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Mary Ruddick on Learning from Traditional Cultures, the Psyche, Curiosity, Goals, and So much More!
943 Plays8 months ago
This week we are joined by Mary Ruddick! The episode begins with a discussion on psychology and the amelioration of the psyche. We discuss an internal vs. external approach to healing the psyche, which can be extrapolated to the physical realm. We covered neutrality, humility, seeking comfort in failure, and the power of curiosity and goals. Concepts of purpose and meaning were also pertinent to the conversation.
In the second half of the episode, we discussed Mary's experience exploring many traditional cultures. She highlighted many amazing things that she's learned, and we discuss how we, as a modern people, can learn from these cultures, as they have so much to teach us.
It was an amazing episode. I hope you enjoy it!
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Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Beyond Train podcast. I'm your host, Leo Dalton. Episode 34 today. Well, we have an amazing guest that I've been looking forward to for a very long time now. I'm very much looking forward to all the insights that are going to be shared today. Very excited to ask our introductory question, especially today. We have Mary Rettick on today and of course, she really needs no introduction. She's been.
00:00:28
Speaker
On many podcasts, I've listened to her speak a few times here and there and definitely very, very insightful. So Mary, thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to spend some time with you. Yeah, definitely.
Defining Health: Resilience and Flexibility
00:00:42
Speaker
Yeah. So the introductory question I ask all my guests is what is health? How does it manifest? What does it look like? You know, I just give you the floor to answer this question any way you want.
00:00:54
Speaker
I love it. To me, health is resilience and temperance. So the ability to handle anything from physical stress, so that could be a toxin or an infection, emotional stress, change of circumstance. The very physical stresses that we often don't think of as stress, like a move right to the body that's very stressful.
00:01:21
Speaker
So the ability to handle these things with no symptoms whatsoever. My rule for when I was healing myself and also for now working with clients for so many years is that if we don't get you to a place where you can eat whatever you want, then we haven't gotten there yet, right? Because if we have to do a diet like we would a medication, then we're not there yet. We don't have that perfect health. So to me, perfect health is not the lack of emotions.
00:01:50
Speaker
but it is the quick bounce back to a very healthy state and a measured state. And with that, the physical resilience and plenty of energy and flexibility. I think emotional and physical inflexibility is a huge issue that I am seeing in the cities around the world. And really, we're just not flexible. We're not healthy without flexibility. Yeah, well put.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, sounds really nice, honestly, the way you put that, the resilience. And yeah, one thing that we've been circling back to seems like every episode now is that, you know, we're not here to demonize emotions. I find that's something that's maybe misconstrued in some of the areas of alternative health field. And of course, the kind of more scientific consensus part of two, of course. But, you know, there's often this demonization of emotions that you shouldn't
00:02:50
Speaker
feel these emotions, but it's about bouncing back, right? It's about having that resilience. And I really like the way you put that. So very often, I mean, there's so many different camps, but I find so often with emotions, stoicism is often misconstrued for lack of empathy. And there's a real danger there. And stoics are actually very emotionally healthy. But you really can't see from the outside what someone is experiencing, you know, and
00:03:20
Speaker
Our emotions give us our fabric of life. They give us our pleasure and all the good things too. So I think it's never a goal, at least not for me and not for those that I work with, it's never a goal to not have the emotions. It's a goal to, or a practice really, to recover quickly. So that if you're upset, it's for 20 minutes, not for years. Yeah.
Reframing Stress and Emotions
00:03:47
Speaker
I think we could really circle this into
00:03:50
Speaker
the concept of dysautonomia. Yeah. And so maybe I give you the floor to maybe expand on that a little bit maybe related to what we're talking to here because I know that that's central in your practice and sort of how you tackle healing. I believe I don't want to
00:04:06
Speaker
No, no, you're right, because, and what I teach for someone who's disabled and bed bound is not necessarily a good advice for someone who's healthy. So I should put that out there first. And that's for the mental work too, because what these folks are dealing with is a situation that they can't change in the immediate. And when we're in a situation that we can't change in the immediate, whether it's being imprisoned or being imprisoned in a bed with an illness, whatever it might be, then it goes to the internal world.
00:04:35
Speaker
as to how we're going to handle and how we're going to experience that day and that moment and that hour. And so there's incredible tools that you can really cultivate. They're almost like habits that you can learn. It's a skill where you start to retrain the brain to reframe. But why I give a little bit of a warning is because that is for something that you cannot change. Now, if you take that same advice and you apply it in the healthy world, let's say you're vibrant,
00:05:03
Speaker
But maybe you're not in a healthy relationship or you're not at a great job. There's a time to work through things, of course. But if you're reframing without questioning or discerning whether or not this is a good thing to be reframing, that could get you into trouble. So these are things, these are tools that I teach that you use when you're in those situations that you cannot change in the
00:05:26
Speaker
And for those, they give you immense happiness and joy, really, despite circumstances, even if you're in a great deal of pain. So those skills are very helpful for getting the stress levels down and also the kind of chemical bath that we need the cells surrounded by so that when they rebuild or replicate, they're creating the healthiest version instead of an imprint and a repeat of the diseased version. And so it's certainly not psychosomatic.
00:05:55
Speaker
It's not trying to fully trick yourself, although I say, let's throw the kitchen sink at it. But what it really is about is about getting a different chemical bath on yourself so that they have their best shot of replicating in the right way, which is a tall ask. If your listeners have been sick and especially chronically ill, it is a tall ask when you are that uncomfortable and that misunderstood to come up with good feeling emotions inside the body. It's really not human. It's pretty superhuman.
00:06:24
Speaker
but that's often what's required, right? Superhuman is kind of required to get to those big goals. So. Amazing. Yeah. I really like this idea of looking at it from the internal or external almost there, right? You were alluding to, um, because you know, we, we certainly take the stance that the environment plays a large role, but there is a,
00:06:50
Speaker
We have to understand that it's not always possible to change the environment either. I like the way that you take it on, you're basing it on, of course, the individual because if an individual is reliant on an income, but they hate their job, but they're going to die without that job. There's a goal there that you could work towards, but it's not going to be an immediate, you could quit your job and everything's going to be
00:07:13
Speaker
perfect in your life. Right. So and you can also reframe that like they're, especially in the working world, you have to grunt, you have to grunt through a lot. And that's how you get good. Right. That's how you become an expert in your field. So it's not that you just follow your bliss in all areas. There are areas where you really do have to put the work in and that might be blissful for you. It depends. But if it's not, yeah, you put it against reason.
00:07:38
Speaker
Like, okay, well, my goal is to be financially free and have no debt and these kinds of things. And I'm willing to do this to get there. That's perfectly reasonable. But if someone was instead saying, Oh, it doesn't matter. I just love my job and I love this. And they're trying to lie to themselves. It's not, when it's not effective and two, it's not, it's not good for the individual either. So yeah, I always, I always like to be honest, honest about the circumstance, honest about the situation.
