Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / Mind-Body Healer Warns: Your Thoughts and Food Are Making You Feel Worse

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Mind-Body Healer Warns: Your Thoughts and Food Are Making You Feel Worse · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  So Crystal Shattuck, welcome to and founder of the Crystal
• 0:03
  Clinic. Welcome to the show.
• 0:04
  Excited to have you on. Thank you.
• 0:06
  Yeah. So how would just to set the
• 0:08
  tone and create context for the audience listening?
• 0:11
  How would you describe what you guys do in maybe a couple
• 0:14
  sentences? I guess I like to offer natural
• 0:18
  ways of healing. There's a lot of ways to heal
• 0:21
  out there, and I sort of came into acupuncture.
• 0:24
  I discovered it about 15 years ago, and I knew it was like my
• 0:28
  mission in life to learn it and share it with everyone.
• 0:31
  And doing that and opening my clinic in 2020, I was
• 0:34
  discovering that there's a lot of ways to heal, and people like
• 0:38
  to heal in different ways, so I like to offer a lot of different
• 0:41
  ways for them to heal. Opened in 2020.
• 0:44
  Was that right before COVID or during?
• 0:45
  COVID right During COVID? Yeah.
• 0:47
  Wow. Yep.
• 0:48
  Everyone told me I was crazy and I shouldn't open during COVID
• 0:51
  but I said I've been waiting 10 years to share this medicine.
• 0:54
  With people. So COVID is not.
• 0:55
  Gonna stop me? That's right.
• 0:57
  Good for you. I did the same thing.
• 0:58
  I started my marketing business in 2020 and really it was July
• 1:01
  2020, I quit my corporate job and started the marketing stuff
• 1:04
  full time. And people are said the same
• 1:06
  thing. They were like, now, I don't
• 1:07
  know if now is a good time. You never know what's going to
• 1:09
  happen. And we're kind of in the middle
• 1:10
  of this pandemic. And but like you, is there ever
• 1:13
  a perfect time? I mean, if it's not now, you
• 1:15
  know it's later and then you delay it and then it's all I'll
• 1:17
  do it next year and then pretty soon just later turns into
• 1:20
  never. Exactly.
• 1:23
  And I had heard the same kind of pushback when I started school
• 1:26
  back in 2014. I had two kids, and I was
• 1:28
  commuting from Sycamore to Chicago.
• 1:31
  And I had people telling me, like, there's no way you can do
• 1:33
  that for five years, like commute to the city and raise
• 1:36
  your kids and work and do everything.
• 1:37
  And I was like, you know what? Watch me.
• 1:39
  I love that. I love that mentality.
• 1:42
  That's so cool. We're going to get into all of
• 1:44
  it. I think if you're a founder,
• 1:45
  entrepreneur, anyone listening to this, you know, mental health
• 1:48
  matters. How we take care of ourself
• 1:50
  matters. It affects how we run our
• 1:52
  business and how we operate as a parent.
• 1:53
  And if you're not well in the in the mind and spirit and in the
• 1:57
  body, you're probably not going to perform as well, at least not
• 2:00
  long term. So did you notice when you got
• 2:02
  into acupuncture and the different types of more natural
• 2:06
  healing and things like that, Was it because that you noticed
• 2:08
  something was broken in the current healthcare health
• 2:11
  well-being system? Actually, I discovered the
• 2:14
  medicine about 15 years ago. I had an experience with it.
• 2:18
  I used acupuncture to sort of induce the labor of my second
• 2:22
  child. And two hours later I went into
• 2:24
  labor. And then I used Chinese herbal
• 2:26
  medicine to help with the breastfeeding so that it was
• 2:29
  like a lightning bolt hit me. And I thought, and I went back
• 2:31
  to the lady and I said, what is this?
• 2:33
  Acupuncture and herbs? And she said these are tools of
• 2:35
  a medicine that's been used for thousands of years, and you can
• 2:38
  use these tools to heal pretty much anything.
• 2:40
  So then I just knew I was on track to study physical therapy
• 2:43
  before. So I knew I wanted to help
• 2:45
  people heal. But having an experience with
• 2:48
  these tools really opened my eyes and shifted my focus.
• 2:51
  And then it actually took me 5 years to go back to school
• 2:54
  because I had the two kids and then five years in school.
• 2:58
  That's why I had waited 10 years.
• 2:59
  And then I was opening the business and COVID happened.
• 3:02
  And I said, I don't care. I've been waiting 10 years.
