinosin. One is made from breast tumors. Another is made from 58 different kinds of cancer tumors. And it basically engages the immune system to recognize self from non-self and discriminate. Because that’s really the hallmark of cancer is it hasn’t recognized self from non-self. And it’s allowed this growth to get out of control.   And we see that on the emotional level as well. The Type C personality, which is the cancer personality, has trouble with boundaries. They’re givers. They’re doers. They’re strivers. They’re people who always are worried about what the other person thinks. And they’ll compromise themselves for the other person. They don’t do self-care very well. And that’s the typical cancer personality. So part of the challenge is learning how to care for oneself and recognize self from non-self, basically.     [01:23:44] Ashley James: Yeah. Let’s all start putting ourselves first. Not to be selfish. But to be –     [01:23:53] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Healthy.     [01:23:55] Ashley James: And to realize that – so my mom died when she was 55. And growing up, my mom was athletic, gorgeous. She was a model. And then she became a rep for women’s clothing lines. She built an empire. She built this beautiful company that she had to constantly look her best. She was walking around in stilettos, you know, 10 hours, 12 hours a day kind of thing. She’d wake up the crack of dawn, make us all protein shakes, and put on her gym outfit, and take her dry cleaning with her. And she would head to the gym by 6:00 in the morning. And then after the gym – so she worked out six days a week. And then she’d be gone all day. Come home at 7:00 and she’ll have, like, a salad and a chicken breast. And then put me down to bed.  And then she’d go to sleep. And it was like rinse and repeat her whole life. She took supplements. She exercised a lot. She ate really clean. She didn’t take enough downtime, that’s for sure. But she was beautiful, hardworking, didn’t take the time to rest and relax a lot. Because she was A type personality, constantly put stress on herself, and she had a lot of anger and a lot, I guess, a lot of fear. A lot of fear of not being successful. And then she just got liver cancer and died within months. And she was so healthy. It was like a practical joke on our family because my dad struggled with weight. He would gain and lose 100 pounds, 200 pounds even. When he died, we had to pay extra money because the casket needed to be bigger. And just the year before he was his goal weight. His whole life he struggled greatly with that. And he constantly worked at it. But he also was A type personality, hard worker, did not even know what self-care was. Self-care to him was, like, treating themselves to a steak dinner, basically. But both of my parents were loving and wonderful people. And my dad died, you know, six years later when he was like 62 years old. So to watch my mom who was the epitome of health. My dad who was not the epitome of health end up outliving my mom. And my mom was the healthiest person we knew. And for her to go so quickly had me really look at self-care in a new light. That it’s not selfish. That it is actually selfish not to do self-care. That my mom – because I’d asked her so many times to – like I said to her, “Stay home. Hang out with me.” And she kept saying, “I’m going to give you a better childhood than I had.” But at the end of the day, could have worked less. And again, I’m not blaming her. It’s just a hindsight, right? Looking at it and going, if she had created a more balanced life, yeah, maybe she would have made less money, but she would have been happier and she’d still be alive, possibly.     [01:27:18 Dr. Cilla Whatcott: How old were you, Ashley?     [01:27:20] Ashley James: When she died? I was 22. So self-care is not selfish. It is selfish to not do self-care. Because our children need us here alive. And it’s okay. My friend, Naomi, she takes off and goes to the women’s spa once in a while. And treats herself to – it’s a beautiful spa here in Seattle in Lynnwood, where it’s an all women spa. And you basically hang out with a bunch of women and hot tubs and saunas. And it’s like her family won’t have her for a few hours. And they will have to fend for themselves. But she’s doing her self-care. And I say bye- bye to my son and my husband and I get in the sauna. And they have to fend for themselves for an hour or whatever. But it’s like we have to – sometimes we have to disconnect from our family and take care of ourselves. But it’s for our family that we do it. So I just know that some of us still have to get over that idea that self-care is selfish. Even buying a massage, like, “Oh, that $60.”  And taking $60 away from buying books for my son or something. Our little voice in our head says that money should be spent on our family. But if we’re not doing the self- care that we need every day or every week and decreasing our stress, supporting our immune health, then we’re not ensuring that will be here long term.   [01:28:58] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. You’re very, very right. It took cancer for me to give myself permission to care for myself.     [01:29:04] Ashley James: Yeah. And that caring for yourself equals caring for your family. I love that you did the shotgun approach. But is there anything that you can share as you think back? Like, did you ever add something and then go, “Wow. It’s really working. I’m glad I added this.” Is there any kind of stuff that you added along the way and you’re really happy you did?     [01:29:31] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Probably the diet. Just supplemental, just tons of organic vegetables, you know, smoothies and vegetables. That’s really your foundation, what you’re putting in your body. I’d say that’s huge. And my diet wasn’t bad to begin with. So it was hard for me to accept that I was doing anything good. Because it was like this isn’t very different than I’ve always eaten. But I saw people at Hope4Cancer who came from terrible diets, do that diet for three weeks, and have their tumors shrink to nothing before they got out. So I watched it. Like your mother, my lifestyle wasn’t that unhealthy. I was overworking. And I had a lot of trauma in my past that was still activated for me that I had to address.     [01:30:29] Ashley James: What did you do to address it? Because trauma is another really big – it’s another really big – they see that there’s a connection between unresolved trauma and disease. Dr. Hamer, who has unfortunately passed away, he created meta medicine. I started studying it in 2005. And I think it’s fascinating that he could identify disease in the body and relate it back to a trauma that has been unresolved.     [01:31:00] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. So this does bring to mind an answer to your question, is there anything that really worked well for me. And what I used to address trauma was microcurrent. So microcurrent is a method that was introduced by chiropractors for muscular skeletal stuff initially. And then it was shown to have value with PTSD and different forms of trauma. So it’s a very, very low level current that’s run through the body. You don’t feel anything at all.     [01:31:33] Ashley James: Is this frequency specific microcurrent?     [01:31:35] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah, yeah. That’s it.     [01:31:36] Ashley James: Yeah. I’ve had an interview – fascinating. For some reason, I didn’t think it would affect emotions.     [01:31:46] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Who did you interview? Who was the person you interviewed? Is it Carolyn?     [0 1:31:50] Ashley James: Carolyn McMakin? McMakin?     [01:31:52] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. And she still teaches     [01:31:55] Ashley James: Episode 332 and 333. It’s a two parter. That interview was amazing. I asked my first question, which is tell me your story. So you know I love – when you’re a new guest, I get you to tell your story. One hour later, I asked my second question.     [01:32:14] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. She’s amazing.     [01:32:16] Ashley James: It was phenomenal. Her story is phenomenal. Oh my gosh, I never knew that frequency specific –     [01:32:22] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. I loved it. I loved it. And I did it twice a week for a while. It was huge for me. I knew I needed something that was hands on. I didn’t want something that was based on talk. Because I’m a talker and I’m an analytical person and I’ve talked my trauma to death. I don’t need to talk about it anymore.     [01:32:49] Ashley James: It’s funny you should say that. It’s like, you know intellectually – you can kind of intellectualize the trauma out then it’s still stuck in the body.     [01:33:02] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. I needed something to get it out of my body. Since it had to be something that was touching me, I did EFT, I did Qigong, I did – what was it called? They did it at Hope4Cancer. It was recall healing. But it’s based on talking and looking at different traumas at different ages and how in the ancestry it relates. So I did all of those things. But it was that microcurrent that I really liked. And she did craniosacral at the same time. So she’d hook me up to the microcurrent and do craniosacral. So there’s no talking involved.     [01:33:45] Ashley James: Right. How did you know it was working on your traumas?     [01:33:49] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Because after some of the sessions I would just have this amazing feeling the next day. Just like this well-being feeling like when I was a kid that I had forgotten. So I liked it a lot.     [01:34:08] Ashley James: I mean, did you ever try testing it? Thinking back to your trauma and then realizing the emotions weren’t there anymore? Or did you –     [01:34:15] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: No. Because the emotions aren’t there. I can talk about any of the trauma very analytically that I do not sense any emotions being there anymore. I think it’s only at a cellular level. So in that way, I didn’t notice anything. But definitely this just subtle sense the next day of well-being. And I went after it. Like I said, Qigong, EFT, lots of different kinds of energetic therapies. But it didn’t click. It didn’t feel like, “Yeah. This is it. I got it.” It was until the microcurrent.     [01:34:57] Ashley James: Cool. Thank you for sharing that. I encourage you to also check into Timeline Therapy created by Ted James.     [01:35:06] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Timeline Therapy. Okay.     [01:35:08] Ashley James: Timeline Therapy. I’m a master practitioner and trainer of Timeline Therapy. I learned it in 2005 from Todd James, of have no relation. And he created it. But it is, I guess, inspired by neuro linguistic programming. It is incredibly effective at getting to the root cause of trauma and resolving it at the unconscious and conscious level. Although you might not need it now. But yeah, Timeline Therapy is phenomenal. I’ve had really great success with resolving chronic pain, anxiety, phobias, fears, anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt that is unresolved from the past it just keeps hanging on. It’s great. It’s great. So that’s another thing. But like you said, you know, taking the shotgun approach, trying one thing, trying another, and finding your truth, finding what’s going to resonate with you. And it’s good to do this. Always looking at the labs. We have to look subjectively and objectively to make sure we’re on the right path. Don’t put our head in the sand. It’s so easy to because it’s part of our culture. I feel like in the mainstream of Hollywood and just every day we’re bombarded by this culture of putting our head in the sand and just going the easy route, going with the flow. Just go to the doctor, take the pills, do what they say, eat the food everyone else eats. Just go with the flow. And when we do that, we become a statistic. One in three people have pre-diabetes. One in three people have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. I think the number is worse for men. Or was it worse for women?     [01:37:02] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Women. Women.     [01:37:03] Ashley James: Women. Like one or two women are going to have – 50% of women are going to have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. Over 70% of the adult population of the United States is on at least one prescription medication. There’s currently over 2 million children in the United States on –     [01:37:22] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Chronic meds.     [01:37:22] Ashley James: — antipsychotic medication. I mean, I just read that. So the statistics are getting worse and worse. And if we want to be a statistic, we must live like everyone else’s. We’ll go with the flow, right? But if we want to not be a statistic, we have to go upstream. We have to at least challenge the status quo to shake it up. And so you’re going upstream. And at first, it’s a bit exhausting. Because, like you said, we have that pressure from our family and our culture and this constant bombardment of mainstream media telling us we’re wrong. And I love that you’re putting together a group of people so we, at least, can start to realize we’re not alone. And that there are other people out there. Like in our Learn True Health Facebook Group, like listeners of this group, and also the people who are following you and want to join your groups. That there are communities or pockets of people that want to swim upstream. And it becomes easier, especially when we start seeing results. Now, before we wrap up today’s interview, this has been on my mind and I’m sort of racking my brain for which guests told on me this. So hopefully, you can clarify. I heard that the immune system of an infant and even a child up until between age six and seven cannot or should not produce T cells or should not – like there’s something about an immune system of a young child before the age of six that isn’t designed to produce this kind of immunity that a vaccine forces it to produce. Have you heard of this?     [01:39:08] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. Yeah. And I think it’s only the first couple years that they’re not fully mature. A child’s immune system isn’t fully mature until the age of 12, I believe. But in those first few years, they’re not producing antibodies in the same way that they do once they’re mature. And I can’t tell you the physiological theory behind that. But you’re correct that their immune systems can’t produce.     [01:39:34] Ashley James: And so they’re being forced to. The body is being forced to produce it. And that we’re seeing a giant spike in autoimmune as a result of, basically, playing God and messing with the immune system. We talked about this a little bit in our other interviews about how having an autoimmune disease is something that we need to look at as well when healing the body. Because the immune system gone awry. So cancer, catching a cold like a virus, an autoimmune condition. There’s acute and chronic but it all has to do with coming back to the immune system. So in your three part documentary movie series, you go through this. You talk about how to help the immune system come back into balance. Do you have any specific guests talk about autoimmune issues?     [01:40:22] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I can’t recall if there’s a specific interview that addresses this. But I would say very simply that indiscriminate inflammation is what causes autoimmunity. So when you pump an immune system full of adjuvants, such as aluminum which are designed to create inflammation and, thus, antibodies. You’re promoting indiscriminate inflammation in the body. So of course you’re going to see autoimmunity. It’s logical.     [01:40:56] Ashley James: Yeah. Well, I urge listeners to go back and check out our other and views because they are enlightening and fascinating and have largely influenced what I do with my health and my family. So I thank you because our family has, obviously, we’re doing the shotgun approach too. We’re eating healthy. We’re detoxing. We’re doing all of it. But we added homeoprophylaxis and Influenzinum. And you’d be so proud. The other day my husband had this dry cough that you couldn’t shake. It was the weirdest thing. And throw stuff at him. And I made him some throat coat tea. I took some fresh thyme. I made him a tea and all this other stuff. And then he went by himself to the medicine cabinet and got himself homeopathic remedies. And figured out by himself which remedy. And I think it was like nux vomica, which like surprised me, but that was the one that worked for him. But he figured out. He researched online. He picked three different ones. He tested it himself. I didn’t need to do any of it for him. I was proud. And I also kind of was kicking myself because I didn’t think about homeopathy. Homeopathy for him is in the forefront of his mind because we’ve seen it work so well with our son and also for me. And I’ve shared in the past Episodes my amazing, amazing results with homeopathy and our son’s. And so now it’s actually the forefront of my husband’s mind. That’s one of the first things he thinks about when he has a symptom is to go to homeopathy. So I thank you for that influence.     [01:42:38] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I love it. That’s really great bliss. Thank you so much.     [01:42:41] Ashley James: I want to make sure listeners know, go to Episode 137, 155, 228, and 305 to listen to other interviews. Cilla, thank you so much for coming on the show. It has been such a pleasure to have you back. And I’m really looking forward to watching the rest of your documentary. I’ve seen the first one. The first Episode, Quest For Real Immunity. I’m really excited for Passage For Real Immunity and of course, Choosing Real Immunity because that’s where the entire thing takes a totally different direction. I’m sure it’s going to be fascinating. I’m really excited. So I definitely urge listeners to sign up to watch it for free. Is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?   [01:43:27] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, my sincere thanks for having me, of course. But I think in closing, I would just say that the consciousness of this entire world is raising. And it’s calling people to take responsibility. And with choice comes responsibility. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t look towards someone to tell you what to do. But ask for your free agency at the same time. So I would just say learn, listen. You know you’ve learned enough when there’s not fear. Get past the fear. Fear is a very low vibration. And have trust in your intuition. But like you’re saying, Ashley, use your head and your heart. Look at the facts plus look at your intuition. Put the two together and really exercise your free agency and then take responsibility.   [01:44:24] Ashley James: You remind me of the quote from Dune, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. “Fear is the mind killer, I was like, “Oh, yeah.” So get past the fear. And I like that, when you’ve studied enough and you know enough and you have sort of armed yourself with enough information, the fear will be running you.     [01:44:47] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: It’s gone.     [01:44:47] Ashley James: Yeah.Right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Cilla. Please come back on the show anytime you want to share or teach. We’d be lucky to have you.     [01:44:58] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Thank you, Ashley. Thanks so much.     [01:45:01] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their lives and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend that you check them out. You can Google Institute for integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learnttruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices. You can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children to be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success in their health goals. There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon.  The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.   Get Connected With Dr. Cilla Whatcott!  Real Immunity Organization World Wide Choice Family Homeopathy Care Twitter Learn True Health – vaccines Book by Dr. Cilla Whatcott There Is a Choice – Homeoprophylaxis Recommended Readings by Dr. Cilla Whatcott Dissolving Illusions – Suzanne Humphries (Vaccines) Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies – Neil Miller (Vaccines) Impossible Cure –  Amy Lansky (Homeopathy) The Complete  Homeopathy Handbook – Miranda Castro (Homeopathy) Check out other interviews of Dr. Cilla Whatcott! Episode 137: Homeoprophylaxis Episode 155: Developing Real Immunity Episode 228: Homeopathy Episode 305: How To Naturally Avoid The Flu

Join the LTH Fb group: learntruehealth.com/group ThatYogiGuy.com SONG USED: "Sappheiros - Dawn" is under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 3.0) Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: http://bit.ly/2OBe00v   Heart Rate Variability https://www.learntruehealth.com/heart-rate-variability Highlights: What heart rate variability is Benefits of heart rate variability How to induce the right side of the brain What spatial perception is What hakalau is Four proofs that you are experiencing heart rate variability   In this episode, Forrest Knutson teaches us how to achieve heart rate variability in five to ten minutes. He also shares with us the benefits of heart rate variability and the proofs that you are experiencing heart rate variability resonant breathing. [0:00] Intro: Hello true health seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s episode with Forrest Knutson. He teaches some really awesome things about decreasing the stress response and that is something 100% of us need especially after some of the interviews that I’ve done recently that I’m going to be publishing soon. So many experts are talking about the leading cause of illness, chronic illness, being either caused by or exacerbated by stress. So if we do this simple breathing exercise every day we can all lower our stress levels and prevent disease. That is very exciting. Now please, go to Learn True Health/Group and go to Learn True Health Facebook group. Thanksgiving is just around the corner here in the United States. That means there’s going to be some awesome deals that all these health companies end up releasing there, Cyber Monday or Black Friday specials. I make sure I go around collecting my favorite ones and I announce them all in the Facebook group. So if you want to make sure you’re getting the best deals on some of the coolest gadgets and supplements and all those fun holistic things that are great gifts for you because you should treat yourself and pamper yourself and take care of yourself because if you’re not around for your family then who will be? So we should take care of ourselves. Self-care is a gift we give to our family. So, now more guilt when you take care of yourself. You take care of yourself and it makes sure that you’re around for your family. So treat yourself, join the Facebook group Learn True Health Facebook group so you can get those announcements that are going to come out next week. Make sure you stock up on some of the really awesome deals. I know there’s going to be the best deal ever on the magnesium soak, which my absolute favorite treat that I give myself. It is so therapeutic to soak in magnesium and make sure that I’m filling up my magnesium stores. When we are deficient in magnesium, there’s 1800 processes that cannot function correctly and everything seems to break down without magnesium. So join the Facebook group so you can learn about the best deal I’ve ever heard on this magnesium soak. I know there’s going to be some other great specials also. All my favorite gadgets and goodies. I’ll be snatching them up along with you come Cyber Monday. Awesome. I look forward to seeing you there in the Facebook group Learn True Health. Please also, go to my website learntruehealth.com. When little pop-up comes, put your email in. I promise not to spam you. I don’t sell your information to anyone. I just send a few emails .a month. I definitely will make sure I send out an email about all of my favorite Black Friday specials that are happening just in case you’re not on Facebook then you can join the email list. Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener and for sharing my episodes with your friends and family to help us spread this information and help as many people as possible to learn true health. Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 393.   [0:03:17] Ashley James: I am so excited to have back on the show with us, Forrest Knutson. Forrest, you were here on the show back all the way at the beginning, episode 25 and episode 32. So much has happened since you were on the show. Welcome back.   [0:03:32] Forrest Knutson: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I think there might have been one more in there somewhere.   [0:03:40] Ashley James: I’ve had you on a few times. But it feels like years.   [0:03:44] Forrest Knutson: It feels forever.   [0:03:46] Ashley James: It’s been hundreds of episodes.   [0:03:48] Forrest Knutson: Every time I come back you’ve got a million more people listening.   [0:03:53] Ashley James: Millions. Millions of people.   [0:03:55] Forrest Knutson: Maniacal laugh in there in the middle.   [0:04:01] Ashley James: Millions.   [0:04:02] Forrest Knutson: Perfect, perfect. Well done. Hard work.   [0:04:05] Ashley James: It’s all hard work. Blood, sweat, and tears. I love what you teach and I love that you started your YouTube channel since we’ve had you on the show. You are a machine. You pump out videos each week teaching people different aspects of meditation from the medical standpoint, from the yogic standpoint, from the neuroscience standpoint, from the neuro-linguistic programming standpoint. You are coming at it from many different angles. I love that you love focusing on heart rate variability. Actually learns heart rate variability from a handful of naturopathic physicians as I was interviewing them over the course of the last three and a half years. It kept coming up. I was like, “What is this? What is this heart rate variability that sounds so weird?” Yet they were saying that it was one of the most important things we need to focus on when reversing chronic disease because it was this marker that allowed us to see whether the body was in stress mode or in healing mode. If we are having healthy heart rate variability we could turn on the body’s magnificent healing response. Then, here you are teaching a technique that within minutes people are turning on the heart rate variability response. So you’re teaching this on your YouTube channel, ThatYogiGuy.com. Of course, links to everything that Forrest does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Welcome back to the show. I’ve just got many things I want you to teach us. Teach us how to turn on this healing response in the body.   [0:05:46] Forrest Knutson: Beautiful. Yeah. I’d love to. So the way that I teach it is very organic because I want you to be able to do it at any time, in any place. So if you’re at home, that’s the perfect place, right? You can close the door. You can turn off your phone for a minute or five minutes or ten minutes even better. Really sink into it while you’re at home, while you’re free from distraction. Then maybe you’re at work and you want to take a break and get into heart rate variability or let’s say you’re a professional athlete and you’re about to tee off at the golf course or get ready for your set to whatever it is. You want to get in the zone before you do that. Well, the very best thing that you can do is get yourself into heart rate variability resonance and you do that through your breath. So it’s resonant breathing. The way that I teach it is the holy trinity of breath. So there are three rules that we follow as we breathe that will basically guarantee that you’re going to put yourself into heart rate variability if you will do it for about five to ten minutes. It should probably take about five minutes but we say ten just to make sure that you really get yourself into it. So what I teach after that is there are four proofs where you can begin to notice that you are accomplishing this. That it is making a physiological shift in your body. So then you know, “Oh my God. I’m doing it.” Nobody had to tell you. You can tell yourself because you have this internal perceived proofs which are not made up in your mind but they’re actually in your body. So there’s a cycle physiological shift that has taken place. So that’s how I teach it. So the first rule is that we want to lower our breath rate under seven breaths per minute. That’s the very first thing. So that breath would be four seconds in and five seconds out.   [0:07:59] Ashley James: Could people do this by accident or do you have to really be conscientious of your breathing to lower it to seven breaths a minute?   [0:08:09] Forrest Knutson: You possibly could do it by accident. Absolutely. If you’re concentrated on something very deeply. So that’s the traditional meditation guidance is to concentrate very deeply on thing. While you do that, your breath rate will automatically reduce. You can see that when you’re at work or when you are really into something or you’re concentrating very very deeply on one subject, you’ll notice that your breath rate drops automatically. If you’re in a very loving state, not an excited loving state but a very very our loving state then same thing can happen. Your breath rate can drop when you’re in a very safe loving atmosphere then your breath rate will automatically drop as well. To make sure that you can actually do it on purpose, that’s the holy trinity. So it gives you a real self-reliance that you can do this thing, you can accomplish it and you can do it anytime that you want.   [0:09:16] Ashley James: Before we go on to the rest of the steps I feel like we should understand a bit more what heart rate variability is and why we want to do it? What is it? What benefits do we get from creating a more distinct heart rate variability? Who benefits from it? Can you just walk us through for those who have never heard of heart rate variability?   [0:09:40] Forrest Knutson: There’s a thing called sinus arrhythmia. So that was understood first and then building on that understanding was this idea of heart rate variability. What that is is that when you breathe in there’s more work going on in the lungs so the heart needs to pump, it needs to do more work at that point.   [0:10:06] Ashley James: Is that because the pressure? Because the heart is basically in this chest cavity is creating more pressure on the heart so the heart has to beat harder?   [0:10:16] Forrest Knutson: There’s a lot of complicated things going on at the same time but the simple reason is that you’ve got gases in your lungs. They have to be processed and that’s the work of the heart. So the heart does that work and it has to pump more during that time when there is breath in the lungs. Then, when the air is out of the lungs, there’s less work to do. So the heart rate has a chance. If we’re not in a stress state it has a chance to lower the heart rate. It does that because your diaphragm goes up and that puts more pressure on the entire thoracic cavity. All that pressure translates backwards toward the spine. Right along the spine is the dorsal vagal nerve. This is the parasympathetic nerve. It’s one of the aspects of the parasympathetic nerve and it goes straight up into your medulla. So all that pressure goes on the dorsal vagal nerve. That nerve sends a signal to the medulla which is the breath center. It sends a signal down to the heart that, “Hey. There’s more pressure, therefore, lower the heart rate.” So the heart rate comes down a little bit. Now you’ve got a variance. So the in-breath the heart rate will go up. The out-breath the heart rate will go down if we’re not in a stress state. That’s heart rate variability in a nutshell.   [0:11:55] Ashley James: So it’s the ratio between the beats happening during the in-breath and the beats happening during an out-breath or when we’ve exhaled and we haven’t inhaled. There’s a pause after exhaling and we haven’t inhaled yet. So that time. Basically, the time of the inhale and the time of the exhale and the pause. You want the ratio to be great?   [0:12:26] Forrest Knutson: It’s not so much the pause as it is the actual out-breath. The pause is there as well but when you’re trying to induce heart rate variability, the pause can mess you up. So if you pause too long while you’re trying to induce it – so once it’s been induced, that’s a whole another story. But when you’re trying to get out of a semi-stress state and into more resonance, that resonance what does that mean? That just means that your heart rate and your breath are working together as one system. There’s a resonance between them. That means your breath goes in. You feel it filling up your lungs and at the same time, your heart rate is going to go up a little bit. Then you breathe out and you feel the breath going out of your lungs going down. Sorry, your diaphragm goes up actually. But you feel the breath coming out of you. At the same time, your heart rate is going down slightly. So there is that resonance. It’s coming up and down, both of them, simultaneously. That’s why we call it resonance, heart rate variability resonant breathing.   [0:13:46] Ashley James: So when this happens, and what’s really interesting is I like listening to my son’s heartbeat. When he’s sleeping I’ll put my ear to his chest and it kind of freaked me out the first few times until I realized. Because I took him to the doctor and I was like, “I think there’s something wrong with him.” They’re like, “No, he’s fine.” He has a very large difference between the heart rate during an inhale and the heart rate during an exhale. I was worried that he had like AFib because I’m listening to his heart and it’ll be like bum-bum-bum-bum-bum and then he’d exhale will be like bum-bum bum-bum. I’m like, “Whoa. What is going on?” So there was a really big difference. So that is heart rate variability? So it’s beating faster when you’re inhaling and slower when you’re exhaling?   [0:14:35] Forrest Knutson: Correct. That’s exactly right. You’re not the only one to ever be freaked out by that. So the story, I think I told you guys this last time but since it’s been so long maybe it’s okay to retell you the story.   [0:14:48] Ashley James: Yeah. We have millions, millions of listeners. Millions.   [0:14:54] Forrest Knutson: Ok, great. Perfect. So the story, I love this story, the story that I like to tell is that so the Russian Cosmonauts were up in space. They had a whole team monitoring them. This was before some of the real-time satellite information was able to pass through and you had video and all that. This was just simple radio at the time. But they had them, their Cosmonauts, hooked up and were monitoring their signals including their heart rate. While they were doing this one of their Cosmonauts were up their meditation but they didn’t know that. They saw, the team that was there the head guy was monitoring this, he saw that his Cosmonauts heart rate was going up really high and then it was going way down. It was going up really high and then go way down. Then he thought, “Oh my God. This guy’s having a heart attack in space.” So they got them on the line. He said, “What’s happening? What’s happening? What’s going on?” The Cosmonaut you know, “What? I’m meditating.”   [0:16:05] Ashley James: “How to shoo. Duh.”   [0:16:07] Forrest Knutson: “Leave me alone. I’m meditating.” Funny story. From there, they actually began to study it. So very, very interesting. A lot of that research is the basis of some of the research that was done here in the United States. They confirmed a lot of the things that some of the researchers were finding here.   [0:16:36] Ashley James: What I’ve heard is that people who are sick don’t have heart rate variability.   [0:16:42] Forrest Knutson: When you’re in a stress state, the heart rate and the breath disjoin. So they’re not going up and down in this resonance that I’m talking about. Your heart rate, when you’re very very sick, your heart rate will stay steady beat to beat. A way to think about that is that you’re like a plate of glass. Any pressure on the glass is liable to break it. That’s not a good thing. Nature loves flexibility. That’s why this variance in the heart rate is such an indicator of health. This is really an emerging field. So when I came on to YouTube I said, “Heart rate variability, breathing.” People are like, “I don’t think that’s the correct term.” I was like, “Okay the sign is arrhythmia and there’s heart rate variability resonant breathing. We can draw it out into a longer name but sometimes when I’m talking I just shorten it a bit.” So this heart rate variability breathing was not on YouTube when I started but now you can look it up and it’s a search term.      [0:17:56] Ashley James: So you were like the first person on YouTube to create a video on how to successfully achieve heart rate variability through breathing?   [0:18:04] Forrest Knutson: In terms of defining it purely as a set of rules that you can follow and get success with. You don’t have to hook yourself up to a monitor or anything like that. I think some of the instructions that I saw at the time were like develop a pleasant feeling and just concentrate on that. So it was very –   [0:18:25] Ashley James: Obtuse.   [0:18:26] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. It was a little bit hard to follow and make sure that you can do it. I like things that you can follow and have success every single time. That’s what I love. So yeah. It’s really a developing field. You’re going to see it, I predict, explode.   [0:18:45] Ashley James: Well you were telling me that life insurance companies use this as an indicator whether they’re going to cover people or not. Can you tell us a bit about that?   [0:18:55] Forrest Knutson: They’re researching it now. I don’t know how far ahead. If one of your listeners knows maybe they can leak it and tell us but I would love to know more. My understanding is that the insurance field is looking at this as an indicator of health and mortality so that they will look at it and decide how long you’re going to live based on how much heart rate variability resonance you have in any moment so they can predict whether to insure you or how long they’re going to insure you or what they’re going to charge you in order to insure you for life insurance. They’re finding this probably one of the most effective indicators that they’ve ever found. These are people with lots of lots of money to throw this kind of research. So it’s really exciting. Sounds a bit morbid but that’s actually really exciting.   [0:19:54] Ashley James: Well, it’s really exciting if we can use it to our advantage to live to be 120 years old. Healthfully.   [0:20:00] Forrest Knutson: Exactly. You look at that and you hear that and you’re like, “Oh my God. This is so exciting.” But I look at it in terms of yogis and what the old yogis said was that we have a set amount of breaths to breathe in one life. If you breathe less, what I said that first rule you’ve got to lower your breath rate right? So if we breathe less we will automatically breathe longer. So they understood it was an indicator a couple of thousand years ago at least.   [0:20:35] Ashley James: It’s interesting because we’re thought that aerobic exercise is something that’s very healthy for us. You do a lot of breaths during aerobic exercise. Do we get into heart rate variability if we’re exercising or is that too stressful?   [0:20:54] Forrest Knutson: Yes. Well, it will a little bit will take you a long way. So if you raise your heart rate and then you relax, it’s that relaxation which benefits you the most. So you get benefit from pumping it up but it’s the relaxation phase which is most beneficial to your body long term. So, work then rest, work then rest. That’s the cycle that’s going to benefit you the most in terms of health.   [0:21:25] Ashley James: So cut out the middleman. Just rest a bunch.   [0:21:27] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. Exactly. But don’t let the couch swallow you. It’s the balance, the middle way that’s going to benefit you the very most.   [0:21:41] Ashley James: What health benefits have you personally noticed? Now, Forrest, you and I have personally known each other since 2006. You’ve always been fairly healthy but I know you’re also very conscientious and very present to your body. I know you’ve been meditating and studying this subject and studying neuroscience and meditation for many years. You started when you were in high school. When did you start focusing on heart rate variability? Has it only been the last two years or three years?   [0:22:20] Forrest Knutson: It’s been recent. So I was monastic for about five and a half years. I went very deeply into the study of meditation at that time. I found this obscure reference to the breath that it would shift as it goes in and out of your nose. I thought this was fascinating. In the process of studying this, this physiological shift in the body that happens in meditation, I thought that, “Well, that you can turn this into a whole biofeedback device.” I didn’t have that terminology but I understood it. That’s exactly what I did. So I developed it for myself. I call it the five breath states. There’s a bunch of other information. There’s a bunch of other shifts like tastes in the mouth and length of the breath as it exits the nose. So there’s a whole bunch of other information. I threw all that out and I just concentrated on the one thing which was the easiest to feel in the body. What I believe is actually happening is that we have these little things inside the nose called the turbinates. As the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system come into balance through meditation, they affect the turbinates in the nose and that affects the breath. So you’ll actually feel these shifts take place in the nose. So I became – how can I explain? I started playing with this and it affected my meditation so profoundly that I went crazy with it. I was doing it every day all the time. I didn’t have any language to explain why this was such a big deal. I tried telling the people I lived with, the yogis that I lived with and other people, my family and my friends. “Hey. This is a big deal. You have to try this out.” Their response was always, “Okay.” I’m like, “No. You don’t get it. This is a really big deal.” I couldn’t translate it. When I saw, let’s see I’m going to slaughter his name, his name is professor [Getherts]. When I saw him explaining heart rate variability, my brain exploded. This is it. This is what I was doing a different way in a very very deep into heart rate variability resonance through this five breath state process. So if you really want to know about the five breath sates I’ve got a video on that on YouTube. It’s called the five breath states. So you would see that on my channel. I go through that and I explain what they are. They’re also in my book Hacking the Universe, there’s a little plug. But anyway. So I was doing it – what was that? That must have been 2001? So I was doing it on my way but I didn’t have a language to explain it. What got me so excited was there was no more hit and miss in my meditations. It was consistent. I can go deep every single time. It was experiential. I knew it. It was just a huge milestone. It was a watershed moment. So, when I saw the heart rate variability resonant breathing language I thought, “Oh my God. This is amazing.” So it’s just a glorious framework to talk about meditation. So if you’re a Buddhist, if you’re a Christian and you pray, if you are doing anything which is of that interior interoceptive world, you have to begin with heart rate variability. Either you’re doing unconsciously or you’re doing it consciously but either way, all interoception begins with this reset point, this balance point of heart rate variability resonance.   [0:26:48] Ashley James: So when you started to focus on heart rate variability and breathing specifically for shifting heart rate variability, were you then achieving new heart rate variability or had you already been achieving it for years because you meditate?   [0:27:05] Forrest Knutson: Because of the five breath states, I’ve already been achieving it for like 15 years at that point. But I didn’t have the language to explain it. Really cool with the people on my channel they try it out and they report back. Their experiences it’s like, “I’m just doing your heart rate variability and this happened.” It’s just explosive.   [0:27:34] Ashley James: Like what? Can you give some examples?   [0:27:36] Forrest Knutson: So, a lot of times they will suddenly shift and fall into a very shallow breath naturally. In the meditative world, one of the names for this is tranquil breath. Your whole system gets so relaxed and so centered and so balanced that you automatically shift into a very shallow breath. You probably go into a trance momentarily, a trance-like state. You’d be watching your breath and then suddenly you’ll just kind of go into kind of float off mentally for a moment and then you’ll come back and you’ll notice that your breath is very very shallow. So it’s a whole different system of breath that your body has entered into naturally. Then your whole system is working so quietly that you can actually begin the true process of meditation because none of that body machinery is getting in the way of your mind. So let’s say you’re a researcher, right? This would be the perfect time to begin your thoughts on your research. Well, let’s say you’re going to pray. This would be the perfect time to begin your prayer. Or if you’re meditating, this would be the perfect time to pick your one idea. Let’s say you’re going to practice, you’re a Buddhist and you’re going to practice metta, which is to take one thought like gratitude or love and just put yourself on that one thought. Now is the perfect time because the body machinery is out of the way. It’s not making a ton of noise and distracting you and drawing you back to the outward world. So you’re able to interocept much more easily.   [0:29:22] Ashley James: I know we could go into your YouTube channel ThatYogiGuy.com. We could go there and we could read the comments of people sharing their experiences. Has anyone had any stories of success in terms of noticing shifts in their health?   [0:29:43] Forrest Knutson: Yes. They say that they feel more alive and more centered, calm, things don’t disturb you that much because you have this balance. This interior centered stated.   [0:30:05] Ashley James: Obviously, 15 years ago you said, can you think back to before you had really figured out this type of breathing that triggered heart rate variability? Can you go back in your mind and think about sort of your health before and after? Did you have any noticeable health changes from – because you’ve been meditating for so long but your meditation wasn’t really centered around creating heart rate variability? So people can meditate and not necessarily create great heart rate variability. Then you do these specific things either in meditation or you don’t have to be meditating you just breathe this way and create heart rate variability. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to meditate in order to create it but you are doing it within meditation. So can you look back 15 years ago and see, is there a difference in your health or vitality that you could tell the before and after when you started creating heart rate variability?   [0:31:09] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. Absolutely. You have a lot less energy when you’re not in heart rate variability resonance. So, your concentration is going to lack. Your stamina is going to lack. Your ease, just being in your own skin is going to be less because you’re in a stress state. I mean your cortisol is up. All of that is going to affect the entire system. So with heart rate variability, your serotonin goes up. Everything goes up. Your rest. It’s like you’re in your car and you come to the stop sign. You don’t go sit there and go [revving sound] and rev your engine while you’re at the stop sign, right? You let the car go down into an idle. So imagine that you go through life revving your engine constantly when you don’t need to. What’s that going to do to your car? It’s going to put stress on your car which is not necessary. That’s the majority of our life, right? Where you’re at work, your boss comes up and you freak out. Your adrenaline goes up, your whole system goes out of whack. If you’re in the jungle and the jungle cat comes up, you get up and you run for your life. Now you’re putting carbon in your muscles. When you’re at work and you don’t jump up when your boss come, maybe you should but we don’t. We sit there and the adrenaline goes up but there’s no carbon in the muscles because we’re just sitting there. So there’s no carbon-oxygen exchange in the body. So you’re hyperventilating because you’re in stress but you’re not exchanging that oxygen. It just stays in your blood. It doesn’t transfer to the muscles because there’s no carbon in the muscles. It’s a marketplace and they have to be able to exchange one for the other. So that’s how the whole system falls apart, how it gets out of whack.   [0:33:23] Ashley James: Can you go deeper into that? I know you’ve explained it to me off-air before with a bit more detail. I don’t want to glaze over this. I remember I think you called me up one day you were like, “I figured something really cool out about carbon.” So take us back to when you first figured this out. What had you figure this out?   [0:33:45] Forrest Knutson: So the breath and the body are like a marketplace. So when you breathe in a lot, you oxygenate the blood. That oxygen flows through your blood. It comes up against your muscles. It says, “Hey. I’ve got oxygen. I want to buy some carbon.” But if there’s no carbon in your muscles, then the marketplace doesn’t work. There’s nothing to exchange. So the muscle says, “Hey. I don’t have any carbon so I can’t buy your oxygen.” So the blood just keeps going, just cycling that oxygen and then it gets rid of it for nothing. It was all for nothing. So when you either workout a little bit and you get carbon in your muscles, now you’ve got the ability to create the exchange. So you’re breathing a lot. You get oxygen in the blood. The blood shows up to the muscle and it exchanges the oxygen for carbon. So the carbon goes into the blood to be recycled and the oxygen goes into the muscle to revamp the muscle, so oxygenate the muscle. That’s what you want. That’s the carbon-oxygen exchange when it’s working properly. So, the way the body was designed, the jungle cat comes up to eat us and we jump up. We’re full of adrenaline, we’re full of oxygen because we’re breathing like crazy. We’re running for our lives. So there’s carbon in our muscles and everything is working right. The carbon and the oxygen exchange takes place. Then we fast forward to today, we don’t jump up. We sit there. There’s no carbon-oxygen exchange. So as a yogi, how do you fix this? Or as a heart rate variability resonant breather, how do you fix this? Well, you lower the breath rate and by lowering the breath rate, you introduce more carbon into the cycle of the breath. That carbon and oxygen floats through the blood and essentially you’re kickstarting your own body economy. The blood gives the carbon to the muscles and the muscles exchange the carbon back for oxygen. Now you’ve kick-started the economy in your body and you have carbon-oxygen exchange because you have a lowered breath rate. So automatically you’re going to feel if you do it very well and very deeply, you’ll feel your whole body tingle like it has come alive for the first time in 20 years. It’s kind of insane. You’ll get used to it. But it’s really kind of crazy.   [0:36:48] Ashley James: Cool. I like it. So what’s the downside to not producing a lot of carbon?   [0:36:56] Forrest Knutson: The downside to not producing a lot of carbon.   [0:37:03] Ashley James: Well, besides being lazy or not moving. I mean, is there really a downside to – we’re doing a lot of breathing. We’re in stress response, the boss is coming. We were just sitting there. The adrenaline’s going and we’re not really moving. We’re not making carbon. What’s the downside to just breathing in a bunch of oxygen but not having a lot of carbon being produced?   [0:37:24] Forrest Knutson: Right. There’s no exchange. There’s no exchange that takes place. The body and the muscles, which form a huge part of the body and all of the tissues which are in proximity to the muscles they don’t get oxygenated. You don’t come alive, right?   [0:37:45] Ashley James: You’re not really giving the mitochondria everything it needs and giving every cell everything it needs because we need to basically move the body in order to kick start economy is what you’re saying?   [0:37:58] Forrest Knutson: Yes. So you need to either move the body or introduce a lower breath rate to introduce carbon into the mix. So, when we think of breath we usually think of oxygen but there’s actually a host of gases which are in the mix. If you take those out you begin to destroy the rest of the balance. So it’s not just oxygen. A huge part of our breath is actually carbon. We’re often told that we need to breathe more. This is kind of a wrong idea because it can lead to the idea that hyperventilation is a good. It could be a short-term at some positive effects but long-term it’s not going to benefit you. So what we actually need is less breathing, a lower breath rate.   [0:38:49] Ashley James: I was recently reading an article in I think it was a bunch of British scientists, a British medical journal, that had measured weight loss and determined that most weight loss – where does the fat go? That’s always been my question when someone loses 25 pounds. Where did it go? You didn’t pee it out or poop it out. Where did it go, right? Most fat we exhale. Isn’t that crazy that they actually measured the carbon? They figured out that the fat is broken down, obviously, energy and the body uses energy but that it’s broken down and leaves the body as carbon and other byproducts. So most weight loss – and also heat. The body uses that fat to metabolic energy. They could measure in heat and in carbon leaving breath, measure 25 pounds basically of fat loss by measuring the carbon leaving the breath and proving that that was your fat. So, we’re breathing out our fat. In that way, wouldn’t hyperventilation be good? Let’s breathe more lose weight.   [0:40:19] Forrest Knutson: Right. It’s possible. It’s definitely going to work the body a lot to hyperventilate but your long-term benefit has to be the resonance between the heart and the breath. So there’s the Wim Hof method, which is a lot of hyperventilation in the beginning. It’s an easy way to get into a state where you momentarily don’t need to breathe. It’s much easier to practice breath holds after you’ve hyperventilated. But the problem that I see, it’s going to work a little bit but it’s also going to make you very tired sometimes. If you’re not up on your game if you’re not on top of your game and you do a lot of hyperventilation you’re going to feel very tired. So it’s going to adversely affect your body if you’re doing that day after day and you’re not doing it when you’re at your peak. I have a lot of worries about people who really get into the Wim Hof method. I think it could be better explained exactly what his end goal is and what the breathing is for. You can basically do three kinds of breathing, four. You can be in a normal state. You can do heart rate variability resonant breathing. You can do hyperventilation or a purging breath. You can do a breath-hold. Those are the basic four things that you can do with your breath. They all have their place. The one that’s really the most beneficial physically and spiritually so to speak is the heart rate variability resonant breathing.   [0:42:32] Ashley James: Well, it’s triggering within minutes. You said within ten minutes it’s triggering the autonomic nervous systems parasympathetic response of rest and digest, lowering cortisol levels, lowering the stress levels in the body, stress hormones in the body, shunting blood away from the limbs into the digestion and bating all the organs in oxygen-rich blood. It’s allowing the blood flow open up to all the logic centers of the brain and turning on digestion. Turning on, even epigenetically, turning on enzymatic processes of digestion and enzymes for healing. So it is the perfect state to be in for healing. If something happens, like the boss calls us and we need to jump up or there’s a rock in the road and we need to drive around it really quick we need our stress response. We can turn back on for a moment and then come back into the parasympathetic response of healing. Some people feel like they need stress in order to be better at their job, like a high-stress job. I’ve heard that before in many different ways but it’s actually this state of the parasympathetic state where we have full access to the brain because in stress response, it shunts blood away from logic centers to the brain. So, if we’re trying to meet a deadline or studying or trying to finish the project, if we don’t have access to our full brain, it makes it very difficult to be efficient. But when we’re in the parasympathetic nervous response of rest and digest, we are able to really concentrate. You said even focused in on one task and not have the voice chatter and the sort of the ADD brain going on. Have you ever had anyone share with you any results about reducing ADD or ADHD as a result of this type of breathing?   [0:44:42] Forrest Knutson: No I haven’t. But I absolutely think it would work exceptionally well for that purpose. So I haven’t heard that specifically but I think it would be a fantastic recipe for reversal of that. That’s a perfect point what you talked about. You would know that instantly if you spoke with a professional athlete and you say, “Hey. You want to come into a game being all stressed out or would you rather be in kind of the zone where you’re in it but not stressed out about it?” Of course, they’re going to tell you, “I’d rather be in the zone.” That’s exactly the best state to be in. That’s a state of HRV resonance.   [0:45:30] Ashley James: Cool. So listeners who have ADD or ADHD, please do this what Forrest is going to teach us today. Then come into the Facebook group, Learn True Health Facebook group and let us know your results because I want to know if this helps people with ADD and ADHD. I want to know real stories of success. I think that would be really cool. Because ADHD is partially from neurochemical, I don’t want to say imbalance because that makes it sound like I’m calling them broken. I think that there’s a place for us who have ADD-like there’s a place in this world. It can be cumbersome to be distracted by racing thoughts. So I think part of it is maybe an imbalance of certain neurochemicals because I’ve seen people with ADD or ADHD find peace mentally when they come back into health even more. Then partly it’s strategy, partly it’s unconscious programing. So there’s lots of NLP for example, neuro-linguistic programming techniques for changing young conscious programming to allow us not to have ADD or ADHD limit us, right? If we can do something like as simple as consciously changing our breath and that then has a cascade effect and changes the neurological state of our brain and the state of our endocrine system and just kind of cascades down and affects our whole body and our circulation and our energy levels and our vitality. It’s affecting every system. That sounds wonderful. If we can do something as simple as breathe and make it so that we are able to quiet our mind, focus more. I mean can see that people might even be able to no longer want to use a medication or use over the counter sometimes people self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, sugar what have you that they might find that they’re coming into balance and they don’t need that.     [0:47:59] Forrest Knutson: I think it would be great. The whole premise of yogic meditation is that I’m going to use toe body to affect the mind. So if you’ve ever tried to meditate and you’re like, “I can’t do this. This is my brain. It’s just all over the place.” Well, that’s very normal. It’s just a misconception because you’re not meant to wrestle with your own mind in mediation because if your mind fights your mind and one mind wins, you still got your original problem. You still have your mind, right? So the body follows this amazing rule, it’s called the 80-20 rule that for everyone single that your brain sends out so your brain is like the general. It sends out one signal to the body, “Hey. Do this.” The body send five signals back of messages giving this well we did this and we felt this and this happened. It’s feedback, right? So there’s much more signals. Your neurology is setup, your nervous system is set up to give much more signals back to the brain than is being sent out by the brain. So it’s easier to control the brain from the body than it is to try and control the brain itself. So when you quiet the body, you will instantly quiet the mind. It’s just the biggest lever in the room to make change.   [0:49:29] Ashley James: I never thought of it that way.   [0:49:31] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it?   [0:49:33] Ashley James: I’m sure you’ve said it to me that way before but just the way you said it. So quieting the body helps to quiet the mind because, for every one message the brain is sending out, it’s receiving five signals back which makes sense. If you think of just walking down a hallway your brain is saying, “All right. Move this leg, move that leg,” but you’re hearing things, seeing things, feeling things, tasting things. There’s so much more input going on.   [0:50:02] Forrest Knutson: Exactly. So the yogi takes that rule and applies it to meditation in order to quiet the body, quiet the mind. Then you’ve already, instead of wrestling with your mind and trying to stick it in a corner that it doesn’t want to go into, you just affect the body and then the mind follows suit automatically. That cascade of events, that’s how it works. Another thing that you might want to think about with ADHD is that we have a left brain which is kind of like a predator. So for example, the bird will – well it’s going to peck a seed. It will look down at the seed with its right eye because the right eye is connected to the left brain. So that predator brain, that predator part of the brain which will focus on one thing like the seed is in activation as it’s looking at that seed. So it’s going to peck at that one seed and while that’s happening, nature knows that the bird is very vulnerable because it’s caught in that one thing, right? So nature designed us with a whole other side of the brain which is very very disassociated from what’s going on in the left brain. That’s the right brain. The right brain has this spherical kind of perception of everything that’s going on around us simultaneously and that’s the brain that warns us that something’s not quite right when we don’t actually know why it’s warning us, right?   [0:51:35] Ashley James: Like when we have a gut feeling that something’s not okay?   [0:51:38] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. That’s right. That is very possibly the right side of the brain trying to tell us something. It might not make logical sense but it’s an instinctual understanding that’s coming from the right side of the brain which is really, I like to call it the parent brain. If you want to use older terminology you could say it’s the guardian angel in us. So it’s looking out for us constantly and it has to do that because you’re vulnerable while you’re concentrating on one thing. In our western society, we developed that law and it’s very very good for us. We have to be able to concentrate on one thing. We have to get a task done. We have to have our list and go down our list and make the list done. That’s just part of our life. But we also should develop this other side where we can benefit from everything we just completed so we can go out and look at the sunset and enjoy it. We can watch the waves crash on the beach and enjoy it. So we can enjoy music, we can enjoy poetry. One of the people I love to follow is Iain McGilchrist. He’s very very great at describing the left and the right side of the brain. Some of the science that came out originally they said, “Oh my God. There’s this huge difference between the left and the right side of the brain.” Then they did more research and they said, “Well, actually there are signals going to the left and the right all the time. We were incorrect.” What Iain McGilchrist says is that well, we weren’t in that middle space. We were not asking the correct questions. So the most up to date research is showing they are more correct the first time that there is a big difference between the left and the right side of the brain but it’s not what. It’s how, how does the brain respond to different things? It responds as if we are two personalities. So the way to think about that is perhaps one is the child and one is the parent brain. So the left is the child, it’s the predator. The right is the parental, it’s the watcher. So we have in mediation circles where you’re allowed to be the watcher. They’re trying to induce that right side of the brain to induce that very calm state. So when you’re in a state where you’re very manic or very hyper, well that’s going to be a left-brain process. So there’s few tricks you can do to induce the right brain very very quickly and easily. One of those is spatial perception. This is my favorite. So if you will think of two points either it’s outside of yourself or inside of yourself. So you could think of your right big toe and your left ear. If you will hold those in your brain, try and feel your right toe and your left toe at the same time. While you do that you’ll realize there’s no thoughts when you’re really trying to feel both of those simultaneously. There’s just no thoughts, right? There’s no words chattering in your brain. So you could play with that or you could go into what the kahuna would call hakalau. Pick one point in front of you. Go into your left spatial perception on the left, that peripheral vision and then go into your right peripheral vision. Hold all three of those points. The point in front of you, and the left peripheral vision and the right peripheral vision. Hold all of that at the same time.   [0:55:25] Ashley James: I just want to break that down.   [0:55:28] Forrest Knutson: Was that too fast?   [0:55:29] Ashley James: Yeah. That was too fast for hakalau.   [0:55:31] Forrest Knutson: Okay.   [0:55:32] Ashley James: No. No. It’s okay because you’re on a roll so hold that thought. I want to continue on that roll. But for hakalau is so so important. I love teaching it to my clients. You can even do this if you’re driving because you’re keeping your eyes open. But basically, you look in front of you at a point. If you’re in a room look at the wall, look at something in front of you. If you’re driving just look at the road. Keep looking where you should be going but notice your peripheral. Notice as far as you can to the left and to the right as you’re staring forward. Your eyes aren’t moving but notice if you can see. If you’re driving, notice if you can see the mirrors the side view mirrors, both of the side view mirrors. Open up your peripherals so that you could see as much as possible and observe as much as possible in the room or in the car, wherever you are. If you’re not driving you can actually stretch your arms out to each side and wiggle your fingers so that you can see them in the corner of your vision on either side while you’re staring forward. So you’re opening up because most people walk around in life in tunnel vision. I remember doing this for the first time and I freaked out because I’d never experienced my peripheral vision. I just was living life in tunnel vision. That it neurologically changes us. The Hunas, the ancient Polynesian tradition of Huna, the Hawaiians knew that when we shift our perception to be aware of our periphery that we’re shifting our neurological state. We cannot stay in a state of anger or stress while doing it. So that’s hakalau. When we do that when we’re studying we memorize things much better. It brings us to a calm stage. If we’re on stage and we notice we’re on tunnel vision we’re on stage, when you’re giving a presentation and we do this and it calms us down. Makes us to become aware of the whole room. But yeah. I love teaching this to my clients because it makes a big difference to them in relieving anxiety as well. I’m glad you brought that up. Okay. Continue.   [0:57:39] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. Well, it’s really fun because when you play around with that spatial perception you’re inducing the right hippocampus of the brain. That’s spatial perception. It really induces a very calm state very quickly. So it’s very very cool. That would be a good thing to play around with. If you had any kind of ADHD symptoms that would be really really fun to play around with and see how well it affects you. Then if you were to put that together with heart rate variability resonant breathing then you really really be playing with fire. You really really have something.   [0:58:29] Ashley James: Maybe not fire. Maybe cooking with fire, cooking with gas. Playing with fire sounds dangerous. You mean like now you are cooking?   [0:58:38] Forrest Knutson: I mean that now it’s going to make you very dangerous when it comes to your own ADHD. You’re going to have power that you didn’t have before. When you walk into the room you’re nervous. It’s going to give you power. It’s going to give you tools in your toolbox that you didn’t have before. So it’s going to make you just a little bit dangerous.   [0:59:00] Ashley James: In a good way. In a productive way.   [0:59:04] Forrest Knutson: In a very beautiful productive way. Absolutely.   [0:59:08] Ashley James: Not in like dangerous like you’re going to implode or something?   [0:59:14] Forrest Knutson: Right.   [0:59:15] Ashley James: Dangerous like you’re going to kick butt.   [0:59:17] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. Take names while you’re at it.   [0:59:20] Ashley James: Kick butt and take names.   [0:59:23] Forrest Knutson: But in a very peaceful way.   [0:59:25] Ashley James: Yes. We’re pacifists in a way that we not harm anyone. We’re just going to kick proverbial butt and take home the gold.   [0:59:37] Forrest Knutson: Exactly. That’s what it is. We have to be successful in whatever we do. There’s room for lots of success for everybody.   [0:59:45] Ashley James: Do you see that because you love studying the neuroscience of this. I know we’ve geeked out for hours on the phone. You telling me about left brain and right brain and being able to access from one to the other and the benefits of that. My question is, let’s say complete newbies are listening, not everyone I know some of you are experience. But let’s say some of us are complete newbies and we for the first time ever start doing this breathwork you’re going to teach us to get heart rate variability for the many benefits such as longevity and energy and vitality and peace, tranquility and the ability to kick proverbial butt. All of that. So we’re changing our breath. Let’s say we didn’t meditate, we didn’t pray, we just kept our eyes open and took in the room like took in our peripheral, kept our eyes open and slowed down our breath and did the things that you’re going to teach us to do to increase our heart rate variability. Would that alone cause a shift to go into the right brain?                                                   [1:00:56] Forrest Knutson: It’s going to put you in the arena of that. It’s going to put you much much closer. It’s the entry point. So there’s some yogic jargon I can throw into you. There’s a state that yogis know about which is called pratyahara. That just means interiorization but it’s a really really big deal when you’re trying to get into a deep meditative state. Heart rate variability resonance is the beginning of that state. Absolutely. If you want to get into that kind of depth this is where you have to be to do that. So the results that come back, that’s what you’re asking, it’s just phenomenal. It really is amazing. So people are trying to meditate. They’re trying to get into a calm state. They’re trying to feel better. It’s okay. It’s hit and miss. “Yeah. I had this good session once upon a time and then I did your heart rate variability resonant breathing and it works every single – what the hell? It’s a game-changer. It’s a huge shift.” I get that kind of feedback a lot. Makes it all worthwhile. It’s really fun.   [1:02:21] Ashley James: So it sounds like it’s an easy win formula for getting some results.   [1:02:28] Forrest Knutson: Yes. Every time.   [1:02:29] Ashley James: Cool. Every time. All right. Teach us. We are ready.   [1:02:32] Forrest Knutson: Okay. Great. So this is the holy trinity of breath. A good way to think about it is that we’re boxing ourselves into the dorsal vagal nerves. We’re going to make sure that we hit the parasympathetic nervous system every single time at work. You can do this standing as well if you’re going to go on stage or you’re going to present something or you’re going to talk to your boss you can stand and you can do this for a minute or two or five. You’re going to induce a much more calm state. You’re going to get into the zone and then you’re ready to do whatever you’re going to do. What we’re doing is we’re just kind of making sure that we’re going to get into that parasympathetic system, the dorsal vagal nerve. So we’re trying to box ourselves in. So that’s what all the rules are for. So the first rule is put the breath rate under seven breaths per minute. You got to kind of play with it. Play with it a little bit and see which one of the breaths feels the most comfortable for you. So a lot of people on my channel they get really excited and they want to go to the lowest breath rate. But that’s not it. It’s not a competition. It’s just the one that fits for you.   [1:03:53] Ashley James: One breath a minute. Let’s go.   [1:03:56] Forrest Knutson: Exactly. You can work up to that kind of thing but in the beginning, it’s just about what fits and what is correct for you. So you want to try out all of the breaths, all of the breath rates and see which one feels really comfortable and seems to bring you into the centered, balanced state really quickly. So the first breath is going to be four seconds in and five seconds out. Then from there you can try five seconds in and six seconds out. Then you can try six seconds in and seven seconds out. Anywhere between those three breaths. So first one was four seconds in and five seconds out. Anywhere under that is going to put you into heart rate variability. The second rule is that as we’re breathing we want to accentuate that parasympathetic because we’re maybe in a slight stressed state. So we want to accentuate the parasympathetic and make sure that we really get into it. So we’re going to make the outbreaths slightly longer. So that’s why the different numbers four seconds in and at least five seconds out. So that’s going to accentuate the parasympathetic because the breath is going out, the diaphragm is going up, there’s more pressure on the thoracic cavity. That pressure translate to the dorsal vagal nerve. That sends a signal to the medulla. The medulla sends a signal to the heart rate, “Go ahead and lower down all the tool bits.” So that’s how it works. The third rule is want to take out the pauses. So the pause at the bottom of the breath and the pause at the top of the breath. While we’re inducing this, we don’t want those pauses because it can just mess up the cycle that we’re trying to get into. So we just don’t have to hurry but we don’t want to pause for a long time. We want this nice, rhythmic in and out-breath to really get into that heart rate variability resonance. That’s the holy trinity. That’s how you do it. So, do you want me to guide it for a second?   [1:06:24] Ashley James: Yeah. Guide us for like a minute? Should we breathing in through our mouth or our nose? Does it matter?   [1:06:34] Forrest Knutson: Definitely through the nose.   [1:06:37] Ashley James: And out through the nose or out through the mouth?   [1:06:39] Forrest Knutson: Out through the nose as well. It’s the most economical for the body. It’s going to put more carbon into the mix. That’s one of the reasons why you have a sinus passage is to introduce carbon into the blood mix.   [1:06:55] Ashley James: If someone has a stuffy nose it’s okay to do this through the mouth?   [1:06:59] Forrest Knutson: It is. Absolutely.   [1:07:01] Ashley James: It’s still effective. It’s just more effective through the nose?   [1:07:03] Forrest Knutson: Correct.   [1:07:06] Ashley James: Okay. Do you want to count when you do the seconds?   [1:07:10] Forrest Knutson: Sure. Yeah. I can count. Absolutely.   [1:07:16] Ashley James: All right. Okay. Guide us.   [1:07:19] Forrest Knutson: All right. Here we go. So we’re going to start breathing in one, two, three four. Breathe out five one, two, three, four, five. Breathe in one, two, three four. Breathe out one, two, three, four, five. Breathe in one, two, three four. Breathe out one, two, three, four, five. Breathe in one, two, three four. Breathe out one, two, three, four, five. Breathe in one, two, three four. Breathe out one, two, three, four, five. That was a minute.   [1:08:22] Ashley James: I totally went into parasympathetic. My hands started the shift because I know how it feels. Because you know, being a massage therapist in my past you know when you’re in parasympathetic. My hands shifted. I always feel it first in my hands. There’s a little bit of a tingle and a shift in blood flow in my hands.   [1:08:44] Forrest Knutson: That’s actually perfect. That’s the very first sign. So I have a video called clinical mindfulness and I teach this four proofs that your hands being hot and heavy. I call it HHH. That’s the HHH symptom that you are in heart rate variability.   [1:09:04] Ashley James: Hands hot and heavy?   [1:09:05] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. Hilarious right? But it sticks in your brain   [1:09:07] Ashley James: What are the other symptoms? If I kept doing it what else would I have noticed?   [1:09:14] Forrest Knutson: So you have to sit still to notice these things. That helps you into the free state in the body. A very good, positive kind of free state. So the next thing that you might notice is we bring your mind to your lips and you might notice that the blood kind of tingles in and tingles out of your lip especially the bottom lip. Then if you go and put your mind on your spine, right along your thoracic cavity, right along your rib cage, right? Your spine. Put your mind there and you might notice actually start to feel the pressure on the dorsal vagal nerve and it will feel really good. It can be maybe tingly, maybe pleasurable, maybe a cool feeling. So that’s the third one. Then the fourth one is to put your attention in your whole skin. Your whole skin may begin to tingle. It might feel a little bit crawly like a crawling sensation. It’s extremely pleasurable. So I call these meditative mellows because they feel really good. It’s a great sign that you are doing everything correctly and the parasympathetic system is working for the first time, maybe in a long time, very very well. So that breath rate that we just did, it may be fast for some people but it is the entry point. That’s the entry breath rate that we need to get into heart rate variability. We have to be under that breath rate. So from there you can just take it whatever is comfortable for you.   [1:11:02] Ashley James: I know you just published three videos on your YouTube channel just this week showing the different breath rates. I don’t remember the exact titles.   [1:11:17] Forrest Knutson: So the music has to be steady. So you have to kind of cheat to make the in-breath shorter and the out-breath longer.   [1:11:25] Ashley James: What was the title?   [1:11:27] Forrest Knutson: Heart rate variability resonant breathing with music.   [1:11:31] Ashley James: Okay. A very straightforward title. It was like you had three different ones, the different breath rates, right?   [1:11:39] Forrest Knutson: Yes. So it’s four:four, five:five and six:six. Like I said, you try and make that out-breath a little just a tiny bit longer. The music is beautiful. Doug Gemmell gave that music to me so that could help me out to produce those videos. Really really beautiful music. Very relaxing and it teaches you something which is so deep. This heart rate variability resonance it’s just so profound. Every deep state that you have in meditation is built on top of that, guaranteed. You can’t skip it. It’s in there somewhere.   [1:12:24] Ashley James: When I asked, this was I don’t know 300 episodes ago, I asked a naturopath right at the end of the interview. So the interview wasn’t really about this but it’s near the end of this interview and I said, “What’s the one thing that you tell all your clients to have? Is there a gadget?” I’ve asked this a few times. So I’ve gotten really cool answers like one naturopath said, “100% of my clients I tell them to get a grounding mat.” That was my first time ever hearing about grounding mats and now while we’re talking I’m on my grounding mat because I love it so much. I have some great interviews about grounding mats. An entire documentary is pinned in the Learn True Health Facebook group about grounding and earthing and the scientific benefits of it. That it actually decreases inflation in the body and explains how by giving up excess electrons the body shouldn’t be storing that it significantly decreases the imbalance in the body to the point where people are going into remission who have MS. So really, grounding and earthing really makes a huge difference. So this question has gotten me a lot of mileage. I asked this one naturopath sort of along the lines of what’s really important for 100% of your clients or what’s really important for all of us to know. She said, “We should all be aware of our heart rate variability.” She told me about this machine that you wear like a heart monitor that’s over $200.00 and that you put it on every morning and it reads out your heart rate variability. I was confused because I’m thinking is this just a heart rate monitor? I said, “Wouldn’t it change throughout the day?” She goes, “No. You wake up first thing in the morning. You put it on.” Again, I’m thinking this is not really accessible for all the listeners to spend a few hundred dollars on a little machine that you’re just wearing a minute a day and it’s going to tell you what your heart rate variability is. Her thing is, she was not teaching us how to affect heart rate variability necessarily. She was teaching to use it like a diabetic would use a glucometer. You get up first thing in the morning and you read out your heart rate variability with this machine to determine if the last 24 hours were good for you or not good for you. She said, for example, and I’ve heard this from other experts, one glass of wine or beer one basically alcoholic beverage throws us into the stress response for 24 hours. Throws us out of heart rate variability for 24 hours. She said with her clients, because she gets her clients to buy this machine and report back to her, that if they ate something they’re allergic to let’s say they’re allergic to dairy or eggs or gluten or whatever or they ate a lot of sugar, a lot of highly processed foods the day before or they had a fight with their spouse or they hate their job and they had a fight with their boss, whatever. Something stressful happened or they drink alcohol. The next day, even though they just woke up and they were sleeping for let’s say seven-eight hours they should be in a state of rest. But their heart rate variability will prove otherwise, will prove that they’re still in a stress response and their endocrine system, their digestive system, their whole body is not in healing mode. They’re either in stress mode or healing mode. That even though they slept, they were sleeping in a state of stress and not in a state of relaxation. So she uses this device to go see look, whatever you did yesterday isn’t working for you. The next day or a few days later you take your reading and you’re like, “Wow. I have really good heart rate variability.” She goes, “Okay. Whatever you ate yesterday keep eating it. Whatever you did yesterday keep doing it because it’s working.” So she used the machine as a way of proving that what they’re doing is working or not working because she can tell her clients don’t drink alcohol but they’re not going to listen. But if they see that they’re in a state of stress they’re like, “Wow. She’s right.” People drink alcohol to calm down because they feel stressed out and they want to relax. It’s acceptable in today’s society to use alcohol just like also use sugar, it’s sort of a meme. Women are stressed or they broke up with their boyfriend they’re going to eat a pint of ice cream. It’s a dangerous meme to continue to push on us. This idea that we need to self-medicate with sugar or alcohol in order to manage our emotion. When it actually doesn’t, it doesn’t decrease our stress levels. It will temporarily give us a dopamine high and make us feel good but it sends the body in a state of stress and not healing. Then when we’re in that state of stressor that happens pushes us over the edge and makes us feel overwhelmed. So then we have to manage ourselves more with sugar or alcohol. Then we’re closer to our breaking point again. So then some little stressor happens like someone honks at us and then our nervous system, our endocrine system and nervous system freak out again. It’s like our fuse for our ability to handle crap in our life become shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. When we stop and we stop drinking alcohol and stop using sugar and highly processed foods as a way of self-medicating, because all those things make our fuse shorter and shorter or our ability to handle crap before we hit breaking point. If we stop using that and we decrease the inflammation in our body then our nervous system can kind of actually take on more stimulants before we reach our breaking point, before we feel overwhelmed and stress and we increase our heart rate variability. Now we have a long fuse. I know you Forrest, I mean I’ve known you. We’ve been really good friends for a long time. You have a really long fuse for handling stress and handling BS. So I think that on an emotional mental health level this is very helpful as well. So that’s my first exposure to heart rate variability was this idea that we could use this like measuring our blood sugar or our blood sugar as a means of seeing if what we’re doing is working or not. You’re saying that we don’t need to spend a few hundred dollars on a machine. We can just do the breathing anyway and also clean up other areas of our life to better serve our health. But by doing the breathing we’re increasing heart rate variability and thus making that fuse longer. Our threshold wider for being able to handle stress in our life.   [1:19:25] Forrest Knutson: Absolutely. All of that was perfect. Everything you said was perfect. Yes, you can actually affect these things. It’s kind of amazing. So, yeah. You just do the breathing and it’s going to reset your system, recalibrate your parasympathetic nervous system to start working properly again if it’s been out of whack. Maybe you’re very peaceful already but this is going to make you more peaceful and more profoundly relaxed.   [1:20:06] Ashley James: Even more. That’s right.   [1:20:07] Forrest Knutson: Down the rabbit hole we go. It’s a very very cool thing.   [1:20:16] Ashley James: Awesome. I love it, Forrest. I love having you on the show. You’re so great. You’re one of my favorite people in the whole world. It’s an honor. It’s an honor to have you here. I really encourage to go to ThatYogiGuy.com which will take them straight to your YouTube channel. You’ve produced a lot of fantastic YouTube videos. Listeners, if you have more questions for Forrest, please check out his YouTube channel and comment in any of the videos asking him questions or requesting topics for him to cover because he will do it. He’s very active on his YouTube channel. He will reply to his comments. He will take video requests because he loves teaching. Ever since I’ve known you, you just love teaching and love helping people. You have this equal love of helping people and teaching. So you’re just this perfect person to learn from and you’re very humble.   [1:21:19] Forrest Knutson: I am. I am very humble. I’m actually writing a book about it   [1:21:25] Ashley James: You’re writing a book about how humble and great you are?   [1:21:28] Forrest Knutson: Yes. It’s call Humility and How I Attained it. I have to say, that’s not my joke. I stole that joke from what was his name?   [1:21:37] Ashley James: You know, if you weren’t humble you would’ve owned the joke. You can just own the joke, Forrest. It’s okay. You don’t need to give credit. Stop being so humble.   [1:21:48] Forrest Knutson: You’re right. I really should. It’s a horrible thing.   [1:21:51] Ashley James: Stop it. Americans don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense to us. You have a great amount of information for people. The way in which you package your information comes across so that we can all understand it. So I just love how you teach. This is where I’m complimenting you and thanking you. So thank you.   [1:22:15] Forrest Knutson: Thank you.   [1:22:17] Ashley James: Now, your website ThatYogiGuy.com, you have a book Hacking the Universe. Is there anything else that we should know?   [1:22:25] Forrest Knutson: I’m going to come out with a training very very shortly.   [1:22:29] Ashley James: Yeah. Sweet. Tell us about your training.   [1:22:31] Forrest Knutson: So I’m working on it now. I’m actually editing it. I have a couple more clips to finish. It’s going to be on heart rate variability and how to take that very very deep into a very deep meditation.   [1:22:49] Ashley James: Into the right brain?   [1:22:50] Forrest Knutson: Not all the way into the right brain. We can’t do that at one training. That’s going to take four trainings. So I actually have four trainings in my brain. I’ve never seen anything like them. So it’s really exciting for that reason that it’s going to be – if you’re in the meditation world or you have meditative interest they’re going to be extremely powerful. It’s combining a lot of information in a way which is very palatable like you say very easy to access. So it’s going to be off the hook. Very exciting.   [1:23:29] Ashley James: I know you have a Facebook group for your students. Those who follow you on YouTube and learn from all your videos. You have a Facebook group. We’ll make sure to link that. It’s also on the show notes. What’s the name of the Facebook group?   [1:23:44] Forrest Knutson: It’s Meditate with Forrest. So very easy to remember.   [1:23:48] Ashley James: Meditate with Forrest.   [1:23:50] Forrest Knutson: Forrest Gump.   [1:23:52] Ashley James: No.   [1:23:53] Forrest Knutson: I do that. Sometimes people don’t hear my name because it’s a strange to them so they don’t actually hear it. So I started – every time I ask for something at a diner or something like that I’ll always say, “You know, like Forrest Gump.”   [1:24:12] Ashley James: And they love that? People like that joke?                                                                                                                                                                                             [1:24:15] Forrest Knutson: They always laugh so.   [1:24:17] Ashley James: You’re the only Forrest I know that like Forrest Gump. I interviewed another Forrest and he said that he doesn’t like that movie. That it was like people teased him in school. I’m like, “No. My friend Forrest loved it and he got so much mileage out of it.” It sounds like you’re still getting mileage out of it.   [1:24:34] Forrest Knutson: Well, you know, you turn the joke around and you use it and then it’s fun. Yeah. People will be like, “Run, Forrest,” and I’d call back, “I’m a running fool.” “That boy is a running fool.” So, yeah. I loved it. It was great.   [1:24:48] Ashley James: I like that you disarmed – that’s another thing we didn’t get to talk about is aikido. You disarm people, the bullies. You’ve never let the bullies get you down because you just disarm them.   [1:25:00] Forrest Knutson: Right. Well, I kind of had to. There’s a very famous book called Giving in to Get Your Way. It’s a beautiful principle that you can see in a lot of different martial arts. If somebody’s joking at you and you run with the joke, you’ve completely diffused the entire situation. It’s very powerful.   [1:25:22] Ashley James: Yes. Yes. Yes. That is a great tool. That’s so great. So I had this one-star review. I have well over 700, almost 800 five star reviews on iTunes. I have like 41 one stars. Which one do you think I focus on? Do you think I focus on the 800 people who took the time to give me a five-star review and tell me how much they love the show? Do you think I focus on the 41 people that hate me, that wish that I would just die or something? Of course, this part of my brain is like, “There’s 41 people in the world that don’t like me.” I have to tell myself to suck it up because I’m not doing it, I’m not doing the podcast for 41 people that hate me. I’m doing it for the people I want to help. I want to help people. Those are the people I’m doing it for. The people who appreciate it not the people who don’t appreciate it. There’s one person once left me a one-star review that said that I sound like I’m a cow because when I go, “Hmm,” I sound like I’m mooing. At first, I was like, “How dare. Oh crap, they’re right. They’re right.” Then I started laughing because I’m editing. As I’m editing the show I’m listening. Every time I go, “Hmm,” I’m like, “Oh my gosh I really do sound like…” Is that bad? I love cows. They’re really beautiful creatures. They’re amazing animals. They’re so much fun to visit when I take, we take our son to this sanctuary farm. Oh my gosh. If I could cuddle a cow I would. They’re the coolest things, right? So why am I upset about this? This guy is trying to insult me. Then I realize he could have said, and I’m assuming his gender is male-only because I don’t think a female would’ve said that about me but that’s just my bias. So I’m assuming that he’s a guy and he has nothing better to do than rip on the fact that once in a while I go, “Hmm,” to a guest’s really cool whatever they said is really cool and I moo, apparently. I’m like, “That’s the only thing he could come up with?” He couldn’t find anything to make fun of the show. That’s the only thing. That’s kind of a compliment in it of itself that there’s nothing wrong with the show. He couldn’t find anything wrong with it but that I sound like I’m mooing when I hum praise to someone’s comment. So I just kind of laughed it off and laughed it off. It could’ve eaten me for days but I laughed about it. Then he deleted the comment. A few days later I looked back and he retracted his one-star. That’s really cool. In other one-star, I would’ve obsessed about what they said because there’s no way to write back to them and try to explain myself. Sometimes someone gives me a one-star for something a guest said. I have no control over that. It’s just kind of silly. The fact that you can take bullying and laugh at it and not take it personally but laugh at it, then you’ve won. You’ve gained control of the situation.   [1:28:44] Forrest Knutson: You know, you really turn it around mentally. That’s so amazing. That’s so fantastic. It’s so easy to fall in that. I’ve listened to a number of YouTubers comment about how you deal with really grumpy trolling.   [1:29:05] Ashley James: They’re brutal on YouTube. Oh my gosh. My husband, I’m so thankful. He just deletes the comments. The really brutal, he won’t let me see them and that’s good because he know I’ll go into a tailspin. I care so much. The thing is I’ve worked on this for so long like my ability to kind of fluff it off but people on YouTube are brutal. We post all the episodes of the show on YouTube. There’s a level of trolling on YouTube that I understand why children are committing suicide. It’s the second leading cause of death between the ages of 10 and 24. Suicide’s gone up 52% in the last 10 years for children ages 10 through 24, I understand. They’re being bullied just so brutally. If there’s a way to, obviously we need to shelter our children from that because when someone is 10, that level of bullying is devastating but when we’re 30, yeah it’s harmful but we can go, “Okay. Let’s use our logic brain. Let’s not end our life over it.” So I love that you brought up this book. What was the book again?   [1:30:18] Forrest Knutson: Giving In To Get Your Way. It’s a great great old aikido book.   [1:30:24] Ashley James: I saw a video on Facebook and it was a presenter in front of a middle school I think it was. He had a girl; come up, I’ve seen this video kind of circulate through. It has millions and millions of views. So if you ever see it on Facebook, watch it. It’s so good. It’s like how to end bullying immediately. He says to this girl, “Okay. Just bully me. Just say really mean things.” She’s a bit nervous.   [1:30:51] Forrest Knutson: I saw this.   [1:30:52] Ashley James: She’s like, “You really suck,” and he’s like, “You’re right. You’re right. When you’re right you’re so right.” She’s like, “Yeah. I’m right and you’re wrong and you’re dumb.” He’s like, “You know what? I just love how right you are. You’re so pretty.” She couldn’t keep a straight face. She kept trying to bully him. He just kept owning it and smiling and being her friend. She was totally disarmed. She was nowhere to go. The whole audience, all the kids just freaked out and cheered and they thought it was great that it was – if we cannot let it land in our psyche and use our ego. But if we can slough it off, that is really helpful. I love it.   [1:31:44] Forrest Knutson: Absolutely. That’s a very good recipe. You can build on top of that recipe and have a more complex way to deal with it so that you don’t have to own the negative. You could just let it bypass you completely but that’s a great way to start is just take it all in and then say, “Hey. Whatever.” It’s a great great way. It’s hard. It’s tough. I get comments then I go meditate.   [1:32:16] Ashley James: Nice. In meditation do you ever had this insights which are like, “Oh. That’s why the probably said that?”   [1:32:25] Forrest Knutson: Oh yeah.                                                          [1:32:26] Ashley James: I mean, do you find such clarity with your thoughts when you meditate?   [1:32:30] Forrest Knutson: Yes. It will diffuse to the point where I disassociate from the body. The body just kind of disappears. So then you’re just left with your perception itself. Then it becomes very simple but then you have to get to that point. If you’re in a stress state you won’t be able to get to that point you’ll be stuck with it. So that’s where the word attachment comes from. You’re attached to the problem. That’s where we usually begins. That something happens and we get overly attached to that negative happening and then we can’t release our self from it. We can’t even begin to think logically because we’re so wrapped up in it.   [1:33:14] Ashley James: So when’s your course coming up?   [1:33:17] Forrest Knutson: Very very soon. I think maybe a week?   [1:33:22] Ashley James: Awesome. Very cool. So listeners, by the time this gets published and their listening to it it’ll just be days away if not already released. It’s very exciting. They can find you in their Facebook group Meditate with Forrest. Forrest Knutson not Forrest Gump but just Meditate with Forrest. Do you think if they typed in Meditate with Forrest Gump that would show up too or is there a different? You have to check. You never know.   [1:33:46] Forrest Knutson: There might be Meditate with Forrest Gump. That would be a pretty – it might probably run a lot.   [1:33:53] Ashley James: To eat chocolate or something. So mow a lawn. Make some shrimp.   [1:33:57] Forrest Knutson: Very good things.   [1:33:59] Ashley James: I love that movie.   [1:33:60] Forrest Knutson: That’s great. I love it.   [1:34:03] Ashley James: I wonder how many listens haven’t seen that movie because it’s kind of old but it’s such a classic.   [1:34:08] Forrest Knutson: It’s so classic. It just has this simple purity which is what the whole movie is about. It’s that simple purity. Win in the end.   [1:34:19] Ashley James: I love it. Awesome. It does make you feel like – you walk away with that movie feeling like you can win. I love that. It does lift you up. So that’s good. “If you can do it I could do it.” So Meditate with Forrest Facebook group. Go to ThatYogiGuy.com to gain access to the YouTube videos. Buy the book Hacking the Universe if you want to go deeper with Forrest or just wait for the course. Have you come up with a name, a title for your course? A final title or are you still working on a working title?   [1:34:59] Forrest Knutson: Let me think about this. What am I calling this? Yes. It’s going to be called the fourth phase of breath also the tranquil breath. Those will both be in the title. The fourth phase of breath.   [1:35:13] Ashley James: That will be part one of four to get into the right brain?   [1:35:17] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. So when I say get into the right brain I mean Samadhi so that’s a very deep state. I think another name for that is satori. It’s the merging. To merge with one thought but that’s a very very deep state.   [1:35:41] Ashley James: Cool. So basically if you want to go deep we keep following you?   [1:35:45] Forrest Knutson: Perfect.   [1:35:46] Ashley James: Down the rabbit hole.   [1:35:47] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. Down the rabbit hole we go.   [1:35:50] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much Forrest for coming on the show. It’s been such a pleasure having you here today. Anything you want to say to wrap up today’s interview? Anything left unsaid that you want to make sure we cover?   [1:36:02] Forrest Knutson: Well, you are one of my favorite people. You are a genius. I love everything that you do. Thank you so much for having me.   [1:36:13] Ashley James: You’re so welcome. Compliments always welcome. It helps to displace those 41 one-star reviews on iTunes. If you’re all, “You’re beautiful,” comments. Awesome. Thank you so much Forrest. I really hope that this episode makes a difference for all my fantastic listeners. We’ll just have to stay in touch and let us know how your course go. You’re launching your courses and all your students and their results. I know you’re in the Learn True Health Facebook group so we’ll just continue the conversation there. Listeners, if you have any question for Forrest you could also post them on the Learn True Health Facebook group as well. It’s Forrest Knutson, ThatYogiGuy.com Thank you so much.   [1:36:55] Forrest Knutson: Thank you.   [1:36:56] Ashley James: Yeah. We’ll have to have you back on again at some point because I want you to teach more about getting into the right brain. Samadhi sounds so neat especially from the neuroscience perspective. What happens to the brain and the different brain waves? Because I know you’re really into that.   [1:37:14] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. There’s a lot that still needs to be uncovered about brain waves. It’s really really amazing.   [1:37:23] Ashley James: So we’ll just get into that in another interview.   [1:37:26] Forrest Knutson: Absolutely.   [1:37:27] Ashley James: All right. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you so much.   [1:37:29] Forrest Knutson: All right. Take care.   [1:37:31] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.   Get Connected With Forrest Knutson! Facebook Twitter YouTube Check Out Other Episodes With Forrest Knutson! Episode 32 – How To Meditate Episode 25 – Yogic Meditation Adventures