00:08:05
Speaker
And if nothing else, just go to neutral. Neutral is perfectly good. And honestly, I feel that neutral would be a lot better in many circumstances because as people start to learn how the environment can affect us and how our internal environment can too, it's very common for people to go into a bubble or to want to be in a bubble and to be very afraid of lots of things that we cannot control. And there's nothing worse for cellular health
00:08:33
Speaker
or regeneration of the human body than fear, really. So while fear is an appropriate emotion, we don't want to be in it often. We want to act on the things that we can and not concern ourselves with the things that we cannot. Wow. Yeah. Very well put. I was going to ask honestly how to, you know, because I always say that being honest with yourself, I couldn't agree more that that's fundamentally important to health and life in general. Um,
00:09:01
Speaker
especially if you're concerned with searching for the truth or whatever it may be, honesty is definitely important. I always say that it's the most difficult thing to do is to be honest with yourself and to look at yourself, your situation honestly. And so I was going to ask, I was going to say, how do you foster that in an individual, in yourself? How do you kind of get to that point and
00:09:24
Speaker
You mentioned neutrality, which I think is kind of an interesting way to look at it. If you just think, okay, well, I'm not going to look at this or good or bad, you know, I'm just going to look at it as it is. I think that's a good way to kind of reframe the term honesty in a more concrete way. Almost.
Self-Honesty and Health Assessment
00:09:38
Speaker
Yes. Just more brass tacks. Really like, okay, this is the situation. This is what we're dealing with. What are we going to focus on? Right. That kind of thing. Uh, because I do see a lot of, uh, flip to the Pollyanna.
00:09:52
Speaker
which if that's not true, then we're not gonna get the right emotion. We're not gonna get the right bath, the right chemical bath. So yeah, I'm always happy with neutral. And there are always two stories, if not 100, that are true in that very moment that you could be telling yourself about the situation. So it's in choosing a neutral story that's very helpful. I often give an example from when I had neuropathy, which for those of you who haven't had it, I hope no one has,
00:10:22
Speaker
unbelievable pain, nonstop. So I knew I could focus on that, and that was the natural thing to focus on that, and that there wasn't a distraction or a medication. But I could also look at something beautiful in the room. Or I could focus on the fact that my ear was working. You know, there are other true things that we can focus on. And the same thing with all the environmental issues that
00:10:45
Speaker
around oneself who's dealing with an illness, you know, a lot of fear starts to come about, about like 5G and heavy metals and all these kinds of things that you may or may not be able to control. And so it's like, okay, well, what else is true? What else can we focus on? So we'll do that. In terms of being honest with oneself, well, isn't that hard?
00:11:08
Speaker
We often don't see what other people see, right? That is a tall ask. That is a tall ask. So what I do with myself, and I have to be honest here. I did not have the personality for being sick. I did not. I am not a homebody. I am a happy-go-lucky person. That is not the right personality for this. So I had to be brought down to my knees, and I just want to say I thought I had been brought down to my knees about 80 times before I actually was humbled enough.
00:11:38
Speaker
But when you get really humble, you start to question a lot of things because nothing's working, right? And so I would often just pick something very simple, right? Because when you're sick, your brain doesn't work well. So you can't focus on a lot of things. So I would often just pick one thing and then focus on that. So for instance, I promised myself, it sounds so trite, but I promise you it wasn't. I promised myself that I would do anything to get better.
00:12:06
Speaker
Now it's very easy to say that and it's very easy for us to feel that we've done everything to get better and failed and we can feel even more like a failure. I really see this more now with all the healing stories out there. If someone isn't getting better and they saw a video of someone who did, it's very easy to feel even more like a failure. Like it's an awful feeling, right? But I had to really put myself up against that. So when I would read a study about how laughter helped the immune system,
00:12:36
Speaker
Well, that's all great, but it sounds trite and you know, come on, who can laugh with this pain and the situation? No, no, no. That's where you have to stop and be like, what am I focusing on? I will do anything to get better. So then, okay, how are we going to get this body to laugh in this state? What do we need to do or look at or focus on? So, so it's really actually being very simple and clear and, uh,
00:13:04
Speaker
and not giving any excuses, but in kind of a loving way. Often the no excuse kind of approach comes from the athletic world or a more kind of a masculine bootcamp kind of method. And actually the discipline that I see work with people is really very soft and internal and quiet. And so having just one thing keeps you from being a bit hectic and scattered and the opposite of quiet.
00:13:34
Speaker
So that's very helpful. The other thing that I do, I did this for myself and I have all my clients here too, is, and again, so basic charting the things that I was working on. So I had a chart by my bedside. It was just on math paper, math graph paper. And I would, I would really ask myself if I was doing the things that I knew. So like, let's say, okay, I knew that meditation could bring cortisol down.
00:14:00
Speaker
or the emotion of gratitude improved the immunity, right? Whatever it would be. So I would have this list of often like 20 things that I wanted to do every single day. And then I would chart if I did them seven days a week. And if I didn't, then I had a very like, you know, just glaring example of, are you really willing to do anything? Are you really doing everything? No, you're not. Here, you did this three times a week.
00:14:30
Speaker
not seven. And here you didn't even do that at all. Right? So it kept me humble and it kept me from making the very easy
Consistency in Health Practices
00:14:40
Speaker
and very human statements that we all so often make, but that never get us to where we need to go. And that is, I've tried everything. So those are the tools that I usually use for them. Amazing. Well, thanks for sharing that. I think the state of
00:14:58
Speaker
the world, I guess, you know, with social media and the internet can make that especially challenging, right? You're online and you're seeing all of these success stories and, you know, people often aren't online sharing their failure stories, right? Or even the person with the success story doesn't share about the 150 times that they failed before that, right? Like, you know, every once in a while, I guess somebody comes along and they succeed right away. But you know, that's like,
00:15:28
Speaker
That's not the common occurrence, right? It's like, you know, finding comfort in that failure, I think is something that is very important when it comes to really anything growing in life, right? No, I fully agree. The people that have succeeded the most have failed the most and failed far more than they ever thought they would. I know I did.
00:15:49
Speaker
I definitely did. And I mean, my gosh, the first, you know, nine years of my illness were pure hell. I did not I did not succeed at anything there. So the no, I think I think it's really important that we not be afraid of failure. It was interesting for me, though, I have to say, because when I was going through these illnesses, we didn't have YouTube and these things. And so I never heard healing stories. And I would seek them out in books from other people. I just thought it was so inspiring. It didn't matter.
00:16:18
Speaker
They healed from something totally different than me. It just planted that seed and I could feel it, that it was possible. And it was possible for me too, if it was possible for them. And I find people either go to that camp or they go to the other camp, which is also very understandable, which is like, oh, well, that person couldn't have had that diagnosis if they're better. They definitely didn't have what I'm having or, you know, something's wrong with me, something extra they haven't found yet because I haven't gotten better when these people have. But, uh,
00:16:47
Speaker
And that's really quite understandable, especially with the chronic illnesses and the misunderstood illnesses like the nervous system disorders, because often these folks have been medically gaslit for years before they were properly diagnosed because the bulk of initial testing is done in the blood. It's not in the nerves. So people with nervous system disorders often get railroaded a bit. And then they're very rarely understood by their family or anyone around them. And so they have this constant dialogue of
00:17:17
Speaker
and experience, genuine experience of being very misunderstood and having a really rough go. And so it's very understandable that others will go to the other camp, but it really can be discouraging. And hopefully, as we get tens of thousands of stories daily out and people see, hopefully they'll see what I saw. And that is that people with the same diagnosis can heal on very different things.