• 3:04
  Like, it's not going to COVID is not going to stop me.
• 3:06
  And so I did. But yeah, definitely, I'm
• 3:09
  hearing lately more and more people are just, they're at
• 3:12
  their wit's end with Western medicine, pharmaceutical
• 3:16
  surgeries, A lot of doctors, they only spend a few minutes
• 3:20
  with the patient. They don't feel like they're
• 3:21
  being heard. They don't feel like the
• 3:24
  pharmaceuticals are really helping or they're giving them
• 3:26
  side effects. So I do feel like, especially
• 3:29
  lately, like people are really looking for a more natural way
• 3:32
  to heal. And that's what I have to offer.
• 3:35
  It does feel like Western medicine is a bit broken in
• 3:38
  terms of, and there's a lot of good things about it.
• 3:41
  We're very thankful to have a good healthcare when you need a
• 3:43
  surgery or something like this. Like I think we have pretty good
• 3:45
  service, but I do feel like it and I think a lot of people
• 3:48
  agree. It tends to be here's a
• 3:50
  prescription, here's the medication, here's that when we
• 3:53
  know and I'd love to get into it with you.
• 3:55
  We know there's thousands of years old herbal medications,
• 3:59
  there's acupuncture, there's other healing methods.
• 4:02
  Why do you think those don't get talked about enough?
• 4:04
  I just think it's our society, our culture, our country, and we
• 4:08
  kind of grew up on Western medicine.
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  If you're sick, you go with the doctor, they give you an
• 4:12
  antibiotic or whatever, and then the whole pharmaceutical boom
• 4:16
  happened and everybody wants a magic pill to fix everything.
• 4:20
  But I like to, I like to work integratively.
• 4:22
  Actually, I have a really great doctor that sends me a lot of
• 4:25
  patients and I send him patients.
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  We work integratively. I tell people if you're having
• 4:30
  an emergency situation, a car accident, a heart attack, like
• 4:33
  go there. They're really great at
• 4:35
  emergency stuff. But for the more chronic
• 4:37
  everyday stuff, I feel like the natural way, if you can heal
• 4:40
  something naturally, why not try that first?
• 4:43
  So. Yeah, unfortunately a lot of
• 4:46
  money has just gotten involved. In insurance is a nightmare.
• 4:50
  Just, you know, if you just follow the money, honestly with
• 4:52
  anything, if you just follow the money, you'll see, OK, now I
• 4:54
  know why we're doing it because that all the people in power are
• 4:57
  in positions to, you know, accumulate this money because of
• 5:00
  this. They're the ones making these
• 5:02
  decisions. And, and again, I, I think we're
• 5:04
  on the same page with there's a lot of good things that come
• 5:06
  from modern medicine, but there's a lot of things that if
• 5:09
  we, if I bet in this country, in the United States of America, if
• 5:12
  we all just took care of ourselves a lot better, whether
• 5:16
  it's mental health, whether it's eating right, exercising, you
• 5:19
  know, trying herbal medicines first and things like that, we
• 5:22
  would bring down healthcare costs dramatically.
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  We would have less people going to hospitals.
• 5:27
  The pandemic wouldn't have been as bad.
• 5:30
  I mean, do you feel that way that I think we can just solve a
• 5:32
  lot of these problems? Definitely.
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  Naturally, they call it preventative care too.
• 5:36
  It's like just that's why I give my patients the homework
• 5:39
  assignment. I want you to do something
• 5:40
  everyday, something once a week and something once a month to
• 5:44
  bring your mind and body in balance.
• 5:46
  But it should also bring you joy, right?
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  It's like you're not going to go running if you hate running.
• 5:49
  So pick something that'll bring you joy.
• 5:51
  And I also like to tell them like gluten, dairy and sugar are
• 5:54
  not our friends. Alcohol and spicy too, because
• 5:57
  those five things are going to put inflammation in the body.
• 6:00
  We can't say we're never going to have them because you
• 6:02
  probably will, but we really want to find that healthy
• 6:04
  balance or relationship with those things.
• 6:07
  And then we want to stick close to nature.
• 6:08
  So anything you find in nature is going to be good.
• 6:11
  Anything made by man, not as much, right?
• 6:13
  And I tell them it's a never ending journey that we're all
• 6:16
  on, so we can't be too hard on ourselves.
• 6:18
  But just try to remember. Try to remember those things are
• 6:21
  not your friend. Is it?
• 6:22
  Is it milk though? Nature isn't that pretty?