"Eat plants, fit in your pants." Chef AJ lost over 50lbs and has kept it off eating over 2lbs of veggies a day Listen to my first interview with Chef AJ, episode 278: http://learntruehealth.com/food-addiction-2/ Chef AJ's site: EatUnprocessed.com Chef AJ's Books: The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss: A Revolutionary Approach to Conquer Cravings, Overcome Food Addiction and Lose Weight Without Going Hungry https://amzn.to/2uSuIS1 Unprocessed: How to Achieve Vibrant Health and Your Ideal Weight https://amzn.to/2JZaGtX   The Ultimate Weight Loss Program https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-ultimate-weight-loss-program The Real Truth About Weight Loss Summit Eating the way your ancestors ate throughout human history You cannot be protein deficient unless you’re calorie deficient Complex carbs and refined carbs Eat until no longer hungry and still full instead of until full Anytime you process a food, you make it calorically rich and nutrient poor The real secret to weight loss and weight maintenance and good health is to eat more vegetables Antioxidants Health At Every Size Metabolic disadvantage concept Health mistakes people make Ultimate Weight Loss Facebook Group Feel Fabulous Over 40 How To Eat Healthfully Anywhere Ultimate Weight Loss Program Weight Loss Wednesday In this episode with Chef AJ, we are going to discuss and share about healthy eating and secrets to weight loss. Find out the real truth about Weight Loss Summit, healthy eating anywhere, the ultimate weight loss program and so much more [00:00:01] Intro: Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health Podcast. I’m really excited for you to hear today’s interview with Chef AJ. When I had her last on the show just over a year ago, I didn’t know that that episode would absolutely changed my life. I adapted her style of eating the whole food plant based no oil, no flour, no processed foods. Just focusing on plants and eating lots of vegetables. And my health has gotten even better this last year. And I should go into that in this interview. We have some really fun things coming up. I want you to be included in them. So to make sure that you stay plugged in, get in our community in the Facebook Group. Go to Facebook and search Learn True Health and join our group. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/group and join our group. We’re going to have some fun giveaways coming up. I know in a few weeks we’re having American Thanksgiving. So there’ll be some Cyber Monday sales from these different health companies that I love that I’ll make sure that I announce in the group. And you know, I love the giveaway. So come join the conversation so that you can be part of it. You’ll never know, maybe you win one of the giveaways. Also, make sure to go to my website learntruehealth.com and get on the email list. I have a fantastic doctor course. I filmed with some wonderful Naturopathic physicians and they teach the fundamentals of health. If you haven’t watched it already, you definitely want to check it out. Go to learntruehealth.com, a pop up comes up, and then you put in your email address. I promise not to spam you. And you get some wonderful videos from me, from these doctors that teach the foundations of holistic health and simple things that you can do today to start building a healthy foundation for your body. 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And thank you so much for sharing the Learn True Health Podcast with your friends and family so that we can help as many people as possible to learn true health. Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 392.   I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Chef AJ. I had her on the show, Episode 278. That was July 26, 2018. Man, has so much happened in the last – almost a-year-and-a-half. And it’s just been a whirlwind. I have become  – since I interviewed you I’ve become a raving fan of yours, Chef AJ. I think every single person on the planet should listen to our first interview and should get your books and should absolutely learn from you. You are a godsend. Thank you so much for the mission that you’re on. You have a big cheerleader over here.     [00:04:04] Chef AJ: Thank you so much. I admire your work too. Thank you.     [00:04:08] Ashley James: Awesome. Well, yeah. So since July of 2018 having you on the show, I joined your – you have this outstanding Facebook Group as part of your course – one of the courses. You have several online courses that are all community based, which I think is really helpful. And it’s such a thriving community. And what I’m inspired by every week, it’s really emotionally helped me to be in your Facebook Group. Because it’s seeing the success stories of people transforming their lives through using food as medicine, whole food plant based diet. And the things that people are transforming is so beautiful. And every week, there are dozens of stories. It’s a very active group. And to have that level of support in the community and people always are asking questions and always supporting each other. So it’s this beautiful community. But what I see is you foster community wherever you go. And I think that’s really beautiful. Because we’re not alone in this. I love to expose these concepts that we often feel too ashamed to talk about, like addiction, and emotional eating, overeating, binge eating. Things that many, many people do and may not even realize they’re doing because they have emotional issues or maybe they’re eating foods that are so hyperpalatable, they hijack the brain. And what we really want to do is figure out how to use food as medicine. And how to heal our bodies and have optimal health . Ad you teach a wonderful way to do that in a way that’s delicious. So because your name is chef, Chef AJ. So you do teach us how to make delicious food, right?     [00:05:50] Chef AJ: I do my best. Absolutely.     [00:05:51] Ashley James: Yes, you do. I love every episode of – every episode – every recipe I’ve ever made of yours has been a huge hit. I made your lasagna. Oh my gosh, you mentioned in your book – I think the unprocessed was the book that you – your book unprocessed has the lasagna recipe. And it’s to die for. And I made both versions, one with the noodles and one with the eggplant. And both trays of it, we’re eating that day. And it wasn’t just by me. It was the whole – like I had friends over. But you say in your book, this doesn’t go in the freezer because it there’s never leftovers.     [00:06:28] Chef AJ: There’s never any leftovers. That’s why I call it the disappearing lasagna. Because honestly, I don’t even know if it freezes because there’s never been leftovers on that particular recipe. And that is the God’s honest truth.     [00:06:38] Ashley James: I took that as a challenge. So I actually took the recipe and times it by four. And I made four times the amount that the recipe calls for. And I have pictures. Four giant trays of lasagna and I baked them all and I had friends over. And they wanted to all take some home. I mean, there was no leftovers.  That lasagna was so good. And I even some zucchini and I added some extra vegetables. Because I was like, “There’s not enough vegetables here. Let’s add more.” And it was so amazing. We had kids over and they were eating it. And this lasagna doesn’t have any dairy. It doesn’t have any meat in. It’s whole food plant based. And it is so delicious. And the kids, which these kids never eat vegetables, were just like, “Can I have another? Can I have another?” So it’s really satisfying when you can make something that’s so delicious and also so wholesome and so healthy. So every recipe I’ve ever made of yours has been outstanding and easy to follow. So anyways, I could praise you for the next two hours but I’m sure we want to start learning from you. So since July of 2018, I know a lot has happened in your life. I’d love to hear the updates what’s been going on?     [00:07:52] Chef AJ: So I’ve been busy but in a good way. So one of the things I did is I changed where I live. Because environment to me is critical in any one’s success, whether it’s success trying to lose weight or be happy in life. And I pretty much was born in Chicago. Pretty much I was born in Chicago. But I pretty much was raised in LA from the time that I was 11 until January of this year. And I love LA for so many reasons. But man, it’s just not for me anymore. It’s busy and it’s crowded, and it’s noisy. And I just wanted to live somewhere peaceful. I’m going to be 60. Not that I’m trying to retire. But I wanted to just have a calmer, slower pace of life. So I moved to the desert. I live near Palm Springs now. I have a house instead of an apartment. And it’s just been beautiful. And it’s allowed me to do just more work it with what I love in giving this information to people. And I’ve been doing it through educational programs. I have a partner now and we do these online courses. But one of the things I did that just blew my mind was that I got to host one of those wonderful online summits. And this was called The Real Truth About Weight Loss Summit. This was offered to me, this position. I always wanted to do a summit but not being very tech savvy, I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. Just like you, I’ve always wanted to do a podcast. But man, I can barely turn on my iPhone. So when this opportunity came about, I thought I was just being asked to be a guest interviewed for something called The Real Truth About Weight Loss Summit. When they said, “No. We want you to do the interviews.” It was amazing because I got to handpick the experts. There were a few that were already decided upon. Maybe the people that I didn’t know but they were all great interviews. But I got to really handpick, like, the best of the best and create something that I’m going to forever be proud of. Because it answered the question, “What is the real truth about weight loss?” There’s so much conflicting information and misinformation. And we had 34 experts that pretty much agreed about pretty much everything. There were some nuances, how many nuts should we eat? But for the most part, they all agreed. And it was interesting, actually, because, as you know, when you’re doing this podcast, you’re listening to me but you’re also kind of involved. You have to watch the tech. You have to do things. When I was interviewing them, I couldn’t really pay attention as well as I wanted to because I had to look for bells and whistles on the computer. But then when we ran the summit and I listened again, I’m like, “Oh my god.” We did the summit for free. I mean, people could buy it afterwards for a nominal fee to own the recordings. But I’m like, “This information is like mind blowing. Why are these people on the cover of Time Magazine?”     [00:10:23] Ashley James: Well, I definitely want to pique your brain as to what you learned as the interviewer for the series? I watched some of the episodes or the interviews that you did, that you conducted. And I loved it. I love the information. It was very thorough. I will let you know that since starting following your protocol, I’ve lost over 40 pounds and kept it off. I’d been, like, yoyo-ing my entire adult life. The second a diet would end, it was like, poof. It would just all blow up in my face. And with your program, it’s not something you ever end. So it’s something that you just – and you never feel like you’re deprived because of volume metrics. You eat to live. Your plate is full of delicious food. You never go hungry. Through eating how I learned through you and through Dr. Goldhamer and this whole food plant based way, my body is just naturally slowly healthfully shed. I just went last week to my doctor. I go every few months just to my Naturopath to get blood work and check in. And she had a smile on her face from ear to ear. She was so happy with my numbers. She was so happy with my slow and consistent and continual weight loss. Everything is coming into balance. All my numbers are coming just better and better and better. My cholesterol has never looked better. All my inflammatory markers have never looked better. Just everything. All my hormones are even better. I mean, just everything is better and better and better. All I’m doing is just filling my plate with this delicious food that’s whole food plant based. And I’ve been on over 30 diets. And I’ve never been on a diet where I felt completely satisfied, completely nourished, completely taken care of. And also my body was coming to a place of health more and more and more. It really does work.     [00:12:26] Chef AJ: That’s amazing. And congratulations. And the thing I want to just say is, you’re not really on a diet, you’re actually just eating the way your ancestors ate throughout human history. The way our species was designed to eat. Because we’ve gotten so far away from that. And most people don’t even eat food anymore. Most people eat something like 70% of their calories from processed food. They think of the way we eat now is restrictive or a diet. Yet this is how humans ate throughout all of human history until just a few hundred years ago, actually. So it’s so true, Ashley, because you mentioned volume metrics. And Dr. Barbara Rolls was one of the only people that I didn’t get to interview for the summit because she had broken her arm. But we are going to rerun the summit next February with some new speakers and she is going to be one of it. Because volume metrics is the ticket. I call it ultimate weight loss. I also call it lose weight with a full plate. But it’s not a diet. Because on diets they asked you to give up certain food groups, like carbs. And they ask you to eat less or weigh and measure your food or count points or things like that. We’re not on a diet. I eat the same way that Dr. Joel Fuhrman eats. He’s never been overweight. We eat huge quantities of delicious whole food. It’s not a diet.     [00:13:38] Ashley James: For breakfast this morning, I had the soup. I texted you a picture of the soup my husband I made. We made two giant things of soup. And this soup is like a stew. The soup is so hearty. And there are carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, and spices like rosemary time, bailey, the regular stuff you’d put in soup, and legumes, brown lentils. I maybe forgetting a few vegetables. Because we put in a lot of stuff in this thing. And then we just let it simmer for a few hours. We had it yesterday for lunch. We had it for dinner. Then we had it for breakfast. And it tastes different the longer it kind of sits in its own juices. It tastes like a different experience. [Inaudible 00:14:23] turned to me and said, “I could eat this every day for every meal. It’s so good. And so filling.” I just had a soup I had a soup for breakfast and I am so full and I feel – I have so much energy. It’s very low in calories but it’s very dense in nutrition. And I was even tracking my protein because people are freaking out about, “Where do you get your protein from if all you eat are potatoes and vegetables?” On average, I get 50 grams of protein a day from a variety of sources that are obviously not animals. So have you ever seen anyone protein deprived not eating meat?     [00:15:00] Chef AJ: Never. That’s called kwashiorkor. And from my understanding, there’s never been a single case of it in reported history with the exception of, maybe, like a child abuse case or an anorexic or somebody actually was calorie deficient. You cannot be protein deficient unless you’re calorie deficient.     [00:15:19] Ashley James: So if you fill your plate up with whole foods with plants, basically, you’re good in terms of protein?     [00:15:26] Chef AJ: Absolutely. There’s actually more protein per calorie in broccoli than steak. I believe that 100 grams of – broccoli has 11.2 grams of protein and 100 grams of steak – 100 calories – excuse me – 100 calories of steak has something like 5.4 grams of protein. So I mean, think about it. All the large herbivores that have walked this planet for centuries, you know, elephants, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, giraffe, they’re not worrying about where they’re getting their protein. They eat plants. The animals that we eat are the plant eaters. We’re not eating carnivorous animals like the lions and the tigers. Were eating animals that eat the plants. Cut out the middleman, eat the plants. You don’t need to eat animal flesh. There’s a great book about this by Dr. Garth Davis – he’d make a wonderful interview for you – called Proteinaholic. I highly recommend that if people really want to understand this. And of course, The China Study. Think about it, when a human being needs the most protein in their life is when they’re an infant, when they’re growing. Breast milk is less than 10% protein. So why would we have a system that we need more of it when we’re not growing. This is just absurd. This is such absurdity.     [00:16:37] Ashley James: Can you share the things that you learned from your summit around carbs versus fat versus protein? Did any of the guests, the experts that helped people with successful weight loss, did any of them cover that?     [00:16:50] Chef AJ: They did. One of the things they had covered was that it’s the difference between complex carbs and refined carbs. So in other words, carbs have a bad rep. You know, we shouldn’t eat carbs. Carbs make us fat. But you can’t just say carbs without knowing what the carbs are. Because there are complex carbohydrates that are unrefined, found in nature, like sweet potatoes and winter squashes, and legumes, and whole grains. And then there’s refined and processed carbs, which is what most Americans are eating that make them fat and sick, like flour and sugar and alcohol. So you can’t just lump carbs all together. That’s like saying, you can’t lump people together saying all these kind of people are bad. There’s different kinds of people in all these various groups. Just like there’s different kinds of carbs. And so definitely they explained that when you’re eating the whole plant found in nature, that has the fiber, and the water, and the vitamins, and the minerals, and the phytochemicals, and the micronutrients all intact. That is so different to your body than when you’re stripping the fiber away and having these processed carbs like flour and sugar. Which go through the same refining process, by the way, as drugs and alcohol. And it just makes no sense. How can we now be designed to run on fat or fat and protein when that’s all our ancestors ate throughout history were these unrefined, complex carbohydrates. The longest lived people in the world from of the blue zones. The Okinawans, for example, eat something like more than 70% of their calories from sweet potatoes. Those are carbs. They don’t they’re not overweight or obese. They don’t have heart disease. They don’t have cancer. There’s a book by Dr. Colin Campbell called the Low Carb Fraud. And what’s happened is because of these processed carbs, all carbs have gotten a bad reputation.     [00:18:38] Ashley James: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I had to really come to terms with that. Because growing up my mother was obsessed with dieting. She was never overweight but she was obsessed with dieting. And so she instilled in me a fear of carbs. I remember her yelling at me once at a restaurant because I ordered the fish. I thought that was going to impress her. I ordered the fish. It’s so healthy. But the fish came with the side of rice. And my mom yelled at me in the restaurant and food shamed me – and I was like 12 or something – because I was going to eat rice. In healing my relationship with my body and with food, I had to also heal  – I don’t want to call it trauma – but the belief system that I had adopted from my mother, which was a fear, a real fear of healthy carbohydrates like whole grains. I am gluten free because my body just does not respond well to gluten, whole grains like brown rice, or even potatoes. My belief system developed because my mother would have me feel shame and guilt for eating those foods. And I just wonder how many people are feeling negative emotions around healthy foods because of the belief system they were raised in?     [00:19:57] Chef AJ: Yeah. That’s a good question. And I think if they do an experiment where they maybe given themselves three weeks to eat nothing but these foods and see how their health improves, how they lose weight. It’s absurd to think that these foods make you fat. They don’t make you fat if they’re in their unrefined form. It’s what you put on them. So if for example, it’s the butter that people put on the rice. It’s the butter, and the sour cream, and the cheese, and the bacon that people put on potatoes. If carbs made people fat and sick then how did they end up doing these studies with just potatoes? For example, something called the KON Potato Study – you can Google it – where it healthy young couple who are actually were athletes ate nothing but potatoes for an entire year. This wasn’t a weight loss study. They were trying to show that you would not be any deficient in any nutrient just by eating potatoes. And in one year of eating nothing but potatoes, they didn’t have any nutrient deficiencies. They actually lost too much weight they had to start adding oil to their potatoes in order to get enough calories. There’s a man named Andrew Taylor who lives in Australia, who became well-known as spud, fit for eating nothing but potatoes for an entire year and lost 120 pounds. And reversed his food addiction and his depression. And Chris Voigt of the Washington Potato Commission, several years ago, was very upset that the government would not allow people to use food stamps to buy potatoes. Bbut they could use them to buy Kool Aid and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. And so he basically for 68 days, I think, was something like 20 potatoes a day and he was still eating oil and cheese and animal products. And he still reversed his high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high triglycerides. Carbs, they’re the fuel that our body is designed for. Just like you wouldn’t put lemonade in your gas tank. Can we run on on fat? Like a keto diet or protein. Yeah, we can. But that’s not what the body was designed to do. That’s like an emergency state that people do called ketosis. That was never what we were supposed to do. And it’s very unsatisfying. It’s funny that you mentioned rice shaming. Because I speak at a lot of spas and cruise ships, they’re not even vegan or plant based just because I’m known as somebody that has helped lots of people lose weight. So they booked me for that. It turns out that my protocol is vegan. But I don’t even have to say it either in my lecture or to get booked because it just so happens that the foods that are the healthiest and also lowest in calorie density but highest nutrient density all happened to be plants. But I remember one of these spas because it’s a weight loss fight. It’s like they weigh and measure your food and you get really sparse portions. And you get literally, like, a-half-a-cup of rice which doesn’t even fit in my hand. I had to actually go to the doctor or the nurse and get a permission slip to get an extra half cup of rice. Now when I eat rice at home, I eat like two to four cups in in a serving. And I’m thinking like, “How does anybody eat a-half-a-cup of rice? That’s like nothing.” I just don’t get it. It’s just it’s sad to me that people feel that that’s what they need to do to lose weight and be healthy. When the exact opposite is true, they need to eat more but of the right foods. But the problem is that they like our system, Ashley, which is ad libitum. where we eat as much as we want to the left of the red line. But they want to include their likely glass of wine or their soda or their Starbucks macchiato or their rich desserts. And unfortunately, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t eat all you want of the nutritious foods and still include the unhealthy foods. If you want to include foods of a higher caloric density or unhealthy foods, you can do it and possibly maintain weight loss. But you’re going to then have to do portion control. And who wants to do that? We aren’t designed for scales.     [00:23:45] Ashley James: There’s this book, First Bite: How We Learn To Eat by Bee Wilson. And she said that they did these experiments. Of course, they probably can’t do them nowadays because it would be like child abuse. But they did experiments on orphans. They took a bunch of children, like toddlers, and they put many, many different kinds of foods in front of them. Instead of forcing them like, “Here’s your macaroni and cheese. Or here’s your hot dog. Or here’s your chicken nuggets.” or whatever. They put everything broccoli, beans, carrots. They just put everything out in front of them and let the children choose what they want it to eat. And they then calculated all the nutrients. And they’d figured out that, intuitively, these toddlers who they’re too young to have had societal – I don’t know – norms imposed on them. They’re just listening to the instinct of their body. They kind of looked at a whole week’s snapshot of what they ate all week. So maybe one day they did mono eating. They only ate carrot. So they only ate rice. And of course, as a parent, you’re freaking out thinking, “Okay. This kid is going to be nutrient deficient because they’re only eating this one food.” But by the end of the week, all of the children had a balanced diet of all the nutrients they needed. And their illnesses started to reverse. So they started to notice that over time, letting the children gravitate towards and choose the food. So intuitively, they wanted to eat, like, let’s say, all broccoli that day. And then the next day they want to eat only apples and only bananas. And their bodies just knew to eat what they needed to eat. Children eat until they no longer feel hungry versus adults eat until we feel full. We have to feel the sensation like nothing else can fit inside me. Whereas, children will eat just until hunger goes away and then they’ll go play. And I thought, “Man, that really -” because I was trying to think when I was young – when I was a kid, I was skinny. And food wasn’t even in my mind. I would eat when I was hungry until the hunger went away and then I go and play again. So it’s a real big difference. Something shifts in us.     [00:25:55] Chef AJ: [Inaudible 00:25:57] profound. That is really profound. Eat until no longer hungry and still full instead of until full when overly. A lot of people until they’re completely overly stuffed they don’t even know they’re full. And I think part of it has to do with eating processed food and animal products. Because think about it, Ashley, processed food and animal products have a lot in common. And that they aren’t completely devoid of fiber and water. And when you’re eating, most of your calories are from animal products and processed food. Which is what most Americans do, over 92% of calories, in fact. You’re not going to feel full until you’ve over eaten because your stretch receptors aren’t going to be activated by the water and fiber that would be in those whole plant foods that we were designed to eat.     [00:26:39] Ashley James: Uh-huh. Right. So if you’re eating a turkey sandwich or something, there’s bread, for example, is dehydrated in a sense that it’s very calorically dense but doesn’t take up a lot of room in the stomach. So you have to eat a lot more before you feel full. But then you’ve eaten hundreds of calories more than you actually needed.     [00:27:02] Chef AJ: Absolutely. Because think about it, all whole grains are about 500 calories a pound. When you mill the whole grains into flour to make bread, it’s now 1,500 calories a pound. It’s triple the caloric density. So anytime you process a food, you make it calorically rich and nutrient poor. So you you’re right, to feel full, you have to eat a lot more bread than you do whole grain. And that’s why I wrote my first book on processed because my feeling was, whether you want to be vegan or not, I can’t make you. But we’re still not designed to eat processed foods. Our stomachs are about the size of a cantaloupe. They hold about a liter of food, which is about 4.22 cups. I can easily eat 500 calories of brown rice.  That’s about, let’s say, it’s three cups or something like that. I’ll feel really full because I’ll activate my mechanisms of satiety, my stretch in nutrient and calorie receptors. But if I have to eat that much flour or bread, I won’t feel full because they won’t activate the mechanism stylus Water is so important. I don’t mean just drinking water, which of course we should. Because water in it of itself has no society. It won’t make you feel full. Even if you drink a gallon of water, it will make you feel full for a little bit but it exits the digestive tract too quickly. But when water is bound to the whole natural food, like the fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and legumes, it not only has weight but it creates bulk because it’s attached to the fiber. And that bulk is what creates satiety that allows us to stop eating before we’re overly full. That’s why people mutilate their bodies and have gastric bypass is to make their stomach, which is about 4.22 cups now hold maybe a cup or less so that they will get in touch again with what it feels like to feel full. Whereas, if you just change the composition of what you eat, that’s nature’s gastric bypass.     [00:28:53] Ashley James: I love how you have a rule of eating two pounds of vegetables a day at a minimum, right? So it’s a minimum.     [00:29:01] Chef AJ: That’s minimum. When I was losing weight, I was eating probably four or maybe more. That’s the minimum that I think everyone should eat just for optimal health. But if you’re trying to lose weight, you want to eat more vegetables. Vegetables are the food that are not only lowest in caloric density but highest in nutrient density. And whenever your diet is nutrient deficient, you’re going to over, over eat on calories looking for nutrients. But you’re looking for them in all the wrong places. Some vegetables are actually considered fruits botanically. So things like zucchini, eggplant, tomato, bell pepper, okra, and cucumber. These are botanically fruits. But we classify them as non-starchy vegetables. There are about 67 calories per pound. For the same amount of calories in one tablespoon of olive oil, you could eat two pounds of zucchini. That’s a lot of food. You can air fry it and make it taste as delicious as you want. But when people really understand calorie density, most people opt in. Because who wants to eat gimbal sized portions of food and be chained to having to weigh and measure their food for the rest of their life? So vegetables are incredible because they fill you up on so few calories. It’s almost as if you burn more calories in chewing and digesting of the vegetables than even in the vegetables. And I think you might have interviewed Dr. Alan Goldhamer. He’s one of my mentors. Well, one of the things he said to me is, “Show me an overweight person. And I’ll show you someone who is unwilling to eat enough raw salad and steamed vegetables.” That really is one of the greatest secrets to weight loss and weight maintenance and good health is to eat more vegetables. And people are like, “I could never eat two pounds.” “Really?” Because they don’t have a problem eating a two pound box See’s Candy. It’s not that much two pounds of vegetables. And that’s true, if you were trying to eat two pounds of raw kale, that would be a lot. But if you cook your vegetables, if you steam them, it reduces the volume. Honestly when I make my balsamic Dijon glazed Brussels sprouts from a pound of Brussels sprouts, it’s like two handfuls of food. It’s not that much food. And because you’ve got the fiber and the water intact, it’s going to be filling. And I don’t want people to just eat vegetables because that wouldn’t be enough calories. They need the starch. The complex carbohydrates that we talked about at the beginning of the show that people are afraid of, the potatoes and sweet potatoes and winter squashes and rice and beans to feel full. But I mean that is really the secret. Every meal you eat, even breakfast, make sure that half of your plate is non-starchy vegetables. You do that your health will soar, your weight will decrease if you need to lose weight, your skin will glow. Like I’m almost 60. And if people watch my YouTube channel, there’s some episodes where I’ve got a lot of makeup on because I play around with makeup. Actually, since I live in the desert, I don’t wear it anymore because it’s just too hot and it will just melt off your face. But I enjoyed in the past wearing makeup. So you’ll see some [inaudible 00:31:46] wears a lot of makeup. But really, most of them now, nothing. No makeup. And people say, “Oh my god, your skin glows.” Well, it’s the vegetables. It’s the fruit and vegetables, the antioxidants. Most Americans are on an antioxidant poor diet. They look for these health creams or these potions to put on their skin with antioxidants. You’ve got to take them internally by eating lots of fruits and vegetables. That really – it seems so simple but yet so few people do it.     [00:32:17] Ashley James: I love that you bring up this idea of antioxidants. Actually, that’s something that Eric Thornton, who I told you about has been on the show several times. He says, “You know, humans don’t make their own antioxidants like vitamin C.” And we do make glutathione. It’s very hard for the body to make glutathione. There’s a lot of cool factors. It’s very expensive – I should say – for the body to make glutathione. So that’s our own antioxidant. But our body doesn’t produce vitamin C. For example, cats, and dogs, and goats, and wolves, they make their own vitamin C. So animals that are designed to eat other animals and don’t eat plants need to make vitamin C because they’re not going to eat it. And that’s another argument for why we’re supposed to be plant based. We need to eat the vitamin C. We need to take in the antioxidants from the plants. Because our bodies don’t produce it. So we need to bring it in as much as possible because we’re not going to get it. So like these animals that don’t produce it, get it from their food, get it from the plants. So plant eaters don’t produce the vitamin C. I’m sure a zoologist could correct me if there are any animals that are an exception. But my understanding is that animals that do produce vitamin C almost exclusively eat meat. And animals that don’t produce vitamin C and other antioxidants, don’t do so because they were designed to get it from plants.     [00:33:51] Chef AJ: It doesn’t make sense what you’re saying. There’s really nothing you can’t get from a plant based diet that you can get in a better and more utilizable form in an animal based diet. There’s only one exception, vitamin B12. And it’s not because animals contain vitamin B12. It’s because they eat the dirt. Which we have very good hygienic practices now and the soil is depleted. That’s where the vitamin B12 is. People they go, “You need the cow to get the B12.” The cow got it from eating the grass because the dirt is where the B12 was. So that’s really the only thing that people have – if they have to worry – worry about. And the truth is, there are just as many carnivores that are B12 deficient as being. So it’s not even really something to worry about.     [00:34:34] Ashley James: Right. You’re saying that people, regardless of what diet they’re on, whether they eat meat or not, there’s a percentage of the population they’re B12 deficient because they don’t get enough of that bacteria, basically. So that’s a good supplement to be on. It’s a really good bioavailable form of B12. Unless, we’re going out in our own garden and picking stuff out of the ground and eating it while the bacteria is still on it. There was a study done on vegans in India versus the same heritage of people eating the same diet in the UK. And they found that those in India were not vitamin B12 deficient and they were vegan. But it was the bacteria that they were getting from the food versus the very sterilized food that they were eating in the UK. And so they were showing that it’s more about the bacteria. And maybe if you’re eating food that’s right out of the ground, really fresh, not sterilized, that you are less likely to be B12 deficient. So it’s nothing to do with meat consumption necessarily. I like that you pointed that out. I started steaming a pound of vegetables for breakfast almost every morning or trying to get it in  as early as possible. But I found that when I do that, my energy goes through the roof. I feel so good. My family has been able to quit caffeine and not even feel a blip. Not even feel caffeine deprived. Some people go, “I could never do a day without.” If I get a pound of vegetables in, in the morning, that’s like my cup of coffee now.     [00:36:09] Chef AJ: Yeah. Absolutely. And do you drink the liquid? Because that’s called pot liquor, Ashley. And I love the liquid from the steamed greens. That’s like a turbocharged drink. You don’t need caffeine when you have green, seriously.     [00:36:21] Ashley James: That is so funny you mentioned that. So my grandmother was born in 1912 in Toronto. And she was about to die of type 1 diabetes. When insulin was invented and first used in Toronto on the children there, she was one of the first ever to receive insulin. And she lived to be 77 years old. Would have kept living but it was very hard to manage them back in the 80s. It was in 1987. A harder back then to manage type 1 diabetes and so she fell into a coma. And we didn’t catch her in time because she was still living on her own in her own condo. She taught me as a child to steam vegetables and then let the water cool and drink the water. And that was one of the things she did every day and was one of her secrets to her health. So I love that you brought that up.     [00:37:04] Chef AJ: Absolutely. And it’s delicious and it tastes different every day depending on what vegetables you use. If you use something like butternut squash, for example, it’s going to be really sweet. But I love pot liquor, it’s the best. I didn’t know it was called that, actually, until I spoke in New Orleans. I just thought it was broth but it’s really good.     [00:37:22] Ashley James: So are there actually nutrients? Is there, like, a noticeable amount of nutrients in the water? Or is it just hydrate with flavorful steamed water?     [00:37:32] Chef AJ: Yeah. I’m sure that there’s nutrients. They say something like 30% of the vitamins and minerals of vegetables are lost during cooking. But if you’re steaming them and if you drink the water, you’re not missing out on any of them.     [00:37:46] Ashley James: How many minutes do you steam your vegetables for?     [00:37:51] Chef AJ: So it just depends if I’m doing it on the stove or in the pressure cooker. So if I’m doing it in the pressure cooker, my Instant Pot, and they’re not cut up small, the greens, I might do as much as five minutes. But if it’s a vegetable like zucchini or even broccoli where it’s going to turn to mush, it might be zero to one minute. On the stove, it probably takes a few more minutes. Just until the water boils.     [00:38:11] Ashley James: You’ve got some fantastic videos on YouTube. I love all your cooking videos on YouTube. You make it really accessible. I really enjoy that. What other points really stand out in your mind? Did you have any aha moments as you were doing your summit?     [00:38:27] Chef AJ: Yeah, so many. I almost wish I could have been a guest on my own summit after the summit just to summarize everything I learned. But one of the things is, there’s a movement called like Health At Every Size. And of course, we should never make fun of people, criticize them, blame them, shame them for having any kind of disability or disease. I think of being overweight or obese as a disability. But what this doctor said that is that, that’s a myth. You really can’t have health at every size. And they explained why medically. Every disease is, you’re so much more susceptible to having these diseases, even cancer and the specific kinds of cancer when you’re overweight. And of course, the more you’re overweight, the more risk. So it’s not just about visually looking a certain way. It’s about that when you have more fat, you have more blood – I’m not going to do it just as the way these doctors explained it medically. But your risk for disease just increases exponentially with every pound. You have to take this seriously. Like 66% more likely to get type 2 diabetes and all the various cancers. Breast cancer, for example, that you’re going to be more prone to with every extra pound of body fat. And I never really looked at it that way, because as a female, you just care about being thin because that’s how you’re raised. It’s better. And you won’t get a date or to go to the prom. I didn’t get asked to my prom. I was the fat kid from age five until age 50. I never really thought about that the health consequences long term or short term of being overweight or obese. But these doctors explained what they were. So that was really, really eye opening because people should accept themselves and love themselves at every weight. But they have to understand that a lot of people – I’ve heard people say, “Well, I’m healthy.” They have a physical or maybe there’s just no markers at that time when they’ve had their blood tested. But if you are overweight or obese, you’re not healthy. You’re certainly not as healthy as you can be. That you are a disease waiting to happen, if you will. And so I think people need to understand that from a health standpoint. And maybe they’ll take better control of their health. And of course, if people would just eat better and eat in a healthful manner, their weight would come off. So people are approaching it backwards. They’re approaching it like, “Well, I have to go on a diet and lose weight.” But they’re not even going on a healthful diet like the one we. They’re going on something that will give them results very quickly like a keto or a paleo. Because when you don’t eat carbs, of course, you’ll lose all that water weight. But you’re not really losing fat. The way we eat, I mean, it took me 27 months to lose 50 pounds. It’s slow weight loss but it’s sustainable. And I kept it off for almost eight years now. So many people are desperate to lose weight that they’re willing to mortgage their health in the short term doing the keto type diet. So you need to look at it like diet – and again, one thing they all agreed on is if you eat or diet for health. If you eat for health, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, a whole food plant based diet, lower in fat, no processed food, no animal products, alcohol, things like that. Then when you eat in this manner for health, the weight ceases to become an issue because it really does fall off. And so people are approaching it backwards. The other thing I learned that I wish I hadn’t learned. And if you’re female, you’re not going to like this. And I’m sorry, but it’s good to know. And this was from Dr. Rosane Oliveira, who is a geneticist at UC Davis, and Dr. Michelle McMacken, a family practice doctor in New York. They both talked about this concept called metabolic disadvantage. And we all know that most people can lose weight. And they have lost weight sometime in their life following whatever dietary style they chose at the time. But most people can’t maintain their weight loss. Something like 98% of people that ever lose weight through a great deal of suffering and deprivation, gain it all back usually within two years. And part of it, I think, is because people look at this as a diet. So they look at eating a certain way to lose weight. And then they go back to the diet that made them fat and sick and think that they’re going to maintain their weight.     [00:42:32] Ashley James: Temporarily, yeah. Eat this way temporarily and then it’ll be done.     [00:42:37] Chef AJ: Yeah. It’s sort of like an alcoholic saying, “You know what? I’m not going to drink any alcohol until I get sober. But once I’m sober, I’m going to go back to drinking alcohol.” Well, then you’re not going to be sober anymore. It’s sort of the same thing. People understand this with other substances but not so much with food. But what these doctors explained is that – and this is especially important with females because they’re generally the people that really want to lose weight – for example, if you have a woman that is five-foot-five inches tall and weighs 125 pounds, which is probably a pretty good weight for that female. And let’s say this woman has always been that weight as an adult never had weight issues. She needs a certain amount of calories every day just to maintain her 125 pound, five-foot-five inch frame. Let’s say you have another woman that’s five-foot-five inches and weighed 175 pounds or whatever she weighed. And then she lost weight to now weigh her ideal weight of 125 pounds. Well due to this penalty, if you will, a metabolic disadvantage. And the reason Dr. Oliveira knows this is because she has a biologically identical twin sister. And they’ve done all kinds of experiments. Because the sister went on a low carb diet. And Dr. Oliveira eats a low-fat whole food plant based diet. Has never been overweight. The sister was 50 pounds overweight. And eventually lost the weight but it’s been very difficult. Compared to Rosane. Now, is the person that lost weight needs far fewer calories to maintain your 125 pound frame than the person that was never overweight. And this is why it can be so difficult. Because while you’re overweight, you get to eat many more calories than you do once you lose weight. But if you’ve been overweight, it’s like a penalty. And you can’t eat as many calories as somebody who is your exact weight that’s never been overweight. Now, Dr. Oliveira says in a couple of years, if you stick to the program, this often can reverse itself so that you can get more calories. But this is just completely unfair. But people need to know this. And when they know this, if they follow the way of eating I recommend – losing weight with a full plate in accordance with the principles of calorie density – they can still eat large volumes of food. Maybe even more food than they ate before. And still maintain that weight loss without going hungry. But they need to know that they can’t go back to eating the way they were eating before they lost weight.     [00:44:51] Ashley James: That’s one thing when I first went this way of eating. I was hungry all the time. And my first thought – and I think I even asked you in our interview or I think asked you may be outside the interview – I can’t remember – but I remember going, “Am I protein deficient?” Because again, I was a newbie. I was eating lots of vegetables and lots of legumes and beans and nuts and seeds and all that. But no meat. And I was hungry 45 minutes after or an hour after eating a meal. And I couldn’t figure out why. And I think you were the one that told me you’re not eating enough. And I was like, “Oh.” Because my plate would be – I’d fill my stomach up. And it would only be like 200 or 300 calories because it’s a potato and some beans and some broccoli. And it was delicious. And maybe put some homemade salsa on it or something. Again, very low calorie, very high dense nutrition wise, lots of fantastic vitamins and minerals, and really great nutrients for the body. But then an hour later, I was hungry. And so I’m thinking, “Is it because my body is missing something? And it’s like, “No. silly. I just didn’t eat enough food. I just need to eat more.” So that’s one thing that happens when people transition into this is that they’re hungrier because they think they just eat a potato and some beans and some spinach. And that’s only like 300 or 400 calories. It’s not what they’re used to. They’re used to like 1,200 calories a meal, right?     [00:46:25] Chef AJ: Right. Absolutely. And that’s why it’s really important, in my opinion, to understand calorie density so that you know you have to eat more to weigh less. You have to. Because if you apply the same thinking to your previous dietary failures to this way of eating, you will starve. Because like you say, vegetables are 100 calories a pound, fruit 200 to 300 calories a pound, sweet potatoes, potatoes 400 calories a pound. We need to eat. However, many calories we eat, we need to eat several pounds of food a day in order to feel full. Dr. Barbara Rolls at Penn State University who studies human eating behavior in her laboratory. The author of the book, Volume Metrics, that you had mentioned previously. She discovered that we all eat about three to five pounds of food a day. Now, an Olympic athlete, is going to eat more than a four- foot-ten, 90 year old woman. Of course, not everybody eats the same amount of food. But most of us consistently eat between three to five pounds of food per day. We need to eat that much food in order to feel full. And so when you change the caloric density of your food, if you are eating most of your calories from animal products and processed food, which are of very high caloric density -what I call to the right of the red line – you wouldn’t need as much food. But now, if you’re lowering the caloric density to 600 calories per pound or less – fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes – you’re going to need to eat a greater volume of food in order to feel full. And this is a mistake people make. Another mistake they make is they shun the starch. The starch meaning the whole grains, the legumes, the potatoes, and winter squashes. People are still afraid of starch. So they’ll give up the animal products and the oils and the processed food and the alcohol. And they’ll just eat fruits and vegetables, which is very healthy. But it’s a mistake. Because without starch, you won’t have that satiety. That feeling of fullness that tells us to stop eating. No starch, no satiety. Starch is to the hunger drive, what oxygen is to breathing. And that is what’s going to make you satisfied. The fruits and vegetables they fill – think about like you have a box. And if you just filled it with packing peanuts, there’s still be lots of space in the box. And you need to fill the whole box. And your stomach is like that box. So you can you can fill it with the packing peanuts, with the fruits and vegetables. But there’s still a lot of space left over. You need to have the starch. So the starch is going to make you feel satisfied. But the fruits and vegetables are going to make you feel full. So that’s why you want to eat half your plate vegetables, then the other half mostly starch with maybe some fruit. You’ll feel full. You’ll feel satisfied. If you have a lifestyle related disease like heart disease or type 2 diabetes, most people will be able to reverse it. And many people will be able to prevent it by eating the way that our ancestors ate.     [00:49:11] Ashley James: I like that you brought up type 2 diabetes. I used to have type 2 diabetes. And I reversed it by shifting my lifestyle and my diet. Originally, when I shifted it, I went low carb. It felt like a long uphill battle with constantly checking my blood sugar. It took a long time to get to a point where I didn’t have diabetes anymore. I noticed I could easily recreate blood sugar imbalance. Going on this diet, I kept hearing all the experts that I’ve interviewed say you can absolutely reverse type 2 diabetes 100%. You can even get type 1 Diabetes to be more efficient. Some people have reported getting on 75% less insulin needed after eating this way. And yet it’s the most carbs they’ve ever eaten in their life. So I was tracking what I was eating and it was over 200 grams of carbohydrates a day eating this way. And this little voice in my head is thinking, “You’re crazy. You’re going to give yourself diabetes.” And of course, most of my brain went, “No. Just listen. Just wait. Wait and see. You’re going to be impressed.” The little critic in my head. And sure enough, like a month after eating this way, I took my blood sugar two hours after a meal and burst into tears. I’d never seen healthier blood sugar in my life eating this way. My blood work I just got back from the doctor – and I haven’t been diabetic for years. But it’s always monitoring it. And my blood work is- my insulin is super healthy. A1C is, like, 4.7. And I’m eating more carbohydrates than I ever have in my life. They’re just the right kind. And so for those diabetics that are listening who are afraid to eat a banana or afraid to eat a potato, why is it that when we cut out the meat and the fat from – the processed fat, like the oil, and we eat a whole food plant based, why is it that bounces blood sugar? Everyone’s blaming the sugar.     [00:51:12] Chef AJ: Right. And when the problem is fat. And you know who can answer that question for you beautifully other than Dr. Neal Barnard, is Robby and Cyrus. They have a program called Mastering Diabetes. They are both type 1 diabetics. And they actually have a podcast too. They make great guests individually or together for you. Because they can totally explain why a high carb, low fat diet works beautifully for health, for reversing, and living with diabetes for the people that are type 1. And also just for preventing other common diseases of lifestyle and reversing them like obesity and heart disease.     [00:51:47] Ashley James: Yeah. I had one of them on my show. That’s what convinced me. Because they have type 1 and type 2 diabetes. They eat nothing but bananas for the first three days just to kind of reset themselves. And people are freaking out. But then they’re like, “Wow. My blood sugar is coming back into balance. I can’t believe it.” So that’s what had me kind of go, “Wow. This is really real.” And there’s something about fat that clogs up the cells. It seemed totally – I mean, we’re myth busting. But it’s going against the mainstream narrative. The mainstream narrative is diabetics need to cut back. You know, basically diabetics should go on keto is what the mainstream narrative is going towards. And yet, that’s going to create further problems with insulin resistance down the road.     [00:52:31] Chef AJ: Absolutely. And the thing is it works. I mean, they get better numbers. But then they’re creating heart disease for themselves.     [00:52:39] Ashley James: It only works as long as they’re in ketosis. But then the second they eat even an apple, they’re having problems because it’s actually the fat that’s creating more and more insulin resistance. And it’s the wrong kind of fat. If you eat a handful of walnuts, it’s not going to do it. It’s the processed oils and the meat and the dairy. It’s just amazing looking at the science of food and how we can heal the body. It’s really exciting. And of course, these diseases that are coming back into balance, people even in your Facebook Group are sharing, “You know, I used to have this and now I don’t have it.” What kind of amazing lifestyle diseases have you seen reversed, eating this way?     [00:53:19] Chef AJ: Oh my gosh. So many. Just this week when I spoke at a conference, a lady came up to me and she is on the donor list for a kidney. And because of eating this way, it just keeps getting delayed. So I don’t know if she’s still going to need that kidney or not. But the point is, is that she’s not in dire kidney failure anymore. She just keeps getting better. And they’re like, “Oh. We don’t necessarily have to do this now.” I had somebody come up to me once and said, “You know, I didn’t even buy your book. I just watched your YouTube show. And I reversed stage four kidney failure.” I mean, that’s unbelievable, right? I mean, usually by then they’re getting ready for dialysis. So it’s unbelievable what it will do if people will just give it a chance. I mean, heart disease is the one you hear all the time, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, high blood pressure. That, you hear all the time because we know that from Dr. Esselstyn [inaudible 00:54:14] prevent reverse heart disease if  people eat this way. Those things are pretty much guaranteed to improve. But as you said, type 2 diabetes. Type 1, no. I’ve never seen anybody completely reverse it. Like you say, they have lowered their need for insulin dramatically and gained health in other ways. Cancer, I can’t say anybody said. Who knows what they’re preventing with this. But I have never seen anybody just reverse their cancer eating this way. But I’ve seen them improve their health. So that when they have to go through the procedures that they often get with chemotherapy or radiation, their health just improves while they’re doing it I would never say, “Eat this way, you won’t get cancer. You reverse it.” No. But I think you will just greatly improve your health on so many levels that when you’re dealing with any kind of disease, it’s going to be so much easier. Well, of course, obesity. I mean, people have been – as you know, being in the ultimate weight loss group, people have reversed that. We’ve had people lose 300 pounds. That was the most spectacular one. But it’s very common for people to lose 50 and 100. And keep it off. Well, that’s the most important part.     [00:55:27] Ashley James: Yeah. But also, I love that the culture of your group encourages people to share the non-scale achievements. The successes that have nothing to do with getting on scale because we can kind of sabotage ourselves by jumping on a scale every day. And so people are sharing like, “I’ve never been able to run around my grandchildren. And I just spent the entire day running around with them.” Or, “I’ve never been able to go hiking with my dogs and now I can.”  Or, “I’m fitting into clothing I have been able to fit into since college.” And they’re sharing these emotional breakthroughs that they’re having incredible energy and vitality. And they’re feeling free of the constraints of this disease that is in part created by, obviously, the food choices but also the hyper palatable foods that contribute to triggering overeating. So some people actually have an addiction, addictive personalities, or they’re looking to food in a way like we would look to drugs or alcohol. But other people don’t necessarily have an emotional eating issue. But food is like a drug. And that hyper palatable food is designed to trigger the brain to want to eat more and more and more of it. It’s like cleansing the palate when we eat the way you teach us to eat. It cleanses the palate and calms the mind. So now the mind is not being hijacked by food anymore.     [00:56:55] Chef AJ: Absolutely. We call them non-scale victories, NSV, which is also an acronym for non-starchy vegetables. But yeah, you’re right. Those are so much more meaningful especially that they’re more meaningful than losing the weight. But they’re more immediate in a lot of ways. Because people don’t realize that you don’t lose weight overnight. If you’re a female, you lose about two ounces of fat a day. And that’s why weighing yourself is one of the worst things you can do while you’re losing weight, especially if you weigh yourself every day. Maybe every month. But you can have other things like improvement in your markers, like blood pressure, and all the numbers, like cholesterol and triglycerides, and things like that. Or getting on the floor and playing with your grandchildren. I mean, to me, that’s the reason to do it.     [00:57:40] Ashley James: Uh-huh. Absolutely. Any other keys that stick out in your mind that really were big aha moments when you were doing your interviews for your summit?     [00:57:51] Chef AJ: Yeah. It’s funny because one of the things Dr. Allen Goldhamer, who I mentioned previously, as my mentor, he has this funny thing where he says, “You know, I assess a person’s intelligence by how much they agree with me.” And I actually spoke very little in the summit. I had about four questions that I asked each guests for the one hour interview. But it was really mostly about the guests. And I was kind of just there to run tech. But I had about four questions that I asked everyone. And what was interesting is that there was something that I had been teaching since day one, when I started coaching people and running the ultimate weight loss program, first in person and then online, was the importance of your environment when you are trying to lose weight or recover from an addiction or just improve your health or lifestyle in any way. And people would always get upset with me. I’m not a doctor. And they would just like, “Well, I can it’s too hard. I live -” all these excuses. Every single person on the summit said how critical the environment was. From Dr. Doug Lisle, who said, we must work harder on the environment than we do ourselves. From Fitness Guru John Pierre, we must sanitize our environment. There was one saying about they have the saying AA – not LA – but maybe in LA at the AA, whereas, if you hang around a barbershop long enough, it’s just a matter of time until you get a haircut. I’ve been saying to people for years that, if it’s in your house, it’s in your mouth. And it’s not a question of if you will eat it only when. But then when we have the co-author of The China Study, Dr. Tom Campbell saying, if you have temptation anywhere in your environment, you will fail. People actually listen because he’s a doctor. So the environment is critical towards your recovery from an addiction of any kind, towards your success for weight loss. We’re not designed to eat these foods. And we’re genetically hardwired to always consume the most concentrated source of calories in our environment. And if it’s in your house, you’re going to eat it. And you might be able to use willpower in the short term. But eventually, you’re going to have a bad day and you’re going to be hungry and there’s going to be sometime in the future or even if it’s not your favorite flavor junk food or whatever, you’re going to eat it. It never fails. And that’s why for an in person client, I will not work with them unless they completely sanitize their environment and I actually see it. But it’s going to be really hard if you’re not willing to clean your environment. A lot of people say, “Well, my husband and kids won’t eat this way.” That’s fine. They can eat however they want out of your house. But you can’t have junk food in your environment if you want to recover. If you’re an alcoholic, you can’t have alcohol for company. You just can’t. And you got to know it’s the same thing with these high fat, high calorie, hyperpalatable foods. So it was really reassuring to hear that I’ve been on the right track for the last 20 years explaining to people the importance of cleaning their environment if they want to affect permanent dietary and lifestyle change. So that was great to have that reinforced. And then the other thing that I also teach after the environment is clean is, you’ve got to have some kind of preparation. You can’t just clean the environment of all the crap and then just have no food in your house. You’ll be like Mother Hubbard with a bare cupboard. You have to have the healthy food there so that that is the default. People say, “Oh, my kids are such picky eaters.” Your kids aren’t picky. They’re just not hungry. And as long as junk food is a choice, instead of cut up vegetables with hummus and guacamole or fresh fruit, they’re always going to pick the junk food. They’re never going to pick the healthy food. But if all you see when you open your refrigerator are beautiful glass jars of cut up fruits and vegetables and cooked sweet potatoes, you will eat them, your family will eat them. So now we got to figure out how to get that food in your house. Preparation always tramps motivation. So if you’re angry, tired, lonely, bored, but that’s all that’s in your house is whole natural food. Guess what? You’re going to eat it. So how do we get the food in there? Well, a lot of people don’t even know how to cook. Believe it or not. I had a client recently with a 44 year old woman. She didn’t even know how to microwave a potato. I’m not kidding you. People eat fast food as their primary source of food these days. So we either have to teach you how to cook. And there’s plenty of programs, mine, there’s other programs, you can take cooking classes online or in person. So we need to teach you some kitchen essentials, like how to use an instant pot, maybe an air fryer. So we either got to teach you how to cook or we got to get the food in there some other way. Like, maybe using one of these whole food delivery services where you can get the food delivered to you, either dehydrated or refrigerated, so that the food is there. Or you got to get somebody else to do it. And it’s not as expensive as you think. So it’s like you need the environment clean but you need the preparation to have the good stuff in the environment. And these sort of go hand in hand. And then I would say, the third leg of – I don’t know how many legs does a stool have, three or four? Well, the third the third leg of the triangle – I’m not sure – I think about it as sort of a three-fold process. You clean the environment of the bad stuff. You learn how to get good stuff in the environment on an ongoing basis. And you find a community to support yourself. Many of the experts said that that was really important. Because no man is an island. And when you’re asking somebody to do something that goes against the norm, that’s completely different, then possibly they’re friends and family. See, it’s great that your family did this as a unit. But not every family will be cooperative. You need to find like-minded people. That’s why we have the Ultimate Weight Loss Facebook Group. I have now one called Feel Fabulous Over 40. But you don’t have to be over 40. You don’t even have to be a female to be in there. Where we provide ongoing education and support so that people don’t feel so alone. And the education is so important, Ashley. Especially when you have all this misinformation out there about keto and paleo and even doctors telling you to do this. If people don’t have some rudimentary answers to give people and they say, “Well, why are you eating vegetables? ” They need some kind of education and support system so that they don’t feel alone. And when you’re with like-minded people and you’re raised up and supported by people that are on the same path as you, that’s really a wonderful thing.     [01:03:58] Ashley James: I love it. I love that you said preparation tramps motivation. I feel like I’ve had to learn all this the hard way. Even though I’ve heard it along the way, I feel like I still am one of those people that I just have to do it the hard way. And if there is anything in the house that is a temptation – you’re right – if it’s like I’m tired, it’s dinnertime. I’m going to go for the easiest possible, like, the frozen pizza, right? The easiest possible solution. I’m not going to go for the, “Oh, it’s going to take me a-half-an-hour to cook this. No. I’m going to go for the what can I throw in the oven.” Because when we’re hungry, it’s like all of our goals go out the window.     [01:04:36] Chef AJ: Yes. Also, willpower, which you can use for a short period of time. Will power gets depleted easily, especially if you’re tired, especially if you have to make a decision. But you never have to decide to not eat something that isn’t there in the first place.     [01:04:53] Ashley James: Exactly. What I do is I go to Costco when they have it. They don’t always have it. But they have a right now at my Costco, at least. And it’s a giant bag of sweet potatoes. There’s probably about ten of them in there. One bag lasts us about three days, I’d say. We also had a farm close by, U-Pick Farm. So we did this all summer long. And it was all organic. And they had two kinds of potatoes. And I would fill up buckets, like giant, giant bins of potatoes. Having a ton of them in the house. And then I bake a bunch. Like I get a huge thing that fills the oven and I bake six to eight big sweet potatoes at a time, 375 or 400 degrees for 90 minutes. I just let them go. And then I peel them. And I have them in the fridge and they’re ready to go cold. Cold as a snack. I’ll have potato is a snack, like, in between interviews. I heard this summer that sweet potatoes gives you energy for nine hours. It take nine hours for the body to digest and absorb all the nutrients from it. So it’s kind of like this slow drip of nine hours of energy from sweet potatoes. My son who’s four and a half love sweet potatoes. And I think, like just last night for dinner, that’s all he ate was a sweet potatoes for dinner. And then we’ll add it to salads cold or we’ll heat it up and make a mash or we’ll make a stew out of it. It’s a great base for a stew. But just basically having a ton of cooked potatoes and cooked sweet potatoes already in the fridge is great. And then I usually have a few pounds of cooked vegetables or steamed or sautéed or baked – and sautéed with no oil, it’s with water – in the fridge just ready to go. And so if I’m really hungry – and I love you’re saying, “If you’re not hungry enough to eat vegetables, you’re not hungry” because that’s become my mantra. I open the fridge and I fill my plate. And there’s that voice that goes, “This isn’t going to be fun. Where’s the fun food?” But the second you start eating it, that voice goes away because the food is delicious. I just have to acknowledge that that there’s that voice that wants to cover it with cheese or ranch dressing or something completely gross and unhealthy but that it’s hyperpalatable. So there’s that little voice in my head that still goes, “This isn’t yummy. Where’s the yummy food? Give me the bad food.” And I just have to tell it to take a hike. And the second that sweet potato or homemade salsa on  some kind of vegetable hits my lips, that voice goes away because the food’s delicious. And it’s very satisfying. So eating foods that are whole food, meaning you know exactly what you’re putting in your body, you know all the ingredients. And then it’s just something amazing happens where my energy, I feel like I’m buzzing. My body just feels like I’m burning clean fuel. Do You know what I mean? It feels so good.     [01:07:52] Chef AJ: Absolutely. I could live on sweet potatoes and I practically do. And what’s great about Costco is they’re actually organic.     [01:08:00] Ashley James: Oh, yes. I only buy organic as much as possible, as often as possible. And then Whole Foods has lowered their prices since Amazon bought Whole Foods. And so a lot of people who have avoided Whole Foods because of pricing, go back. Go back to Whole Foods. They do have more affordable organic vegetables now. So we do that and we buy in bulk. If you have a large family, there’s ways to get organic for cheap. You can talk to the grocer. And often you can order in bulk, like by the case. And that saves a lot of money. So there’s fun tricks. And then the thing that has really fallen into place for me has been staying on program when I’m leaving the house. Because that’s where it’s like I can clean my environment. I can control my environment in my house. But I can’t control the chaotic world outside. And so I think I’m only leaving the house for one errand and then one leads to another leads to another and now I’m out for the whole day and I’m really hungry. And that’s where it’s like, “Good luck finding really healthy food.” And so I love that you have a technique where you pack food with you wherever you go. Can you share a bit about that?     [01:09:07] Chef AJ: Yeah. I actually [inaudible 01:09:09] free webinars. It’s on my YouTube page, How To Eat Healthfully Anywhere. And it’s true. The world is not set up to support us in healthy eating. Your environment is everywhere you go. So you could have a perfectly clean environment at home with delicious food. But you go out and eating unhealthful food, junk food is socially acceptable, readily available, easily affordable. It’s everywhere. You go to the hardware store, you go to the pet store, there’s m&m’s at the counter. Even though dogs aren’t supposed to eat m&m’s. A cooler, I have actually – because I’m female and I don’t mind having a purse. I mean, the gentleman may not want to have a lady’s purse. But if you’re lady that already carries a purse, they make so many beautiful cooler purses. I’ve gotten some from Tupperware. I’ve gotten some on Amazon, Bed, Bath and Beyond. I think my favorite are in my Amazon store. But these look exactly like stylish women’s purses but their coolers. And you can have an ice chip in there so that you can sneak them into the movies or wherever you go. And I always make sure – and it’s not just about fruits or vegetables, but you got to have that [inaudible 01:10:15]. We call it pimping it, P-I-M-P, you know, Potato In My Purse. Always have a cooked potato or sweet potato with you. So that is so, so important to do that. The one day you don’t take the food is the one day you’re not going to be back in an hour. “I’m just going to stroll. I’ll be back in an hour.” And that’s the day that you’re going to get a flat tire. It’s going to be like six hours. So while it’s true that hunger is not an emergency. And I like to teach my people that they can go several hours without food. That you always have it with you. I generally don’t like people to eat dried snacks, dehydrated stuff. They’re not as good for weight loss because the water has been [inaudible 01:10:56]. But there’s certain things that you can get without oil, sugar, or salt, like a [inaudible 01:11:00] or sprouts. It’s just carrots but they’re dried, right? Or just beats. And having those, you won’t need a cooler for those. But those might be some good things to have in your glove apartment or with you if you really feel like you’re going to be starving. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to get a healthy meal at a restaurant that’s completely oil free or salt free. It depends how much you want to reach your goals and why you’re doing this, how strict you want to be. But in general, any food you bring is going to be less expensive. It’s going to be more bountiful. It’s going to be more delicious than anything you can get on the outside. And I’ve traveled everywhere from Canada to Mexico multiple times, across the United States almost every week for many years and I’ve never had a problem. I bring my instant pot with me on the plane. I have the three quart instant pot and I can cook in my room. I have one of these little microwave steamers from Tupperware and Pampered Chef that if I don’t want to bring my Instant Pot, I can easily cook vegetables. Because most hotels now have microwaves. And if they don’t, there’s usually one in the lobby that you can use. But you really have to learn how to have healthful food with you.     [01:12:07] Ashley James: I love it. Oh, yes. It’s made such a difference that concept. I make food in bulk. So I cook once, eat four times. They say cook once, eat twice. I like to cook once, eat for a whole week. So I fill the oven with potatoes, for example. Or when I steamed vegetables, I’m steaming close to four pounds of vegetables because I have those bamboo steamers. You stack the bamboo and it’s so great. You can get them in Asian markets you can get them on Amazon. But these bamboo steamers are phenomenal. And that you can stack them. So you could do, like, three layers, three stacks or four stacks and you steam a ton of vegetables. Super delicious.   I have food already cooked in the fridge like the beans, and legumes, and the brown rice, and potatoes, and the vegetables. And then if we’re going somewhere, I’m just filling up some glass, whatever Tupperware and throwing it in the cooler. That was, for me the biggest trick. That was, like, the last thing to kind of make everything fall into place. Because if I were to eat out at a restaurant and go eat, even if it’s vegan food, it’s still covered in oil and just filled with salt and sugar and all kinds of stuff. I would feel kind of crappy for a few days after eating that. But then the cravings come back. And then it’s like a mental mind mess for a few days. Because then I’m like, fighting those little voice in my head saying, “Oh, you deserve this.” Or, “You should have this. You feel so deprived.” And then it becomes more of a mental emotional fight.     [01:13:40] Chef AJ: It’s so hard. The first bite is the only bite than anybody can refuse. And I just think it’s so much easier to stay on track, at least for me, than to constantly trying to have to get back on track.     [01:13:56] Ashley James: So seeing how you do it has really helped. And you talked about taking it into the movie theaters. My friend Naomi, who’s a listener – so she’s listening. Hi, Naomi. Her and my husband and I went to see the premiere of the Game Changers last month. And she brought in her cooler purse, she baked and seasoned chickpeas just like popcorn. So we just popped these wonderfully seasoned chickpeas into our mouth. And then, I think, she had hummus and dip. And then she had baked some kind of zucchini cookies that were – she did some fantastic thing with vegetables and made them into these cookie looking things. And so we just – it was like I didn’t feel deprived at all. I didn’t want that oily salty popcorn. Actually no one in the theater was eating bad food. It was kind of funny because they were all on board already. But yeah, we were sitting there just feeling really satisfied bringing our healthy food into the movie theater. I love that. I love the ability to feel prepared. And it actually gives me a lot of – it gives me a sense of wellbeing to feel prepared no matter what. It feels so good eating this way that I want to stay on this path. It’s obviously working because my Naturopath says that my blood work keeps getting better and better and better every few months that I get it taken. So I’m not deprived at all. I just love it. I love it. It’s kind of like the skeptic wants to ask this question, the skeptic amigos. Has anyone ever gotten unhealthy eating this way? Has anyone ever gone like, “Man, you know, my doctor put me back on steak because this wasn’t working for me.”     [01:15:39] Chef AJ: Well, I mean, I haven’t had a client that has happened to that really has followed the program the way it was laid out. But there are people that do their own variations with their own additions of food that don’t necessarily thrive or lose weight the same way. What I’ve seen though when people have been told to go back to meet by the doctors, it’s often the unhealthy vegans that are not following the health promoting diet. That are just vegans for ethical reasons, which is great, because I am as well. But they eat a junk food diet and they get some kind of a disease. And their doctor says, “Oh, well. It’s because you didn’t eat meat.” And I’d have seen people go back to eating meat because it’ll help. But not when following a whole food unprocessed plant based diet with enough calories from delicious fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes.     [01:16:28] Ashley James: Yeah, that’s right. I think a lot of people will learn a diet like you learn your lifestyle. And then start to make little alterations. Like start to add in alcohol or the sweets or the oil once in a while. They’re not going to give up the dairy in their coffee or something. They sort of negate those little things and then they start altering it more and more and more and making their own version of it. I’ve seen that happen in many other types of diets.     [01:17:00] Chef AJ: And you know, that’s fine. But then they complain that the program didn’t work. And that’s because they weren’t doing the program. It’s like people being vegan for over 42 years and people say, “Oh, I’m vegetarian. I eat chicken and fish occasionally.” Well, you’re not vegetarian. It’s like, “I’m faithful to my wife except when I go on business trips.” This is where the concepts of abstinence comes in. But people don’t like abstinence. It’s hard. It’s not sexy. And it’s not something most people look forward to doing. But I will tell you that complete abstinence is a lot easier than perfect moderation. And that is a direct quote from St. Augustine.     [01:17:38] Ashley James: Wow. I like it. It’s awesome. Yeah. So you have so many programs that I want to make sure that my listeners know about all your programs. So you have the website, eatunprocessed.com or chefajwebsite.com.     [01:17:58] Chef AJ: Right. They’re both the same website. Absolutely.     [01:18:01] Ashley James: Okay. So either. I’ll make sure the links to everything you do is in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Now, you have your ultimate weight loss program, which that’s the one I keep referring to this Facebook Group. And that’s part of the – the Facebook Group is part of that. But just let listeners know what is the Ultimate Weight Loss Program.     [01:18:23] Chef AJ: So what that is – just so they know so that I don’t want them to think that I’m there every second answering questions. I’m actually not in that group except for twice a month where I do a live q&a based on their questions to all the members, myself, and John Pierre. This is a pure supported group for people that are following the program. But what they get when they join is lots of audios and videos. And just to explain what the program is, this was created before my book came out. So it might just be easier and more cost effective if they just want to pick up like the Kindle version of my book for less than 10 bucks to understand what the program is. But if they need the support, if they want to connect with the tribe of like minded people, then this is why they might want to join the program instead of just reading the book.     [01:19:06] Ashley James: It’s worth every penny. Your Facebook Group is worth every penny. And I told my friend this I said, “You know the videos and the audios are great. They’re all great. Of course, you can get it from the book too.” But really it’s worth every penny for the Facebook Group support. I go in that Facebook Group almost every day and get so much information. And I love sharing in that group. I love getting the inspiration from others. And the support is truly a beautiful community. So I highly recommend. That Facebook Group is phenomenal. Yeah. Absolutely.     [01:19:43] Chef AJ: Thank you so much. And you know what’s nice is that people get to know each other virtually. And then when we have our annual conference, which next year is moving from Las Vegas to Palm Springs in May, they know that people already. And so it’s like a reunion or old home week or going to camp. So that’s one of the nice things about it that the people have made some really nice connections and forged so many friendships. So That’s pretty cool. And in July, I started a membership website, which is a little bit different way of delivering content. And it’s actually quite affordable if they go in for a whole year. It’s like $12 a month. But what I do is, every single week, Wednesdays at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, we go live where they can ask questions. And not just of me but I have just amazing experts like Dr. Doug Lyle and Dr. Alan Goldhamer that come in and do these classes or do some success stories where we interview people that had that. So we have a weekly interaction for at least an hour. Plus, just meal planning tools. And my partner, Toby, we just built this amazing system where they could go in and search anything that I’ve ever said. Like, if they have a question and it takes it right to the video. Because I’ve done almost 500 YouTube videos now. And it’s kind of hard, like if you have a question like, “Is stevia okay?” I don’t know where it is. But if you’re in the membership area, you just put the word stevia in. And anytime I’ve ever mentioned it in my life, the video will pop up. It’s very, very cool. And there’s a way to get an accountability partner. And we do, like, videos for yoga and Zumba. So it’s kind of cool. It’s just another group for people to have a different way of delivering content. Also, not everybody likes Facebook. And so the Feel Fabulous is not Facebook dependent. There is a group for it. But we interact with the website, which is very nice.     [01:21:33] Ashley James: Nice. So that’s feelfabulousoverforty.com?     [01:21:37] Chef AJ: Yeah. And if they go to slash register, they can have two weeks for free. So we wanted to do that because we don’t want somebody in there that’s going to be unhappy. So we give everybody two weeks for free. And they can see if they like it. They can print out the recipes. They can create their own customized meal plan. Find an accountability partner. I mean, the longer this goes, the more videos there are. But there’s just tons of these. Not everybody can be with you. live at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesdays. Many people are several hundred are always there on the group videos which we do through WebinarJam. But they can watch these as often as they want. And it’s kind of a really cool website. So check it out. You might like it.     [01:22:14] Ashley James: Awesome. Very cool. I love you, Chef AJ. I love what you do.     [01:22:19] Chef AJ: Thank you.     [01:22:19] Ashley James: And you know, you look like you’re in your 40s. I know that you’re –     [01:22:24] Chef AJ: Almost 60.     [01:22:25] Ashley James: I know right? And this – if any listener is vain and just really wants to freeze their youth and hold on to their youth as long as possible, you got to eat this way. Because every person I’ve interviewed who eats this way – I feel like even if you listed a dozen people, Dr. Allen Goldhamer, Dr. Esselstyn, you, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, and Dr. Joel Khan, and a handful of others, they all look 20 years younger than – and Dr. Bernard, they all look 20 years younger than they are. And they feel it. And it’s amazing that this way of eating prevents disease. Now, some people like to say that the China study is bogus. And vegans don’t live a really long life. It’s complete baloney. That we have to eat meat in order to live a long life. Is there anything that you would like to say to that? I know you’re not a doctor.     [01:23:30] Chef AJ: No, I’m not.     [01:23:31] Ashley James: But you’ve interviewed a lot of them. You’ve worked with a lot of them. And this has been your passion to teach people how to eat in a way that helps them come back into balance, come back into health. Have you any information around that you can shed light on that –     [01:23:50] Chef AJ: Yeah. The China Study, I mean, I would refer your listeners to the book, The China Study, where they found that these people – yes, they ate about something like 10% of their calories from animal products. Not necessarily everybody’s ready to go or willing to go 100% vegan. But my goodness, to think that that’s what you’re supposed to eat and that’s where the majority of your calories are going to come from. Look at the Blue Zones by Dan Buettner. These successful populations, the longest lived people in history, and longest lived people today, it’s the Okinawans in Japan. The people on, I think, [inaudible 01:24:22] Costa Rica. There’s five locations.     [01:24:23] Ashley James: Right. [Inaudible 01:24:24], the Georgians –     [01:24:26] Chef AJ: They eat primarily – primarily – a plant based diet. We are not carnivores. Think about it, those little teeth that we have in our mouth called canine teeth, do you really think we could bite into flesh and eat it if it wasn’t killed for us and cooked by somebody else? No.     [01:24:49] Ashley James: Right. Go chase an elk.     [01:24:54] Chef AJ: I remember Harvey Diamond who wrote Fit For Life, who, fortunately, I don’t think is vegan anymore. He wrote a book once and he said, “You know, take a baby and put a carrot and a bunny next to the baby. And if the baby plays with the carrot and eats the bunny, I’ll give you a $10,000.”     [01:25:16] Ashley James: Oh, that’s so cute. I love it.     [01:25:17] Chef AJ: Is that funny?     [01:25:18] Ashley James: Yeah.     [01:25:18] Chef AJ: Dr. Michael Greger once said, “I know I’m going to die. I just don’t want it to be my fault.” And so by eating the way that we eat, you really do make yourself bulletproof against so many of these Western diseases that our ancestors never suffered from. And we get to eat a healthy long life without destroying the planet, without harming the animals, and without harming ourselves.     [01:25:43] Ashley James: Beautifully said. Do you have any homework that you’d like to give us?     [01:25:49] Chef AJ: Maybe. I have a series I do every Wednesday called Weight Loss Wednesday. I think there’s about 150 episodes now. They shouldn’t watch all of them obviously unless they want to. But there’s a couple of them where they could maybe really learn, like, what I eat in a day so they can see. I think it’s Episode 36. So that they can see how much food you really need to eat if you want to eat in accordance with the principles of calorie density. Or Episode 24, I believe it is, the vegetable edition just to see how easy it is to prepare vegetables very easily. Those are the ones I’d recommend. I have a very short YouTube Easy Meals To Make You Thin just to kind of an overview. Or if they really want to know where I came from and how I achieve success, one called From Fat Vegan to Skinny Bitch. I guess my homework would be just to try this for three weeks. There’s a holiday called Lent, where for 42 days people do incredibly difficult things like giving up things they love, like coffee or alcohol. Why not try this for three weeks? Just do an experiment. See how you feel. You can always go back.     [01:26:54] Ashley James: Brilliant. I love it. Thank you so much, Chef AJ for coming on.     [01:27:00] Chef AJ: My pleasure.     [01:27:01] Ashley James: You’re welcome back any time. I love what you do. And I’m so inspired by the work that you do. And I know that my listeners, especially the ones that take you up on your challenge, will also love it. I highly recommend reading your book on processed. And Episode 230 of my podcast is the one I did with Dr. Alan Goldhamer. And that’s when I first learned about his book with Dr. Lyle.     [01:27:29] Chef AJ: The pleasure trap.     [01:27:31] Ashley James: Yes. Where I learned about the book, The Pleasure Trap, you were the narrator.     [01:27:34] Chef AJ: Yeah. That was fun.     [01:27:36 ] Ashley James: That was great. I love it. Because I’m really so busy, sometimes I just can’t sit down and read a book. But man, I can definitely listen to one while driving. And what’s extra great is my husband gets to listen with me because we do a lot of driving together. And we both work from home. So when we leave the house, it’s like our quality time together. So we’ll go drive, you know, we’ll be together. Yeah, listening to you it was very pleasurable to listen to The Pleasure Trap. That’s a fantastic book to start with because it’s talking our history, or genealogy, or what we were designed to do. Which you’d mentioned is, we’re designed to seek out the most calorically dense foods possible. And that was fine 200 years ago when there wasn’t really highly, highly processed foods. And flour wasn’t in abundance. And sugar was definitely not an abundance. And so we still wouldn’t eat very unhealthy 200 years ago because we didn’t have access to this incredibly calorically dense food. And even meat wasn’t a daily staple for most people. They couldn’t afford it. Most people that ate meat, it would be something on the farm, right? So if you had to kill a chicken and pluck it and all that stuff, that’s pretty tiresome. That’s something that maybe they would do once a week or that was something like they do on Sunday or on Friday. That wasn’t a daily thing. And now, we’re sort of marketed, too, to expect to eat meat three times a day and have it basically be. And every meal has to include it. And so it’s been all marketed to us, our belief system. That’s why I love the movie, the one that’s about to be on Netflix really soon.     [01:29:28] Chef AJ: It’s on now. Are you talking about Game Changers? Because Game Changers is on Netflix and Amazon Prime at least right now.     [01:29:34] Ashley James: Is it on right now? Okay.  It’s on Netflix right now. I thought it was on the 26th. So it’s on Netflix right now. So Game Changers is great because it shows us – it kind of exposes – I love this documentary because it doesn’t do fear mongering. It doesn’t sort of make us feel belittled. Some other documentaries kind of beat us up and make us feel bad. This documentary, not at all. It feels really positive. But it does show us and expose how much our choices that we make every day are actually we’ve been programmed. We’ve been brainwashed by years and years and years of marketing. And so looking at that our bodies want to because it’s part of how we survived for however many thousands of years and however many generations.  We’ve looked for the foods that are the most pleasurable. And that’s because the pleasure, The Pleasure Trap, because the pleasurable foods are the high density caloric foods to help us survive famines. And so this whole book – which your audio book is wonderful so listeners can just get it from Amazon and listen to Chef AJ narrate The Pleasure Trap by Dr. Goldhamer and Dr. Lyle – helps us to understand why eating the way you teach us to eat is actually the healthiest for brain and our body and also for our emotional state. So it’s really beautiful because it helps break that addiction. So if someone finds that they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol or food, this is a fantastic book and a fantastic diet as well. So I love that. Thank you so much for that.     [01:31:21] Chef AJ: Yeah. Absolutely. I love that book. That book was a game changer for many people.     [01:31:27] Ashley James: And I hope I hope this interview and your information will be a game changer for many people as I know it has been for me. Is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?     [01:31:38] Chef AJ: Let’s see, I think I’ve said just about everything. Just eat plants. Eat plants.   [01:31:47] Ashley James: I just wanted to make sure I squeezed every drop of wisdom I could get out of you before saying goodbye. So eat plants everyone.     [01:31:54] Chef AJ: Eat plants, fit into your pants. That’s what I say.     [01:31:55] Ashley James: Eat plants, fit in your pants. Love it. Okay. Fantastic. Awesome. Thank you.     [01:32:00] Chef AJ: Thanks, Ashley. Thanks everybody. Take care everyone.     [01:32:03] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program. Get Connected With Chef AJ: Official Website The Wisdom Course Healing Movement Feel Fabulous Over Forty Books By Chef AJ Unprocessed   The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss Check Out Other Episodes With Chef Aj! Episode 278: Food Addiction     Overseas by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9 Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/oversas Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/YnbgCSf-ANI

Join the Learn True Health Facebook group to get the latest scoop on the upcoming NEW Learn True Health Home Kitchen Membership! Visit: LearnTrueHealth.com/group Or Join my email list by visiting LearnTrueHealth.com  Jon Paul's Site: https://www.breathewithjp.com   Breathwork https://www.learntruehealth.com/breathwork Highlights: Four alienations: nature, each other, work, ourselves Grief gets stuck in the lungs. Breathwork clears out grief out of the lungs There’s nothing you’re going to get from the outside that’s going to make you enough on the inside Breathwork makes you realize that you are enough Breathwork is an adjunct to 12-step programs for people to get sober Trauma is passed down the DNA We breathe differently depending on what state we’re in Be willing to be an explorer, a scientist within yourself Contraindications of breathwork   In this episode, Jon Paul Crimi tells us how breathwork helped him turn his life around. He tells us stories of how breathwork transformed other people’s lives as well. He also explains the breathwork technique to us and the contraindications of breathwork.    [0:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another episode of Learn True Health podcast. Join the Facebook group Learn True Health on Facebook because I’ve got some exciting news coming up. I’m going to be announcing it there first and I want you to be the first to hear it. So please join the Learn True Health Facebook group. Plus we have some awesome giveaways that always happen and wonderful conversations. It’s a great group to be in, a great community. Very supportive community. Jump on my email list. I give you seven days of videos that I filmed with naturopathic physicians teaching you the foundations of health. All good information that everyone should know. Very fun course. It’s all free. So go to LearnTrueHealth.com and a pop up happens. Just put in your email. I promise I will not spam you. I send out maybe three emails a month. But you’ll get every day, for seven days, you will get videos that I filmed with these naturopaths who are wonderful doctors teaching the foundations of health. So join the Facebook group and get on the website and join the email list so that you get the news first because I have some really exciting news coming up. I want to make sure that you’re connected so that you get it. You’re going to love today’s interview. I loved, loved interviewing Jon Paul and I can’t wait to have him back on the show. I think this information is something that 100% of the population needs to hear. You know some interviews are just for women or some interviews are just for people with thyroid problems. This interview is for 100% of the population. I’m very excited for you to hear it. Please, share it with those that you love that you know it will help. Help me to spread this information and get it out to as many people as possible so we can help all of our loved ones and everyone we care about to learn true health. Enjoy today’s interview. Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 391.   [0:02:19] Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have on with us Jon Paul Crimi. I love your last name. I’m saying it like you told me to say it. Like an Italian, Crimi.   [0:02:31] Jon Paul Crimi: That’s right. Kreme. It’s beautiful. I love it. Thank you.   [0:02:35] Ashley James: Jon Paul has a wonderful website breathewithjp.com. We were in the presence of a celebrity here. I’m feeling the pressure. Feel the Hollywood pressure. You’ve been in Hollywood for the last 20 years with the bigwigs. You are sought after. Your classes are full. Your teacher trainings are full. Your breath technique that you’ve developed over the last 20 years has helped people to become very successful in the Olympics, in Hollywood, CEOs, major corporations and executives. So today we get to jam with you and figure out what’s up with breathwork and why are all the celebrities just jumping on the bandwagon? What’s up? So good to have you here today.   [0:03:27] Jon Paul Crimi: Thanks. It’s great to be here. At first, I don’t think I’m a celebrity. I’m more celebrity adjacent. I’m like next to the celebrities or working with the celebrities. I’ve worked with a lot of celebrities over the years and I found that when I’m standing next to some big celebrity I’m pretty much invisible. It’s okay. I’m happy to be invisible. Lately, I’ve been in the spotlight with breathwork. It’s really taken off and people have really taken to it which is it’s fantastic to see because it changes people’s lives in a very short amount of time which is great because we live in this society today that everybody wants a quick fix and there really aren’t any quick fixes out there, right? But this actually is a quick fix. In one session, the most common statement I hear is like, ‘Oh my God, it’s like 20 years of therapy without having to say a word.’ So if you can feel that way after one session or one class or one workshop you know, it sells out. People come in droves. They have this experience then they bring their family members back and their friends back, everyone they know that needs it which is everyone right now on the planet seems like.   [0:04:36] Ashley James: You were telling me before we hit record that you were just in at Hay House, which is a publishing company, Hay House summit.   [0:04:46] Jon Paul Crimi: Well, so glad it was the Heal. You know the Heal documentary on Netflix? Heal had a Hay House online summit. So it was great. It was like Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Michael Beckwith, Dr. Sue Mortimer. It was like doctor, doctor, doctor, Jon Paul Crimi, doctor, doctor, doctor.   [0:05:09] Ashley James: I like in your website you say, “I’m not a doctor. I’m not your doctor.” But what you do helps people to access their own ability to heal itself. After you were on the summit, your interview is only available for 24 hours you said. After that hundreds, hundreds of people came to your website and bought your five-day course. You have this course. We are definitely going to talk about it because I’m interested in learning more about it. Then you started to get the flood of emails. You’ve been telling me that the weekends been non-stop emails of people telling you that what they learned and what they’ve done with you and your coursework so far has been nothing sort of life-changing.   [0:05:46] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean, to read the emails and to hear the stories from people saying that they let go of trauma that they’ve been holding on to for their whole life. That their bodies are starting to heal. Because so much of our physical health is due to emotional health, right? So if we can start to clear out that stuff, those negative emotions or things that we’re storing in our body then some of that physical health will start to get better. So we can dive into that because that’s a big part of my own personal story as well. So just hearing these stories from people who are doing this course all over the world and having this incredible results and then they want to turn around and give it to other people, to show it to other people. So I’m creating these like soldiers for good out there of people taking other people to breathwork and changing lives. It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done. It’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. In a million years I never would’ve thought I would be doing something like this. I’m not that guy. I’m not your typical guy.   [0:06:48] Ashley James: Guru?   [0:06:49] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I’m not a guru. I don’t like that. I’m a breath teacher, you know. I’m just not that guy. I’m from the South Shore of Boston Massachusetts where people are kind of rough and tumble. I grew up in a really rough way. This thing was never on my radar. None of this stuff was on my radar but the universe has this funny way of pushing you down roads through pain, right?   [0:07:19] Ashley James: Well we’ll definitely get into your story in a minute. I studied Huna which is the ancient Polynesian spiritual practice. I can’t really call it a religion but in Hawaii, they practice Huna every step of, if they’re practicing Huna is part of their life. It’s part of how they go fishing. It’s part of how they are a parent. It’s part of how they practice medicine. It’s part of how they chant. It’s every aspect of their life. They have a saying in Hawaii. They call foreigners or white people haoles. They say it, it’s a derogatory almost a racist term but haole means without breath. Imagine a hundred years ago, the ancient Polynesian Hawaiian people have never met any foreigners and they were living in harmony. There was actually no recorded accounts of mental illness at all. There was no depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, nothing. People were fishing and gardening and dancing and racing families and they were harmonious. Then these ships came out of nowhere. Most of the people there, the natives were half-naked because it’s really hot. These people, these missionaries come dressed head to toe in wool. Holding bibles and telling them that they needed to stop being sinners, get dressed. The Hawaiians noticed that these people never pause and take a breath. They were just like breathe shallow and be kind of nervous and emotional, uptight at the same time. The Hawaiians would actually take a breath, part of the practice, part of their Huna was that when you met someone to say hello, you would take a pause and you would take a breath and then you would say hello. That you would pause to eat. You would pause before you fish and take a breath. Everything they did was they would stop, take a breath and then do something. So when these foreigners came and they never paused to take a breath they called them haole without breath. I thought that was so interesting, that distinction of our Western culture that we are without breath.   [0:09:49] Jon Paul Crimi: You know, I’ve heard the term haole quite a bit because I have some surfer friends from Hawaii. I have a really good friend who was in this movie North Shore. He says in the movie, “He’s so haole he doesn’t even know he’s haole.” Talking about the white guy in the movie. He doesn’t even know that he doesn’t belong, you know. The shallow breath that you’re talking about, there’s a saying, ‘Shallow breath, shallow life. Deep breath, deep life.’  Hearing that story made me think we’re so disconnected know in our society. The four alienations, right? The first alienation is we’re disconnected from nature, from the world, from the earth. They were working in nature. They were fishing and they had their feet in the ground. So we’re disconnected in that and we’re destroying the planet. Then we’re disconnected from each other. We’re on social media but we’re not really connecting with people and listening and taking them in and spending quality time as much. We’re disconnected from our work, from what we do. So many people don’t love what they do for work anymore. So we’re disconnected from that. We’re disconnected from ourselves. That’s the biggest one. Those people were connected that’s why there was no schizophrenia, there was no mental illness, there was no sickness. I mean, it’s just as simple as that. It’s like when you have those things in place it’s so obvious for me to see now. I work with people. In my other business, in my sober coaching, sober companion business I’ve worked with very successful people. Millionaires, some billionaires, actors, and musicians. They’re isolated. They’ve isolated themselves off from the world. They can’t understand why they’re not happy. Everybody else can’t understand why they’re not happy because it’s seemingly what society dictates that they have it all. They have a career, they’re beautiful, they have money, they have success. But yet, if you look at those things I just explained, they don’t have any of those things. They’re isolated off. They’re disconnected from all those things. When you start to sit inside and isolated yourself off from the world your brain starts to play tricks on you when you start to think about all the stuff. You start to read all the stuff online about you. You get down this rabbit hole. I can see how they quickly make themselves sick with that.   [0:12:22] Ashley James: Right. I was just reading the latest statistics of suicide rated among our youth is now the second leading cause of death. Suicide went up 52% I believe it was for ages between 10 and 24. Just yesterday, between –   [0:12:46] Jon Paul Crimi: What is it an 11-year-old or a 10-year-old? You’re playing outside.   [0:12:53] Ashley James: A nine-year-old committed suicide about a month ago. It was in the news. It’s just, what’s going on that we are so disconnected.   [0:13:00] Jon Paul Crimi: That hurts my heart.   [0:13:01] Ashley James: This is so recent. This is just this generation. I mean, it went up 52% in the last 10 years.   [0:13:08] Jon Paul Crimi: Well, what do you think that is?   [0:13:11] Ashley James: We’ve got social media.   [0:13:12] Jon Paul Crimi: Social media. That’s it. That’s it.   [0:13:14] Ashley James: We’re disconnected. We’re disconnected like you said. We’re not meeting face-to-face and we’re isolated. We’re more and more isolated. We think we’re connected digitally but we’re actually more and more isolated.   [0:13:26] Jon Paul Crimi: I agree. I think what happens too is that you know I had a hard time at school. But at least when I got home from school I had my house and my safe backyard. All my stuff, right? Now these kids, they get home from school and now they’re bullied on social media and it’s endless. You can’t get away from it. It’s worse on social media than in school. They’re constantly being bullied and barraged. You know, I had someone close to me that I knew, one of my nieces. She was bullied on social media where they created a website or created a profile for that wasn’t her. I mean, it was pretty serious. She had a lot of problems around it. Just the things that can happen online are you know awful to people. When your brain is that young it’s not fully formed yet. I don’t think you realize that all that online stuff it really isn’t real you know.   [0:14:25] Ashley James: It feels like the real world.   [0:14:26] Jon Paul Crimi: It feels like the real world for some people. They can’t separate that out because they just think that is the real world. It’s scary that suicide is an option. I have a lot of experience with people close to me committing suicide. It’s very difficult. Part of that course, one of the days of the Five Day Emotional Detox is things called the ‘transformational letter.’ That was formed out of loss of someone that was very dear to me that committed suicide. What was happening to me was I couldn’t move the grief out. It was stuck. I went and saw someone who was really wise and they told me, “Write a letter to him saying everything you wish you could say, everything you want to say, everything you can’t say.” I was like, “Yeah. I’ve heard that before.” Then he said, “Write a letter back from him saying everything you want him to say, everything he can’t say, right.” So I did the two letters and then I laid down and I did the breathwork and it was incredible. It transformed everything for me because the letter has brought all the stuff up to the surface. It made me see what I couldn’t see because I was just stuck in a loop that I felt guilty because I could’ve done more, I could’ve said more. I felt responsible in some way. The letters really help me get clear about my part in it and also what I wanted from him, what I needed from him. Then the breathwork really cleared it out of my lungs because grief they say gets stuck in the lungs. We hold on to it. We just keep relieving it over and over again. We just carry it around with us. It moved the grief out and threw me. I was able to get some kind of measure of compassion for him and what he was going through and for myself, let myself off the hook. Because with suicide there is an element of guilt to that that we carry sometimes. I mean, it’s hard. To see that it’s so big and it’s so prevalent in our society that it just hurts my heart to hear about a 10-year-old or a 9-year-old committing suicide. It just, it breaks my heart. I’m really sensitive. It was very difficult to grow up where I grew up being as sensitive as I am. So I had to find ways to deal with it. The ways that I found to deal with it were not great tools, not the right tools. Whether it was through alcohol or drugs or candy or TV or whatever. Just trying to checkout from my feelings. Now, I have found all these really powerful, healthy ways of allowing, expressing those feelings. I’ve just gotten to a place and maybe part of it is just growing. Really, I think it’s the breathwork. It’s gotten me to this place. Someone actually messaged me today and they said, I’m really open at night. I’m really sensitive and I cry and I get emotional in my classes and in my workshops and in my teacher trainings. She said to me, “Were you like that before the breathwork?” I said, “No. I wasn’t like that before the breathwork. I couldn’t access those feelings. I wouldn’t allow those feelings and I certainly wouldn’t allow it in a room full of people.” Now I’ve just gotten into this place now where I’m like I don’t care if I’m on a stage of 200 people. I don’t care if I’m on a podcast or an interview or something like that and I start to get emotional because that’s what I’m feeling, right? There’s nothing wrong with that. Let me allow that emotion. I’m sad that nine-year-olds are committing suicide. It’s terrible, right? So let me just allow that for a minute instead of going, I don’t want to feel that. Because I need to –   [0:18:27] Ashley James: That’s so healthy.   [0:18:28] Jon Paul Crimi: I need to be present in this interview. I need to do the best interview I can or I need to do the best class I can. It’s like, no no let me just be sad and let that come through you. What I’ve discovered just coincidentally because I was actually teaching breathwork when that guy committed suicide and I wasn’t going to cancel the classes and I said, “I’m going to go.” I’m so emotional in classes and what happened was me being so emotional in classes allowed everybody else in the room to let their emotions out and let their emotions go. So it gave permission for people breathing in the room to get emotional. We don’t get that permission, a lot of us, growing up. Be strong, be tough, never let anyone see you cry, never let anyone see your emotions. That’s a lot of the messages that I heard growing up. Most of the people I knew growing up hurt growing up. We get these messages. Knowing what I know now is terrible because if I was to say to you, “Listen, Ashley, I don’t want you to go in the bathroom. Don’t go to the bathroom okay.” You’d be like what? That’s so unhealthy. You’re going to die, right? But why is crying is the same exact thing. Our bodies need it. It’s a mechanism within our bodies to cleanse us and help us release certain emotions. Yet I have people who come to my classes and my things and say, ‘Oh my God, that’s the first time I’ve cried in three years or five years.” You’re going to get sick. You’re going to get some horrible disease if you don’t start allowing those emotions because we’re supposed to cry. We’re supposed to allow those things. For some reason, people are not. They’re fighting all of that stuff. It’s causing a lot of health issues out there in the world.   [0:20:14] Ashley James: Men are taught not to cry. I caught my husband. My husband’s very open-minded. He’s not like a 1950s male that thinks we all need to eat meat and men don’t have feelings. He’s very evolved. He has caught himself saying to out four-year-old son, “Men don’t cry. Don’t cry. Stop crying. Men don’t cry.” Something along that. I jumped down his throat when he says that.   [0:20:46] Jon Paul Crimi: Well just have him watch The Mask You Live In. That documentary. That’s a game-changer. When you watch that as a man and you see what we do to boys, to little boys when we put that on them. It just breaks your heart and you go, “Why are we doing this to little boys?” They’re little boys. They’re just as sensitive as little girls. There’s no difference in the sensitivity level. When my son cries, I just pick him up and I rub his back and I say, “Yeah. That’s okay. Let it out.” I heard a lot, ‘you’re too sensitive,’ growing up. What does that mean? There’s something wrong with me? There’s something wrong with my feelings? If I say something bothers me the response was, ‘you’re too sensitive.’ So now whenever I said bothers me is invalid, it’s me, there’s something wrong with me, right? Our parents, if they knew better they’d do better. A lot of our stuff comes from our parents. Their stuff come from their parents. It’s passed on generationally. Trauma is passed on generationally as well. So I say, ‘your problems may have other people’s names on it but your solutions have your name on it. It’s up to you if you’re going to do something about it and change it and change it for your children.   [0:22:10] Ashley James: Absolutely. We can really only heal ourselves and we can make a better environment for our children. I want to get into your story. What happened in your life that led you to create this type of breathwork that helps people heal physically and emotionally?   [0:22:32] Jon Paul Crimi: So I didn’t create it. This breathwork has been around for thousands of years from India, right? I wish I created it.   [0:22:41] Ashley James: Well you created your own unique style though.   [0:22:44] Jon Paul Crimi: I did. I created a technique. Breathwork has been around for thousands of years from India. What happened was for me is I discovered this incredible technique and it was life-changing for my first session. But the package that it was wrapped in, the way it was done was so new agey and woo woo that I somehow had an open enough mind to do it. I mean I just been to Tony Robbins and I think it cracked me open. A couple of people that didn’t know each other said to me, ‘you need to go do breathwork.’ I was like, ‘what’s breathwork?’ and I find this place. I went to this class and there were five or six people there. It was very woo woo, new agey crystals and oils and all of it. It was just awful for me then. The experience was undeniable. I started doing it on my own every day and at one point I said, “God, if somebody did this in a way that wasn’t new agey and it wasn’t woo woo, they would have 200 people in the room and they would change the world.” I started teaching it. I was never going to teach it but I somehow started teaching it. I took all that woo woo stuff out of it. I actually added in all these other stuff to make it even more palatable for people. Then I added in a few more components. It just built and it just kept tweaking it and going, ‘how would I want this if I was on the other side? If I was the person laying on the floor right now, what the best experience that I can deliver for somebody?’ So I just shaped it and honed it and it became that. Now, tons of people are doing it the same way. Some of them had been trained by me. Some of them haven’t. That’s a whole other story? You know, it’s been incredible. It’s been an incredible ride. At first, no one would come do it. I would tell people, “You got to come try this thing.” And they go, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” I would post about it. There were times that one person would show up. I was renting the room and losing money. I was like, “I want to help people but I don’t want to lose money on the process.” But now, it’s just grown massively. It’s incredible. Everything’s sold out that I do. I’m just so grateful, you know.                                                                                       [0:24:59] Ashley James: Take us back to when it wasn’t working out and there’s one person in the room. What happened? How did you all of a sudden become so popular?   [0:25:10] Jon Paul Crimi: So, it was kind of a series of events. I kept pursuing it where I would post on Facebook and trying to get friends of mine. I have a lot of friends in recovery. I would just tell them. I hear them share how depressed they were or how angry they were and all this stuff. People could see the change in me. At first, when I was doing it I wasn’t even telling people and people are like, “What’s going on with you. You seem very calm. You’re very different.” I was really angry when I found it. I was so angry because some career dreams hadn’t worked out for me. I’ve been kind of ripped off in Hollywood. I was just so bitter and so angry. You can’t hide that. It just comes out. They say that anger is the mask that sadness wears. The truth is that I was just sad. I was disappointed. I was heartbroken that things didn’t work out. That I got ripped off. All these different things had happened to me. But I didn’t want to feel sad so it came out as anger. I started doing this breathwork and it just released that anger out of me. It just cleared that anger out of me. It allowed the sadness to come out. It allowed me to cry. It allowed me to feel gratitude and love in a way that I had never experienced before. So I was just doing it every day sometimes twice a day. I could just feel these things leaving my body. I could feel things in my body that had happen to me like I broke my arm when I was a kid. There was something going on in my arm right there. It was healing all these areas, all these traumas within my body. It just started to change me and clients and friends were saying, ‘you seem different.’ I finally started telling people, “I’m doing this weird breathwork thing.’ There was no research, nothing out there on it at the time. I would try and find information. I was a personal trainer, I was a celebrity trainer at Gold’s Gym in Venice. I had the very scientific brain of what’s happening in my body. I couldn’t find the science around it. There is some science out there now. They’re doing more and more studies on it. They’re just starting to go into the studies. Right now, they’re doing a study with breathwork on veterans with PTSD. I think the results are going to be amazing from that. I’ve had veterans with PTSD come in and work with me and see them heal in front of my eyes. See them just transform and clear all these stuff out. So I’m so looking forward to watching this thing grow and it’s growing really fast. I tell people, “Imagine if I told you there’s this thing, it’s called yoga. It’s going to be everywhere.” They’re like, “Really, yoga? It’s going to be everywhere?” I’m like, “But it’s going to be even bigger than yoga.” A lot of people will go, ‘I’m 300 pounds. I can’t do yoga,’ or ‘I’m not flexible’ or ‘I’m not this.’ They just don’t have that confidence in their body type to go into a yoga studio whereas anyone can go to a breathwork class and just lay on the floor and breathe. Breathwork, I should straighten this out, breathwork is an umbrella term, right? It’s like saying fitness. If I said I do fitness you’d be like, ‘Okay fitness. What do you do? Do you CrossFit? Do you do cycling? What do you do? Do you do yoga?’ So breathwork, the type of breathwork that I teach, the technique that I teach, and I’ve studied them all but this is the one that I find is the most powerful. So I work with this one specifically it’s called connected breathing, circular breathing. So in life, you take a breath in through your nose ideally down into your belly ideally. Let it out either through your nose or your mouth. Then you pause for a while and you talk or you rest. In breathwork, we breathe in and out. And through this technique, through conscious connected breathing, through circular breathing, we breathe in and out through our mouth down into our belly without resting in between. It’s intense. So a lot of people have this misconception that they’re going to come and it’s going to be this relaxing kind of like a meditation class and it’s not that at all. It’s a workout. You lay on the floor and you breathe intensely through your mouth for about 28 minutes. In that process, all that crazy things happen in your body physically. All these things happen emotionally. All these things happen mentally. You know, most people have this huge release of emotions. It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not or you think it’s going to work or any of that. It’s undeniable for anyone. In fact, the more resistant to it you are the bigger the experience. That’s what I love about it. I’ll have some women who will do it and then she’ll go, ‘my husband or my boyfriend would never do this but he’ll do with you because you’re a guy guy.’ So the next week or the next month I see the woman there with her boyfriend or husband. He’s just sitting there like, ‘I can’t believe she dragged me to this.’ Then afterward he comes up to me and I can see he’s been crying. He’s had this big experience and he’s like, ‘Can I give you a hug? I never experienced anything like that. That was the most profound experience. It was life-changing.’ That’s what I hear a lot. It’s life-changing. So to answer your question, it slowly started to grow person by person. You get one person who has a huge experience, they would go and tell everyone they know. Then next week they would come back with two or three people. Then so on and so on and so on. It took a while. There was a meditation studio that opened up in Los Angeles. The owner was really good at marketing. She got people in there. She had me come teach there and my classes grew very fast in there and they were sold out within a couple of months. So I was doing a couple of classes a week there with 66 people in the room because that was as many as we could pack in like sardines. There were 20 people on the waitlist every Monday and Wednesday night. It was just wild. Then I eventually left there and rented this church space, this huge church space in Los Angeles and filled that up. That’s what I still use to this day when I travel back to Los Angeles. I live in Bend, Oregon now. I put 120 people in that class, in that church. When I go to town I’ll do two back-to-back classes sold out which is amazing. So, I’ll fly to Los Angeles say I’m leaving in two weeks. I’ll do a teacher training on Saturday and Sunday where I teach people how to teach it. Then I do two classes on Monday at that church. It’s incredible. It’s an incredible weekend for me. Then I come back to Bend, Oregon where I live with my family and enjoy my life and spend time with my kids and chase my kids around the yard.   [0:31:52] Ashley James: That sounds so awesome.   [0:31:54] Jon Paul Crimi: It is.   [0:31:55] Ashley James: Well, I have so many questions. The constant breathing, the first thing that comes to mind, don’t people pass out? Don’t they get so dizzy? Because I’ve done that prana breathing, pranayama and you get lightheaded. No wonder you have everyone lay down. They might fall over. So do people ever faint or get really lightheaded and they’re afraid of fainting or does that just pass?   [0:32:24] Jon Paul Crimi: So it passes. One of the things, when I break it down and I usually break it down in a really funny way in front of the room. I say, “There are three areas that you have to overcome to do this thing to really have a big incredible experience. Just three tiny areas. Just physically, mentally and emotionally. If you could just overcome those three little areas you’re going to have this incredible experience. Here’s what’s going to happen to you. Physically, things are going to happen in your body that is going to freak you out. Your arms are going to get tingly and weird. Your hands, your fingers can clamp up. It’s called tetany. It’s like claw hands. It freaks people up but it goes away. Your jaw can get tight. You have all these sensations. You’re going to get dizzy. You can get nauseous. You can get lightheaded. All that will go away. It will pass. You have to push through it if you want to have the experience. The second part is the emotional part, right? So emotions are going to come up. Let them come up. Let them come out. A lot of us are told that we shouldn’t cry, right? A lot of us are told to be strong. Let that stuff out, cry if it comes out for you. Whatever. So let the emotions out. Then the last part is the mental part. This is actually the toughest part. I notice for most people. Because the brain doesn’t want you to do this. Your brain doesn’t want you to do anything difficult, hard or uncomfortable. So you have to override that, right? Just like going to the gym or anything else. But with this thing, your brain really freaks out because it does this thing called transient hypofrontality. It shuts off part of your brain, part of your frontal lobe. The critic that we all have that tells us we’re not enough. You’re not smart enough. You’re not thin enough. You’re not rich enough. You’re not skinny enough. Whatever. It just tells you you’re not enough, that you’re never going to do anything. We all have this critic in our head all the time. It turns that off. It’s the most incredible feeling when you can turn that off. You can go accomplish anything with your life when you could turn that off. But the brain doesn’t want you to turn that off. So it does everything it can to get you to stop. So it will be like, ‘Ashley, stop doing this. You’re going to pass out. You’re having a stroke. I know he said this can happen to your hands but you’re having a stroke Ashley.’” It will literally freak you out. Some people can’t override. Eventually, you will override it. It’s like stepping out of an airplane. You’re body’s not designed to step out of an airplane to go sky diving, right? So you have to override everything inside of your body physically to step out that door. This is very similar in that way. The hardest part is the first 12 minutes and then eventually you just go, I’m fine and it just kicks in. The breath starts taking over and you start having this almost psychedelic experience in some way. It’s very incredible. It’s hard to describe. It’s different for everybody. It’s different every time you do it. So I’ve been doing it for a while now and every time I do it it’s still different. So, I tell people, ‘Come back, it’s going to be different.’ Then they go, ‘Oh my God. That was different.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, do it on a regular basis and it will change your life. The way I used it to change my life was I would wake up in the morning and my head would be talking trash to me. I would just lay down and breathe. Okay, let’s get to work on this sober companion business. Let’s get this work on how do we build this breathwork to help more people? How do we do this? How do we build online courses? I don’t know anything about building an online course but let me just breathe and clear out that critic that tells me I can’t build an online course because I can barely use Facebook properly. Let me turn that critic off and just get to work.’ What you can accomplish is incredible when you’re not talking yourself out of it and telling yourself that you can’t do things.   [0:36:13] Ashley James: You’ve been teaching or helping people to be sober, get sober and stay sober for a long time now. Longer than you’re teaching your breathwork, correct?   [0:36:25] Jon Paul Crimi: Correct, yeah. I’ve been sober 19 ½ years. Since March 5, 2000. I got sort of pulled in to helping people get sober about a year after I got sober. That was transformative to watch other people get sober and be a part of that changed my life. Then I was a celebrity trainer and then someone sort of dragged me into this world of sober coaching, sober companioning which is a high-end niche thing where it started out for rock stars. Rock stars would get out of rehab and they’d need to go on the road for tours and they’d need support. So they would put somebody who was sober on the road with them who knew what they were doing, right? Then they moved into movie stars and TV stars and now it’s CEOs, wealthy children, children of wealthy people, right? Because it’s not inexpensive. Insurance doesn’t cover it, unfortunately. But instead of going to rehab which is a bubble, right? It’s easy to stay sober in rehab for 30 days or whatever the times is because you’re in this bubble and they’re guarding you around. What a sober companion does is they go into your regular life and they help you get sober in your regular life whether that is in your work environment, your home environment. Whatever it is you do, they help you build that rehab in your life and teach you to have a sober lifestyle. It’s like taking a tree that’s sick out of the environment, putting it into rehab, nursing back to health and then putting it back in the environment that it got sick in. It doesn’t make any sense. So let’s nurse the tree back to health in its environment or let’s take it out of the environment, get it healthy, then bring it back with someone that can help it stay healthy in that environment.   [0:38:14] Ashley James: So, for many years you were working with people to get sober and stay sober. Then you discover this breathwork and then you adapted your own enhanced version of breathwork that you now teach to many people. When you began to incorporate this breathwork with those who you were helping to get and stay sober, what changes did you see take place?   [0:38:44] Jon Paul Crimi: Oh my God. Because people who were newly sober or don’t want to be sober, I mean there’s a lot going on there. I would see people just flipping out. I’m screaming and yelling. I’m going to go get high or I’m going to go jump the balcony. Just this crazy person in front of me. Then I go, ‘Okay. I’ll tell you what. Let’s get high right now.” They’ll look at me like what? I go, ‘Lay down on the floor. I’m going to get you high.’ Then they go, ‘Shut up.’ And I go, ‘No, no. Just lay down on the floor. I’m going to get you high. If you don’t like this, if it isn’t an incredible experience, we’ll go get some drugs.’ Of course, I’m not going to get them drugs but I would say that, right? They go, ‘All right. I’ll take that deal.’ So they’d lay down and I go, ‘You have to do what I say though. You have to push through the discomfort. It’s going to get weird.’ Here’s the thing, alcoholics and addicts, they don’t care if it’s uncomfortable if it’s weird. If it starts to make them feel, it does put you in a bit of an altered state. If it starts to make them feel that, they’re in. My joke was in the class I could always see who the alcoholics and addicts were in the room because they’re trying to suck all the air out of the room. They’re breathing 10 times harder than everybody else in the room because once they start feeling something, feeling weird they’re into it. Whereas regular people, ‘Oh, I feel weird. I want to slow this down or back off or I don’t like it,’ you know. So I could spot the addicts rather going twice as hard. So I do this session with them and then they’d come and they’d sit up afterward, and I do this cool stuff after the breathing where I have you reach out and pull moments into of your heart. I’ll say, ‘Put an arm in the air and find a moment where you felt grateful for something, for someone. Where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with? What are you grateful for in this moment? Who are you grateful for at this moment? Step into it and then pull it down to your heart.’ So you could hear the emotion in my voice. It’s like I’m so grateful that I get to do this thing. So I’m leading people through it, these moments of gratitude, of love, of all this incredible stuff and I’m feeling it myself. I’m going through it with them. So I do that people after the breathwork and it’s a really special thing that I’ve added in there that I kind of picked up from Tony Robbins. I adapted it from a technique that he uses and I tweaked it. So I do these sessions with people that are flipping out. Then they’d sit up afterward and they would be a different person. Their energies are different. They’re different. They look different in the eyes. They’re calm and they go, ‘Oh, wow. That wasn’t really I thought it was going to be at all.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God. Who is this person?’ This person doesn’t sound the same. They don’t look the same. I’m meeting this person for the first time. It is a different person now in the room with me. It’s a trip. I’ve worked with schizophrenics. It’s kind of like that. They’ve got a whole another personality, well that’s multiple personalities. That’s not schizophrenia, but it’s like another person shows up in a good way. In a really good way because they’ve turned off all the noise in their head that’s telling them, ‘I need to go get high. I’m too uncomfortable of whatever it is I’m feeling.’ I mean, that’s what it comes down to. It’s like, I can’t sit with discomfort in my body, in my body right now. I need something to take me out of that discomfort. Whether that something is alcohol, whether it’s drugs, whether it’s food or sex or TV or the gym. It’s like, I can’t just sit and allow the feelings to be what they need to be. When we could learn how to do that, people say that meditation is great for that. I think meditation, seated meditation is a really advanced thing especially for an addict or an alcoholic. They have a hard time sitting still. So breathwork is really great for that because you could lay down on your back. I was a trainer so I approached it like it was a workout. Okay, I’m going to lay down on my back. I’m going to breathe in through my mouth as big as I can to my belly. If anybody’s listening to this in the car, please don’t start doing this in your car. It’s very dangerous when you’re in your car. You need to be at home laying down. I would just say, ‘Okay, we’re going to lay down and do this technique.’ So I took all the woo wooness out of it, the new ageyness out of it. I just looked at it like a breathing technique. But there is something magical that happens there. I can’t deny that and that is transformative. I’ve had connections which you know I’m not religious but someone might call them spiritual connections. I don’t usually talk about that because I think that that’s really personal to each person. Everybody’s got their own beliefs and what they feel and what takes it in. I’ve had a gang member come up to me one time after class and he said, “Can I talk to you for a second?” Pulled me aside and he was like looking around and he said, “Man, I felt the presence of like God or something like that when I did that. Is that normal?” And I said, “Yeah. I mean it’s different for everybody.” That guy came on a regular basis and changed his life.   [0:43:40] Ashley James: Wow.   [0:43:42] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean, I’m going to get choked up just talking about it. I mean it’s just the things that I’ve seen. The people that I see transform in front of my eyes. We’re walking, so many people are walking thinking that they’re just not enough. They’re just not whole like we talked about. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the biggest celebrities on the planet and some of the most successful people on the planet. They all suffer from I’m not enough. In fact, a lot of them suffer from it more than your average person. That’s what drives them to be so successful. Because when I get this Oscar, when I get this gold medal, when I get this Grammy, when I make a billion dollars I will finally have reached this thing and I will enough. When they get there, they’re not. It doesn’t work because there’s nothing you’re going to get from the outside that’s going to make you enough on the inside. There’s just nothing that’s going to do that from the outside in. So once they realized that, they don’t really realize it. What happens is they get the thing and they get really depressed afterward. There’s a study. There’s studies out there. The research shows that gold medal winners or Olympic medal winners, they get depressed after they get the medal because they’ve working towards this thing their whole life. Okay, now what? Do I just train again for the next Olympics? They age out of the Olympics. Then, people who get the Oscar and different things like that. I usually work with people after they’ve hit some pinnacle of success then they’re really depressed or they start using drugs and alcohol. Because it’s just that nothing’s working for them. Now they’re isolated from everyone around them in some way because they don’t feel like they can trust people. This thing, this breathwork thing is really incredible that it makes you realize that you are enough. That you don’t really need anything else. You don’t need anything more. It’s great if you want to work on some things. Like you want to build some things and you want to create some things. It’s a great tool to do that. I’ve used it in that way. But I could just lay on the floor and breathe and just know that right now, right where I’m at, my life is perfect. I just need to be grateful. I don’t need to be the biggest breathwork teacher on the planet. It would be nice. I would love that. It would be great but that’s not going to fix me. There’s not any better moment that I’m going to have than this moment right now. So just starting to come to that truth, that realization is pretty powerful. I wouldn’t have found it any other way. I don’t think. I couldn’t have found it any other way. I’ve worked with all these big, successful people. I don’t know who said it. I heard someone say. It’s like, ‘Everybody knows that money won’t fix them but they want to find out for themselves.’     [0:46:41] Ashley James: Yeah. Right. You know what, it’s a lot more fun to be depressed with money than to be depressed without money. I can tell you that. So as you were working with these people, keeping them sober, helping them to stay sober and doing the breathwork. What kind of like percentage increase in success did you see? Were you like, this is 100% creating way more success for people to stay sober if they do this breathwork? Were you able to see measurable, noticeable like with every single person you worked with that people could stay sober because this breathwork had them do that break state and get out of that frenzy and get back in their body and start being able to process the emotions, almost like cleanse their body in a sense and have that reset?   [0:47:38] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean I definitely saw people getting sober around them because of it. I’m a big advocate, I want to make this clear, I’m a big advocate of 12-step programs. I think that they work. I’ve seen them work. It’s how I got sober originally. So 12-step programs, recovery programs, I think they work really well. So I think that that’s the foundation and then breathwork is a great adjunct to that. I don’t think breathwork is the foundation to getting sober. I think recovery 12-step programs are the foundation because they’ve worked for 75 years. Usually, when someone tells me, “Oh, I’ve tried that. It didn’t work.” I’ll ask them a few questions. Did you do this? Did you do this? Did you do this? The answer is no. Because if you’ve done those things you would’ve stayed sober, right? So I’m a big proponent of those. I would see people, they’re starting to put it in a lot of rehabs, a lot of recovery centers now. They’re starting to put breathwork in there because they need anything they can. The truth is, these recovery centers, they’re just drying people out. Then they’re hopefully getting them to go to 12-step, into recovery meetings. They don’t really have many things. They’re having a lot of success with breathwork. They’re having a lot of success now with EMDR and some other therapies. They’re looking for anything they can to help people get sober. It’s hard to measure results. It’s hard to measure success. Because if somebody, what happens I found unfortunately with people whether it’s with recovery, whether it’s with fitness and your health, people get the results that they want and then they get lazy, right? They forget. They’d stop doing the things that got them there in the first place. So we fall off of the fitness routine. We fall off of the things that got us sober and helped us in recovery. We stop doing those things and then it’s only a matter of time before we relapse into whatever our thing is. I did breathwork in the beginning for a year and it changed my life. I don’t do it that much now but I don’t need it that much now. I do it kind of as needed. So I don’t need it as much now as I did before. I do different techniques and different stuff but I like to do a big session once a week. If I have something going on in my life, something heavy, something happens. I lose somebody close to me. You can be darn sure I’m going to lay down on the ground and I’m going to do breathwork right then and there. So I can start to move those emotions through me. So they don’t stay stuck. Because that’s what it is. It’s about stuck emotions. It’s about stuck traumas. It’s trapped traumas and all that kind of stuff. So many people don’t realize that trauma is passed down to the DNA. They have studies that show this now that mothers that were pregnant at 9/11, the babies were born with higher cortisol levels, right? They have studies that show, they did this thing with the mice where they spray cherry blossom spray and then they electrocuted it. Then they spray the cherry blossom spray and electrocuted it and then they just spray the spray and it would have a reaction. Then those mice would have babies and they never got electrocuted but they spray cherry blossom spray and they’d have a reaction to it that other mice it didn’t have that. They weren’t shocked it didn’t have. That lasted up to 14 generations. There are all these books right now like the Body Keeps the Score and It Didn’t Start with You. So, a lot of people don’t even know. They come in and they breathe and they realize all this stuff comes up and comes out. It’s like maybe it’s not even your stuff. Maybe it was your mother’s stuff. Your mother was depressed when she was pregnant with you because there was something difficult going on in the household. Someone that I worked with very closely, the mother had lost a previous child in a really tragic way and then she was pregnant with him. So she was suffering, she was grieving that loss of that precious baby, child. It fell into the water, it drowned. It’s just terrible. It was just heartbreaking. He tells me the story of his brother that he never met. So his mother was depressed and grieving while she was pregnant with him. So that goes right into the baby. That baby is born into the world. Then they come out and they come out into a world where there’s still grief in that household. They’re probably happy that the new baby is there. That’s in us. When this person started breathing, he was just breathing out all that grief. All that sadness. All that heartbreak. I mean, I don’t know if you can be on this planet and not have disappointment, not have heartache, not have grief. I don’t think it’s possible. So we all have it. So why are we acting we’re all fine all the time? We all have this stuff, right? So I say in my class, “Everyone in this room has heartbreak and sadness and disappointment and grief. Why are we pretending that we’re fine? Allow all that to feel that and then you can feel what’s on the other side of that which is gratitude and love and joy and all the beauty.” Because if you’re denying those feeling then you’re denying all the other good feelings in. My capacity to feel love and gratitude is in direct proportion to my capacity to feel grief and sadness. So if I want to feel massive love and massive gratitude inside of my life, inside of my heart I have to allow all the other stuff. You can’t shut yourself off from the disappointment and the heartbreak and the sadness and then open yourself up to loving gratitude. It doesn’t work that way, right? So you got to make a choice. How do you want to live?   [0:53:57] Ashley James: I want to open up all the doors and feel everything. I want to feel everything. But like you said, don’t let it get stuck.   [0:54:04] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. Well, that’s the thing too. People start to feel it. They start to feel sad or grief or whatever and they just back off. They can’t handle it and they back off. So they start to feel grief and they start to feel sadness and they back off because it’s uncomfortable. Okay, if you just allowed it to come through you it would pass through and it’s a few minutes. It’s not going to last forever. I learned that lesson when I was going through a heartbreak of a relationship that ended. My body’s like, ‘what are you feeling?’ I said I’m feeling sad and disappointed and lonely and all these things. He said, ‘go sit there and just feel it. Just sit there and feel that.’ I did. I just sat there and I felt it. Then it lasted like 15 minutes and I was like, ‘okay. I guess I’m going to go make a sandwich now. Where I was fighting so hard to not feel those things and to look for any way around them. I see that with people. To look for any solution to not just allow the feelings to be what they are. I used to say that feelings aren’t facts and the feeling won’t kill you but I don’t say that anymore because unchecked feelings will kill you. You can get a loop inside of your brain that tells you that I’m not loved, nobody loves me. I’m not enough. People would be better off on this planet without me. You can get that loop going around and around in your heard and you start to believe it, you can take your own life. I’ve seen it happen. It’s a scary thing that your brain can give you bad information. Robin Williams’ brain was giving him bad information. It’s a scary idea that our brain can sometimes not be our friend. It’s there to protect us but sometimes it can get on a loop and start giving us bad information. If you have those kinds of feelings, go share them with somebody that you love and trust that cares about you. Because it’s just not true.   [0:56:12] Ashley James: You brought a really good point that those who are committing suicide feel like the world would be better without them and that they’re family, the people they love would actually be better and happier without them. A friend of mine went through this where her brain was telling her this that she really believed that her family would not miss her, would not feel sad and that everyone would be better if she didn’t exist.   [0:56:42] Jon Paul Crimi: It’s such a weird lie. Why would your brain do that you? Why would your brain lie to you in that way? So your brain isn’t always telling you the truth but it’s really good at convincing you that it is.   [0:56:57] Ashley James: There was a beautiful interview that was posted on Facebook and it’s been shared around a bunch with a man who survived jumping off of the Golden Gate bridge.   [0:57:08] Jon Paul Crimi: I’ve seen it.   [0:57:09] Ashley James: I bawled my eyes out. I keep trying to reach out to him and I’ve messaged him to get on the show because his story is beautiful. He’s now dedicated his life to helping people prevent suicide. He said that every single person he’s ever spoken to, a lot of people who have attempted suicide and survived, every single one of them he’s spoken to says that they immediately regretted. Like if they jumped or overdosed or whatever they chose to do, that they immediately regretted it.   [0:57:46] Jon Paul Crimi: It’s interesting, I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book. I think it’s called talking to strangers. He has this whole chapter dedicated to suicide. What they thought was, if we prevent the way that people commit suicide, if we put a net underneath a bridge, people are just going to go find another way to do it. It’s actually not true. That it’s actually coupled with something else. If they can’t do it that way at that moment because there’s something going on at that moment, then they go off and they do something else and it passes. It’s the easy access to ways to do it that lead to more suicides. There are studies. He has all these studies in his book, Malcolm Gladwell’s amazing. So for years, they didn’t want to put nets, like a net underneath the Golden Gate Bridge because they didn’t want to change the look of it. But once they did, boom the suicides just dropped. There’s a study in England where they had a gas in the stoves and people were putting their heads in the stoves and killing themselves that way. Then they changed the gas and the suicides just dropped.   [0:59:04] Ashley James: Helping to make it less convenient. Like you said, the depression passes the moment passes. If we can teach our children to have that emotional intelligence, they call it emotional quotient where we’re able to wait a certain amount of time because they know. No matter what we’re going through right now, it will shift. It will get better. You breathe. You’re going to teach us some breathing and to breathe.   [0:59:32] Jon Paul Crimi: Right. There’s a saying in recovery, this too shall pass. It’s like whatever you’re going through, however how hard it is, whatever is going on, it will pass if you could just hang in there. Maybe you pick up the phone. Maybe you talk to someone. Go see a friend. It will pass. You have a breathing pattern for when you are depressed. You have a breathing pattern for when you’re angry. You have a breathing pattern for when you’re anxious. If you can change your breathing when you’re feeling those emotions, then you can change the emotion. If you can change your emotions, then you can change your life. Because like you were saying, people with emotional intelligence. People with better control of their emotions are very successful in life. They’re more successful in their relationships and their work and their life and their friendships. Every area of their life than people with high, high IQs. We used to think that, ‘oh this person’s a genius. They’re going to be successful.’ That’s just not the case. The studies actually prove out that people who are more emotionally well-adapted are more successful than people with higher IQs. We’re living on a planet that’s about relationships with people. It’s hard to be around people that are emotionally unstable. I know. I’ve worked with them for 20 years. It’s a really challenging work. Teaching people how to manage their emotions through their breath is a key thing. If you can just start to breathe in a different way. It’s that moment where they’re like, ‘I’m angry. I’m depressed.’ Let me just try something different instead of choosing to be stuck in this thing. Nobody wants to be stuck. Nobody wants to be depressed. Nobody wants to be angry. Nobody wants to be a drug addict. Nobody wants to live on the street and try to find drugs. They’re not choosing that. They’re stuck in the cycle and they can’t get out of it. Just trying to find that moment of the window of opportunity where here’s a moment where someone’s trying to help you or you’re going to reach out and ask for help. I sometimes say in my classes, “Stop waiting for somebody to show up and put their hand on your head and heal you because it’s just not going to happen. You have to do it. You have to take responsibility of your own healing, for your own life. Take action around it.” Every time I take an action, my life changes. Every time I do something I don’t want to do, every time I do something that makes me a little uncomfortable I grow, I change. So if I just do something small every day, some small action every day, then I’m transforming. I’m changing. If you do that, they find that’s it. People who have these, that changed their lives, that transformed their lives, it’s through small little actions over and over, consistently. Just showing up to the gym and doing a couple exercises. It’s just starting the thing. Be a good starter. Have a smart feet, whatever it is, just show up and do it. After a while of doing breathwork, it got kind of old for me so I had to find new ways. I started listening to motivational speakers that I like while I was breathing. What was incredible about that, I didn’t realize it was seeping into my subconscious and into who I am, all that stuff. Then it started coming out of me and my classes. I became this Tony Robbins of breathwork. I started saying all those stuff in the breathwork classes which nobody did before. It changed how I taught breathwork. So just constantly showing up, you don’t know how you’re going to transform who you are and what you do and then how that’s going to transform other people.   [1:03:35] Ashley James: I love it. I like that you pointed out how we breathe differently depending on what state we’re in. I don’t know if you know this about me but I’m a master practitioner and trainer of neuro-linguistic programming.   [1:03:48] Jon Paul Crimi: I love NLP.   [1:03:49] Ashley James: Right? You were talking about anchoring the idea of being able to get someone in a state when they’re in an acute state. So you get them into the state of gratitude and you have them anchor it into their heart. It becomes part of their neurological strategy to go there. You pointed out that physiologically, we actually have anchors in our physiology. So if you sit hunched over and you frown and you just sit there kind of hunched over and you breathe shallow, however you would if you were depressed and sitting hunched over and frowning with your head tilted downward and breathe shallow. Notice the state your body goes in versus if you just pull your shoulders back, put your head up, open your eyes, look up towards up in a 45-degree angle and smile and pull your shoulders back. Just hold that and breathe openly. You’ve opened the chest up and you breathe.   [1:04:59] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. You’re protecting the heart when you’re doing that. When you’re curling over you’re protecting your heart. Then your breath gets really shallow or you’re holding your breath. Most people are walking around not breathing all the way down into their belly, into their diaphragm. They’re breathing very shallow in their chest and holding their breath all the time. That’s why they’re feeling stressed and anxious and depressed. So just breathing in through your nose down into your belly is a game-changer for most people. But you’re saying open, bring it in the physiology in your body. I’m a big big believer in that. You start to feel the emotion. I teach affirmations in my teacher training. I’ve done affirmation workshops. I said, “Listen, you can’t just sit there hunched over and be like, ‘I’m happy, whole and worthy of love.’” Your body, your brain goes BS. That’s BS. Doesn’t feel it. You got to get up. I would have people pound on their chest and open their chest and hold their heads up high and pound. Say, ‘I’m happy, whole and worthy of love.’ We go through each word. ‘I am happy. I am.’ That’s the day two in the five-day detox is that affirmation technique. That’s incredible. I have them throw their hands up in the air and scream ‘I love my life.’ If you do that, even if you don’t love your life it will start to shift you. It shifts your emotions. If you can just shift your emotion a little bit, break yourself out of that pattern. You’re in a bad pattern, right? It’s just breaking yourself out of that pattern. What’s interesting is, when I was telling you about anchoring those moments. Reaching out and pulling those moments into my heart. For me, I have little children that I love more than anything on this planet. I’ve been pulling these moments with my daughter, with my son and it’s incredible. Now, what’s happened to me from doing that for the last bunch of years, I’ll be with my daughter and my son and I go, ‘I’m in a moment right now.’ I’m having the moment with this moment while it’s happening. It’s such a beautiful thing. I’m just present in it and going, ‘Wow. This is it.’ I’m more present in this moment than I’ve ever been. Maybe I wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t done that in the last 10 years or whatever.   [1:07:10] Ashley James: Just by shifting our physiology and not even like, let’s say we’re in a neutral emotion. Just by shifting for example like hunching over and breathing in that shallow way and frowning, we can create sadness. We can actually access sadness. I think we walk around feeling like our emotions run the bus. That are emotions control us. Our emotions drive the bus. People go, ‘I’m just not motivated to do this.’ Who’s running you? Who is running your life? We’re letting emotions run our life but our emotions are actually anchored to our physiological state. So when we hunch over we create sadness because it’s an anchor. It’s attached to that physiology. So we might have been kind of in a good mood but we can access sadness simply by recreating the physiology of sadness. When we pull our shoulders back and smile, even if we don’t feel like smiling, smile, pull your shoulders back and lift your head up. Breathe openly for a few minutes, even 30 seconds all of a sudden you’re noticing your state shifts into a state that is more fulfilled. More motivated. So just by changing our physiology, we can shift our state. With your breathwork, we’re changing your physiology a lot and we’re moving through those emotions. I love that you’re teaching to not push them down, to not repress the emotions. When we look at violent crimes in the United States and I’m sure around the world, unfortunately, the sad statistic is that most violent crimes are done by men. I’m not saying that no violent crimes are done by women. I’m just saying the majority are done by men. What is going on? How have we raised our boys in the last 70 years? How have we raised? What have we taught our boys that we have most of the violent crimes committed by men? It’s something really crazy like 96%. I was reading the latest statistics on violent crimes. What have we taught our men? What have we taught our boys? Since I have a 4 ½-year-old son I want to raise him to be respectful of men and women, respectful of his own body, respectful of others and emotionally intelligent. So what’s going on that men are committing violent crimes. If they were in touch with their emotions and actually felt them instead of suppressing them and reacted. Like having some kind of altercation at a stoplight and just reacted and started punching each other, right? What if they could feel their emotions and realize, ‘Oh, wow. That came from all the hurt I had as a child with my dad, or with my uncle.’ What if we process our move through our emotions? I think that your breathwork is even more important for men. I mean, of course, women will gain benefit from it. I think it’s even more important for men to do it because we need to create a society where men are emotionally healthy.   [1:10:34] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean listen, I have a lot of personal experience with it. I’ve been probably over 100 fights in my life. I was stabbed in the head when I was 19 and lost half the blood in my body and I almost died. I’ve been jumped by five guys at once and beaten unconscious. I’ve had a lot of crazy stuff. A lot of violent stuff happened to me. The message that I got was that I’m not safe in the world. What started happening to me was I needed to react before I was attacked because I had been jumped so many times. I’ve been attacked so many times that if somebody threatened me, then I needed to react first. That was what started happening to me, right? But I think it goes back to something earlier that you and I were talking about which is we tell our boys to be strong, to be men. They repress all these emotions and there’s nowhere for that emotion to go. So it’s repressed emotions. It’s also a feeling of powerlessness. I think that violence is a powerful thing and men are filled with testosterone. If you teach compassion, it’s pretty hard to be a compassionate person and want to go beat somebody up. You know what I mean? If you get at the stoplight and this person does something wrong if you practice compassion and you know what that feels like then you go, ‘This person’s probably having a really bad day right now.’ Instead of going like, ‘I can’t let them do that to me. I cannot let that guy get away with that. I cannot let that stand.’ I mean, that’s what that feels like when two guys get out of a car. You’ve crossed a line and I’m not going to allow it. Yeah. I know what that feels like. I’ve been on the other side of that and it’s an awful way to live your life. It’s an awful way to live. To be going around angry, it’s like two magnets just looking for each other to bump up against to express this frustration that’s inside of them. When they find each other, that’s what they want believe it or not. They want that –   [1:13:01] Ashley James: That altercation?   [1:13:03] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. If two guys. I’m not talking about a violent crime where some guy commits a violent crime against a woman. That’s a sickness. That’s a power thing. I think a lot of that comes from frustration, from sexual frustration. That’s a whole other topic that I don’t think I would talk skillfully on. You know, it’s not my area. I love women. I think women are the most amazing creatures on the planet. I don’t understand them as much as I would like to. I’ve spent 47 years trying to understand. I think I understand them better than most men. But men are really simple. We have a really simple need. We like food and sleep and sex. That’s it.                                                                                                                      [1:13:48] Ashley James: And breathing.   [1:13:51] Jon Paul Crimi: Right. And breathing to clear out the testosterone and the frustration and the emotion. So that’s it. But women have a whole set of needs and motivations that I can’t begin to understand and I don’t think that they understand it neither themselves. Yeah. I mean, a lot of that too is the frustration that people are feeling from social media where so and so has this incredible life, which isn’t true, which is a lie. People are only showing the good stuff. I mean, I’m guilty of it myself. I post all these great videos of my kids and me. I don’t post the videos of their meltdowns. I did post a video where I wasn’t going to do it and then I did it and I regretted it. I hid their Halloween candy on them and I did the Jimmy Kimmel thing where you hide the Halloween candy. You’re like, “I ate all your candy.” They both started crying and I was like, “I’m just kidding. Here’s the candy.” It was 30 seconds, right? I posted it on my social media and people just, people who knew me who really knows me was like, ‘Oh that’s hilarious.’ They know that my kids are my entire world. That I love my kids more than anyone on this planet. It was 30 seconds. People who didn’t know me, I have kind of a big social media following, were like, ‘Oh, that’s awful. That’s not compassionate.’ So I deleted it. It made me feel lousy. I was like, ‘I’m allowing these people who don’t really know me to criticize me and I’m letting that criticism in.’ You know Brené Brown, I’m a huge Brené Brown fan. Brené Brown talks about that, social media, you really allow the criticism of people that are in your inner circle, that know you really, really well.   [1:15:55] Ashley James: Right, right.   [1:15:56] Jon Paul Crimi: Your five people in your mastermind, in your inner circle. All the other people on the outside that don’t know you, you just can’t allow to let that criticism in. I know that. It still bothered me a little bit because people are really good at digs. I’m human and the best I’m going to do is human. Things get to me sometimes. Things bother me. I love social media. I think it’s a great tool like I get to see some of my family that I don’t get to see very often on the east coast. It brings people to my classes and my teacher trainings and my workshops. I’ve found amazing people in podcasts that I follow through social media. So I think that it’s an incredible tool. But I also think that it can be really harmful if we’re really allowing it to like if we’re believing it all. Nobody has a perfect life like that. They’re just showing the perfect shot. If I’m comparing my insides to other people’s outsides on social media, I’m going to lose every time.   [1:17:10] Ashley James: You know I was just reading Proverbs 27 today. I brought it up because what you said reminded me, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted but an enemy multiplies kisses.” “Wounds from a friend can be trusted,” meaning speak honestly to our friends and the inner circle and take that criticism with heart because they are doing it in a way that’s loving and they care about us.   [1:17:41] Jon Paul Crimi: And they know you. They know you and they know what you need and need to hear.   [1:17:49] Ashley James: Later on in Proverbs, it says, “As iron sharpens so one person sharpens another.” I love that idea that we’re sharpening each other. Take the criticism from your close friends with love and know that we’re sharpening each other.   [1:18:09] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah, 100%.   [1:18:12] Ashley James: Well, we talked about the emotional component, which is great. I’d like to get a little bit into the biological component. Something interesting about the Krebs cycle. Our body produces ATP, which is cellular energy but in a state of lack of oxygen, the body cannot continue to produce the bounty of ATP. Instead, by-product becomes lactic acid. Lactic acidosis, I’ve had an expert on the show talk about that, all disease, 100% of disease has elevated levels of lactic acidosis. He feels all disease begins with this break in the Krebs cycle where instead of in an oxygenated state, we’re producing too much lactic acid. If we all got back to the root if we’re all fully oxygenated that we could stay in an alkaline balance state. That we would then not produce lactic acid or get into lactic acidosis and therefore prevent disease. He goes as far as to say all disease. What have you seen because this has been your biggest passion right? What have you seen around disease? Have you seen people reverse disease? What kind of things have you seen actually physiologically shift when they began to do this deep breathwork on a regular basis?   [1:19:40] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of people have physical ailments and come in with physical ailments and say, ‘my back has been bothering me for 20 years and it’s gone.’ I’ve seen people, these guys had this throat thing going on and it cleared up in one session. Just all these kind of things, I would love to see. I would like to have somebody do some studies on the alkalinity in the body before breathwork and then after breathwork. That would be amazing. I mean I know you’re oxygenating the body but you’re also throwing off CO2, right? That causes some stuff to go on there. When I first started breathwork, people’s hands would clamp up. It never happened to me but I saw it happen to a lot of people that I worked with. It’s called tetany and people would ask me what causes that? The answer that I would get from my breathwork teacher, the people that I study with was like crazy answers. ‘It’s, you’re holding on to stuff’ or ‘it’s the moon. You’re detoxing off marijuana.’ I was like, ‘that’s not what it is.’ I just couldn’t take that for an answer. What I did, as someone who is very from a scientific standpoint, is I started just studying commonalities. Okay, who in the room is cramping up in their hands? Okay. These 20 people out of 60. What are they doing that the other people aren’t doing? Well, they’re breathing a little harder. They’re actually breathing louder and they’re pushing the exhale more. So I brought in this woman who is a student of mine, Tanya Bentley, she’s a health and science researcher with Harvard. We started looking at it. She started going diving into the studies. My theory was is that when people push the exhale extra hard that it got worse. I was correct. So, when I teach it I try to teach people to really inhale, take the biggest, deepest inhale they can into their belly and then take another inhale into their chest and then let the exhale just snap loose. You just get free just to kind of relax it. For some reason, a lot of people think that if you have to work on the inhale, you have to work on the exhale. You don’t. You work on the inhale and then you let the exhale just relax and be like a reflex almost. So, I’ve had people who were cramping up in their hands, having this tetany and I’ve coached them through that and then it goes away through relaxing the exhale, which is incredible. I’ve seen people just heal their bodies because of so much of our physical ailments are emotional. I mean some people try to argue that it’s all emotional. It all comes from emotion. Then you’ll hear the other argument, ‘Well, what if I got hit by a car and I broke my arm? That wouldn’t be from emotion’ I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I don’t have all the answers. Nobody doubts, in this world that we’re living in today, that stress, for example, is causing heart disease, cancer, and all kinds of heart problems, right? If we’re stressing ourselves out so much, I stress out myself so much that I gave myself an auto-immune disorder. I gave myself alopecia, which is a sudden hair loss. I lost all my hair. If I can stress myself out to the point where my body starts to fight against itself and starts to kill my hair follicles off because it thinks it’s a foreign invader, then maybe I can do the opposite. Maybe I can start to love myself enough and heal my body. Because everybody knows that you can stress yourself out and cause health problems. If that’s true and people believe that, why don’t they believe that the opposite is true?   [1:23:24] Ashley James: Well they’ don’t know how to decrease the stress. It’s so harder ingrained in their life. How do you not get stressed about your bills? How do you not get stressed about your kids doing stupid stuff? It’s part of your life. You can’t separate yourself from your bills, and your job, and your kids and your husband and the stress. We know intellectually our stress is killing us. But what can we do about it besides take a bubble bath, which helps just for a few minutes, right?   [1:24:00] Jon Paul Crimi: I joke in my classes. I say that self-love, self-care isn’t taking a bubble bath. It can be later but self-love, self-care is showing up and doing the hard work, doing the uncomfortable work. That’s what real self-love, real self-care is. So if you do that, listen, you can be stressed out, your kid can have a health problem, your bills can be overdue, you can lay down and breathe. You’ll get up and you’ll go, ‘you know what? It’s all going to be fine. It’s going to work out. It’s going to work out just fine.’ But instead, we dig into that stress. What is stress really but fear? That’s what it really is. Stress is just a fancy word for fear. So you’re allowing your fears to consume you and affect you and affect your health. What’s the opposite of fear? The opposite of fear is love. So if we can get more into love and start to love yourself more, maybe you can start to combat those fears and let go of some of those fears and know that it’s going to be okay. Because 99% of it is all in our heads. That’s the truth of it. That’s what nobody says. It was Mark Twain that said, “I have a lot of problems some of them actually happened.” Most of that stuff that you’re stressing out about the bills, and our kids, it all works itself out. It always does. So you’re creating this all in your head. You’re creating these problems in your head. We’re like right now, you might have a bunch of stuff going on. A bunch of issues, problems, whatever you want to call them. There is no issue right now. There’s just you and I talking right now. That’s all there is. In order to get to that issue, you have to go into your head and start to think about it and start to worry about it and start to ruminate on it. Then you start to go, ‘Oh no, how am I going to pay the bills? My son’s got this…’ Just saying that my chest gets tight and I stop breathing. But if I just stop and sit back and take a deep breath in through my nose, down into my belly, put my hand below my belly button and take a big breath in through my nose down there. Then I let out a long exhale twice as long out of my mouth. Let me do another one of those. In through my nose, down to my stomach, way below my belly button. Then let out a sigh. That long exhale, that breath in through your nose down into your diaphragm. Then that twice as long exhale, that actually activates the parasympathetic nervous system to rest and digest. It starts to calm you down. It starts to calm your body down. So that saying, ‘take a breath,’ we hear it but we don’t do it.   [1:27:00] Ashley James: Some are like [shallow breaths].   [1:27:04] Jon Paul Crimi: Or like, ‘You take a breath. I’m not going to take a breath.’   [1:27:07] Ashley James: Oh man, I’ve told my husband to breathe and it’s just like [shallow breaths]. It’s like a shallow, shallow breath. I’m like, ‘Really, come on. Deep, deep breathe, through your belly.’ He’s like, ‘Okay.’ [shallow breaths] I’ve seen that where people just they’re still breathing shallow. Can you teach us?   [1:27:25] Jon Paul Crimi: I couldn’t breathe into my belly when I first started because I was a trainer. I have been working on my abs and I’d kept my stomach flat for 20 years. So when I would try to breathe into my belly laying on the floor, I would arch my back and my back was so sore for the first couple of weeks of breathwork because I couldn’t actually breathe into my diaphragm. I couldn’t actually expand my diaphragm. Eventually, I was able to relax and breathe into my belly but it took a while. It’s incredible once you can do it. You want me to teach you the breathing technique?   [1:28:00] Ashley James: Yeah, teach us. We are your Play-Doh. Mold us.   [1:28:05] Jon Paul Crimi: Well, okay. Well, I could give you the technique. The challenge lies in that it needs to be, I would say, you can get benefits in 15 minutes. Usually the 12 minutes of it, the first 12 minutes are the hardest part. So a lot of people will do like five minutes or eight minutes or ten minutes and be like, ‘I don’t like this. This is uncomfortable. This is weird,’ and stop. So if you just 12 minutes of it, it would be awful. It would be the most awful thing you ever did because you have to breakthrough. You have to breakthrough on the other side. I could tell you how to do it and then you could go do it on your own and you could just make a playlist. I also have some guided iTunes CDs. So I have a couple of CDs. If you go into the iTunes stores, not Apple Music, I have two CDs on iTunes that have different length tracks and I guide you through how to do it. The technique is really simple. It’s in through the mouth, down into the belly and you take the biggest breath you can into the belly, and you take another one on top of that in your chest and then you just let it fall out. Then you start again. Belly, chest and then the exhale is half a second. It just falls out. You keep that going, circular. Again, don’t do this in the car.   [1:29:26] Ashley James: I’m already dizzy. I took two breaths, I’m already dizzy.   [1:29:30] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. It passes. If you lay down on the floor and you did it and you did it that dizziness is going to pass. Your brain is going to go, ‘I’m dizzy. I’m going to pass out.’ When I do my classes I demonstrate it. ‘Oh my God. Am I doing this right? Two breaths in, one breath out. I think I messed it up already. Okay. I’m terrible at this. I’m dizzy already. I’m going to pass out.’ You’re not going to pass out. You’re on the floor. You’re fine. Even if you did pass out, you would be fine, right? So you got to push through that fear that you’re going to pass out. ‘Okay, I’m breathing. Who’s crying already? What’s going on in their life? Well, that’s me crying already. What’s going on in my life?’ It’s incredible what your head says to you and tried to talk you out of it. Tries to get you to stop doing it. You just have to push through. You have to be willing to push through. You have to be willing to show up for yourself and do something a little uncomfortable, something a little different. If you do what you always do, you’ll always have what you’ve always had. If you want something different, you have to try new things. You have to try different things. I thought breathwork was the stupidest thing. I’m going to go to a thing and somebody’s going to show me how to breathe and all this. What’s going to happen? It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been breathing my whole life, right? That’s what everyone says. That’s the stupid thing I hear from people all the time. ‘I’ve been breathing my whole life. You’re going to show me how to breathe?’ Then finally, when they’re in enough pain they’ll show up. Because people aren’t motivated until they’re in enough pain in some way in some are. Then they show up because they’re willing to try new things. They’re willing to try anything. If you get in enough pain you’ll try whatever. So, unfortunately, pain is the motivator for most people. For me, when that cracked me open I went, ‘okay, what else is out there?’ I started just going down a rabbit hole of exploring all kinds of stuff and all kinds of modalities out there and trying it al. I added what worked to my trainings. Why didn’t I just let it fall away? So be willing to be an explorer, a scientist within yourself, within your life, within your body.   [1:31:50] Ashley James: Is there any contraindications of doing this? Could it be dangerous to breathe this much?   [1:31:56] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. There are some contraindications. Some of them are like high blood pressure, glaucoma, certain mental illnesses are not recommended.   [1:32:07] Ashley James: Which ones?   [1:32:08] Jon Paul Crimi: I would have to go look it up off the top of my head because I’m on the spot right now. I don’t have it all memorized. But here’s the thing, I’ve had all the people with mental illnesses that are on my contraindications and they’re fine. Like I’ve had them come to my classes. I’ve had them come to my training. But you just never know. You just never know what somebody is going to react too. Unfortunately, we live in this litigious society and people want to sue for everything now, right? So, you have to be extra careful. Pregnancy is a big contraindication because miscarriages happen. What do we teach women in Lamaze class, right?   [1:32:56] Ashley James: Breathe.   [1:32:57] Jon Paul Crimi: Breathe. Right. Deep breathing for the most painful thing you’re ever going to go through. They say when women have a baby, it’s almost the pain that a man feels when he has a cold. But it’s the most painful thing you’re ever going to go through is have a child, childbirth. That’s what they say, right? So we do deep breathing. I believe Lamaze is through the mouth, right? Here, let me read some of the contraindications for you. A person with history of cardiovascular disease including angina or heart attack, high blood pressure, glaucoma, retinal detachment, osteoporosis. I don’t understand the osteoporosis one. Significant recent physical injuries or surgery which is anything, right? You don’t want to be doing anything when you just had surgery, really. Breathwork is not advised for persons with severe mental illness or seizure disorders or for persons using major medications, which is most of the planet. It is also unsuitable for anyone with a personal history of aneurysms. Pregnant women are advised against practicing breathwork without first consulting and getting approval from their primary care physician. Persons with asthma should bring their inhaler, consult a primary care physician. I can’t tell you how many women have been in my classes. I’ve seen a hand go up while they’re three songs into the breathwork. I go, ‘Yes?’ They go, ‘Is this okay to do when you’re pregnant? I’m like, ‘Don’t you think you should’ve asked that before you came to the class?’ Because they thought it was going to be some relaxing meditation thing but it’s not. It’s a workout. Like I tell everybody in my classes, ‘You’ve all done something harder in your life than lay on the floor on your back and breathe. Come on.’ A hike is harder than laying on the floor on your back and breathe. It just freaks people out because it catches you unexpected. You’re just not prepared that all this wild stuff is going to happen to you physically, mentally and emotionally from laying on the floor and breathing. So because you’re not prepared for it, it just freaks people out, right? So my job as a facilitator, as a teacher is to prepare people as best I can. So that they can push through that stuff and go, ‘You know what, JP told me this was going to happen. He’s telling me I’m fine and I’m fine. So just push through it.’ Then have a big experience. A lot of people will have that big experience then tell me, ‘Oh my God. That’s like-changing. I’m going to be here every month or I’m going to be here every week. I’m going to do it all the time.’ Then they don’t do it again. They just don’t. They get too freaked out to go back and do it even though they know it was incredible. They could use it. We don’t take care of ourselves in that way. It’s easier to say with bad habits that we know hurt us. It’s easier to stay in that discomfort that’s familiar than to go into unknown that feels good.   [1:35:54] Ashley James: Marilu Henner is an actress who I’ve met a few times and I’ve spent some time with. She has a photographic memory. She was on Taxi and she was on the Apprentice, really cool. She has this whole story and she says, “Choose your hard.” Listen, I mean it’s hard to stay stuck. It’s hard to stay depressed. It’s hard to stay in a bad relationship. It’s hard to stay in a bad job. It’s hard, right? It’s hard to change. It’s hard to get a new habit, a new health habit. It’s hard to get up and go to the gym or eat healthy or not eat crap. Choose your hard. All of it is hard. Everything is hard. Choose your hard. If you’re choosing your hard, which is get up 15-20 minutes earlier and lie on the floor and do breathwork, which would be amazing to start the day off. I can’t even imagine the amount of clarity someone would have after. If they started their day off, they get up, they go potty and then they lay on the ground and they do 15-20 minutes of breathwork first thing in the morning. I mean that would completely reset the day, energize the body, turn on the mitochondria, just totally detoxing. Cleanse the body. Introducing oxygen to the whole body. Just amp up cellular energy production and mental clarity. Turn off that inner critic and allow them to have that huge amount of clarity for the whole day. That sounds like the best. That would beat the best cup of coffee anywhere.   [1:37:37] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean listen, if you get up in the morning and you do that, you walk into the world that day filled with gratitude and love. So you show up to whatever it is that you’re showing up that day, work or whatever, with gratitude and love people are attracted to that. You become a magnet in the world. As opposed to showing up with all your stories, all your stuff like we’re doing and we’re saying, ‘Oh my God. You’re not going to believe what happened last night. Let me tell you the story,’ because that’s how so many people are getting attention, which is really just a way that they’re trying to get love is they’re telling all their stories. If you can let go of those stories and just be present and start to embrace yourself and have gratitude and love for your life, you can walk around in the world like that, it changes who you are in the world. It changes what your world becomes because you start to attract all these other things into your life. The last 20 years for me has just been a series of replacing one horrible bad habit with something better. I do drugs all day at work and then I go home and drink so let me clear that out and replace it with exercise and recovery and helping other people. Okay, now I’m eating sugar and I’m doing this. Let me replace that with ice plunges and float tanks and breathwork. Just trading off a bad habit for a good habit. I think the mistake too many people make is they try to do it all at once and then they fail. Then they go, ‘Yeah. It didn’t work.’ Then they go back to their all bad habits.’ When it’s like just pick one thing. Pick the one thing that you most want to change in your life right now and do that. Focus on that thing. After you’re successful with that and you see that you can change that one thing, build on that. Build on that. I saw that because I was able to show up and do this and eliminate drinking. Listen, I would read self-help book and spiritual books while I was drinking and doing drugs. It just doesn’t work very well that way. So I kind of think that’s the first thing. I’ve seen people show up to these kinds of events, these motivational events, these guru events. There’s no judgment from me. I just don’t think that none of it is really going to work if you’re medicating which is self-medicating. So start there because you don’t even know what’s going on until you stop with the drinking and the drugs or whatever that is. However, you know you’re self-medicating and then all these feelings start coming up. Then you go, ‘Oh my God. All these feelings are coming up, right?’ That’s when breathwork is a great tool. ‘Oh. All these feelings come up. Let me lay down and breathe and clear them out and get clear. ‘  What you start to get clear on is all your old stories. All the stories that you’ve been telling since you were a kid of who you are and why you do these things and how you try to sick love that often doesn’t work for us. You start to get clear on those stories and you can start to let go of those stories even if they’re true, especially if they’re true. When we can start to let go of our stories, our old stories, we can start to write some new ones. We could start to create some new chapters in our lives and we could become a different person.   [1:41:11] Ashley James: Is that level of self-reflection happen during the breathwork or those epiphanies come after the breathwork when we’re in that very clear-headed mental state after we get up off the ground from breathing for about 20 minutes?   [1:41:28] Jon Paul Crimi: Both. So you’ll have some things that will come out while you’re breathing. Some stuff will come out, some emotions will come up and stuff will come up while you’re breathing. Then afterward, for me, I tell people, the breath after the breathing that laying there after you’re done active breathing, that’s the pay-off. That’s when you get these, I call them downloads from the universe where it’s like, ‘Oh. This is what I need to do. I need to help this person or I need to do this or I need to create this. I just need to be present with my kids.’ I have this joke where I say like, I want to have shirts made that say, ‘I’m sorry for what I said before breathwork.’ Because it’s been so many times. Like I’ve had an argument with my wife or something and I go lay down and I breathe. Then I come back in the room and I’m like, ‘Babe, I’m sorry. I was just being a selfish jerk. I love you and you’re amazing.’ I wouldn’t have got that clarity or whatever that thing was. It wasn’t that important than what really is important. That’s what it gets you to. It gets you to what’s really important. What’s really important is gratitude and love and those moments in your life that go in your heart. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and be like, ‘the moments that I pulled in was so unexpected and not what I thought at all.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. That’s what really matters.’ Because we think all the other stuff matters and it doesn’t. So it gets you really clear about what really matters in your life. Everything else is just a distraction. That’s amazing if you can get that clarity. I would have people come in and go, ‘I’m struggling with this relationship.’ or ‘I’m struggling with this career decision, I’m struggling with this.’ I go, ‘Okay. Let’s just set the intention for clarity on it.’ It’s crystal clear when they come up. There’s zero doubt. They were so torn when they walked into the room. They lay down and breathe. What they need to do. The answer is crystal clear. Then what happens sometimes, especially around relationships, is the head will kick back on a couple of days later and fear kicks in. Fear goes, ‘You don’t really want to go back out there and date do you? You don’t want to go out on Bumble or match.com. He’s pain. He’s not that bad. He does do this.’ We start to make a case. We start to build a case because the fear is telling us that we’re not going to find anyone that’s right for us. The truth is, it’s trite to say but it’s like you want to whole and complete within yourself. Jerry Maguire sold us a lie which is, “You complete me.” Well, that’s BS, right? Nobody completes you. You complete yourself.   [1:44:09] Ashley James: I love it.   [1:44:11] Jon Paul Crimi: It’s just like, when you complete yourself and you’re whole and complete within yourself and you’re walking around with gratitude and love for your life and not looking for something more, I’m telling you. You are a magnet. You’re a magnet to the opposite sex or the same sex. Whatever you’re into. Whatever your thing is. You’re just a magnet to people who want to be around you who want to be with you in some way who want to work with you, who want to hang out with you. Whatever. It’s like you become this magnet because it’s so rare now in this day and age that people are not walking around needing, wanting something.   [1:44:47] Ashley James: Feeling inadequate, feeling like there’s a hole in them that they need to fill.                                     [1:44:53] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. There is literally nothing I need right now in my life. It’s weird. I’ve had some really good business-wise a bunch of financial windfalls lately. I’ve gone like, ‘I should buy something.’ I wanted that for so long. I got to that place and there’s nothing I need. You know that that watch isn’t going to make me happy. Let’s put it away for my kids’ college. I don’t know. There’s nothing I need. There’s nothing I want. It’s an incredible place to get to. It finally makes sense now looking back. If you’re in a part in your life where you’re frustrated and you’re angry, you’re not there yet. Joseph Campbell, the Heroes Journey, right? When you go through all the stages of the hero’s journey and then at the end of the hero’s journey you turn around and you help somebody else. You come back with the elixir, right? That’s where I feel like I’m at now. I’m just turning around and I’m helping other people and it’s incredible. If you’re struggling right now, you’re listening to this and you’re struggling with relationships, with career and all that stuff, it doesn’t make sense yet and it doesn’t make sense for you. You cannot connect the dots, right? Looking back, Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots until you’re there.” There is no there really. I found this fascinating. Steve Jobs took this font class in college and he didn’t know why. Now, we all know why when we’re staring at an Apple font, we’re starting at the iPhone. It all makes sense for me in my life. All my disappointments, all my failures, all the things that I tried, they all came together for me to create this thing and share it with people. I never in a million years thought I would be doing this and sharing it with some people. But it totally makes sense to me now looking back. I’m fulfilled in a way that I didn’t know that I would be that I didn’t know I want it, the fulfillment. I tell people all the time, happiness. Everybody’s looking for happiness. They’re searching for happiness. I’m like, ‘You’re looking in the wrong place because happiness is just an emotion like sadness. It’s going to come and it’s going to go.’ Fulfillment, filling yourself up that’s the key. Because whether you’re happy or whether you’re sad, if you’re fulfilled in what you’re doing, happiness or sadness doesn’t matter. So fulfillment is the key to search for, to work for, to find that fulfillment. Teaching breathwork and helping people get sober has been the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done. I’ll keep doing it until I’ve changed millions of lives on the planet or I find something more powerful to help people with.   [1:47:38] Ashley James: Well, I love it. I love that your goal is to help millions of people. My goal is to help millions of people too. To be able to learn how to create optimal health. That’s why the podcast is called Learn True Health. They’re going to learn how to create true health for themselves and help mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually and energetically. Do that by listening to amazing guests like you, Jon Paul. Oh my gosh. It’s been so incredible learning from you. I want to talk about your course because I have a feeling that my listeners are going to want to do it. Before we hit record, you said that I should do it. So I’m going to do your course, your five-day course. I want you to tell us a bit about it. First, I have some clarifying questions. So, if someone wants to lie on the ground and breathe, they want to do it to a minimum of 15 minutes? You said your classes are 27 minutes long.   [1:48:39] Jon Paul Crimi: Well, the class is an hour, right? The class is like 1 hour and 15, but the act of breathing, the active portion of this breathwork that we’re talking about is about, see in a one-on-one session it really depends on the person. Somebody could be done in 20 minutes, right? They could be done in 30 minutes or 35 minutes. So in a class, it’s really challenging to find that sweet spot of time, right? So what I generally try and do, because some people are coming, they come every time and they’ve been doing it for a while. There’s a lot of brand new people in the room. So I try to find a sweet spot of time but it’s really different for everybody. Let’s just say a minimum of 16-17 minutes. Let’s make it 15 to make it easier. You could go up to 30 minutes. I wouldn’t suggest 30 minutes if it’s your very first time doing breathwork. So you lay on the floor and the active breathing is for 15-30 minutes, anywhere in that zone. The way you might want to do it, the way I used to do it, was I create playlist and I’d know by the song. So I’m going to breathe. I’m going to do the active breathing for six songs. I use songs that are motivational like a workout. I would do the active breathing during the six songs. The last song or two I would do emotion in there like Landslide from Fleetwood Mac. Nobody makes it through Landslide without crying. Landslide breaks everyone. Fire and Rain from James Taylor break everyone.  So anyway, you don’t have to do that but that’s how I do it. Then have some songs that are beautiful, moving, calming after that. Those are the songs that I call the rest songs because the best part of breathwork is after the breathwork. Laying there and enjoying it. I tell people, ‘You just did that hard and uncomfortable work. Don’t get up afterward. Lay there and that’s where you get the payoff.’ I felt my head quiet for the first time in my life like I’d always try to do with drugs and alcohol after breathwork. So just lay there and enjoy it.   [1:50:44] Ashley James: That’s when you can meditate.   [1:50:45] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean, that’s how I learned how to meditate was through breathwork. This is what meditation is. This is the quiet space that I could never get to. I would feel my body just vibrating with this incredible energy and that’s your energy that you can use to transform your life and other people’s lives. Just lay there and enjoy it. Get whatever comes in. you’re going to get downloads. You’re going to get messages. I’ve heard all kinds of woo woo stuff in the thing. People tell me their dead relatives have visited them when they’re doing breathwork. People tell me that they have visions and all kind of stuff. I’ve had all kinds of stuff. I try not to put that stuff out there too much because I think it’s different for everybody. It’s different every time you do it. So, who knows what’s going to happen for you but be adventurous and go for it. Lay down on the floor, breathe into your mouth down into your belly, then into your chest, and then let it fall out. Then start again. So I have a couple of CDs that are guided on iTunes that are like $11.00 I think or $12.00. That’s the cheapest kind of guided option. But you don’t need to do that. You could just do it yourself. Then I have this course, the Five Day Emotional Detox which is on sale right now. I believe it’s 40% off. It’s on my website which is Breathe with JP, B R E A T H E with JP. So a lot of people write breath with JP and then can’t find it. It’s breathe.   [1:52:20] Ashley James: You need to buy breath with JP and just have it redirect.   [1:52:25] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. That’s a great idea. It’s a really good idea. So there’s courses on my website. You’ll see the buttons there. It will say like, Online Courses. If you want the five-day emotional breathwork detox, that’s what the course is called, you’d click on my Online Course and it will take you there. I also have the teacher trainings online or I do the teacher trainings in person in Los Angeles as well. Then I offer them all as a package online. You could do the five-day course with the two teacher trainings, it’s packaged. But the five-day detox, we talked a lot about it. I mean the first session, the first day is a video of me showing you the technique of breathwork. It really goes into an incredible description. There’s a downloaded, one of those albums is in there that you can download and do it. The audio. You could add music to it, your own music. Another way that you can play it with music. The next day is the affirmations. You combine the affirmations with breathwork. Then the third day is the transformational letter with breathwork. The fourth day is this thing called the eulogy or the legacy where you write your legacy. Who you became at the end of your life, which is really powerful to do. You can read it to somebody too. It’s even more powerful. You write this and you go like, ‘I got to get to work.’ It’s time to get to work, right? It’s really moving and I have people do it in my teacher trainings. I have them get up and read their legacy. The last day is a love letter to yourself. You write the love letter to yourself and you combine it with breathwork. So if you did these exercises with breathwork, and they don’t have to be five days in a row. If you did them, you would have a massive, massive shift in your life. Then I would get an email from you saying like, ‘Thank you so much.’ And I love that.   [1:54:06] Ashley James: Yes you would.   [1:54:07] Jon Paul Crimi: I love that. For me, that’s the real payoff is the email that says like, ‘Wow. I did this. It’s so unexpected. It helped me heal this thing or change this. I feel different.’ I have with me my wife at the restaurant. Some woman came up to me in a restaurant and she said, “Are you Jon Paul Crimi?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “I did your five-day detox online and it was life-changing. Thank you so much.” I looked over, “See. That’s my husband over there.” She pointed to her husband and her husband mouthed thank you to me. I was like that’s so awesome. It’s just incredible. It was a combination of these workshops that I was doing and I decided to just put them together in a course and see what would happen and see if it would work. I didn’t know if it would work. I took a chance. It was an idea that I had to do breathwork. It all comes to me through breathwork. So I put them online and the response has been amazing. I just feel so grateful that I get to share this with people. It was like, ‘How do I share this with people in other parts of the world?’ Because I got emails from people all the time who would hear a podcast with me or see something or hear about it. I was like, ‘I need an effective way to share this.’ So I did the iTunes album. Then I did the course and the course is really powerful because it helps I think when you see me kind of explain it to you. When you watch it physically. When you see my diaphragm expanding and you watch me do the technique. It’s a little challenging to understand just hearing but I think people could do it. I’ve had people listen to it and hear it and do it and it had incredible results. Oftentimes when people do it just from hearing podcasts like this is they’ll do five minutes or ten minutes and then they’ll get scared and they’ll stop.   [1:56:03] Ashley James: Right. They got to power through.   [1:56:05] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean, that’s actually why the class helps. It’s kind of like peer pressure in a good way like everyone around you is doing it. You hear people around you having emotional experiences and you start to get emotional. So classes are really good. A private session’s a really good for people. But not everybody has access to that. So, if you don’t have access to that, that’s why the online courses are great.   [1:56:27] Ashley James: This makes so much sense why you have a link to Spotify with all this playlist. I was going through your website. I was like, ‘Oh, he’s on Spotify.’ I click on it, it’s just a bunch of playlist of songs. I’m like, ‘What? What?’ Now I get it.   [1:56:43] Jon Paul Crimi: I’m so glad you brought that up. All right. I have years of my classes. Those are all my classes, right? That I’ve done on Spotify. If you look at the playlist, let me get one up here so I can kind of go over it. If you look at a playlist, let’s just say here we go Bend. So the first song is like a song Feeling Good by Lauryn Hill. That’s a real intense motivational song, right? Then the second song is another motivational song. So the first three or four songs are really pushing you. Then we get into emotional stuff. Then there’s a song in there that’s just sound. What I’m doing there is I’m actually playing the gong in my class. So I have a gong. I can’t believe I have a gong and I play a gong in my class. It’s just so weird for me. How that came about was I was in a class and I didn’t like the class but we screamed into the gong and that was such a powerful experience for me that I added it to my class. So I have a song where I play the gong and you’re still breathing during the gong playing, which is really weird. Then I count it down, ‘On the count of three, we’re going to scream into the gong. One, two, three. Ahhhh’ I’ll have 200 people in the room just screaming, yelling at the top of their lungs. That in itself is a powerful, powerful release because where in your life do you scream at the top of your lungs, from the bottom of your soul? When do you get to do that? Unless stuff’s gone really wrong in your life, right? It just doesn’t happen. That adds to the release at the end of the breathwork. Then after the scream, I’m like, ‘Okay. Just relax.’ Then another song will come on. It will be an emotional song like Be Still by the Fray or I Am Light by India.Arie, whatever song I pick. Heroes by Peter Gabriel. So that’s the rest song. That’s the payoff. That’s the beauty. So I don’t say anything during that. Then this other song, Devi Prayer comes on. You shouldn’t still be breathing by then if that comes on. That’s the song, it’s like a yogi kind of song. The woman is like, ‘Ohh.’ She’s like sort of singing like that. That’s when people reach up and pull moments of gratitude, moments of love into their hearts. Then I read something. Then I say, ‘Okay. I’m going to go outside in the lobby. Come out in a bit. Enjoy these couple of songs and just lay here. This is what you came for not the breathing.’ Then people will come up and hug me on the way out and I get 200 hugs and I feel amazing.   [1:59:27] Ashley James: Wow. That sounds awesome. Your classes sound amazing.   [1:59:31] Jon Paul Crimi: It’s a good time. I mean, it’s pretty powerful. It’s a ride. It’s an experience. I’ve made it such. I tweaked it and I honed it and I made it into this incredible experience where people come and they bring- I have people that buy 10 tickets and bring all their family members. People that bring like rehabs bring all their people in rehab or sober living. People come with their friends. They drive, people drive. I’ve had people fly in for my classes. It’s wild. It’s become a thing. I’m feeling really blessed. I’m feeling really lucky that I get to do this incredible thing and changes people’s lives. I never knew that I would be here doing this. I’m so glad that I didn’t get what I thought I was supposed to get. It would’ve been so much less.   [2:00:34] Ashley James: You thought you were going to some relaxing yoga breathing class.   [2:00:40] Jon Paul Crimi: No. I meant in my life. I wanted to be some big celebrity thing. That’s not what happened for me. I’ve got so much more because I saw that that wasn’t going to fix me. I saw that first hand. I believe that’s the reason I worked with all these people is because I got to see that that wasn’t going to fix me. So I got something much more fulfilling.   [2:01:05] Ashley James: Yeah you did. Absolutely. You have been training teachers. You’ve been training people. You have an online teacher training and an in-person teacher training.   [2:01:15] Jon Paul Crimi: Correct   [2:01:16] Ashley James: Thousands of people have been certified in your technique and work with individuals. People can do one-on-one work or they could do classes. It’s a movement. You’re the head of this movement.   [2:01:33] Jon Paul Crimi: I don’t know if I’m the head of it. There have been other people that had been around doing it for a long time. I think that I teach it in a way that I just have taken all the new agey woo out of it. I feel like I’m more accessible to most people. I had a fire chief come to my teacher training. I’ve had doctors, PhDs, psychologists coming to my teacher training. So I think I’m just teaching it in a more accessible way that translates to your housewife, to your angry guy guy, to different people who really need this. People bringing their teenagers to my class, which you have to ask first. I think that it was really kept within this new agey woo woo circles. It was kept small and done that way. It just turned a lot of people off. I just tweaked the technique to make it more accessible to everyone else. One time I had one of these teachers that I’m talking about. If I get any criticism, it’s other breathwork teachers who studied from someone else or had a different style and they don’t like it. This woman came into my class and she’s like, ‘I can kind of like see how you’re like for like people who would never do this work.’ I was like, ‘Yeah. That’s exactly right. I want a room full of people who needed help, not eight other breathwork teachers pretending that we’re all spiritual in mala robes and mala beads. I want to help angry guys and stressed out moms. That’s what I’m for. Thank you for the compliment that you weren’t intending as a compliment. I don’t do the whole spiritual speak. I worked at a meditation studio. I worked with a couple of them. I don’t anymore. I rent spaces and just do it myself. The teachers would come in with this, I love a lot of these teachers but I would hear people come in with these voices that are like, “Hey everyone. I know it’s been a hard day. Mercury is in retrograde right now.’ I’m going, ‘Oh my God. A) That’s not really your voice, b) don’t blame it on Mercury in retrograde. Your life is a mess because you made it that way. Just own it. Let’s fix it. So I’m kind of like a little edgy and I can still be a jerk sometimes. I’m a lot less of a jerk but I’m a human being. I used to go to these classes and I’d go, ‘Oh my God. It’s just on the 405 freeway to the 101 to the 10, which are the three worst freeway in America to get here. I almost choke someone out in the parking lot. Don’t worry, we’re going to put gratitude and love in your heart right now. So somebody will be like, “Oh my God. This guy is so real. He’s so authentic.’ I’m like, ‘No, no. I’m really going to kill somebody. Just lay down. Stop messing around. Put your phone away.’   [2:04:25] Ashley James: Shut up and breathe.                                                                                                                                                                                           [2:04:26] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I’ve actually mellowed quite a bit as a teacher. It’s ironic that attracted a lot of people to me is my style. It’s my sort of like angry breathwork teacher. I mean, I’m not angry anymore. I can get irritated but it’s just not there. Most of it is gone.   [2:04:48] Ashley James: I love it.   [2:04:49] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. It’s really powerful.  That you would never. So, if I have anything to share with anybody it’s like, ‘Don’t believe your head. Try something different. Try something new. Tray something that you would never try. Do something that you would never do. Be open. Keep showing up for yourself because you’re worth it.   [2:05:09] Ashley James: I love it so much. You say you take the woo woo out of it. So, you’re so not woo woo then when kind of like spiritual things happen, it’s a bit of surprise for some people. Can you share with me what kind of interesting spiritual things has happened for you in doing the breathwork that you were shocked happen? That you weren’t aware would happen?   [2:05:42] Jon Paul Crimi: I don’t usually share the spiritual stuff because I don’t want people to get turned off by it. I feel like if you’re hearing someone share their spiritual experience you go, ‘Okay. I’m out.’ That’s not for me, right? But if you have your spiritual experience yourself, different story.   [2:05:59] Ashley James: Right. To preframe it. One of my regular guests is an exorcist. I think my listeners are more open-minded than the regular population.   [2:06:09] Jon Paul Crimi: Okay. All right. We can dive into it. One of my first breathwork sessions, I saw myself on the stage, reaching out in the air, hand in the air, 100 people in the room. They were all reaching out, laying on the floor. I was like, ‘That’s so weird. Why would I be doing that?’ I was on a stage couple of years later with 100 people in the room and I had them doing that, pulling the moments in. I remember that first session. I went, ‘Oh my God. That is the thing I saw in the breathwork session. I saw this. I saw this years ago and I didn’t understand what it meant. So, it was like a future download. I would get messages. You need to go call this person. You need to help this person. It was always about help. It’s always been about helping people. I’m a selfish, self-centered person by nature. So I was like, ‘Damn. Why can’t it be just about me?’ It’s never about me because when I help other people, my life gets really good. When I focus on myself, my life gets really lousy. So, just parts of my body healing traumas in my body from different things that happened to me in my life I would feel that. My very first session, I felt connected to the universe. God, spirituality, whatever you want to call it. I felt it in an undeniable way. I felt it in the way like I would want to get out of the car and kill someone in LA in the freeway. It was that real for me. It was that undeniable. I felt it. I felt the presence of something in my life. It was the first time I’d ever felt it. I have grown up in religion. I traveled the world and gone through temples in Cambodia and the cathedral in Notre Dame. I’ve done it all and I never felt it anywhere in my life ever. I felt it in this breathwork session the first time. It was incredible. I came home and told my wife about it. I made love to my wife and I said, ‘I just made a baby.’ She said, ‘Shut up you idiot.’ I said, ‘No, no. I felt the soul the baby come through me.’ The next day, she was nauseous, I was like, ‘That’s the baby.’ She’s like, ‘It’s the next day, idiot. Shut up.’ Then I had this thing the next day which I’d never experienced before, which was my head was completely turned off for the entire day.   [2:08:34] Ashley James: Wow.   [2:08:35] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. It was the best day of my life I guess. I felt like maybe what someone feels like, I don’t know for sure, with schizophrenia or some kind of mental illness because I was walking around kind of just giggling. Present and giggling. I said to my wife, ‘Do I look like I’m crazy?’ She said, ‘You just look really happy.’ But I’d never experience anything like it. My friend who was a spiritual kind of guru, healer he said, ’You are in the Buddha mind.’ I was in the Buddha-mind for that day and it was just an incredible day. Sure enough, that was the conception of my daughter that day, that night before. It’s just been one awakening after another. There have been times where I’ve done fasting. I started fasting and I would breathe in a fast. I will go, ‘Oh my God. Now I get it, what the connection is between fasting and spirituality.’ I would have these intense breath sessions where I would do the active breathing for an hour or more. Then I would lay there vibrating on the floor for two hours just connected to some kind of source, to some incredible thing. So, there’s been journeys like that. I’ve done it on beaches, on planes. I have a float tank, that sensory deprivation tank in my house, which I love. It’s like my favorite place to and I’ve done it a ton in there. I freaked myself out, maybe I’m building too much carbon monoxide here. But it has vents you know. But your mind is really dangerous. It can be really dangerous, right. It’s like acid. They say if you start thinking you’re going to have a bad acid trip you do, right? That really translates into breathwork too. If you think you’re going to have a bad time- there have been people who email me like all scared and worried. I go, ‘Yeah, don’t come. If you think you’re going to have a bad time, you are going to.’ Whether you think you’re right or not, you’re right. The brain is such a powerful thing. The mind is this supercomputer and it has to be right and so we make it right. So if you think you’re going to have a bad time then you probably are.   [2:10:46] Ashley James: Yeah. Yeah. We need to shift our mindset. Absolutely. Because it’s right. Our mindset is right.   [2:10:54] Jon Paul Crimi: I program people. Like you’re talking about the NLP, I tell people, ‘You’re going to have this incredible transformational experience tonight. You’re going to walk out of here different than the way you came in. If you can just do these little things. If you can just push through these little discomforts, you’re going to leave here differently.’ People do. Everyone in that room leaves different than the way they came in without a doubt. I’ve been teaching it for eight years now, I’ve never had somebody come up and say nothing happened. This hasn’t happened, never had anyone asked for their money back. It just never happened.   [2:11:24] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That’s amazing.   [2:11:25] Jon Paul Crimi: I have had people quit at the studio. I would see two or three people quit. They gave up five minutes in because it got hard, it got uncomfortable where they start to feel the physical sensations and they got scared and freak them out and they stop. They go, ‘This isn’t for me.’ I’m like, ‘You haven’t gone to the other side yet. You don’t know if it’s for you. You have to fully do it.’ But what I found out is I would go ask the studio, ‘Was that person here on a guest pass, on a free guest pass?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah. How’d you know?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. Because they gave up.’ Because there was no investment. Being invested is often key to this thing. Having some kind of investment, having some kind of exchange will help you to push through. If I have you pay $1000.00 to do it, you’re going to do it.   [2:12:11] Ashley James: Yeah. I bet the people that fly into LA and dedicate a few days of their life between travel and getting to your class, I bet they get the biggest breakthroughs out of being there.   [2:12:22] Jon Paul Crimi: They do. The more invested you are the bigger the experience is going to be. Yeah. Test it out. Let me know what you think. If you have the guts, you got to push through it.   [2:12:34] Ashley James: I know. I’m totally going to do it. I’m so excited.   [2:12:36] Jon Paul Crimi: The one thing- I just realized I forgot to say that it works better on an empty stomach.   [2:12:40] Ashley James: Really glad that you mentioned to do it on an empty stomach because when I was in massage therapy college back when I was 19, many many lifetimes ago, I had learned this breathing exercise that also involves clenching. You clench your muscles and let go. You clench your muscles and let go. I came home and did it with my roommate, he threw up everywhere because he had just eaten. He’s like, ‘What are you doing to me?’ I was really afraid of it afterward. It was so weird. He was just lying there one second next thing he’s throwing up everywhere. So I imagine that deep breathing because the diaphragm is pushing on the stomach. You definitely want to be- so how many hours away from food should we be?   [2:13:25] Jon Paul Crimi: You know look, the less you’ve eaten, the further you’re away from it the actually the bigger the experience will be. But if you’re someone who gets really lightheaded or dizzy or has low blood sugar then I would say two hours, three hours. Bring a bar or bring juice to have after the breathwork to take care of yourself. If you’re someone that can handle it that does fasting regularly then you’re fine. Do it fasted. My biggest experiences have been fasted. But listen, if you’ve never done this before and you’re not someone that fasts, don’t do that. Don’t fast all day and then do this big huge breathwork session. I mean, it’s too much too soon.   [2:14:10] Ashley James: The mismatches that are listening, the mismatchers who have to do what you tell them not to do are all going to do a seven-day fast and then start breathwork. The mismatchers, you’ve been warned.   [] Jon Paul Crimi: They’re going to see God. They’re going to see God. They’re going to email me 50 emails after that.   [2:14:28] Ashley James: So take it slow. It sounds like the best time is first thing in the morning because you’re already coming out of a natural fast having not eaten for the last eight hours.   [2:14:37] Jon Paul Crimi: That’s right. That’s right. I do my classes often at night so people will hold off and they normally have dinner at five or six or seven and I’ll do my class at seven or 8:00 and they’ll be really hungry. Those are the class and they go have this big experience. Then they’ll go eat with their friends afterward. I would suggest at least two to three hours of an empty stomach.   [2:15:02] Ashley James: Very good. So your five-day class is on breathewithJP.com   [2:15:09] Jon Paul Crimi: Yup. Five Day Emotional Detox it’s called.   [2:15:11] Ashley James: Five Day Emotional Detox. The link to that and the link to everything Jon Paul does is going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. I want to have you back on the show after I’ve done the Five Day Emotional Detox. We should definitely have you back. We should keep diving into this topic. I think that this is incredibly valuable. My listeners are turning over stones and trying to figure out what am I eating? Am I eating things wrong or right? What am I doing? Should I be taking these supplements? Should I be taking these herbs? Should I be taking these classes? Should I be doing this or doing that? They’re turning over stones and this is the stone that 100% of the population should turn over.   [2:15:57] Jon Paul Crimi: Yup.   [2:15:58] Ashley James: Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing. I definitely want to have you back. Is there anything you’d like to say to the listeners to complete today’s interview? Any homework you want to give or any final words that you’d like to impart upon us?   [2:16:15] Jon Paul Crimi: I think I just want to say that I think I already said it which is you’re worth it, show up and love yourself no matter what, no matter how hard things get. Everybody wants somebody to show up and love them for who they are, the way they are when they’re not loving themselves that way. We teach people how to love us. We show people how to love us by how we love ourselves. How we love ourselves is how we show up and do the hard work for ourselves. So show up and do the hard work for yourself because you’re worth it. I want to say this little quote by Thich Nhat Hanh which is, “I have been repeating this to myself over with my hand on my heart and it is so healing. To love is to be there. We cannot love if we are not fully breathing into each moment. May we have the courage to open to each moment with a sense of curiosity. May we have the desire to show up for ourselves no matter what. May we put our hands in our hearts and speak in a gentle voice. Dear one, I am here for you. Dear one, I am here for you. Dear one, I am here for you. All my love.   [2:17:33] Ashley James: Jon Paul Crimi, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. I can’t wait to have you back.   [2:17:39] Jon Paul Crimi: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s been fabulous.   [2:17:43] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.   Get Connected With Jon Paul Crimi! Website Facebook Instagram  