00:17:46
Speaker
It's really consistency and patience that gets anyone to the end goal with whatever they're dealing with. It's the little things instead of the big, massive change. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's really important. And coming to that with this view of self-compassion is important too. It's funny.
00:18:16
Speaker
on this sort of journey to try and heal my eyes, right? I have a slight prescription, just very light. And, you know, they've been kind of back and forth, up and down, they get better, they get worse. The more time I spend on computers, of course, they get worse. They're always great in the morning, you know, and they have all these techniques that I do. And, um, you know, there were periods of time because I've been on and off of this journey that for like three years now, and you know what, like,
00:18:45
Speaker
I'm not ashamed. I have not been consistent. You know what I mean? Like there's not been a week where I do it consistently every day where I'll do the Bates method for 15 minutes a day for seven days. And that's never happened for me. Right. So it's no wonder that I'm not seeing any progress. Like, um, but you know, initially like I was, you know, I was just like watching these YouTube videos of
Personal Healing Stories
00:19:07
Speaker
these people.
00:19:07
Speaker
They said, Oh, I went outside and I stared at the sun for 45 minutes. And then my prescription went from negative five to zero. And I was like, why can't I looked at the sun for 30 minutes yesterday and my eyes aren't healed. Um, I think that's, that's kind of funny. And it's like, uh, obviously it's, it's different example than of course what you went through, but you know, you can kind of see the underlying similarities to in any sort of. Anybody's healing journey, right? It's.
00:19:38
Speaker
You know, you could look at that, that individual's experience and healing and having a great recovery, you know, going through these methods and the same conditions as you and looking at it as, you know, you know, going from one, you were explaining the two camps that you could go through one sort of the more negative outlook on it, one, the more motivating outlook. And I think, uh, that's interesting. Like that's really interesting. Like having that sort of positive outlook on these, on this phenomenon, you're kind of rewriting just the,
00:20:09
Speaker
your perspective, right? And even maybe even looking at that neutrally may be a good stepping stone to get there. Right. No, I totally agree. Because it's actually quite neutral to say, look, we're not that different, right? I mean, we're, we're so similar to a dandelion. Like, so human human, we are not very different as much as we like to pretend that we are. And if you think about it, if you ever study animals,
00:20:36
Speaker
I find zoology fascinating. That's the field I was originally going to be in, well, in the marine world. But there's no kind of tiger that needs to eat a different diet from another tiger. But we are constantly convinced as humans that we are very bio-individual. And while, of course, there are things that can be applied at different times and implemented at different times, yes, all those things,
00:21:03
Speaker
Overall, human to human, we do require the same kind of things, and same with the eyes. So with the eyes, there are people that don't have much wrong with their ocular nerve. They're not in a lot of sympathetic dominance, right? And that can be written when we're in the womb. There's all sorts of things that can affect these things that are changeable. But it can change someone's time scale, right, as to how long it takes. And you never know. You really don't ever know.
00:21:32
Speaker
you only know once you pop into health. And that's it. And then looking back on it. And then some people don't have many of the fat soluble nutrient deficiencies or the B1 that's required for the ocular nerve to really function very well. But yeah, I was one of those two. I'm so sorry. My eyes were like.
00:21:54
Speaker
I did the take off your glasses and see exercises. Now I was consistent and I did a full four day intensive where it was just nonstop with the exercises. And then I did it every day for at least a year, if not more, but I was able to take off my glasses after day four, which was really great and they haven't gone back on.
00:22:19
Speaker
Um, but I would say it's, it's literally consistency. It's like the same when I'm working with the microbiome with someone would diet, they could maybe only eat a bite of starch, a bite of rice or sweet potato or something once a month. But if they're dealing with a microbe that, you know, needs to be off starch, you know, to start about say three months or six months or 12 months, they've never, they're never going to start it out. So they're never going to get that progression than someone else who had maybe a three week bacteria. Lucky them a few of those.
00:22:48
Speaker
but lucky them, may have had to where they popped into a healthier state. So yeah, it's really just about, I think, my approach, and I'm sure there's lots of really good approaches. It was just the way that I went. My approach was, okay, I can't wait for someone to figure this out. That's obviously not happening. So, I mean, I did think that for a long time when I realized it wasn't. Then I was like, okay, well, let's learn.
00:23:17
Speaker
Let's learn what the eyes need, what the nerves need, what any part of the body needs, because it's all connected. So the more any area improves, the better a chance that my area that's diseased will improve, right? So in you focusing on, say, your posture, you wouldn't think that has anything to do with ocular health, but it does. It does on so many accounts because the, here, if the head is forward or you have a tongue tie,
00:23:45
Speaker
and you don't know about it, you go into sympathetic dominance with your breathing. And you probably did so since you were a child. So all these things can come into the eyes that you would think are not related. So yeah, I think there's no better method than to be very consistent with anything you learn about that might help. Yeah, you know, we definitely apply that generally to really anything, right? Because we're kind of seeing this almost
00:24:13
Speaker
a little bit of a paradox here, right? Because we're seeing that, you know, individuals are so very individual and, you know, each journey is going to be different, but on this interesting level, right? And I kind of look at it from this kind of alchemical perspective, I guess, we're all undergoing this same process of, you could call it transmutation, whatever you want to call
Curiosity and Achievable Goals
00:24:34
Speaker
it, right? But there's this underlying process that's going on that we all kind of are constantly going through on different levels and it's manifesting in different ways, but
00:24:42
Speaker
sort of there's this underlying reality. That's sort of a take that we take here a little bit, right? Like it's, it's kind of interesting to look at it that way, right? There's, there's these consistencies, but at the same time approaching every situation uniquely and, you know, honoring the individual's experience is so ever important as well. But there's these patterns that seem to manifest over and over again. Completely, completely. I think, I think, you know, like the struggle that you've had with your eyes,
00:25:11
Speaker
any struggle where it's like, well, okay, I'm doing these things that other people are doing. It's really humbling and it's frustrating and it makes you question so much, right? If you're anything like me and I don't want to project, but that's how I felt. And I think what you're doing is the right approach is curiosity. Curiosity is soft and fun and not condemning, right?
00:25:39
Speaker
Why haven't I gotten better these other people have gotten better thing that we can see online is And and that I'm sure we've all experienced too. I just didn't know anyone who had gotten better. So I couldn't be low But but it's a lot of self-condemning and self-judgment that comes with that and You already get so much judgment in the world just period and then you get so much when you're dealing with a chronic chronic chronicness It could be anything
00:26:09
Speaker
And so because people who haven't had anything chronic just assume that it's a character flaw or that you're making it up in your head. So you're already getting all this judgment. And then you still often have the pressures of the outside world that the healthy people have, but to you they're far more because you're also dealing with these other things. And so it really is more stressful on the body. And I think when we turn a leaf,
00:26:36
Speaker
And for each person, it's at a different time, and it's always appropriate whenever it happens. But when that delicious leaf changes and turns from that self-judgment to playful curiosity, like, oh, well, what if we do this? What if that works? What if this is just fun? What if we just bring in fun? Whatever it is, it's a really lovely way to go about it. It makes the journey so much more fun.