• 6:24
  Yeah, but a lot of people have, Yeah.
• 6:27
  And it's processed and a lot of people have a lactose or dairy
• 6:30
  intolerance. In Chinese medicine, we look at
• 6:33
  dairy as causing like phlegm, extra phlegm in the body.
• 6:36
  So it's really just, you know, if it works for you, if you have
• 6:40
  a yogurt here or there, like that's fine.
• 6:42
  But some people are just, you know, overdoing it and some some
• 6:46
  gluten, dairy, sugar areas. And that's what really leads to
• 6:49
  a lot of inflammation and problems.
• 6:51
  So if they can back off of those things, they can give their body
• 6:55
  a chance to see how you feel if you stick close to nature.
• 6:59
  I always tell my kids the same thing and I'm no expert in this,
• 7:01
  but I say, if it came from the ground or was roaming on the
• 7:03
  ground, probably good for you. If it came from a plant or a
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  factory, probably not. That's my that's my rule of
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  thumb. And so as we go to the store,
• 7:11
  I'll be like, where do you think this came from?
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  A factory or the ground? And they're like, that's came
• 7:15
  from a factory. I was like, cool, let's not that
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  we can never have good things that taste amazing.
• 7:20
  I think there's a lot of natural things that taste really good
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  too. It's not that you can't have a
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  snack or a treat once in a while or alcohol or whatever.
• 7:25
  It is your choice. It's just that it seems like you
• 7:28
  don't want to be doing that stuff every single day.
• 7:30
  And can you talk a little bit about inflammation and what that
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  is? Because when I think of
• 7:34
  inflammation, I think of like, oh, my necks hot or my arms hot
• 7:38
  because I have an injury or something like that.
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  But there's a different type of inflammation that you're talking
• 7:42
  about from eating processed foods, Is that right?
• 7:44
  Yeah, definitely. Especially I see it a lot with
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  gluten, dairy and sugar. A lot of people don't know about
• 7:50
  the glyphosate, like the Roundup that they spray on our foods
• 7:53
  that actually damages your gut lining and allows certain things
• 7:57
  articles to leak out, like you've heard of leaky gut,
• 7:59
  things like that. So when you're having those kind
• 8:01
  of things happening or you're consuming a lot of gluten,
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  dairy, sugar, alcohol, you're putting Chinese medicine will
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  actually calls it damp heat. It translates to inflammation
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  basically. So that kind of stuff is just
• 8:13
  hanging out in your body. It will go to certain places,
• 8:15
  especially where you're weak. If you have a little weakness in
• 8:18
  the knee, it's going to go there and then you're going to end up
• 8:21
  being diagnosed with arthritis, you know, things like that.
• 8:23
  So a lot of imbalances stem from inflammation.
• 8:30
  I have someone that's close to me, I won't mention their name,
• 8:33
  but they drink a lot of sugary coffees, Dunkin' Donuts,
• 8:37
  Starbucks, you know the kind, you know, the Grande, the
• 8:39
  Venti's, and they get, you know, a few of them a day.
• 8:42
  Well, can you break that down? Because then maybe they'll
• 8:44
  listen to this. What is it really doing to the
• 8:46
  body other than what you just mentioned like and long term
• 8:49
  wise if they do this for a year or two years longer?
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  Yeah, I mean, everyone's bodies go out of balance in different
• 8:55
  ways. So it kind of depends on their
• 8:56
  constitution, what they're starting out with.
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  So like some people that do that, they they get like
• 9:02
  breakouts on their face. That's inflammation coming out
• 9:05
  in your face. You know, some people will start
• 9:07
  to get acid reflux. That's inflammation in the
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  stomach, your stomach energy supposed to send things down and
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  out, but it's it's out of balance, it's weak, it's coming
• 9:15
  back up, you know, so some people feel it in their joints
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  and muscles. They get aches and pains
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  everywhere. That's inflammation going there,
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  you know. So by consuming those gluten,
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  dairy, sugar, alcohol, spicy, consuming those inflammatory
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  things, depending on your constitution and what's going on
• 9:32
  in your body, you're going to feel it or experience it in
• 9:34
  different ways. So.
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  What's, where did you guys draw the line between mental type
• 9:42
  health and then physical stuff? Do you guys do both because they
• 9:44
  are both very connected? Oh yeah.
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  Back come to your clinic. Am I going to talk to somebody
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  about potentially both? Because there's like the
• 9:50
  physical stuff of what the sugar is doing to this person that's
• 9:53
  drinking the sugary coffees. But then the other side there's
• 9:55
  the the mental hurdle of I can't stop drinking these damn things.