Get the free Flash Fast 70 Page eBook: learntruehealth.com/fastbook Try Roby's Flash Fast and Get $10 off Your First Kit: learntruehealth.com/flashfast MUSIC: Lioness (Instrumental) by DayFox https://soundcloud.com/dayfox Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/lioness-instrumental Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/ZATMh49j49M   Modified Fasting https://www.learntruehealth.com/modified-fasting   Highlights: What is modified fasting What is autophagy Is fasting safe? While our bodies are going through a fast, our bodies are trying detox and cleanse and heal Four day modified fast before chemo for cancer patients Fasting decreases inflammations Intermittent fasting is offsetting the damage to the liver and kidneys Atkins and keto is the same diet Diabetes is manageable If weight loss is a goal, you could do modified fasting once or twice a month Other benefits of modified fasting Refeeding process Hormone balancing effect Book: How to Get The Health Benefits of Fasting Without Going Hungry Antibiotics wipe out good bacteria Who shouldn’t do modified fasting? Eating small meals in a window of 12 hours   In this episode, Robyn and I will talk about modified fasting and its benefits people who are undergoing cancer treatment, people who are trying to lose weight, and people who are experiencing hormonal imbalance. Robyn also shares with us how fasting decreases inflammation and the other benefits of modified fasting.   [00:00:00] Intro: Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. You’re going to love today’s interview with Robyn Openshaw. She’s giving us a free copy of her book. To download her book, go to www.learntruehealth.com/fastbook. That’s learntruehealth.com/ fastbook. As in it’s a book that teaches you how to fast. But it’s also a fast read. So it’ll be easy for you to remember learntruehealth.com/fastbook. Now, Robyn talks about her Flash Fast. And to get the listener discount on that, go to learntruehealth.com/flashfast. That’s learntruehealth.com /flashfast as in a very quick fast, Flash Fast. All those links are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast as well. So if you’re driving or exercising or running around and you don’t have a pen, you can always jump to the beginning of this episode to hear those links again or go to the show notes of this episode to grab them.   I definitely want to grab that book though. I could not put it down. Robyn sent me a physical copy of it. It’s 70 pages long. So you can finish it in one sitting. And I just couldn’t put it down. It was a really good book. It’s well-written. It’s an easy read. And it is chock full of science and the data. And she is referencing the latest studies showing how we can fast in a way that is the healthiest, that staves off disease. People are seeing now – it’s amazing, people are actually reversing MS, autoimmune disease. There are cases of cancer being reversed. People are reversing type 2 diabetes. We are able to heal our body and do it in a way that triggers our own body’s self-cleaning mechanism called autophagy. So we get into that in today’s interview. You’re just going to love it. Please share this interview with your friends who have struggled with metabolic syndrome, who struggled with losing weight, balancing hormones, autoimmune conditions, type 2 diabetes, as we talk about how they can utilize a specific type of fasting that isn’t removing food from their diet. It’s utilizing food in a certain way that triggers the body’s own self-cleaning mechanism. And the mechanism the body uses to repair and heal. So I know you guys are going to love today’s interview, please share it with your friends because I want to get this information out there. There are people who are suffering like I was suffering for so many years. All through my 20s, I was so sick with six different illnesses. And I reversed them naturally with food and with lifestyle changes and supplements. And I wish I’d had this information that you’re about to learn today. Because it would have definitely made my journey a lot smoother and my healing a lot quicker. I know that we can get this information out there and help a lot of people to heal and support their body’s ability to heal itself. Enjoy today’s interview. Thank you so much for being a listener. And go to learntruehealth.com/ fastbook to get Robyn Openshaw’s free book that I’m really excited that she’s giving it out to everyone so we can get this information out there and help as many people as possible to learn true health. Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 390.     I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show with us Robyn Openshaw. She’s Green Smoothie Girl. You can go back and listen to our Episode 178 where she taught us the high vibration foods that bring in the nutrients and the energy, and the vibration that brings in vitality, and to do away with the foods that lower our physical vibration. And it was a phenomenal interview. Actually, that was the interview that convinced my husband to go from basically being an Atkins style meat eater to a complete vegan whole food plant based overnight. I came out of that interview and told him what you said. And he said, “I am never eating meat again.” So that is a pretty powerful interview I have to say. And then you came back on the show, Episode 358, to teach us about how to protect ourselves from EMF. What I love about learning from Robyn Openshaw and she has a wonderful podcast called Vibe, published 16 books, and just constantly coming out with great information. Robyn, you are who I want to be when I grew up. So I just love that you are pulling in the data, the research, the science and showing people how they can change every single aspect of their life, emotionally, mentally, physically to optimize every part of your being to living truly healthfully in a joyful way. So I must thank you so much. I know my listeners love learning from you. And as always, it’s a pleasure to have you back on the show.   [00:05:18] Robyn Openshaw: It’s so nice to be here again, Ashley. And that is high praise. And as you know, I’ve told you this a long time ago, I have a secret fantasy that we co host a podcast one day. I don’t know how to make that happen. It’s just a little throwing that out there.     [00:05:30] Ashley James: That’d be awesome. We have to figure it out. That’d be super great. When you are with your tribe, when you’re with the people that are on the same path, it feels so good. And I know my listeners feel that way, too, being part of the learn health community because they’re finally finding the people that are all really, really interested in gaining health. But not just physical health, all aspects of life. And you exude that. I love following you on Facebook. I recommend listeners check you out and follow you on Facebook. Because the stuff I learned for you every day is wonderful. And you give such great advice. And you ask such great questions. And make us all think, think about the things in our life. Instead of being the ostrich and just digging our heads in the sand and wanting to be put back in the matrix, we have to open ourselves up and start advocating for ourselves. Now, today’s episode, I have been really excited to do because fasting has sort of become a buzzword. But there’s a lot of misconceptions. There’s a lot of misinformation. And for some people, there’s a lot of fear and belief that we can’t do fasting, especially if someone has an illness like type 2 diabetes. There’s an idea that we can’t do any form of fasting. And that just is not true. And there’s lots of studies to prove that. And you’re here today to make sure that you clean up all the misconceptions, do all the myth busting, and show us how we can utilize fasting to support absolute optimal health.     [00:07:01] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. It’s a big question. Basically, is fasting safe? And should people be afraid of it? I think mostly people are afraid of fasting because they’ve never – I learned this on a speaking tour. I spoken 450 cities in six years. And I had many, many people tell me they’ve never missed a meal. And that was shocking to me. And I don’t know why it would be. Because I was raised in a very small community of – well, not really – I think there’s, like, 12 million Mormons worldwide. But I was raised Mormon – or LDS is how they prefer to be called. And we’ve fasted for 24 hours the first Sunday of every month. And so for me, it was just no big deal. Not that it’s fun. It’s not fun to go a whole day without food or, let alone, a week without food. And the most I’ve done water fasting is 12 days without food. But I think that because we live in a time for the first time in the history of the world where people don’t just naturally go without food for long periods of time because we’re not hunter gatherers. And we don’t have droughts and famines. We have just food anywhere all the time, inexpensive food. Even people who are in poverty, many of them don’t, in North America at least, want for food. I mean there’s food banks, whatever. So just most people haven’t gone without food. And that’s not true. The thing to think about here is that maybe the most powerful thing that people were doing for their health, for literally thousands of years, was something they’re doing unintentionally, which is they just would go hungry. I know we’re going to get into why fasting is possibly the most health preventative, disease preventative thing you can possibly do. But I agree that it’s scary to think about not having food for a week. In the last four years, I’ve done four different water fasts that were between seven and 12 days. And I don’t go out there and talk on radio shows and podcasts about that because I know that nobody else is going to do it. It’s going to be, like, one in 1000. I mean, it’s kind of like my job to research and write about and publish my own experiments when it comes to health and wellness. And sometimes I do my own trials of people. We’re going to get into, hopefully, my own trials of people doing modified fast. But I really wasn’t out there saying everybody should do, like, seven day or 12 day water fast like I’ve done. But even though I’m open to it, and I was raised fasting once a month, I flew to Texas to stay at an ashram just to literally have the temptation removed. It’s not easy. It is not easy to fast. I would agree with that. And I do want to say since you mentioned diabetes that people who are on some diabetes medications really do need to be careful about fasting. You can’t just take those medications and go and start water fasting for days, or a week or two at a time. You really do need to have some good guidance from your practitioner. And a functional medicine practitioner is going to be a lot more likely to guide you. But there are some contraindications. Most people can fast, no problem. But people are a lot more toxic than they were even a generation ago. You know, it’s no joke that we have 80,000 chemicals approved for use in our air, food, and water. And they’re all in our organs now. And we all have pretty extraordinary levels of heavy metals. Any anybody who’s tested for that knows that we all pretty much have a variety of heavy metals that are highly toxic. So we have risk factors that maybe two generations ago people didn’t have. But what’s cool and what we’re going to get into today, I know that’s what you want to talk about, is a way that we can fast and that we can get all the benefits of it without just going cold turkey and having nothing but water for a week.     [00:10:48] Ashley James: Absolutely. I’ve done a variety of fasts. And you’re right about the temptation to try to do what only fast at home. Well, still cooking for my husband and our son who’s young, he’s four. But he was a little bit younger when I was doing some water only fasting. And just to be around food is difficult the first few days. And then after that the hunger goes away. But I think the first two or three days can be the hardest in my experience. But also then you have to be resting. If you’re water only fasting, you can’t necessarily get up, get the kids ready, make their lunches, take the kids to school, go to work, work a full day, come home, handle the chores. Just everything that we need to do, all the energy we need to put out there. While our bodies are going through a fast, our bodies are trying detox and cleanse and heal. And so we really have to take a break from life and schedule a time to just maybe lie on the couch or go for a gentle walks or read and not really do a lot. And that is not necessarily reasonable to ask the modern mom or dad right now. But these modified fasts where you we still get the benefits of the water only fasting are much more doable for the average person. I’d love for you to get into how did you get all this research? And how did you get excited about teaching people about fasting? What happened? Because you’ve been fasting, I think you said, since you were eight. That’s when in the LDS church, eight year olds on the first Sunday of every month spent a whole day not eating or drinking. So that’s just been part of your life. But at what point did you start to get into the science of wanting to then teach people how to fast in a way that’s modified so that they can still get the benefits and still actually do it and make it realistic?     [00:12:52] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. So my exposure to fasting early on, it was really for religious reasons and cultures since the dawn of time have fasted for spiritual purification. And the basic concept is – and anyone who is exposed to these religions or these philosophies, this will be no surprise – that as you humble the body and, like you mentioned it, that if you water fast, you can’t go out and play a tennis match. I’ve done two modified fast in the last two months where I went out on day two and on day three of my modified fast and played a competitive match and they were both in July and August in the Utah desert heat, middle of the day. This is not something I would have ever scheduled myself for doing a water fast. And so when I fly to this ashram to water fast to basically get away from my refrigerator and my car – like you can’t even get an Uber there. You’re literally out in the middle of nowhere. I pretty much lie in bed. And I might go for, like you said, a slow walk. I mean, I’m not a competitive athlete. And I play sports between one and three hours really every day besides Sunday. And I’ve always done that. And so for me to be so incapacitated by water fasting, you’re right, I would literally have to take time off work or take a week off work or, like I said, I did I did it for 12 days once. And I did it because there has been more and more actual published clinical research of how powerful fasting is. For instance, my friends who own True North in Santa Rosa, California. If I were going to go water fast again, I would go there. Because you’re getting medical supervision there. I knew I could do it. I knew I was healthy. So me flying to the ashram in Texas is fine. But I don’t recommend it to people. Because they don’t have any real oversight medically. And some people really should be watched over and your vitals taken twice a day and all that. But they’ve taken 20,000 people through a water fast and if people are into that they should totally do it. However, what I found is the vast majority of people won’t do it. So I was becoming aware. And then Yoshinori Ohsumi, Japanese researcher in 2016. I’m talking this is new information. This is literally less than three years old. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the mechanisms of autophagy. And I became just as a researcher – and my full time job is research and health and wellness and I’m an author of 16 books. And I became completely obsessed with this idea of autophagy. And I especially been preoccupied with it, because I researched cancer a lot. I have a lot of history of cancer in my family going way back. And I’ve always wondered, like, “What would I do? What are the things that I would do if I had cancer?” And then my cancer research all over the world, a lot of these doctors highly recommend fasting. And so I was curious about the mechanism of it. Well, when autophagy was discovered and quantified, what we learned is that when we deprive the body of food, when the body is not in a fed state, when it is a fasted state, the body shifts its energy. It no longer has to spend 65% of its energy metabolizing food and taking this raw input and taking it through a lot of different processes so that it becomes mitochondrial energy. We’re talking about the very end points of what that food is going to eventually do. So you free up the body from what it spends 65% of its energy doing. Ad guess what it does, it doesn’t take a nap. It goes into repair and clean up. And we could call that process autophagy, which means self- eating. And in the process of autophagy, the body’s immune system mobilizes – highly, highly mobilized killer T cells and white blood cells. White blood cells and stem cells are mass produced. And the body goes into tearing down broken parts. On the cellular level parts of cells are stripped down, broken down, metabolized, recycled. But also on an organ level and a systems level,your pancreas, for instance – and this is really exciting for diabetics, pre-diabetics, all of us considering that there are people projecting that by 2050 every single one of us will be diabetic if we keep going at the rate we’re going of diagnosis – the pancreas actually strips down broken parts and rebuilds. And those beta cells become more insulin sensitive. So we literally regenerate parts of the pancreas, functions of the pancreas. We become more insulin sensitive. And there are multiple human and animal trials showing that just from modified fasting, not even going completely without food. And really what I want to talk about is modified fasting because everyone can do it. And doing it a few days a month is the most powerful thing I’ve discovered in my lifetime of being a health and wellness researcher, the most powerful thing could possibly do to avoid disease, to reverse the effects, the ravages, the symptoms of disease. I mean, I’ll tell you what I think is the most mind blowing thing they’ve discovered is, is repairing myelin sheath – rebuilding myelin sheath. I mean, there are millions of people suffering with Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. And all timers. We’re not we’re not getting on top of these problems at all. And the methods of Western medicine are doing nothing for us, for people with Huntington’s disease and ALS. I mean, what a nightmare of a disease. But multiple sclerosis, it’s where you’re developing these lesions in the central nervous system and the myelin sheath is eroding. Well guess what? A few days of doing a modified fast in both animal and humans, we’re seeing rebuilding myelin sheath. That’s unbelievable.     [00:19:11] Ashley James: I love it. It is so mind blowing. I actually had Dr. Goldhamer on my show, Episode 230. And he’s the founder of the True North Medical Center that you mentioned. And he said autophagy happens on day three of fast. And then on day five of fast they see a huge spike in stem cells, the body repairing itself .Which is brilliant. It’s like a self-cleaning mechanism. It’s our own self-cleaning mechanism that the autophagy is digesting pathological tissue, bacteria, and viruses, and also cancer, and unwanted cells that are kind of broken or scar tissue, even cysts. And they’ve seen cystic breasts or cystic ovaries that diminished. So the body’s just digesting scar tissue and unwanted tissue, unneeded tissue. And then after it does the self-cleaning mechanism then it has this boost in the human growth hormone and in the stem cells. Which actually, what I found fascinating is it protects us from losing muscle mass. Because I think that’s a big fear people have is that they’re going to waste away. “If you lose weight on a fast, it’s just your muscle you’re losing. You’re not losing any fat. You’re just losing your muscle.” That’s a fear people have. And yes, we might have it. There’s a very small percentage of muscle that is lost. But then there’s a protective mechanism that kicks in that stops the body from using muscle as fuel in a fast. And I thought that was really interesting. and he published a study, Dr. Goldhamer, showing a woman who came in with end stage cancer. And 30 days after fasting with him walked out with zero cancer. She went and got scans before and after her 30 day stay there at the clinic. And he published it. And that is just, like, mind blowing because no oncologist is going to tell you, “Why don’t you try fasting?”     [00:21:08] Robyn Openshaw: They’re not. I think they’re going to be. The functional medicine doctors are and they’re putting cancer patients on. And I think that we’re going to see an explosion in this with anybody who’s open to functional medicine, nutritional medicine, are going to start putting people on a modified fast before chemotherapy. And this isn’t even released yet. But Dr. Valter Longo – you’ve mentioned our mutual friend Dr. Alan Goldhamer, and his work is some of what I cite in my new little book. I know you’re going to offer it for free to your readers. You can literally read it in an hour and you get an overview of all of the health conditions that the modified fasting research is showing is super, super beneficial for. And it runs the gamut. And I want to talk about cancer right now for a second since you brought that up. Because I’m actually telling you this before this clinical trial comes out. But Dr. Longo is the main researcher at USC’s Longevity Institute. And he and Sebastian Brandhorst are behind a lot of the clinical trials. They’re just going to town on all these different, very specific disease states that they study. What happens when you put people on three, four or five days of modified fasting? Johns Hopkins has some great stuff that I also quote in this little 70 page mini book in reversing asthma. But let’s go back to cancer. The animal studies, usually any hypothesis comes, then you go to an animal study. And then when animals see a major reversal in disease, then you take it into human trial. And that’s what they’re coming out with. They’re going to be recommending a four day modified fast before chemo, because what they found in animals and apparently the human study that they’re coming out with, also really, really exciting results. But three different major mechanisms. Actually, there may be a fourth or fifth. But how it helps cancer patients is several fold. And that is if you deprive the body of food, then the cancer cells and these colonies of cancer cells – and usually by the time somebody is diagnosed with cancer that cancerous growth has developed a vascular system and it’s threatening an organ system. Usually by the time it’s detectable, you’ve got that. And anybody listening to this, it’s like, “Oh, this doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have cancer.” I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here, but we all have cancer. And most of the holistic cancer doctors I’ve studied with all over the world – which is more than 20 of them- say that your body develops a detectable cancer condition several times during the course of a lifetime. But your body metabolizes. So your body is metabolizing cancer everyday. About 50,000 aberrant cells. Cells that were healthy and mutate. And that could be because of exposure to low grade radiation that we all have from the electromagnetic pollution in our life. It could be like garbage foods we eat. It could be stress. There’s a lot of reasons why cells mutate. We’ve got 50,000 cancer cells forming every day in the average person. And your body is metabolizing it all the way until it isn’t. And when the cancerous growth starts to get the upper hand and the immune system starts to function in a more and more dysfunctional way, so just imagine your immune system is getting weaker, the cancerous growth is getting stronger. Once it’s over about a million cells, that’s when it becomes detectable. That’s when it potentially could compromise some functioning of an organ system. Well, one thing that happens when you go into autophagy and also ketosis, by the way, when the body is in a fasted state is that cancerous cells can’t put up a shield. And sort of when they when they go into chemotherapy, they’re going to drown in those chemicals. The cancerous cells become more vulnerable as a result of the modified fast. And the healthy cells in the fasted state can put up a shield of sorts. And they become more resistant to chemotherapy. So that’s one of the ways that modified fasting is useful. Another way that it’s useful is mass production of stem cells increase, like you mentioned, of human growth hormone. Another way that it’s beneficial is that the immune system is strengthened. In a fasted state your white blood cells become very, very active. And other components, the lymphocytes, the killer T cells, like I said. And they all become highly mobilized. They’re hungry. They’re not sluggish. They’re not overfed. And so we’re going to wait and hear what all the details are of what Longo is coming out with. But he’s basically recommending a four day modified fast now, apparently, for people going into chemotherapy. And so I would be surprised if the oncology industry can continue to ignore the benefits of fasting. Now, I’m not saying a stage four cancer patient who is in cachexia where the body is metabolizing muscle. There’s probably a contraindication for some cancer patients to fast, especially to do a full blown water fast. When they’re in cachexia and the body is sort of breaking down muscle quite quickly, usually, they have people eating extra protein and trying to put on weight to stem that process. But you’re right, a lot of people are thinking that if – they think a couple things about if they’re fasting. They think that it’s going to slow down their metabolism. And Dr. Jason Fung has proven that, in fact, when you fast or when you do a modified fast for several days, your body’s metabolism actually increases. And people are worried that their body is going to break down muscle. Listen, trust your body to be smarter than that. Your highly intelligent body knows when it’s cleaning up. It knows what to throw out and what to keep. It knows the weeds from the cultivated plants. It knows to not go after healthy muscle tissue. Healthy muscle tissue is extremely durable. Now, it might grow go after some broken down muscle tissue. Because like every other tissue and organ in the body, there’s old skin cells. There’s old cells and tissues that need to be broken down. That’s the muscle tissue that is going to break down. And let me mention another thing, because you mentioned breaking down muscle tissue and that people are afraid of fasting for that reason. You know what? Another thing that happens is, you know, were studying 2500 people right now who are just starting into our three day modified fast and following our protocol. But before I ever went to a larger group like that, we put 100 people through our Flash Fast, which is a three day modified fast. And it follows all of the science. It follows all the research. Because I collected it all. I analyze it all. And I was like, “Okay. Here are all the principles that all of these researchers like Longo and Brandhorst are using in their clinical trials. They’re getting such great results. And we got to follow that. In fact, we’re doing one better than they are. Because Longos’s fasting protocol isn’t even organic and ours is organic. So we put 100 people on this three day modified fast and the average weight loss was four pounds. And several of that first group of 100 lost 6.4 pounds. That was the highest we saw. Several people lost that much. Now, you’re going to hear that. And you’re going to say three days of eating – we kept it under 800 calories. And we put them on five mini meals a day so that they never got very hungry. Their average highest hunger level was 3.4 on a scale of 1 to 10. That was their self rating. So you got to ask yourself if you’re scared to do a modified fast, if you’re scared to do a three day modified fast. And you’re like, “Oh my gosh. I’m going to be so hungry. And I won’t be able to exercise. And I won’t be able to take care of my kids. I won’t be able to work.” I’ve done it nine times. I’ve done the Flash Fast nine times. Like I said, I’ve played my competitive sport. I work out every morning. You can do that. I don’t know I would tell everybody to work out super hard. But you can totally be active while you do it. Well, 3.44 average hunger level of scale 1 to 10. But here’s what I wanted to say because people also think, “Oh, that’s just water weight.” And I want to point out what we’re talking about when we lose water in fasting. We’re not talking about dehydrating the body. When the body releases fluids in the fasting process it’s because of wide scale healing of inflamed tissues. And if you imagine an inflamed cell or an inflamed organ, if you want to go bigger, if you want to step up the ladder and think of an inflamed organ. Imagine that that organ has billions of cells that are trapping fluids because they’re inflamed. So just imagine the outside of the cell is kind of red and angry and injured and trapping fluids. Well, when the fasting process allows you to heal inflammation – and by the way, in that first 100 people we put through the Flash Fast, 100% of them said that they noticed inflammation decreasing or disappearing. And I’m talking about puffy circles under your eyes. I’m talking about joints that hurt. Those are the things that people tend to notice when it comes to inflation. Those are things you feel. Well, if you’re feeling that your joints hurt, you can guarantee that there are billions of cells that are injured. And so when the body goes into this repair mode and you lose some of that water weight – because I would agree that a minority of that 6.4 pounds is going to be water weight. – what it is, is those inflamed cells healing and releasing dirty fluids. And so it’s not water you want. That water that you’re releasing is dirty fluids from inflamed cells. And it’s a good thing.     [00:31:58] Ashley James: I love it. I love that you can do – anyone can do your fast, the three day modified fast. Even people who are diabetics because they’re not starving themselves. And they’ll have enough energy to still go to work, take care of the kids. Maybe they’ll need to just rest a little bit. Maybe they can’t run the marathon that day. But you still play tennis while you’re on your modified fast. So it just shows that – and the fact that the hunger levels are under four out of ten is phenomenal. But during the three day fast, people are getting great results. Now, those listeners who have heard other maybe interviews from other people about the ketogenic diet, I know I was on the ketogenic bandwagon early on in the show. So back in, like, before Episode 100 maybe I was talking about ketogenic. And I was doing ketosis. I thought it was the best thing in the world. And then I went to my Naturopath – my husband and I were doing it for a few months. We went to Naturopath and my husband who had had perfect blood pressure developed dangerously high blood pressure. And then we did some more blood work and urine analysis. And it turns out the ketogenic diet had damaged his kidneys severely. And I had an inflamed liver that was very angry and enlarged. And so we found out. And it took me a while. It took me being really diligent with the Naturopath and getting on the protocols. And completely getting off of the ketogenic bandwagon and getting on a whole food plant based healing plants protocol to heal my liver but and to heal my husband’s kidneys and his heart. And that’s when I woke up and went, “Wait a second. Everyone is kind of this fad.” This ketogenic diet is this big fad and I’ve been promoting it because I’m listening to all these people who also think it’s amazing. And people get some good results during a ketogenic diet. But there are some big negative results that you can get. And so then that’s when I started to look into interviewing whole food plant based people and started to see the light. So some people who are listening go, “Hey. I’m doing ketosis right now. I’m getting great results.” Or, “I’ve done ketosis. I got great results.” But your diet is not this 90 or 100% fat fast. Like some people say they’re fasting but they’re eating coconut oil a day long. Can you just clarify the for us that you could get into ketosis when you’re fasting, even water fasting, you don’t need to eat fat. But that your program is not a ketogenic diet.     [00:34:53] Robyn Openshaw: No, it’s not a ketogenic diet. And I’m really troubled by this fad. And people always push back when I post science about the danger of the ketogenic diet. I mean, US News and World Report every year since this became sort of the reigning fad, it sort of took the limelight away from the Paleo diet, that was the rain raining fad before that. There’s a panel of nutrition experts that collaborate and they rank all the fad diets. The ketogenic diets always almost dead last, it’s like in the bottom three of almost 40 diets that US News and World Report ranks every year. And they don’t just look at do people lose weight. Although it actually does pretty poorly there, too, compared to many other approaches that are more sustainable, that are more healthy, that are more useful in your heading on out to the rest of your life and how you can eat for the rest of your life. But I have a theory and it’s a theory based on my life’s work of studying nutrition. That if people do well on the ketogenic diet – and generally people do well for a short period of time and they get over committed to it if they lost some weight – if they lost some weight, it becomes religious for them. They’re not listening anymore. It becomes like this very emotional thing. Like, “I lost 10 pounds. Therefore, it’s a good diet.” Well, you can lose ten pounds doing the cotton ball diet, too, or the Jelly Bean diet. But here’s the thing, I believe – here’s my theory – that if people do well on the ketogenic diet and they haven’t yet evaluated how devastating it is for the liver to have to metabolize more fat than the human liver was designed to be able to break down and deal with, that’s just the 70% average ratio of fat that people on the ketogenic diet are eating is really, really hard on the liver. And I’m very sorry that that happened to you. And your husband, I am sorry to say, I’m not surprised. But my theory is that people are, to the extent people are doing well and there’s lots of stories like yours. And there’s course like all the keto rash and the bad breath and the bad smells and all the things that happen when you put your body in a really unnatural state and it’s really struggling. Those are all signs of struggle. It’s not a good way to treat your body. They’re doing well not because they’re over eating fat. If they’re doing well, it’s because they skipped a meal. The intermittent fasting is a great idea and that is offsetting the damage they’re doing to their liver and kidneys. And the other thing that’s offsetting the damage they’re doing to their liver and kidneys is that if you take someone on a standard American diet, where they’re drinking rock stars or their eating Pop Tarts for breakfast, or they eat a candy bar with every lunch and dinner or whatever it is, whatever your dietary sins are, potato chips, you name it. If you take them off of those things because as bad as I think the ketogenic diet is for over feeding fats and that people say, “Oh, I ate good fats.” Yeah, but you still can’t eat 70% fat and expect your liver to keep up it’s not designed for that. You have to know a little bit about the liver to go into an unnatural state of eating like that. But I really believe that getting people off the processed food and the intermittent fasting is why they’re actually pretty bad diet. They’re overeating fats diet is why they might lose weight or why they might feel better. It’s because they got rid of the processed food. It’s really that simple. And unfortunately, because they get people off of sugar, and stimulants, and alcohol while they’re doing the “keto diet.” The overeating of fats gets the credit for that that it doesn’t deserve.     [00:39:01] Ashley James: Right. And now, the science will eventually catch up and will eventually see. But it’s so new as a fad. We have to remember that it was designed to mimic fasting for epileptic children that were unresponsive to drugs. And its beneficial for a very small percentage of the population. And that these children, in the quality of their life, is significantly lowered if they’re not in a state of ketosis. They created the diet originally, the ketosis – the ketogenic diet originally was created because these doctors were doing fasting with children. They were doing water fasting and they found that the children – because going into a natural state of ketosis when we’re not eating anything – that their epilepsy would get better or significantly lowered amounts of seizures. And then they had to figure out how to modify it so they could still eat because they – I don’t know what it was but legally they couldn’t do fasting with children or something. That’s why the diet came out of basically trying to mimic the benefits of fasting. It’s like why people going after the copycat? Just go to the original source and do a fast and get the benefits from it.     [00:40:25] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. And you said eventually science will catch up. And I’m glad to hear you being bold and speaking the truth. Because it’s not popular right now to be a critic of the darling diet of the day. But let me just say, because I’m a lot older than you, that the science already did catch up with the last time keto was around with a different name. They put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig. The fact of the matter is that it’s the Atkins diet but you add intermittent fasting. Actually, it’s a better diet than Atkins was. Because Atkins in the early days was like eat unlimited hamburgers and cheese, you just can’t have the bun. And for God’s sake don’t have any fruit. And most of us are aware of how Atkins diet went down is lots and lots and lots of studies of people who had done it off and on for years. Here’s the thing, you can’t really separate out the all the animal products that people are in Atkins from keto. It’s the same thing. You can say, “Oh, that was higher protein and this is higher fat.” Keto is higher fat. But you’re really splitting hairs. And if you take a look at what the diet was they were actually eating on Atkins and the diet people on keto, it’s the same diet. And Dr. Atkins because he was so under fire for the nutritional deficiencies that people on his diet had. He sold people over 60 different supplements. So it was brilliant in terms of a marketing plan. And that people buy his diet and then they were really suffering. And they smell bad. And they were losing energy. They could hardly function. And so he would sell them a whole bunch of supplements. And people did lose weight. And so they just thought, “Oh, this is the price I have to pay, I guess, to lose weight. And people will do anything to lose weight. That’s why diets are billion dollar industry. But we already know what happened because there’s lots and lots of published studies. I mean, Colin Campbell wrote the Low Carb Myth. Ari Whitten, Dr. Wade Smith wrote Low Carb Fraud. Michael Greger wrote Carbophobia. And these are just digests of all the published research that came out after 15 years of the Atkins diet. It got run off the stage by science. So exactly what you just said. All we have to do is go back and look at the high levels of diabetes that people who did Atkins for long periods of time had ongoing. They had been paying the piper for that. They still are for years and years and years. Much higher rates of heart disease, much higher rates of cancer.     [00:43:07] Ashley James: One final thing I want to say about that diet where it’s a low carbohydrate – and these are the good carbohydrates, like the healthy potatoes and vegetables and fruit, and legumes. Really cleansing and healthy for the body filled with vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients and anti-cancer properties. So when you’re eating a diet that’s almost nonexistent, no carbohydrates. And then you’re just consuming fat and animal meat, which is carcinogenic. And there’s a lot of research that shows that. They’re eating that way. Of course, blood sugar, like A1C hemoglobin – I used to be type 2 diabetic and I healed myself with food. And so I’m really passionate about this. Because people when they go to their MD are told that they will have diabetes for the rest of their life and they manage it with drugs. But there’s no drug on the market to cure diabetes. You can manage it. And yet if you were to walk out of that doctor’s office and go to a holistic practitioner, they would say to you, “Of course type 2 diabetes is reversible. It’s reversible in a few months, a matter of months. Let’s get you on a healing lifestyle and healing protocol.” And so on a ketosis or an Atkins or ketogenic high fat diet or an Atkins high fat and protein diet, of course, your blood sugar levels will come down. You’re not consuming any carbohydrates. But it is doing damage throughout the body. And it is not addressing the insulin resistance. The insulin resistance actually becomes worse for many people. And then if they go back to eating the standard American diet or just even start eating fruits and adding some carbohydrates in, they will quickly see that that diet did not help them to reverse the diabetes. So they’ll become they’ll be just as sensitive to carbs if not more. So we have to look at how can we help the body come back into balance. Don’t do extreme things. Some people think fasting is extreme. Fasting is a natural state that we’re used to. And like you said, only up until recently we’ve had access to food for three or more meals a day. But fasting is something that it’s a natural state. This is a natural thing the body wants to do. And when we can aid it, either by doing modified Flash Fast, which is that 800 calories a day – very specific calories, not just inner calories of donuts a day. The coffee and donut diet. It’s not the coffee and donut fast. But that we can take our body back into this natural state of self-cleaning – the self-cleaning protocol to clean out the cancer cells, to clean up the water. And the fact that just in three days, the 100 people that you did this experiment with that 100% saw a decrease in inflammation and a decrease in overall that that water that was in their organs and in their tissue because of the inflammation was able to be released is phenomenal. So how did they feel after the fast? And obviously they weren’t that hungry. They was less than four to ten, that’s just totally fine. That was the most they were ever hungry was like 3.6, you said on average. But how did they feel afterwards?     [00:46:41] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. I feel like a million bucks afterwards. In fact, I didn’t intend to do the Flash Fast nine times in the last three months. It’s just that I feel like one million bucks. And then so like, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I do it. And I’m going and I’m playing 90 minutes of tennis with my team. I generally will do 45 minutes of cardio as soon as I wake up. Sometimes that night, I’ll go to a hot yoga class. Now, I’m not saying everyone should do that. That’s my normal lifestyle. The point is, I have been astonished doing it that I don’t have to stop doing that kind of thing. But everyone has their own reaction to it. And we have just tons and tons and tons of people filling out the questionnaire and telling us their results. I mean, people who are seeing their hormone systems balanced. And they go into their next period and they can’t believe that they haven’t had a period like that for ten ears. They just sail through it without the headaches, without the PMS. without the cramps. We have people reporting similar things to what we’ve read in the scientific literature which led me to develop the Flash Fast regarding stabilizing their mood. That’s a huge issue for people. And people are embarrassed to talk about it because they don’t want to talk about that they have a hard time controlling the ups and downs in their moods. So we have so many of us who struggle with anxiety and depression. And those were some of the exciting things that I had read in this just avalanche that’s coming out especially through Longo and Brandhorst at USC about the many, many categories of health benefits from just doing a modified fast a few days a month. We have people who are doing it now monthly. Especially people who have weight they want to lose. If weight loss is a goal, you could do it once a month, you can do it twice a month. There’s no contraindications for that. There’s no problem with that. Like I said, I’ve been doing it three times a month. If you had a few glasses of wine on the weekend and you wake up on Monday morning, you don’t feel great, instead of it taken two days to feel great, do that modified fast and your body regenerates the liver so quickly. You can’t believe how good you feel by the end of the day, Monday. Now, are you going to be hungrier than you are when you eat your normal 2,000 calories or whatever it is? You are. You are. I no longer dread it now that I’ve done it nine times. Like, I don’t even dread it. It’s not difficult. I know exactly what I’m going to eat. I have my five mini meals. And I like them. They’re delicious. They take two seconds to prepare. And so I mean, some of them take two minutes to prepare. And some of them it’s just a bar made from greens, seeds, nuts, vegetables, and fruits. And so that one doesn’t take any time at all to prepare. But people are reporting to us that they feel energetic, they feel light on their feet, their joints don’t hurt, their brain the pistons are firing. They don’t have that cognitive delay and the sort of mental slowness. Especially after you come out of a weekend, people tend to let down a little bit on the weekend. But the cognitive, the mental clarity, and energy effects of doing a modified fast are super exciting. Before I put the flash [inaudible 00:50:14], before I started doing my own research, there were some trials where the clinicians who ran them found that fasting, also modified fasting, between days two and seven, people in these studies – there are also animal studies so they’re observing behavior instead of self-report – they have an improvement in mood. They have an increase in alertness. And they have a sense of serenity. Those three big things are things that we are now from our first 2,500 people just now going through the process. They’re reporting to us and it’s beyond exciting.     [00:50:59] Ashley James: I love it. What about this fear that after doing a three day fast, we would rebound and overeat? As a – I don’t know – as a way of reacting to it. So it’s like if I eat very little for three days, aren’t I just going to eat more the next few days? Some people are afraid. Maybe they’re overeaters or emotional eaters or they binge eat. And they’re worried that by restricting that they would then binge afterwards. What’s been the experience with your cohort?     [00:51:30] Robyn Openshaw: The interesting thing is that with dieting, we know that that happens. There have been lots of studies that show that people just go face first into a plate of nachos when they’re done. But I want to, first of all, tell you academically why not to do that. But I also want to say that even with water fasting, I didn’t do that. You talked about this stomach shrinking and other phenomena that make you actually not super hungry after a fast. I haven’t experienced that at all. There’s one study that track people doing a monthly cycle of modified fasting who kept the weight off. And they followed them, so in six months – they continued to lose weight, they did not regain it. There are a bunch of studies – this is one of the things that I think is most exciting about modified fasting – where the insulin sensitivity and other health benefits are long term. The myelin sheath, for instance, these are long term health gains. This isn’t like a little shot in the arm, “O, I eat fewer calories. Of course, I feel better because I lost four pounds or whatever.” The kind of work that the body is able to do when it’s in a fasting state is very restorative. It’s very reparative. And it’s not like we do it once for three days and call it good for life. However – and I’m really advocating for people doing it once a month. Once a month, if you have weight to gain. If you’re completely healthy but you’re just doing it as a preventative, at least consider doing it quarterly. We at Green Smoothie Girl, we actually feed a child in Zambia through Mothers Without Borders. I’ve supported Mothers Without Borders for many, many years. And I talked to my followers about Mothers Without Borders all the time. They do such amazing work around the world. But specifically, we feed a child in Africa for three days. And we’re talking about AIDS orphans in a place where there’s no public education. And so they’re provided education and food. And for one Flash Fast that when you eat less for three days, I feed a child in Africa for three days in your name. But there are long term weight loss. If you lost an average of four pounds a month doing a three day cycle, potentially that’s 48 pounds in a year just doing a modified fast three days a month. You’re not even addressing the rest of your diet. Now, if the rest of your diet isn’t good, we highly recommend, of course, to a more whole foods plant based diet.     [00:54:15] Ashley James: Refer to Robbins other books.     [00:54:18] Robyn Openshaw: Yes. I don’t want to imply, “Hey, keep your crap diet and just do a three day modified fast.” However, we all live in the real world. I just got back from five days in Cancun with my children who are college students. And I can officially report I did not eat a perfect diet there. And I love that I have a quick reset. I mean the liver is the most regenerative organ we have. And it’s also super, super scary when we turn it to rubber. Or end up with fatty liver disease. It’s hard to come back from those things. But you know what? When we do little fine tuning once a month, I think it’s extremely powerful. I can absolutely tell that my liver is serving me well after I do this three day process. I’m just on point. I find my words quickly because I have to. I have 25 employees and I’m constantly in the media and I need to not be on a decline like most people are in their 50s, at my age.     [00:55:22] Ashley James: Do you find or have people reported that after the three day modified fast, that they are more satiated from eating. That they really do feel like their stomach may be shrunk. And that they’re not – they find that they can eat smaller portions or happier with that. Or is there any kind of reporting on that? I just wonder if the reason why they lose that four pounds on average in those three days but then it stays off. If it stays off then, eventually, they do this fast three days once a month for every month. Eventually, they’re losing fat. Not just water weight because they’re hopefully eating a good diet. They’re losing the inflammation. And you said, it’s restorative, long lasting results. And if they do it consistently, like maybe twice a month or once a month, then eventually they’re losing fat. And I’m just wondering if the reason why it stays off is that it helps to reset our relationship with food. And also physically we just feel satisfied and fuller quicker.     [00:56:34] Robyn Openshaw: I have definitely gotten that feedback from hundreds of people who’ve done our 26 day detox. With the three day Flash Fast, I don’t know that I have longitudinal enough data or enough data to be able to say that yet. But I haven’t heard people say they want less food after three days. But I do not have the experience myself personally. And I also haven’t heard that the flip side is true, which is that they just want to eat everything in sight. You don’t come out of it the next day wanting to eat like crazy. And here’s what I wanted to say before. I’m glad that what you just asked me reminded me this. I want to talk about the refeeding process. Because there’s if you do a three day Flash Fast and if people are willing to do six days, do two of them back to back. Our Flash Fast costs 30% of what ProLon is. ProLon is the company spun off by Dr. Longo and those guys who the researchers. I don’t know if he owns it or he just endorses it or what, but it literally costs $225 for five days. Ours is like 40 bucks for three days. It’s less than some people are spending at Starbucks. It’s like $13.33 a day. And ours is organic. And there’s isn’t. And I actually like their product. I don’t understand some of the stuff in it like the glycerin drink. I don’t want to drink glycerin. I don’t understand why I have to drink glycerin. Orange flavored glycerin, no less. I mean, I love what they’re doing. And I love Longo’s research. I don’t really understand the ProLon protocol. I don’t understand why it has to cost $45 a day. So I saw that and I was like, “God, I love the idea.” And some people will go and figure it out themselves. And we’re happy to help them with that, too, figure out how to do what – Longo calls it fasting mimicking diet. And you notice I haven’t said that because he has that trademark. But that’s what is in his book. I call it modified fast. I think that’s a simpler, more intuitive concept. Basically the same thing. But he is very adamant about this. And I think it’s important to bring up that when you take your body deep into autophagy, three days doesn’t take you deep into autophagy like a 12 day water fast does. But it does get you into autophagy. So when your body goes into breaking down broken parts, Longo talks about the metaphor of the wood burning train. So when I interviewed him on my podcast, he said imagine with fasting – or what we’re calling here modified fasting -he says fasting mimicking diet -imagine that your body in a fasted state is like a wood burning train. And you aren’t going to get to the station. You realize you’re going to run out of fuel in the fire. And you’re not going to make it to the station. So what do you do? You rip out a couple of chairs. So you rip out some of the wood chair. Some of the ones that look like they’re old anyway. And you chop them up and you throw them in the fire. And that way you get to the station. Well, then you get to the station and you got two missing chairs. So you have to rebuild them. And that’s the metaphor for what’s going on if you do the three day modified fast. If you’re feeling ambitious, if you’re trying to reverse a chronic illness like diabetes or MS or whatever your specific reason is, those folks who are trying to reverse a chronic illness they’re really suffering from, those are the ones who are more likely to be willing to do two Flash Fasts in a row. If you’re willing to do six days, great. Go for it. Flash fast was built to be something that anyone will do. I have talked to – it’s about one in ten that I’ve pulled very, very, very informal research here. People who tried to ProLon and most of them dropped out after day three. I, personally, did three days and I couldn’t take it anymore. And I went back and did another two days later. I never finished –     [01:00:40] Ashley James: Of the ProLon. Not of your program. Of the ProLon which has weird chemical glycerin flavored stuff and not whole foods, not nutrients.     [01:00:49] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. And his is a five day. His is a five day. And my own informal research says people don’t finish the five days. The Flash Fast is built for three days. Anyone will do it. Virtually, everyone finishes our three day Flash Fast. If you want to double it and do six days to get into deeper states of autophagy, go for it. There’s no contraindications for that. It’s inexpensive to do. However, here’s the thing I want to say about refeeding, where you get to the station, you get to the end of the three days. Now, it’s time to rebuild. You have to be aware that after all that effort by your body in autophagy to break down broken parts in cells, broken, defective, old parts of organs, aberrant cell clusters like small cancer clusters. Your body broke all that down. Now, it needs to rebuild. And so for however many days that you did that modified fast, that many days afterward, consider your body to be in refeeding mode. And you want to make sure that you give your body really quality materials. Because that old saying of you are what you eat is never more relevant than we were talking about the refeeding process after a fast. And so you don’t want to do a Flash Fast for three days and then go out and have nachos and beer for your next meal. You don’t want to ask your body to rebuild tissues out of garbage. So the materials you want to use are primarily greens, vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds. So plant-based whole foods.     [01:02:42] Ashley James: Exactly. And then we could also choose to do it in the form of smoothies or soups or stews, which are very gentle. Very gentle on the on the gut. I like refeeding in a way that is moist food. Just taking your favorite vegetables and blend it into a soup or a stew and add some legumes to it. I did that this morning. I took a wonderful soup that we made. It was just very basic broccoli, potato, onion, cauliflower, water. Boil it then hand immersion, blender it. And that is the foundation. Either I just drink that. I warm it up and drink that. Or I’ll add – this morning I took that as the base and took a bunch of – I had leftover sweet potatoes, leftover [inaudible 01:03:31], leftover mushrooms, and leftover zucchini and threw that into the soup. And so it became a nice kind of fix stew. And then leftover brown lentils and added some – there’s no salt seasoning from Costco, which is really, really delicious. It was something like 23 herbs I think are in it. And it tastes so good. It tastes really, really good. But it’s very gentle and moist. So it’s hydrating to the body and really gentle on the gut. Potato is really good for supporting the microbiome, the good bacteria. And this type of fast doesn’t really drastically affect the microbiome. Water only fasting kind of kills off a lot of the bacteria that we have to rebuild. But this doesn’t do that. How about people who have SIBO or gut dysbiosis or Candida, what kind of results do they see on your protocol?     [01:04:32] Robyn Openshaw: I don’t have data like that. We’re too new out there with our specific three day Flash Fast. However, there is evidence that fasting can help repair or seal up that leaky gut disorder. Ad when you starve the body for a period of time, you’re also starving the yeast. And when the body goes into autophagy, we’ve mentioned that it goes after cancerous growth. We’ve kind of focused on that. But also the body can then really go after viral colonies and bacterial overgrowth. Most of us have bacteria and viruses. If all of us got full panels of blood testing, a lot of us would find out we have a Subclinical Epstein Barr. A shocking number of us would find out that we have Subclinical Lyme Disease. We would find out a lot of things that would be disturbing. I know this because I take people to Switzerland and actually get these tests. And I have found out my own low grade bacterial and viral load that you only think that you “have something” like the flu or whatever when you become ill and you’re in bed. Well, guess what? If your immune system is struggling against a high burden of bacterial and viral load, it just has a hard time doing stuff like staying on top of cancer growth. And another couple of examples that you’re bringing up is, like, that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. In autophagy, the body goes after that stuff. In fact, when I went to – the last time I was at that ashram in Texas, the fourth time I went, there was a gentleman there named Eric, who had been in the hospital for a month on antibiotics. He had been on antibiotics after antibiotic and it was because he was a heroin addict for many years. I want to say, like, 12 years. He was about my age. And the man looked nine months pregnant. And he showed up in a total desperation because he couldn’t eat anything without looking nine months pregnant. He was thin guy. He was, like 6’4″. And he’s a pretty fit looking guy. He had given up meth a long time before. But because he was so sick from his drug use, he ended up in a MRSA infection. And they just had to just nuke him with every kind of antibiotic there is. So here he has no good gut bacteria. He’s just a disaster. And his long term effects of that, even though he hasn’t done street drugs since then, is that anything he ate would blow his belly up. And he would have all this pain and swelling. And that’s why he looked, well, maybe eight months pregnant. And I actually have a picture of him in a video masterclass I did about our detox. Well, this guy was there too fast for two weeks. And he was there to starve out the bad bacteria that had totally taken over his whole GI tract. And he left there. He texted me weeks afterwards and he said, “I still feel like a million bucks. It’s just a miracle.”     [01:07:51] Ashley James: I love it. Oh, it’s so cool. So many people are suffering with gut dysbiosis and Candida or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And this is such a gentle way to get rid of it. Because you go to – even [inaudible 01:08:08] doctors they’ll bombard you with these really powerful herbs to kill it. And then you’re dealing with that and you’re dealing with the die off and it doesn’t feel very good. But this is a natural way to, again, self-cleansing. And it’s part of that – almost like a parasite cleanse, the microscopic parasites. It really does feel like we should be doing this on a regular basis to do that self-cleaning. I mean we take our car through a car wash, especially in the summertime. We’ll pay good money to keep our car clean, to keep our carpets clean, to wash our clothes, or even take our clothes to the dry cleaner. We pay good money to look clean on the outside. But what about on the inside? And that’s what this is. This is just the self-cleaning. What about those with autoimmune conditions? A lot of listeners have Hashimoto’s and other autoimmune conditions. I know MS is considered an autoimmune condition. And it’s amazing to see that people are able to rebuild myelin while doing a fast. Have you heard any information about people with autoimmune, specifically seeing good results?     [01:09:23] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. And diabetes too. Yes. There is quite a bit of evidence starting to emerge. And I think that Longo and the researchers at USC are taking on more clinical trials with humans for autoimmune. But you can actually break down broken parts in some of the glands and the organs as well. That’s the principle behind it. That’s the mechanism. And help rebuild a healthier thyroid. Help rebuild a healthier pancreas. I mean, when the liver and the pancreas are rehabilitated and can release enzymes appropriately, when the thyroid is regulated and in balance and producing the right amounts of hormones at the right times, that’s when we see this hormone balancing effect. So there are some exciting, new emerging data points that lead to, my great hope, that as we all embrace a few days of modified fasting – if you don’t want to go cold turkey and do water fasting, then don’t. But that’s one of the major benefits that researchers are discovering is that, your hormone system balances itself. And that’s pretty exciting for people who are on chemical or synthetic drugs. I mean, I’m a fan of the bioidentical approach to hormones. But what if you could actually clean up these organs and glands that produce the hormones in the first place? What if we could, in the process of autophagy, eliminate a lot of the toxic body burden that keeps our thyroid and many other upstream and downstream organs and glands functioning properly? So they’re just not always doing so much battle. I love the idea when I’m fasting of the fact that I’m just stripping it all down, stripping down the garbage. And I’m enhancing and rebuilding and strengthening the various parts of my immune system that I need to keep me strong going into healthy aging.     [01:11:37] Ashley James: I love that you brought up balancing hormones. And we have a Facebook Group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group. And several members have shared recently their dilemma that they’re on the birth control pill to regulate their period. We have some mothers sharing about their daughters, their teenage daughters who are having too heavy of a period or periods are lasting longer than two weeks. Or the PMS is so drastic, they can’t go to school. And so the doctors put them on the pill to regulate it. Which I’ve had several interviews about the damaging long term effects of being on the pill. And that is definitely worth listening to. You can go to learntruehealth.com and in the search box type in birth control or the pill and find those episodes. It’s really good for us to fully be informed before we get on any medication, both natural and pharmaceutical. But especially pharmaceutical because it is man made. We have to really acknowledge that there are always side effects. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could arm these women with a way to balance their bodies in a completely natural way? I mean, you’re saying that even as simple as a modified fast could support their hormones, could support their endocrine system to come back into balance.     [01:13:05] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. Absolutely. Because there’s two things to look out. One is your body isn’t producing the right amounts of hormones that are all in the right proportions to each other. Because just throwing some Cytomel at it – or what’s the other one? Not Synthroid. Cytomel and Synthroid, yeah. Just throwing some Synthroid at is not actually solving the problem. But fasting has the capacity to get at the actual problem. The actual problem isn’t just misfire of specific glands that are supposed to serve you. But it’s also the fact that those glands are drowning in chemical toxins, which is another one of the virtues of just stop eating for a few days or eat a lot less.     [01:13:54] Ashley James: Now, I loved your book. You’re giving it to the listener for free. I loved it. I couldn’t put it down. You said we can finish it in an hour. I just didn’t want to put it down. It’s a really easy read but it is chock full of really good information and constant references to the studies. So it’s not just your opinion. It’s not a fad thing. This is absolutely 100% science based. And it’s a really well-written book. And the fact that you’re giving it to us for free is even better. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/fastbook to get the free ebook. And then and I want to talk next about your Flash Fast program. Like you said it’s about $40 for three days, which would save me money. Because I’m pretty sure I spend more money on groceries just for myself. More than $40 in three days. So that is probably saving a lot of people money to even just do it, like you said, for three or six days. And listeners can check that out by going to learntruehealth.com/flashfast. And all these links are going to be on the show notes for today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. How many times in a row would it be safe to do your three day fast? Like you said someone could do it for three or six days if they bought two kits and did it back to back. But let’s say someone wanted to just – I don’t know – do it for 12 days or entire month. At what point do you think people should take a break from it?     [01:15:22] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. So far we’ve only had people who do two of them back to back. But we just released this product two months ago. And I did it because I was so excited about ProLon having read Dr. Valter Longo who deserves a ton of credit for discovering how powerful modified fasting is. And by the way, the name of the book -just so you guys know why I’m saying, “Hey, this is worth an hour of your life to read this.” It will totally deeply commit you to the idea of fasting. The book and Ashley is giving you a link to get it for free. And we send you with your first Flash Fast. We send you a printed copy of it. But it’s called How to Get The Health Benefits of Fasting Without Going Hungry. And Longo deserves so much credit. He’s got a bee in his bonnet about what does it do for this? What does it do for that? What does it do for this other thing? And I think he’s especially going to really enhance the lives of cancer patients. I mean, his animal study, he did a modified fast on all these mice before he then put them through a cycle of chemotherapy. And after, I think, it was four days of modified fasting, he put the mice on. The ones who got the chemotherapy without fasting first, they were all dead. And the ones who did the four day modified fast cycle before chemotherapy, they were all running around in their cages. So that’s what made him go, “Okay. We got to go take this to human beings.” But I didn’t love his program. And I didn’t understand why when you’re eating less than 800 calories a day. how does it cost $45 a day? I mean, I could eat in a restaurant for breakfast lunch and dinner for that amount and so much packaging – incredibly much packaging. So I was like, we already make at Green Smoothie Girl, we make these products. They’re organic. They’re plant based. We’ve made them and tweaked them and gotten feedback from our followers for years. And I was like, “Okay. If we put this, this, and this and single serves.” And so we tested the heck out of it. I’ve been working on this for a year. I was like, “How can we bring the cost of this way, way down? ” And read the book, you can do a fast yourself. It’s not for everyone to have it be super, super easy. But on the other hand, it’s not for everyone to have to cook their vegetables and prep it and take it to work and all that. So it is a little bit higher in protein than your average vegan diet. There’s a significant amount more protein in there. But it’s whole food plant based. One version of it has some bone broth in it. And the other version is 100% vegan. And so you can choose whichever one you want. All of them right now are shakes and bars and sprouted flax that you add two shakes. So everything in, all of the ingredients are superfoods, greens, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. That’s the end bone broth in one of the kits. And so for the vegans, don’t buy the one with bone broth in it.     [1:18:30]  Ashley James: But the bone broth is really healing for gut especially if you know you have leaky gut or gut dysbiosis. Any autoimmune condition, just automatically assume you have leaky gut. It’s just really good to just start with healing the gut. So even if you have like distension, like you said that guy who’s thin but he looks seven months pregnant. Anything that has to do with healing the gut and if you’re not vegan, go with the bone broth because it is so healing for helping to close up those gaps in the in the microvilli.     [01:19:04] Robyn Openshaw: There’s twice as many people choosing the bone broth one than the vegan one. And my assumption is, it’s because that’s the number of people who are noticeably suffering from gut issues. I mean, anyone who’s been on antibiotics in the last 10 to 20 years, most people haven’t really recovered from that. It takes some serious work to recover from antibiotics. And I mean, the average American is being prescribed an antibiotic every 11 months at this point. Actually, that’s American children. I don’t imagine that American adults are much different. So antibiotics, they really wipe out whole swaths of those good bacteria that keep us in balance so that our immune system can do its job. Most of the immune system is in the gut, which I’m sure you’ve said that like 20 times in your – what have you done, 500 episodes now, Ashley?     [01:20:00] Ashley James: We’re approaching 400 episodes. But yes, I believe it’s something like 70% of the immune system is surrounded by the gut. It surrounds the gut and there’s an absolute relationship between gut health and immune health. And you can’t fix one without the other. You have to address gut health. And what’s wonderful is a whole food plant based diet has all the wonderful prebiotics to support bringing the good cultures in. And a fast helps to starve the bad stuff. So we can do this . We don’t need to be on crazy medications. We can do this naturally.     [01:20:41] Robyn Openshaw: And I wanted to mention that too. Is if you’re interested in rehabilitating gut health, you got to eat starchy foods. And so these foods are high in fiber. I mean, it’s really very simple. People think they need some kind of medication and to go to the functional medicine doctor to rebuild their gut. But please don’t forget the key in all it, most people are not going to bring their gut health back just by taking probiotic, even if it has prebiotic. Even if it’s alive. Like, I’ve done Facebook demos where I show several brands of probiotics and most of them are dead. Most of them won’t culture milk. But even if you get a good living probiotic and it’s really broad ranging. It has a bunch of different types of probiotics and it’s got good prebiotics for it to feed on. You still need to eat that the bulk. You need to eat the fiber so that there’s something in the gut for the probiotics and the cultured foods that you might be eating to build on. And if you eat the standard American diet, it’s extremely scarce in that fiber. I mean. average American is getting 11 grams a day of fiber. And you got chimpanzees who might eat hundreds of grams of fiber Their gut isn’t a whole lot different than ours. And so we’re very, very similar to the primates. And so 11 grams. I mean, just your court of green smoothie a day, you’re going to double your fiber right there. So habits like that. Veg salads, sweet potatoes, rice, regular potatoes, they’ve been demonized but they’re really great for gut rebuilding. Starchy foods, they’ve gotten a bad rap because the last two fad diets are anti-carbohydrate. But you know what? That’s a lot of why everybody’s suffering with gut issues is there’s people scared of carbohydrates. That’s where the fiber is, friends.     [01:22:44] Ashley James: These are foods that support a healthy gut biome. So people are on at least one antibiotic a year and then they’re not eating any foods to help support healthy gut bacteria. And then they end up with a slew of medical conditions. Because if we cannot digest and assimilate our nutrients, we can’t build ourselves. And what’s really interesting is that the healthy gut bacteria actually help us. There’s about between two and three pounds of bacteria in our body that isn’t us. Like, cells that aren’t us. It’s just pretty crazy how much of our gut health has nothing to do with us. These are bacteria. But that they are part of our digestive process that without them we could not assimilate and absorb nutrients. So we need them. This is a symbiotic relationship. We can’t be sterile. We need to think about there’s an entire colony inside us that helps to break down and assimilate and absorb nutrients. What’s really interesting is if you go on a farm and eat, let’s say, strawberries. You pick them right out of the ground. It’s all organic. There’s bacteria on the strawberry. And when you eat it, it gets into your gut. It starts to populate in your gut. That bacteria on the strawberry that’s native to being on the strawberry helps us to break down assimilate the nutrients from strawberry. So the more variety of fruits and vegetables we eat, especially fresh ones – organic and fresh and as fresh as possible right from the ground. So that’s why farmers markets and having your own garden if you can or finding friends that do have their own garden and eating foods that are still alive will also help to repopulate the gut. But then also help you assimilate that food. That’s why people have done studies where they ate nothing potatoes for a year and they weren’t nutrient deficient, which is mind blowing. I love that you brought up fiber. I’ve had a man on the show twice and he has been doing – he spent $20,000, he’s a school teacher. But his is a masters in acupuncture but now he’s a school teacher. But his passion is doing fasting and proving that fasting is healthy. So he spent about $20,000 of his own money doing these blood tests every six months. Retests the PCBs and bisphenol A, and all of the toxins, glyphosate, all these toxins that are on our food and in our water and air. And he tests his levels. And he’s doing these 30 day fast and then testing to see how long these – how much progress he can make. And what he noticed is that, you do a long fast once a year and he’s a vegan. He eats whole food plant based. So he’s always eating cleaner. He was eating organic. But he still had these high levels of heavy metals and pollution, basically, in his body. And he noticed that he was getting kind of good results. But then he decided to do, “Okay. I’m going to do a fast and sauna.” And then he would watch and see after every six months taking his blood work. And he’d see that was getting even better results. Then he added something to absorb the toxins in his gut. Which he had an activated charcoal and he got the best results. So the best results, absolutely, sauna therapy and fasting. He did like a big fast once a year. But using activated charcoal during the fast because our liver takes toxins out of our body when we’re fasting, puts them in our bile, and then shoots them into the small intestine is trying to get rid of them. But the problem is our body wasn’t designed to recognize all these toxins. And so to make itself more efficient, the body then reabsorbs the bile. And with all the toxins back in – reabsorbs most of it and reuses it. Because bile is kind of costly for the body to make. And so fiber, if we did a kind of detox like a modified fast which is your – I love your product, specifically because it’s high in fiber. Fiber binds to and stores and holds onto the bile so that we cannot reabsorb those toxins of the body’s trying to get rid of. And that’s why I really love your fast because people can do it and still go to work. They will still have enough energy to get through the day. In fact, they start feeling even better. They’re dropping inflammation and water weight so they’re noticing that they have less aches and pains and they have more mental clarity. They’re probably saving money. Because saving money on food while still eating, like your 800 calories of organic food. And then their body is – the fiber is able to pull out the toxins and get them out of us while also the same kinds of fiber also supporting the healthy gut biome. So there’s just so many reasons why someone should try your Flash Fast. Are there any reasons why someone shouldn’t do it? I mean, we just really want to be up front. Is there other people for whom this wouldn’t be good for?     [01:28:10] Robyn Openshaw: Pregnant and nursing women. Nursing being like when breast milk is most of the babies calories. When baby is recreationally nursing later, probably not a problem. But pregnant nursing moms, stage 4 cachexia patients, people in renal failure. People on diabetes medications, you got to work with your doctor. You can go to your doctor and say, “I want to do this fast. What do you think?” And have your doctor watch your meds because you’re probably going to – and this is not me saying to get off your meds, okay? This is like, talk to your doctor, do not go off of your medications without the competent care and oversight of a doctor you trust. But the research is showing that people are getting off of diabetes meds. There are clinical trials showing that people reversed the symptoms of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes I mentioned that one study shows regeneration of the insulin producing beta cells. And then a 2017 study and this is animal study, but four day modified diet triggered changes in mice. That led to – I’m reading from the book here – led to pancreatic beta cell regeneration and the return of insulin secretion. These are changes that correspond to the reversal of type two diabetes. And so I think that diabetics should be completely fascinated by the idea of a fast. I wouldn’t go do a water fast while you’re on meds. So with that one with diabetics, I would say work with a practitioner. I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m not saying do do it without any worries in the world. I’m saying do it with some advice from your practitioner.     [01:30:15] Ashley James: Absolutely. I love this. I had a client who was very thin and she wanted to reverse some blood sugar issues but she was-  she really couldn’t afford to lose any more weight. And so this idea of water fasting scared her. And she actually called Dr. Goldhamer and talked to him. And he said he did not recommend that she did a water only fast. He recommended that she did a modified fast, exactly like you’re saying. That she can still gain the benefits, the healing benefits to her pancreas and her insulin sensitivity through the exacting – through of the what you’ve designed the Flash Fast where there’s a modified calories. But the calories are designed to be healing for the body.     [01:31:02] Robyn Openshaw: Well, a lot of people who are underweight, like people think, “Oh, you just have a quick metabolism.” No. I’m sorry to say that a lot of the people in our culture who are underweight – and watch them, watch them eat. I mean, unless their gut hurts, which some of them have gut dysbiosis so bad that they literally don’t enjoy eating because eating hurts. But besides the fact that some of them are eating less because eating causes suffering for them because of their gut dysbiosis. The other thing that’s going on is that food just goes right through. And people know that. Even people will just be like, “Oh, food goes right through you.” And they may have diarrhea and they’re not absorbing the nutrition. But here’s the thing about a modified fast, it allows that leaky gut to repair, to seal up. And if that happens, then you can absorb nutrition better. And you can, therefore, achieve a more healthy weight. So all the people – the two-thirds of America that is overweight looks at the skinny people and they assume that skinny people are eating less food than they are or eating healthier food than they are. And the crazy thing is that the people who are thin – anywhere from thin to super thin – the vast majority of them are actually thin to super thin for the exact same reasons that two-thirds are overweight. Is that the food they’re doing is doing so much damage but just it’s a flip side of the same coin. So don’t assume that the thin people are healthier than overweight people. The fact of the matter, certainly there are people who are thin because they eat a very disciplined diet, of course, or very healthy diet. But there’s a significant number of them who are actually not absorbing nutrition. So I am not surprised that Dr. Goldhamer actually recommends that because – then you can get some of that gut sealing effect and that gut healing effect. And so you can absorb nutrition and get up to your healthy weight. Because a lot of people are underweight because they aren’t getting the nutrients they need even though they’re eating the food.     [01:33:12] Ashley James: I love it. Now, listeners can get the free book to learn more about how to do this Flash Fast by going to learntruehealth.com/fastbook. Tell us a bit about the Flash Fast, which I think that the majority of listeners will just do it. Just buy the kit. You’ve made it incredibly affordable. It’s all very healthy ingredients and organic and just follow your program for three days. So it’s like this no brainer. They don’t really have to do much. Like you said, it’s a maximum two minutes of preparation to do their mini meals. And they can do it any day of the week and still maintain going to work. So it’s not disruptive. So tell us a bit more about the specific things they would be doing during the day with your kit.     [01:34:06] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. I like to do it Monday through Wednesday. Like I said, I’ve done it nine times the last three months. And some people might say that’s kind of obsessive. But I’m the researcher who flies to Texas and sits in an ashram and doesn’t eat any food for 12 days too. And some people call it biohacking. I call it experimenting for science. You’re going to get this kit. We’re giving your followers on the link that you give them $10 off their first kit. The retail price is $70. You can get $10 off your first kit or you can get $30 off or 43% off if you sign up for Subscribe Instant Save. So subscribe Instant Save means that every single one that you get is $40, just $30 off. You also get the book in that first package How To Get The Health Benefits Of Fast Without Going Hungry. You get a little one page insert that tells you not only how to do it, which is like, so easy. But you also have a couple several recipe ideas in the right column telling you ways that you can make it taste different. You can add handfuls of greens, you can add up to two vegetables a day, which I kind of highly recommend. At the beginning of my three day Flash Fast on Monday morning, I’ll steam a whole head of cauliflower and I’ll steam a bunch of asparagus. Now, why cauliflower and asparagus? Because those are the vegetables I like best. So I’m talking about non starchy vegetables. So you can add up to two servings. And the reason for that is that your five mini meals give you 650 total calories. And the research coming from all these different institutions, especially USC, are showing that you can eat up to 800 calories a day to get the benefits. I would love to tell you that men can eat a different number of calories than women. And I would tell you that if I had seen the published evidence about it, but I haven’t seen anybody do that study yet. So unfortunately, right now, all I can tell you is a maximum of 800 calories so you can add to non-starchy vegetables. Like, I do the asparagus. I’ll also cut up a cucumber. You can do stuff like that unlimited. You can cut up a cucumber. You can add handfuls of spinach. You don’t have to do any of those things. You could also instead of the vegetables, you could add one fruit. And I like to sometimes do my one fruit being a banana. It’s an organic banana. And all this is in your kit – all these little tips. But I cut an organic banana with the peel into my little shake. So my little superfood shake that’s superfoods and plant based proteins. And it’s got some little bit of fruits and vegetable extract, blend that up with a handful of greens. Sometimes I do two. Sometimes I do my two shakes at once. That way I only have to whiz it up in the blender once. But I’ve got two meals. And then I just have it there at my desk or in the fridge to just get my other one out. And then you have a bar that’s super delicious. And you’ll probably, at the end of your Flash Fast day, “I want these bars. I want to have them for my kids. I want to have them in my purse.” They’re the healthiest bar that you’ve ever ordered. And again, organic, everything in it organic. The whole bar is certified organic. And again it’s vegetables, fruits, superfoods, nuts and seeds. Delicious. Pretty soon we’re coming out with two soups. And they’re high protein plant based soups. And I think they’re quite lovely and quite delicious for those who want something hot in their Flash Fast. But anyways really quick, really easy. I like to do it Monday through Wednesday. You could do it any day that works for you. The reason I like Monday through Wednesday is I don’t really have a social life then. I’m pretty much just at home working. And I don’t have to say no to business lunches or whatever. If somebody reaches out to me for a business lunch, I say, ” Sure. Thursday or Friday, what works?” And if people reach out to me wanting to go to dinner, I’m like, “Sure. Anytime on the weekend.” And so let’s see what else should I tell you. So keep it under 800 calories. Keep it 90 to 100% plant based. Keep it organic. Make sure it’s high in fiber. Make sure, for satiety purposes, you’re eating small meals in a window of, at the most, 12 hours. So I’ll eat it like 9:00 a.m. And then my last meal will be like 6:00 p.m. The only time I get significantly hungry – if you just follow the plan, eat the five mini meals, space them out. The only time I get really hungry – and again, I probably only get really hungry because I am playing sports every single day that I’ve done the Flash Fast, all nine times. But I get hungry about 9:00 p.m. So you know what I do? I go to bed early.     [01:39:00] Ashley James: Yes. Yes. That’s so good. I love that. Those are just two tips that you could do every day even without the fast. love starting my day – I’d say about four days a week, I start my day off with steaming a pound of vegetables, non-starchy vegetables and that’s what I eat first. And then when I’m hungry next, I’ll just eat like potato, brown rice, beans, something like that. But I I’ll start my day with a pound. And pound sounds a lot, but it’s maybe two-and-a-half cups. It’s not that much. And I actually really enjoy the flavor. But you can always add herbs, super simple seasonings to it. But I noticed that when I start my day off first thing in the morning, obviously, a glass of water and then steamed vegetables and eat them, my body buzzes. It buzzes. It has energy. It just feels – it really rewards me almost immediately. I can feel it working. I can feel the difference. And then going to bed at 9:00 is like magic. It’s magical. And people will stay up crazy late. And right around 10:00 p.m. is when our cortisol kicks in. So we have that second wind. And if we stay up until 10:00, that is that magic moment where we have now screwed ourselves for good sleep. It really does. Because we’ll stay up watching TV or looking at our phone or computer. But at 10:00 p.m. – I don’t know if people noticed – they got like a second wind and they’re like, “Oh, I’m not tired. I don’t need to go to bed.” And then it’s like midnight. Because the body goes, “Oh, we’re up late because we have to run away from the bear. We have to survive some kind of situation where we need to be awake.” Because why on earth would we be awake at this hour if it wasn’t for the fact that we needed to fight the bear? And so the body turns on the stress response and stops making melatonin and just get this kick of cortisol. So if we can get in bed by 9:00 and, hopefully, fall asleep soon after, then our body goes into deep restorative sleep. We don’t have that exhaustive spike of cortisol. And then we can wake up maybe a little bit earlier and get all the things you wanted to do done at the end of the day. Just do it at the beginning of the day. But it’s so healing to do that. So I love those two points. I think we should do them anyway regardless of if we’re doing the Flash Fast or not Now, you talked about this subscription where someone can get it once a month so that they can do this healing, especially people have weight loss or really long term health goals. What’s the feedback you’ve been getting by people who’ve been doing it for more than one month?     [01:41:50] Robyn Openshaw: Well, I mean, we only released it the end of August – end of August? End of September? So we don’t have longitudinal data. So I can’t say. However, the studies that Longo does tend to be one cycle a month. And I’ve seen some of the other researchers, like Johns Hopkins, some of those researchers, they don’t all do the exact same thing. But I see these health gains coming out. Basically, what I’m seeing is a once a month and some cases with significant illness, I’m seeing them putting subjects on a twice a month cycle of modified fasting. Now you have to be fairly motivated to do a three day Flash Fast twice a month. So you know, either you’re just a person who loves little health experiments – like I do – and you’re really super committed to your health. Or you have a significant health challenge. So if that’s you, if you’re in either one of those categories, and you’re like, “Yeah, I will. I’ll do it once a month.” I highly recommend people get on a once a month modified fast to really gain all the health benefits of it. And with weight loss, there’s no reason why you can’t do it twice a month. And I think I failed to answer your question earlier when you asked, how often can you do this? Honestly, you could do it long term. I mean, listen, there are prisoners of war who lived like 10, 15 years longer than the average person. And they think it’s because of low calorie, like chronic long term calorie restriction. I mean, did you ever read that novel Unbroken? About that prisoner of war, Louis Zamperini. He just died not long ago. Just a fantastic book. Laura Hillenbrand wrote it. She’s the same author of Seabiscuit. But this guy, Louis Zamperini, who was an Olympic runner and then he went to World War II. He ended up in a concentration camp – not a concentration camp. That’s an obviously –     [01:44:00] Ashley James: Prisoner of war camp?     [01:44:02] Robyn Openshaw: Prisoner of war camp. Thank you. And the Japanese fed him nothing for four years. He would volunteer to do laundry all day so he could lick the starch off his fingers from the spray starch cans or whatever. So these are people who are chronically calorie deprived. And obviously, we’re not going to do that. Obviously, you’re not going to go four years with essentially no calories. But the guy lived to be, like, 90 something. And obviously that is a case study and it proves exactly nothing. But if we know one thing about longevity, it’s people with chronic calorie restriction. So there is no contraindication for people to eat 800 calories or less for a long period of time. And if you don’t feel well, that’s how you know to stop doing it. I don’t think I’m really going to have a whole lot of people who are going to suddenly eat 800 calories or less for long periods of time. But if you did it twice, if you did it three times in a row – I mean I’ve done water fast for 12 days. And it’s the deeper states of autophagy. I mean, Dr. Thomas Lodi, the Columbia train medical doctor, the first thing he wants people to do when they’re diagnosed with cancer is go do a 30 day water fast. Literally eat nothing for 30 days. So I’m not worried about people doing the Flash Fast too many times because, remember, you’re getting nutrient dense food, you’re getting 800 calories. You can pretty much do anything. I met a woman, she’s a medical doctor. She came to my Swiss retreat that I’ve been doing for eight years. She had my Swiss retreat two summers ago. And her husband who was also a medical doctor had not eaten any food for 70 days. He went to work, the whole thing. He lost like –  I don’t even know how many pounds – somewhere around 100 pounds, maybe it’s more like 70 or 80. But did not eat food for 70 days. And she said he’s felt completely fantastic. And people who are really into water fasting will tell you that you know when it’s time to stop fasting, it’s when you don’t feel good anymore.     [01:46:05] Ashley James: I love it. So yeah, so doing three day stints a few times a month of 800 calories. The very specific calories that are dense nutrition and high in fiber and organic and non-GMO, and really super foods and designed to nutrify the body, nutrient dense calorie restricted. That is in no way going to throw someone into some kind of deficiency. The blue zones – a lot of them – these blue zones where they’ve documented people living with almost no disease well into their hundreds. They all live in a calorie – they have calorie restriction. They have times of famine where they fast because that’s what they have to do. Or they only eat one meal a day. So we’ve never seen a gluttonous society eating thousands of calories a day every day, several meals a day, live longer disease free than the rest of the population. That’s part of this habit. This health habit is part of long term health.     [01:47:16] Robyn Openshaw: Right. None of the blue zones eat to excess. And all of the blue zones eat 90 to 100% plant based. And a lot of people want to ignore that because they’re – not only a lot but maybe even a majority of health and wellness experts out there, they want to just – the denial about the massive body of evidence that says we’ve got to eat mostly plants. I’m not going to say all because I don’t think the evidence proves that we have to eat 100% plant based to be healthy. I don’t think they reprove that. I, personally, rarely eat animal products. And if I do It’s generally because I’m out traveling or whatever. But the longer you do it, the more you just don’t resonate with those animal products anyway. Like, eating animal flesh just doesn’t appeal to me anymore after, literally, decades of not doing it. It doesn’t smell good to me. It doesn’t look good to me. I don’t crave it. I, certainly, in my 20’s was eating as much of it as anybody was two times a day, probably. But yeah, the blue zones eat 90 to 100% plant based. They eat clean, close to the land, not sprayed, not processed kind of food. And  they had periods where they eat less. And they probably are a lot more in tune with their body because they’re not constantly upping and downing. You said do people have negative reactions. And I do want to say this, because we have a Facebook page with two health coaches who support our Flash Fasters. And not all the 2,500 people who’ve gotten themselves a Flash Fast in the last month since I told my audience about it – a month to two months as I told my audience about it. Not all of them are in there. But I think close to 1,000 are now. And the one thing is the caffeine drinkers. Because we tell them during that three days, if you want best results get off the caffeine. Well, here’s the thing, if they go off the caffeine right at the same time that they do the Flash Fast, they’ll tell us about their headache. And it’s a little bit frustrating to me, because I’m like, “Well, it would be really great if you could have gotten off the caffeine a few days before.” So that’s what we recommend. But then people don’t do it. Because I swear, you can’t you can’t pry coffee out of some people’s cold dead hands. It’s become this American staple. Like, what is it? Two-thirds of Americans drink an average of two cups of coffee a day. Maybe it’s even worldwide. I think it’s literally like the Western world. And so coffee is such a staple. But here’s the thing, if you want your ducts to dilate, you want the most amount of detoxification during the period of time that you’re dedicating to the Flash Fast, best if you’re not coming off of coffee where your neurological system is going to be reactive. As your body is like, “Oh good. She’s not dumping caffeine into here anymore.” Which is dehydrating by the way and which it dilates some vessels. I mean people like what it does for their digestive system. But the long term effect is energy depleting. And it’s dehydrating. And we are trying to hydrate and to dilate and relax ductwork to allow for the flushing of the kidneys and the flushing of the liver. And so we ask people to stay off the coffee. If you’re like, “No, can’t do it.” Then do the Flash Fast with the coffee. I would rather have you do the Flash Fast with coffee than not do it at all. However, if you’re willing to go off the coffee for a few days first so that you realize that it’s your coffee withdrawal or your caffeine withdrawal. It’s not a Flash Fast doing that to you. That’s where my frustration comes in.     [01:51:03] Ashley James: Absolutely. My husband was addicted to coffee. He was drinking 90 ounces of it a day. And this was the strong stuff. We’ve been married for over 11 years and he kind of jokingly complains that I’ve taken everything away from him. Because when I met him he was drinking three Monster Energy drinks a day, venti coffees from Starbucks, he had some other unsavory habits with tobacco and sugar, addicted to ice cream. And so just the standard guy thing. He was a carpenter. And he was, you know, just the standard guy thing. Eating only meat and fries and nachos and cheese, things covered in cheese. So I don’t think I ever seen him eat a vegetable until I came into his life. And so I started with sugar. I took away sugar from – when I say take away, I showed him. I showed him the light. And he decided to do the challenge and try life without sugar, seeing how bad it was. He just didn’t know. And so we got rid of sugar then we got rid of ice cream addiction. And that was fun. I used an NLP technique called Like to Dislike. I neurologically made him be repulsed to ice cream and he couldn’t walk down that aisle in Albertsons for over a year without feeling like he was going to vomit. So he just completely gave up ice cream cold turkey, which was great. And then giving up dairy. And then giving up fried food and tobacco and alcohol – that was another one. He would drink beer every day and so that was gone. And now finally, he’s like this clean vessel. Ad caffeine was the last thing to go. I mean, he held on to it. He got rid of all that stuff over the last 11 years. And he’s just this clean vessel that just needs nothing but plants. And doesn’t have any vices at all. He doesn’t touch processed food at all. But he was still doing coffee and so we got rid of coffee. And his headache lasted two weeks constant. And so I read up on it because I was a little worried. And it says basically after – if you really are this consistent coffee drinker and you get off of it, the blood vessels in your brain contract or dilate or they do something where they’re just like freaking out. And so your brain is just getting an abnormal blood flow. And that’s what’s causing the headache. So it’s an abnormal blood flow to the brain. And he pounded back the water and just powered through it, went cold turkey. Because he’s one of those guys, he’s either on or off. There’s no just turning it down a little bit. He’s either doing it full blast or he’s not doing it at all. And probably, why it was so easy for him to go vegan just total overnight transformation. But now he doesn’t need it. He doesn’t need it. And his sleep is better, obviously. But he just notices his heart rate, his respiratory rate, everything is an optimal levels, and he sleeps better. And he now has – this is the funny part – he now has more energy. And that’s because it does, like you said, we think it gives us energy, gives us that boost, but it really exhaust our adrenals. And so when we need an energy boost at our house, we steam a pound of vegetables each or we make a smoothie. And we noticed that our body feels vibrant and gets a jolt, like a really cool rising in energy from these nutritious foods. So I love your protocol because even on your Flash Fast we can be raising and elevating our energy levels using non-stimulants. Using food, which is what our body supposed to use to make energy from.     [01:55:07] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, how impressive. How impressive that he got off all that stuff. I mean, he basically went from one end of the spectrum to the other. It’s really, really inspiring. It’s too bad he didn’t do a documentary about it. I mean, it’s like my friend, Drew Manning. I don’t know if you know him. But he’s here local. And he’s a longtime friend of mine. And he wrote the book Fit To Fat To Fit. And he was like this body builder. He was a personal trainer. And he purposely gained 70 pounds. He went and did all this national media about it. He purposely gained 70 pounds to feel what his clients felt. And then he lost it again. He’s a super ripped, super gorgeous guy. And then he went and did that. And he just kind of showed how he gained the weight. He just went face first into a giant – an entire box of cereal in the morning. And giant burgers and fries at night, and whatever. So your husband did the exact opposite. And it’s really inspiring because it just goes to show you that these things that we think make us happy, like, “Oh, I need sugar because it makes me happy.” Or “I need alcohol so that I can do social things.” My guess is he probably still does social things without the buzz and that’s really –     [01:56:24] Ashley James: Well, he’s a high introvert. So alcohol was never social to him. It was all an escape. And so we’ve had long talks about – me too. I mean, It’s both of us have been on this health journey. But we both talked about why do we use this? What is it giving us? Why is it this crutch? So whether it was sugar or overeating or emotional eating, or whether it was the Starbucks or the alcohol or tobacco or whatever it was, it was why do I run to this? And what is it masking? And since we removed it – also, we didn’t have this crutch. So we both had to talk about, “Well, what kind of strategies can we build on our life now that allow us to face things instead of put our head in the sand and kind of numb our emotions.” So we do a lot of processing and talking together. And that, I guess, has made our relationship even stronger. So my thing has always been like, we’re on this health journey but health isn’t just physical, it’s emotional. We have to address the emotions because there’s absolutely – you can’t remove emotions from food and substances that we constantly use. And the way food is designed nowadays, it’s hyperpalatable and designed to hijack the brain. And so we often we’ll go to food. It’s socially acceptable to go to McDonald’s and have a shake when we’re feeling upset with our boss or when we’re feeling dissatisfied with our life purpose. Instead of actually face it. So we’re using food as a drug. And we use these substances every day, like coffee or alcohol or like legal substances every day, and now, of course, pot is legal and other substances are becoming legal. And so a big part of my healing journey has been to remove what’s unhealthy but then also face why I was using it in the first place. And so my husband has been doing that as well. And it’s been a wonderful journey. I love you, you know, you point out that you’re kind of experiment on yourself. I’m always experimenting on myself too. And that’s what’s been so great is that when we’re willing to do these experiments and we’re willing to change our diet and try new things that we often find ourselves. We get to strip away so much that isn’t us anymore and it’s not serving us anymore.     [01:58:39] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. I love that.     [01:58:42] Ashley James: You’re Flash Fast is wonderful. I really do love it. Everything in it is delicious, by the way. So I am a really big fan of it. And I love all the products you’ve created. I think you’re just stand alone. Your bars are delicious and they’re these whole food – superfood bars. Your smoothies are wonderful. I love everything that you create because you are so diligent to make sure that every ingredient is clean. You don’t just put a filler in there just because it’ll make it cheaper or save you money so you can make more money. You really are ethical. And so I love your products. And I’ve gotten to know you and know that as you stand as a very ethical person and I trust everything you put out because of that. You had shared with me, I think back in September or August, you shared with me a testimonial of someone who it blew my mind. I love this testimonial. Do you have any testimonials on hand or that you can remember you can read off the top of your head of people who’ve had outstanding results working with your Flash Fast?     [01:59:53] Robyn Openshaw: Oh my gosh, I’d have to go into Facebook and read them. But people who get their Flash Fast, we immediately put them in the Facebook Group. It’s a closed group but anybody who buys a Flash Fast, we want them in there so they can go through the experience with other people and see the experience they’re having and ask questions. And I have two help coaches in there. You know what? I could go in my Facebook Messenger right now. So the testimonial that you’re talking about that I sent you is a woman named Dolores. And she said, “End of day three on the Flash Fast. and what a miraculous three day Flash Fast it has been. I had my three shakes with added organic kale, organic mixed berries, ginger, and turmeric. I had my bar and an organic apple and organic banana every day. I have been pain free in my hips and knees since hour 15 of the fast. I’ve been in intense searing chronic knee and hip pain 24/7 for 15 plus years. And it’s gone just like that. I feel like I’m dreaming. and if I am, I don’t want to wake up. I’m beyond thankful.” So yeah, that testimonial that I had sent you, I had to think for a second what I sent you because we see a lot of these. Although, that one was really quite astonishing. I mean 15 plus years of pain, zero relief whatsoever. And 15 hours and her pain disappeared. It didn’t come back after day three. She reported back to us, she said, “I’m completely astonished. I still have no pain.” I think the point here is – and it’s a great one to end on – is that the body knows what to do. And the body needs the raw materials. It needs a little space and time. And that’s what you’re giving the body as a little space and time. A little breather to instead of having to do all the urgent tasks that are coming at you in your work  – and anybody who works for a living can relate to –  they get urgent stuff coming at you all day every day. And when you have some space and time and those tasks – that would be food coming in are not there – then you can turn to those important but not urgent tasks. And that’s what the body does. It immediately turns to those long overdue maintenance projects and gets it done.     [02:02:14] Ashley James: I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Robyn Openshaw for coming on the show again. It’s been such a pleasure having you on. These two hours just flew by. Get the free book. Listeners, please go to learntruehealth.com/fastbook and get that free ebook. And also by the Flash Fast. Do it. Check it out. I actually prefer doing your flash, fast getting the kit versus doing it myself because then I have to calorie count and restrict myself and try to stay under 800 calories. Then there’s temptation. Whereas if I have your program, it’s like, “No. I’m just following this.” So it makes it really clear cut. And then I could just do it and forget about it. I don’t have to put a lot of mental energy into it. So that’s why I love your program. It just saves me my mental energy so I can just focus. Just do what you put in front of me, do your kit, and follow the protocol. Like you said, it has one card, basically. Do this, do this, do this, do this for three days. And then and then reap the rewards, reap the benefits. So listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/flashfast to get the – was it $10 off their first kit and try it for themselves. And I’d love to hear what you think of it. Of course, we’re going to talk about this in the Learn True Health Facebook Group. I want to know what you guys think and what kind of benefits you’ve seen from doing this kind of fasting. Robyn, I definitely want to have you back on the show. Anytime you want a platform to come share and teach, you are always welcome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing with us the Flash Fast.     [02:03:57] Robyn Openshaw: My pleasure. Thanks, Ashley.     [02:04:00] Ashley James: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from the standpoint of how we can help people to shift their lives and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend that you check them out. You can Google Institute for integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices. You can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children to be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success in their health goals. There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon.  The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.   Get Connected With Robyn Openshaw: Official Website 200 High Vibration Foods Shopping List 3-Video Course Books by Robyn Openshaw The Green Smoothie Diet 12 Steps To Whole Foods Vibe: Discover Your Energetic Frequency for Health, Love & Success (FREE!) Check out other episodes with Robyn Openshaw!  Episode 358: EMF (Electromagnetic Fields) Episode 178: High Vibration Foods