00:27:09
Speaker
I love that word curiosity. And I think that, you know, it's something that we tend to lose as you grow up, right? You tend to lose that curious, I could go spend time with children and they're so curious and they're so present, you know, and obviously we live in the world, like in a world where we are seeing increases in childhood illnesses. And, you know, we could talk about many different
00:27:38
Speaker
theories of the causes of that. But you know, generally, you're looking at healthy children, you know, they're, they're present, they're curious, they're just focused on what's in front of them. And they're not necessarily dealing with these same things that we're dealing with as adults, right. And of course, there are many children out there who face, you know, situations that alter this sort of state. And maybe it happens to everybody in some sort of respect. But coming back to that curiosity, I think is
00:28:06
Speaker
A beautiful way to get into the ever present now is a beautiful way to, like you're mentioning here, to, you know, start self-assessment in a way, right? To be curious about yourself and, you know, observing yourself, you know, curiosity of how you act in the world, right? Like it's, um, you know, you could relate it to any level of, you know, external internal, whatever it may be.
00:28:30
Speaker
And so approaching it with that curiosity, I just love that perspective so much. I think that's really, really important. It seems like you take a sort of goal oriented approach here, right? You're kind of focused on, like you were mentioning earlier, you're focused on like on a goal and coming back to that in the moments, right? Like if you're focused on healing, right? When you're looking at somebody else's situation or your own situation, you're thinking, I want to do whatever I can to heal.
00:28:59
Speaker
Maybe you could speak a little bit more to that because I think that's so powerful. Yeah, I'm totally goal oriented, which is pretty masculine, honestly, and not the feminine approach. But there is a way to bring it in, right? Because the feminine is more healing, right? If you look at it archetypal. So I am just someone that like really works with positive rewards, negative rewards, you know, to not work with me and illness is a negative reward. So what I started doing
00:29:28
Speaker
because you really get to know yourself on a very different level when you go through these things. And so I started with curiosity to kind of look at my own psychology and what works for me and what doesn't, and how I could play with that to my own advantage, right? So often I think we look at psychology as an excuse as to why something can't be done. But actually, if we look at our own psychology, and we're stepping out of extreme psychosis, of course, in those things that's different,
00:29:58
Speaker
But if we look at our own psychology and then see what it is about our nature and how we can use that often, like Carl Jung and just Campbell and some of the greats used to talk about, often the very things that we kind of judged ourselves for growing up are the things that can help us get out.
Goal Setting and Learning from Setbacks
00:30:16
Speaker
So for my own self, I was a rebellious kid. I was a good kid, but I was a rebellious and an impish for sure. And so that ended up being my saving grace.
00:30:28
Speaker
had I been just compliance and just continue to go to the doctor's appointments, take the medicine and then die, I wouldn't be here. And so the rebelliousness, there's a light and a shadow to all of these. And so kind of pulling those out can be very helpful. But in terms of goals, you would think when you're disabled that goals go out the door and for a long time they did. And for anyone going through that right now, I just want you to know, I understand.
00:30:55
Speaker
because you can't count on your body day to day. So it's a set of goal and an expectation for yourself and actually hit it. Well, that's just self-defeating. It's not gonna happen. And so I kind of put together this method where I would break a goal down into something very, very tiny to where I could do it on the worst day. And I would do that now in other fields. Like let's say you wanna do something huge. Like you wanna be in a hot air balloon.
00:31:21
Speaker
in the Arctic Circle, right? That's $100,000. You better start saving. How are you going to do it? Well, if you just think of the big goal, you're like, well, that'll never happen, or I'll have to win the lottery, right? But actually, if you break it down, you can be like, okay, well, that's 10 years at $10,000. That's less than a thousand a month. So if I start doing this, this, and this, I can do that. Or you come up with a new business and you're like, I'm going to sell these t-shirts.
00:31:45
Speaker
And I have to sell this many t-shirts to get to that goal. So this can be applied in other things other than health, but it's really in breaking it down into tiny, tiny, tiny goals. And then the real goal is holding yourself accountable to each day because it's always easy to make an excuse. But when you genuinely make a strategy based on your worst day or your busiest day, if you're, you're bringing in a life habit, right?
00:32:11
Speaker
and you account for that, then there really is no excuse on that worst day or that busiest day. You can get it done. And so you learn self-trust again, right? Because a lot of this, any kind of goal really comes from your systems if you're going to get it, right? Like, okay, let's say when we're eight years old, everyone's like, I want to be a millionaire, or I want to win the Olympics, right? That's all the same goal. But why do some people get it and other people not?
00:32:39
Speaker
It's really in building the systems so that that goal comes to fruition and then being consistent. And that is it. It's so simple. The beautiful thing about it is that with whatever goal you set, one, it helps you to be, it helps you to put what you want into concrete terms. I so wish that goal setting was taught to children in schools.
00:33:09
Speaker
Because we often think, oh, we'll be good at something if we have that talent, right? But if you take two people that like piano, and one person is naturally talented, but the person who isn't naturally talented out practices the natural talent, by the time they're 20, it's not going to be the naturally talented one that's successful. So really, we tend to think of goals very
00:33:35
Speaker
loose. And I even on my paperwork for the last decade or so when I'm on taking it when I'm onboarding someone, my first question is named three goals. And a lot of it is not to see what their goals are. A lot of it is to see if they know how to set a goal. If their goal says more energy, nobody's going to hit that goal. There's no way to divide that and get to that. If their goal says, I would like to wake up with ease, go for an hour of run without caffeine,
00:34:04
Speaker
go about my day without even thinking about my body and then go to sleep easily after cleaning the house and being at work and taking care of the kids and feeling good. That's a goal I can hit, right? Because those are measurable things. It's measurable how you wake up in the morning. It's measurable if you can walk or run or exercise for a certain amount of time, but the other is too nefarious.
00:34:32
Speaker
Right. So a lot of it is, is seeing how to set that goal. So, uh, like, let's say, let's say, uh, let's give you a different eye condition. Okay. Let's say you're going blind. Right. And you're getting your eyes tested every, you know, month or so. Uh, all we need is to move the needle in the right direction each month. It doesn't matter if that needle moves a lot.
00:34:59
Speaker
It can move by hair that you don't even notice, but your eye doctor does, right? As long as that needle is moving in the right direction, it can go so slow, like the turtle, but you do actually get to your goal. So that's why I say, yeah, the consistency and the setting the goal and the breaking it down, because also when you have your systems in place and your habits, you actually don't really care about the end goal anymore. And that's a huge piece of it. It's really a huge piece of it.
00:35:28
Speaker
the non-attachment to the outcome. Well, he who loves walking, walks further than he who loves the destination. Always. Famous adage. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, there's such purpose and meaning within the process as well. You ask anybody that you could define as successful if we look at it from like a financial standpoint, anybody who is rich, right? Rich financially or measurably by material.