• 9:58
  I actually went through that myself really.
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  I have an older son, he was going through some some mental
• 10:05
  health stuff and I actually had to put him into a program to get
• 10:08
  the help he needed. And in doing that, it really
• 10:11
  like hurting my mom heart so bad.
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  So I was like, I'm sad. I want a cookie, you know, so
• 10:15
  I'd have a sweet treat or the coffees.
• 10:17
  I love me a good latte too. And I got to a point where I was
• 10:21
  consuming too much and I was having a hard time to stop and I
• 10:26
  was looking for like, what can I do?
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  I actually hired a personal trainer for a month.
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  I was like, this is how I'm going to do it.
• 10:31
  But I didn't back off the coffees and sweet treats that
• 10:34
  much. So finally I came across the
• 10:37
  company that's called Perium. They grow all their own
• 10:41
  superfoods out in California. They test the soil, they turn
• 10:44
  the superfoods into a powder at a certain temperature.
• 10:47
  And the company is really big on helping you get rid of the
• 10:50
  glyphosate that they spray on the foods, the heavy metals that
• 10:53
  we are consuming and the parasites.
• 10:56
  Actually, that's another topic that a lot of people don't know
• 10:58
  about, but it's something we talked about in school.
• 11:01
  Like basically everyone has parasites and other countries
• 11:04
  will do a parasite cleanse like once or twice a year to get rid
• 11:07
  of them. And this country, they never
• 11:09
  really talk about it, but. What are what are parasites for
• 11:11
  those that don't know? Like little little bugs.
• 11:14
  Actually like little creatures and bugs you can get them from.
• 11:17
  Especially meat sushi. People that have pets can get
• 11:21
  parasites. Lots of ways you can get them.
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  Basically everybody has them. So we need to do a parasite
• 11:28
  cleanse at least once a year to kind of help get rid of those.
• 11:32
  And the company that I found three months ago, I started
• 11:35
  doing their supplements, getting rid of the parasites, getting
• 11:38
  rid of the glyphosate, repairing the gut lining, getting rid of
• 11:41
  heavy metals with certain supplements and superfood
• 11:44
  powders that you just mix with water, or you can mix it with
• 11:47
  coconut water if you want to. You can add extra.
• 11:50
  You know, sometimes I'll add avocado or I'll add mango or
• 11:53
  something to it. But I drink superfood shakes for
• 11:56
  breakfast and lunch and I take my supplements.
• 11:58
  And in the last three months, like I've lost weight.
• 12:01
  I have less brain fog, more energy, like I just feel so
• 12:05
  amazing. And so I'm really passionate
• 12:07
  about the company and the whole protocol, and I love to share
• 12:10
  it. I feel like it was the missing
• 12:11
  piece to my clinic too, because you can come to me for
• 12:13
  acupuncture. I can do all the acupuncture I
• 12:15
  want. But if you go home and you're
• 12:17
  eating bad stuff, yeah, and you're not clearing your body of
• 12:20
  these toxins, then you just kind of climb in an uphill battle,
• 12:23
  so. So was that what got you off the
• 12:25
  the coffee and the sugar? Stuff it is.
• 12:26
  Yeah. Within three weeks, I had no
• 12:28
  more sugar cravings. Really.
• 12:29
  It was amazing. Yeah, did.
• 12:31
  You have to change your entire like did you have to be so
• 12:33
  strict that you couldn't eat anything that was or how did
• 12:35
  that work? No, I basically drink the shakes
• 12:38
  for breakfast and lunch and I eat a healthy dinner.
• 12:40
  They say you can eat as many fruits and vegetables as you
• 12:43
  want throughout the day. I'm like one day I was at home
• 12:46
  and I just felt like having soup, so I made soup instead of
• 12:49
  having a shake. It's not like you can only have
• 12:51
  the shakes, but it's really my go to, especially in the
• 12:54
  mornings. I'm very busy.
• 12:55
  I have 3 kids, I'm getting them to three different schools and
• 12:57
  I'm getting to work on time, so it's so convenient just to grab
• 13:00
  my shake and go. It's really helping me not to go
• 13:04
  out to lunch either. That was really easy to do being
• 13:08
  downtown Sycamore. I could just go across the
• 13:10
  street and have some tacos, you know.