00:35:58
Speaker
They'll all, one, they all never stop working until they die. There'll never be enough money. First of all, that's the first thing because a lot of them are more obsessed with creating businesses and more like entrepreneurship and working with the systems and creating these funnels and whatever it may be. You know, they're so obsessed with the process. That's why they make it so far, right? They get obsessed with this process. And I think that's really important because there's often, I think, you know, the goal, the end goal,
00:36:27
Speaker
The pursuit is the meaningful part of it. The end goal is kind of like if you do end up achieving your goal, right? That would be great. When it comes to things like health, you do want to achieve that goal, but you're sort of getting back to the state where then you can start looking into
00:36:49
Speaker
giving meaning and purpose in different ways as well, rather than trying to get to this state of health and wellbeing in which you can pursue anything that you find interesting, whatever it is. A lot of people find health very interesting, like we do, I'm sure. That's why we're here talking about it and trying to help foster that in other people and getting information out there.
00:37:13
Speaker
falling in love with the process, something you hear, whether you're talking about health, finances, whatever it is, it's the process. The artist loves painting more than the painting itself, right? You could really extrapolate this to any situation. On the topic of creating goals, funny, we learned in, and I thought this was kind of good, actually, so I'm one of my masters right now, and we learned about smart goals, and you alluded to
00:37:43
Speaker
most of these, but essentially smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and like a time, have a time constraint to them. Right. So you want to have all of these aspects to your goal. Now, I think it's good to have big goals, like you mentioned, and then break it down into the smallest increment that you need to feel motivated to do it. Right. So, and this works really good for like people with depression, because often there's this lack of motivation of people who
00:38:13
Speaker
feel depressive symptoms, right? I don't want to label people as depressed per se, but you know, there, if you, if your goal is to clean the house, you know, because your house is a mess and you know, that's contributing to your depression, your environment and you know, but the idea of cleaning the house so overwhelming that you're never going to get out of bed. Right. So step number one, you know, is.
00:38:36
Speaker
move the covers off of your body, right? It's like you could break it down to that small, like, you know, you literally need to put one foot on the ground and then you make your way to the kitchen finally and you say, all right, you need to wash one pot. Well, what's the first thing you need to do? Pick the pot up out of the sink, right? You can really break this down as small as you need. Now it depends on the individual too, because some people can wake up in the morning and think, all right, I'm going to make a hundred dollars today or whatever. And then they'll just,
00:39:03
Speaker
they could kind of go into this flow state where they're working towards that. And they don't need to necessarily think about every step of the way, but you could really break this down really into detail, as much detail as you need. And there was one of the psychologists talked about that. I don't know if it was Adler or Frank or whoever it was. I love Adler. I hope to hear more about his work in the upcoming years. I think he's been so skipped over and so amazing. Yeah, breaking it down into the tiny is really important because
00:39:33
Speaker
often when you're to the point where you're working on a goal with your health, your burn health already. And so you don't have that excess energy, which we would normally associate with motivation. And so you just can't think of it as waiting for motivation. Like you don't get motivated to brush your teeth. I guess you do when you're very sick, but like you have to like work yourself up too. But in general, it's just something you just automatically do. And so you do, you want to break those goals down into automatic
00:40:01
Speaker
movements and tiny things that, one, it's not overwhelming, and two, so you're not thinking about the whole thing, you're just focusing on the one thing. That also brings you into the present moment, which is really where the magic happens and where most people have the hardest time being. So that's very helpful for that as well. But yeah, I think that's an excellent way to teach goals. I like that smart goal. It's very smart. Great. Kind of funny. Nice acronym. Yeah.
00:40:30
Speaker
No, that's fantastic. Yeah. So I think whatever it comes to, I think that's important to keep in mind. And yeah, that's awesome.
Indigenous Health Wisdom
00:40:38
Speaker
Maybe we can segue a little bit here into, I'd love to hear, you know, you've traveled, you're well-traveled, that's for sure. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that generally, and then we can maybe get into a few questions surrounding that because you've experienced many different traditional cultures, ways of life.
00:40:56
Speaker
And I'm sure it inspires a lot of your practice. Maybe you could just have a few words on that. Oh, sure. Well, I spend an enormous amount of time living with the and studying with the indigenous of the world. And we're talking the traditional indigenous, so not modernized indigenous. That does still exist, actually, although it is dwindling now, unfortunately. But yes, I've been really bouncing around all six of the continents that are populated.
00:41:24
Speaker
And almost for the fervor, this last year, even more so, just in the last three months, I was in 31 different countries. So that's faster than I usually go. But I could see that things were changing rapidly after COVID. And I wanted to get documentation for all of you because I realized most people can't take these kind of trips that I've done and can't spend the time it takes, honestly. It takes months to build relationships to get into these regions.
00:41:53
Speaker
And also just the logistics of it, right? Because most of these places you have to take like five tiny planes to get to and then hike or go by horseback and boat. And so by the time you go in and come out months are gone, most people can't do that. And the unfortunate part about that, both the fortunate and unfortunate, fortunate is that because of that, these folks have kept their traditions
00:42:18
Speaker
And they've kept their incredible health, which until I saw it myself with my own eyes that I didn't even believe, even after what I had gone through and seeing people go into remission all the time and all these things. But like, it was shocking to me, pleasantly shocking, joyfully shocking how incredible the health was. And so I've been kind of buzzing around
00:42:41
Speaker
getting footage, which won't be like film footage because I'm not a videographer, but it's at least enough for you all to see it when I can clip this up because I do think some things are really hard to believe unless you see them yourself. And with our current dialogue and culture of illness, even just now, so I just got back to the States and I'm at a hotel. I turn the TV on. Yeah, I never have access to TV, right? Netflix maybe, but not even that very often. So I turn the TV on.
00:43:11
Speaker
and to get the hotel instructions. And it's the news. And in between the news, it's nonstop pharmaceutical commercials, which is normal for everyone in America. I know that. I grew up with it. It was not weird when I, it was a joke, but it wasn't strange. I do remember my foreign friends always commenting about it. Now that I've been gone so long, it is peculiar. It's very peculiar the way we think of illness and the way we associate it as so normal here.
00:43:39
Speaker
And it is unfortunately normal. Like you mentioned cancer. Well, cancer has gone up 800% in children in the last 15 years. So that's not a, it's not genetic. You know, there really are this many people getting sick. And so you can understand where the culture comes from and why there's hospitals everywhere. Oh my goodness. But the problem with that is that we forget what's normal and what to expect of our health.
00:44:08
Speaker
and what real health really looks like and what we can attain for ourselves, even in this culture. And so that's why I've been zipping around and getting as much information as I can so that when I'm done traveling, I can assimilate at all. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, the pharmaceutical companies, they're kind of funny to watch though, like when you look at them. I always thought they were funny, but this is,
00:44:35
Speaker
They haven't changed. I've just been gone. It's just a little, yeah, it's shocking. Yeah, you know, I haven't, like, we never ever watch cable. If we're going to watch something, it's going to be Netflix or whatever. But we watched a movie the other day, A Few Good Men on cable. And it was like every single, it was always the same recurring commercials.
00:44:57
Speaker
But then there was always the pharmaceutical commercial for a different drug every time for the whole three hours that we watched this movie. One of them that stuck out to us, not to get too off topic here. But one of them that stuck out was, it was like, does your antidepressant not work anymore? Well, here's an antidepressant for your antidepressant. We were just laughing like, okay, so your antidepressant doesn't work. I think the message was,
00:45:23
Speaker
Does your antidepressant need an antidepressant? I think that's what it started out with. And we just had to laugh because I was like, oh my goodness, it's just too. And then at the end, obviously it was like, may cause suicide. And it's like, okay. We're so distant from true healing. Anyways, that's a little aside. That's really amazing that, sorry to bring it back here.
00:45:51
Speaker
You know, I think, I think it's amazing what you're doing and documenting this, like, um, because, you know, one of the problems with modern world, right? Is that we're going in, I keep harping on this modern world, but you know, we think that we're so benevolent in, in trying to aid these individuals as well. And these groups in these traditional cultures, it was, we'll send them powdered milk or antibiotics. Like that, that was,
00:46:20
Speaker
but will wipe their health out completely. And we view it as benevolent, but it's like, come on. But that's when we're not approaching it with any sort of curiosity or humility whatsoever. We think we're better than them and we need to help them. They don't need any help. That's what I always come with. They don't need any help. So I think it's really important. Say that again. They could help us a lot.
00:46:47
Speaker
But we can't really be helping them. They figured it out. They figured out how to live in a utopia on Earth, a genuine one. And they have all the things we're looking for. But we do. Yeah, we come from our world and we're like, oh my, they don't have air conditioning. It must need shoes, these things. It must need shoes, yeah. It must need shoes.
00:47:13
Speaker
And it's so well intentioned, but it actually destroys the culture. And it's a very hard thing to communicate because I think we've been a bit indoctrinated to assume the indigenous are less than. I think a lot of that has faded, but that does exist in parts of the world. Also that they would obviously want to need everything we have. So we tend to project our culture on them
00:47:43
Speaker
and our issues, right? So we have issues of domestic violence. They do not. We have issues of illness and infection and chronic disease. They do not. We have issues of depression and temperature regulation and all these things. They do not. They don't require the clothes we do. When we give them our clothes, they get into trouble because polyester is a huge problem in terms of temperature regulation,
00:48:11
Speaker
fungal, bacterial regulation, all of that. But people assume, oh, they need clothing. And so you take this culture that's never had anything, and now they have issues because they're wearing polyester that someone donated. So the well-intentioned are causing the largest problems, unfortunately. Well, if you take a sheep and you never shear the sheep, it doesn't need to be sheared. Exactly.
00:48:41
Speaker
You know, what happens if you share that sheep once and let it out into the wild, it's going to come overgrown. And, um, you know, so that's, that's one way of looking at it, I think. And, you know, so we were on the East coast here. So, um, you know, the indigenous populations were some of the first to be sort of discovered by the colonizers back in the day. So a lot of amazing stories. Um, and I spent a little bit of time learning from them. So I learned how to speak the, the.
00:49:09
Speaker
traditional indigenous around here are the Mi'kmaq. And so I learned to speak the language. Very, very basic understanding of the language were very introductory, but it was really interesting. The way, first of all, that they teach it, they teach it through such story in their language. Just, you know, we could segue into a whole discussion on their language and how it pertains to their knowledge and wisdom. But one of the stories that always stuck with me is they didn't have a word for jealousy traditionally.
00:49:38
Speaker
until the colonizers came over. And of course they introduced their guns and their, which, which a gun is a great tool to have, you know, in the, like, you know, it's very, it's a very good tool. Um, you know, when you're trying to hunt your food, but you know, this introduced a whole plethora of problems. So they actually invented a new, they invented a new word for jealousy, right? They didn't invent the word, but they attributed the saying, you smell like shit to somebody who was jealous.
00:50:08
Speaker
And so there was no traditional word, but when the colonizers came over, they would start saying to each other, you know, you smell like shit if you were jealous. And I always thought that was really funny, just the way that they perceived it as well, right? Like, you know, that's what they chose to choose as the word. I just thought that was hilarious and so beautiful in a way. No, it's so fitting because I don't go anywhere where there's jealousy. No, because nothing is...
00:50:36
Speaker
ownership is not the same. It's not like that. And I think that's why we have the misperceptions about like domestic violence and things like that, or that people are subjugated and subjugating. No, none of that, because everything is so respectful and very conscientious of how everything affects the other. And we're talking about people in perfect health, and that's mental as well. So they're like that calm, gentle alpha that, you know, if a polar bear comes up, oh, they'll handle
00:51:06
Speaker
but they'll be giggling with the kids right before that and after. So, you know, like there's none of this mental illness that degrades relationships, the severe anxiety, depression, addictions, none of this exists. And so yeah, it's not surprising that they didn't have a word for it because why would they? I'm gonna have to go message a bunch of my friends from around the world and see if they have a word for it. I bet they don't. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they don't.
00:51:35
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, that sort of led me like down a path of questioning too. I was like, so what other words didn't exist, right? Because then you're looking at, you know, so one, you know, there is very important is that a lot of their language was lost, especially here on the East coast, like a lot of their, their language was lost, especially due to the residential schools and things like that. So that's important to note, but you know, the beauty is that, you know, now there's such a, uh,
00:52:05
Speaker
they're all coming together to try and bring back this sort of understanding. So all the elders worked very hard to conserve the language. Conservation of the language is part of their conservation of their history and philosophy and teachings and healing practices and whatever it is. So, um, you know, I would always just kind of ask my professor, you know, what, you know, what did this existed? Is there a word for heart disease? And of course there was not. Of course they didn't have these words. And so,
00:52:35
Speaker
Um, you know, the modern scientists, I think would probably have a snarky answer to that, you know, saying, well, they're not advanced enough to know about these, but you know, I think that's just such an ignorant take to be honest. And I think, you know, I had, I did have another professor who taught indigenous medicine and he's really tying it into a modern sense to try and
00:53:00
Speaker
almost as a convincing way, right? To try and look at the biochemistry and the phytochemistry involved. And he's, he's really amazing. He's taught me so much. You know, it's really interesting to see his take on that sort of lost my train of thought there. Can I go back? You were saying that he was teaching like more of a modern approach.
00:53:30
Speaker
to the Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, well, that's all right. I lost it that because I'm wildly curious to meet this person. I do you know, one of the surprising things in my travels and not to say that this is across the board. But one of the surprising things was that almost no medicine is used because there's not need for it. Which blew my mind.
00:53:57
Speaker
Having worked in herbalism and studied botany and these kind of things, I've seen and I've experienced how strong certain herbs can be if they're used correctly. Most instructional books and most people using them, it's a lost art. Let's just say that, but it's very strong. It's like medicine chemically, which is exactly why so often doctors are afraid if you're taking
00:54:22
Speaker
right, because they often don't know the biochemistry and if it can affect medication and all of these things. Pharmacists usually know, but caution is given. So I was expecting to see a lot of traditional medicine and it was actually years in before I saw a bit of traditional medicine. And where I saw it was really interesting. So it definitely in the indigenous of Panama,
00:54:50
Speaker
they have some of the most remarkable techniques to handle snake bites, deadly snake, I mean, powerful and amazing and actually very well studied. I was shocked after that trip when I started researching the plants they had shown me to find that they had actually been well studied and documented to prevent deadly snake bites or to reverse, reverse the damage. So I hadn't really seen like emergency or chronic use of herbs or medicine
00:55:19
Speaker
with the exception of mild things that I can only theorize. So for instance, like with the Chaga tribe in Kilimanjaro, they're not sick. They don't get illnesses, but not the ones living in the traditional way. But they have a banana beer once a week, which is actually not banana. It's millet, fermented millet, and some other things. But they put quinine. They grow the fever tree.
00:55:45
Speaker
is all around. The bark of the fever tree has quinine, which is an anti-malarial, anti-parasitic. Very good, very powerful. Well, they use that in the fermentation process. So once a week, they're getting an anti-parasitic, which is the life cycle of a parasite, for most parasites, so in the eggs.
00:56:01
Speaker
That's very effective. So there's small little things that I've seen that seem more habit, almost like what we were talking about earlier, you build these habits and you don't think about things. So it could have been that that had happened. But until I saw the emergency medicine in Panama, I didn't really see herbalism used. Now, all of my Amazon trips, they have medicine. Absolutely. I haven't seen anyone need it. But the medicine man is usually the chief.
00:56:28
Speaker
Different cultures and different environments have different systems for deciding who the leader is. And in many places, it's a meritocracy. So in a hunter-gatherer group, it's going to be the best hunter, right? And in most of the cultures that I've been to, there's so many. So there's going to be some that this doesn't qualify for and some that I'll meet in the future that it may not. But in general, if you live in a region where there's a lot of deadly things,
00:56:57
Speaker
And I'm not really talking about infections because they don't get them. Uh, but things like snakes, things like that, they have very powerful medicine. And so that's going to be the chief. That's going to be the medicine. Yeah. Yeah. And so that actually circles back. I got my thought back. What I was trying to make was, you know, that they're, you know, all, a lot of these tribes are viewed as sort of unscientific in a way, you know, my, my professor that worked in the indigenous medicine, you know, he spoke about,
00:57:25
Speaker
They've been doing clinical trials for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years. You know, this is like more scientific than what we do. We do a two year clinical trial and think we know something about a certain chemical or whatever it is, you know. Um, so he really takes a stance that there is this, you know, archetypal science within what they're doing within their medicine, within their way of life. And like you're mentioning, you know,
00:57:51
Speaker
Very rarely do they need medicine. They have the option there, but you know, their way of life doesn't contribute to disease. So unless there are the acute things, like you mentioning, poisonings from snakes or maybe, you know, eating a bad mushroom or something, I don't know. It's so uncommon. I can't tell you. We suspect that it's just a hellacious life, but it's quite the opposite. It's just blissful. Yes. I think that's amazing. And I think that's something that
00:58:20
Speaker
You know, I think there's a lack of understanding. I think this was one of the driving factors to be quite honest, you know, in my, in opening up my eyes to sort of this, you know, health freedom way of life. And, you know, through COVID, right? They were kind of pushing me that way, right? With the whole old man days. We all know that story, right? But that's the time when I started learning, I started taking these classes, these, these courses in university from these indigenous professors, they were,
00:58:49
Speaker
They just opened my eyes to a different way of looking at medicine, at health, at a way of life, you know, and learning about these principles. You know, we don't all have to go and live in the woods, hunt all of our food. I don't necessarily think that's the answer either, but like incorporating these principles into our modern lives is the way forward in my opinion. I think that's going to be the best way towards health and vitality and wellness and
00:59:20
Speaker
well-being for the entire population and our children moving forward as well, right? I couldn't agree more. Yeah, there's no question. We're not going to go back. That's not going to happen. And if we did, it would be like the Handmaid's Tale. It would be a dictatorship, a hellacious dictatorship, right? So I do think that the answer is to
00:59:44
Speaker
cultivate the things that gave the most benefits and bring those into our culture and our life and those kinds of things. So yeah, I am fully agreed fully. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's the argument I always hear. It's like, so what are you saying? You think we should go live in the woods? And I'm like, no, that's not what I'm saying. Smart. You know, like, okay, so I've been down quite a few rabbit holes the last year of research. Cause I'm a curious person and,
01:00:15
Speaker
And for several years now, I've been really going down the hormonal one because the hormonal system is so different than the other system. And it's so fascinating to me anyway. I'll try not to just say adjectives. I'm just like blown away by it. But the most interesting thing to me, what I was not expecting, what surprised me the most is that most of the, if not all, the traditional ways of life
Traditional Lifestyles and Hormonal Health
01:00:43
Speaker
in these cultures that I go to visit lead to perfect male and female hormones, literally perfect. And so once we start decoding all of that, which has been going on, studies on hormones and how everything from like posture or how we relate or if you carry something for me, all of those change your hormones versus mine very differently. And some hormones lead to life quality,
01:01:12
Speaker
really good life quality and some hormones in situations lead to the opposite. And so I think as we go forward, kind of decoding these things and then bringing them into the modern life, because we often, with quite a bit of hubris, just go forward in life thinking that we know the best and how silly of these people in the past or how silly of these people in another region, right? When actually we've just been
01:01:38
Speaker
getting less happy and less happy and less healthy and less healthy and basically just becoming miserable internally, right? And so while we love to identify with our minds, we do, at least here, and while that may give people a great sense of identity and these fighting arguments at universities and on news channels and all of this, I think there's no greater barometer for how well someone is doing than how their internal world is.
01:02:09
Speaker
And what we've been learning about the hormones means we need to change the way we interact with each other quite a bit because we've really been kind of destroying the genders, essentially. And just like probably with feminism, there's reasons for these things and it's part of the life cycle. But there's a shadow and there's a light to both, just like with rebellion. Right. And I think we've had far more of the shadow than the light.
01:02:38
Speaker
So hopefully all these discoveries about the hormones and what they need for each sex and all these things. And we're not talking diet, folks. These are like lifestyle things and interactions. Hopefully that will help us to kind of navigate a road forward with integrating the way we live now with a bit more street smarts to our bodies, I would say, and to our cultures. Yeah. That's a great point.
01:03:05
Speaker
Like you mentioned it, this is what manifests naturally as well, right? I'm sure you observe this around the world. It's the same underlying principle, may manifest in different ways, but you're looking at the same underlying concepts that are at play here. And I think the destruction of the masculine and feminine is both equally problematic. A strong masculine can't exist with a strong feminine right? Like there needs to be, they are in perfect unison with each other.
01:03:36
Speaker
It's so very obvious. I always think, I find this discussion fascinating, but whenever I think about it, I'm like, there's no reason that we should have to talk about this. But of course, the state of the world that we're in, of course, necessitates it.
01:03:54
Speaker
the hormonal aspect that I think that's a great way to sort of materialize the conversation around it as well. I think that's really interesting. It takes the emotion out too, right? Because everyone thinks they know best and thinks they know, you know, the best thing for everyone or for themselves, right? But this is something we can actually test. Like if we test your best present levels, I can tell you how your relationship is going to go.
01:04:20
Speaker
and if it's gonna be successful or not, right? If we test my oxytocin levels, you cannot deny if I'm happy or not, if I'm relaxed and joyful and happy. So these hormones really do influence us quite a bit, and often in a very different way than society thinks, like testosterone does not make you violent, estrogen makes men violent, and it's rare, folks, it's rare. So women get violent too, when we get too much testosterone.
01:04:48
Speaker
We are the ones that get that. So there's all these things that we can use reason and calm strategy with, with the hormones, rather than so much emotion and theory and belief and identity. Those things always lead to separation and often conflict, right? Whereas if we just look at like the brass tacks, like we started with,
01:05:17
Speaker
with hormones, we could find a real quality of life very quickly living in this world. So I do think some of those things, it's almost like a hidden language that none of these indigenous regions ever needed someone to put into a study, but we do. But now that we're getting that information, we can apply it.
01:05:41
Speaker
I don't know if you'd agree with this, but we don't place any emphasis on hormones as the cause of illness either, right? These are results of our lifestyle and our environment. I don't know if you would agree with that. I think, I think most things are at catch 22. I think most things can be caused or a result of different things. And I would put hormones into that category as well. Um, there's no question if you are dominant,
01:06:09
Speaker
in a hormone, your phase two, phase three liver channels are going to be rather congested. They'll work, but they'll be congested. And that sets you up for just about everything. So you can have that from our interactions, right? So the way we interact can change our hormones today. And because of that change, if that was consistently done, the liver would be rather backlogged. Now we see that, right? Any health practitioner sees that.
01:06:37
Speaker
The women having perimenopause is horrific. That is not normal. We should not be having perimenopause or bad menopause or bad PMS or infertility. None of that is normal, but it's a result of the liver and those things not working well, in addition to the blood sugar spikes and other things. I think it could be either way, and it is really. I see both in different individuals.
01:07:06
Speaker
I guess the stance that I take is I just think that it is downstream of an event. No doubt that they're a part of the equation of causing these symptoms and these manifestations in the body, maybe in a physical sense. For me, I just think
01:07:29
Speaker
they're still like imbalanced hormones are still a result of something. And I guess that's kind of how I would look at it. I don't know if you, what do you think about that? Well, you can definitely say that, right? Like, okay, let's break apart individual hormones, right? Um, let's take serotonin. That's a hormone. Uh, you could get low levels of serotonin simply by having damage to the gut lining or by having the inappropriate kind of light. So you're not producing melatonin at night and then you're not going to have your serotonin. Uh, same with dopamine.
01:07:59
Speaker
dopamine could get really messed up just by the light around you. The cortisol can be too high in a woman, not because of her interactions, but because of a trigger to the sympathetic nervous system when she's younger or even in the womb, actually even in her grandmother's womb. And so she can be overproducing cortisol, which can make those liver channels sluggish, right? And detoxing doesn't do it, folks. There's other things that are needed for that.
01:08:29
Speaker
the um uh so so you can have it from you could take well actually you know i guess we can't say for sure because the people i'm working with they're not coming from the indigenous they're not coming from perfect microbiomes in a perfect world right they're coming from
01:08:47
Speaker
They're healthy until they're not, but we are not in a healthy environment and we're based in quite a bit, microbiome-wise and other. So in that way, we can't really say, but I can say with our current state of microbiome and stress on the body, stress not just being emotional, chemical, all the rest, right, structural, everything, that you can get the trigger either way, but once it's there,
01:09:15
Speaker
once it's there. And I would say usually focusing on the hormones is not the way to get out of a condition, but it would very much depend on the condition. Like if I'm working with infertility, that it is. Or thyroid, yes, it is. But not for everyone. Some people just have deficiencies that they have to deal with or yeah. So it's, it's never very simple, ironically. It's not, it's not simple in that,
01:09:44
Speaker
And this is why I don't have a YouTube channel, to be honest, because I'm very honest. I work with so many people. And when you work with tens of thousands of people, you see outliers and you just can't give harsh answers, right? If I wasn't working with people, I could be like, broccoli is terrible for these reasons, but I see the people of benefits.
01:10:05
Speaker
So, you know, I just I can't. Yeah. So I I don't feel like blanket statement. I can say like all illnesses because of this or that I don't. And I also can think of about 15 different things that have influenced thyroid to to go negative or positive. And so I can't say it's just one thing for that either. But but I will say for as complicated as I'm making it, it is typically very simple.
01:10:33
Speaker
to get better. It's really the consistency. Yes. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. I think that's a great perspective. I shouldn't ask any more questions because we're getting up to time here. So, um, maybe I could just ask your final thoughts, anything that you want to add to this conversation or anything you might've missed that you want to throw in there at the end. Well, I mean, there's so much, there's so much.
01:11:00
Speaker
And I should backtrack. I do have a YouTube channel, but I don't make great content because I'm not very polarizing. I'm kind of the opposite and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. So often for people it feels really overwhelming or like they have to do a million things. And I would say if you could just focus on being present in this moment and being okay with this moment, the more you can do that,
01:11:29
Speaker
I think that kind of outweighs most other changes that we do, that new light and getting our community again. Like I really do think, you know, we're so lucky to have this to where you and I can talk on video. It's amazing, right? We can get eye contact and all those things. Humans really need that.
Positive Habits and Laughter Therapy
01:11:48
Speaker
So I would say for all the things that we learn that hurt our health, if we shift the focus to what helps it, we'll get a lot farther and we'll also have a better ride.
01:11:59
Speaker
So I think that's what I would leave folks with. There's so much that's scary in the world and that's true, but there's also the true story of like laughter and light therapy and hugs, increasing oxytocin and all these wonderful things. So, so if we can just shift the focus on that, which is also true, our life becomes better whether we're sick or not. Okay. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you for that.
01:12:26
Speaker
Maybe you could tell a listener how they can learn more from you, how they can support you, where they can find you on the internet. You mentioned YouTube, you got a website as well. Yeah, you can find me on maryredic.com. If you click subscribe on there, I don't send much out, but when I do, you'll get notified. I just moved back to the States, so I'm actually going to be able to cut up some of my content, so keep an eye on that.
01:12:49
Speaker
It's on Instagram most likely. That's typically where I post the most, which is Mary Queen of Hearts or just my name, Mary Ruddick. And then my YouTube channel is Mary Ruddick too. So it's all easy to find. Perfect. Amazing. Yeah. We'll put links down below to make it really easy for the listener. Thank you so much for coming on today. Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Oh, it was amazing discussion. Yeah.
01:13:13
Speaker
All right, I want to thank y'all for listening. You should know this is not medical advice. This is for informational purposes only, of course. But remember that we're all responsible sovereign beings capable of criticizing, thinking, and understanding absolutely anything. We, the people in the greater forest, are together self-healer, self-governable, self-teachers, and so much more. So always keep that in mind. Please reach out if you have any questions, comments, criticism, concerns, whatever it may be. Find me on Instagram. You know where to find me. Beyond train. Beyond dot train, I guess I should say. Listen, I really appreciate y'all. If you're on this,
01:13:41
Speaker
informative, insightful, if you liked it, you hated it, give us a like, share, comment, subscribe, review, whatever you got to do on the platform you're listening to. I really appreciate you guys helping us grow, helping to show the support for the channel. All right, really hope you enjoyed it. Remember, there are two types of people in the world. Those will believe they can, those will believe they can't, and they are both correct. All right, thanks for listening. Take care.