• 13:12
  And so I bring my shakes with me for lunch too, So I'm not, you
• 13:16
  know, and tacos across the street are not as bad as
• 13:19
  McDonald's, but they're not as good as superfoods definitely.
• 13:23
  It's really exciting how the difference that you feel so.
• 13:26
  Yeah, but there had been something from a mindset
• 13:28
  standpoint, right, of you being able to because you could tell
• 13:30
  someone, hey, get these shakes or like eat a healthy dinner.
• 13:32
  But they're like, I know that Crystal.
• 13:35
  Like, I know I need to be doing something else or substituting.
• 13:38
  I can't get past the addiction. How do you get past an addiction
• 13:42
  that you're stuck on, whether it's sugar, alcohol, whatever it
• 13:44
  is? I love to recommend the book The
• 13:48
  Untethered Soul. So it helps you understand the
• 13:51
  difference between your psyche and your consciousness.
• 13:54
  So your psyche is like that voice in your head that was
• 13:56
  developed as part of your ego, as like a protection mechanism.
• 13:59
  And your consciousness is who you are.
• 14:01
  It's who you were when you were born, when you were little, who
• 14:04
  you are now, who you'll always be.
• 14:06
  So once you understand the difference between the two, you
• 14:08
  have a lot more control over the psyche.
• 14:11
  The author of the book calls the psyche the annoying roommate in
• 14:14
  your mind, you know, and when I'm trying to help my patients
• 14:17
  understand this so they can have more control over the psyche
• 14:19
  because that's what it is, The psyche kicking in, telling you
• 14:22
  that you want this or you need this or something like that.
• 14:24
  I like to give the example like say you decide you're going to
• 14:27
  go to the gym at 5:00 AM everyday, right?
• 14:30
  Third day in, you're laying in bed and the psyche kicks in is
• 14:33
  like you're comfortable, you're warm or you have these things to
• 14:35
  do kind of talking you out of going.
• 14:37
  Your consciousness kicks in and it's like, wait, we made an
• 14:40
  agreement, we're going to get up and go.
• 14:42
  So you get into this mental battle.
• 14:44
  That kind of stuff happens all the time and people don't
• 14:46
  realize it. And that's what's happening with
• 14:48
  addiction as well. So if you can learn, if you just
• 14:51
  listen to this book and kind of understand the difference
• 14:53
  between the two, you are able to have a lot more control over
• 14:57
  your psyche. That's exactly what happens
• 15:00
  because it's literally feels like a mental battle.
• 15:03
  One side's telling you, hey, you made this commitment.
• 15:04
  I know a lot of y'all are listening to this right now.
• 15:06
  It's 2026, first month of the year.
• 15:09
  You guys probably made some commitments.
• 15:10
  Hopefully you're sticking with them.
• 15:12
  But we're humans, sometimes we don't and we got to get back on
• 15:14
  that wagon. But it feels like there's this
• 15:16
  battle of like, don't take the right turn and go to the the
• 15:20
  store, get the coffee or the drink or whatever it is.
• 15:22
  And then the other parts like get it, it's comfortable, it
• 15:25
  feels good. You're used to this.
• 15:27
  Where does that, Why does that happen?
• 15:28
  Do you know? Just like the book explains, the
• 15:32
  psyche was developed as part of your ego as a protection
• 15:34
  mechanism. So it is trying to protect you
• 15:37
  but also likes to keep you comfortable, right?
• 15:39
  OK, is that I was gonna say is a protection by keeping you
• 15:42
  comfortable because it's not protecting you from being at
• 15:44
  your best health state. Right.
• 15:46
  Yeah, It likes to be comfortable.
• 15:47
  The psyche really likes to be comfortable and kind of keep you
• 15:51
  where you're at sometimes. So that's why your consciousness
• 15:54
  needs to step in and be like breakthrough that comfort
• 15:58
  because a lot of times we know that you're going to feel better
• 16:01
  on the other side of breaking through that.
• 16:04
  Right. And you always do too.
• 16:06
  It's right. I always tell people like after
• 16:07
  you work out. I've never worked out one time
• 16:10
  and been like, man, I wish I wouldn't have done that.
• 16:12
  Every time I'm like, I feel good.
• 16:13
  I'm like, thank God I got that out of the way for the day.
• 16:16
  I feel better about myself. I feel like my habits for the
• 16:18
  rest of the day are probably going to be better.
• 16:20
  It always feels better at the end when you do the right thing.
• 16:23
  But for some reason, it's just easy.
• 16:25
  And it's we got that voice that, you know, subconscious telling
• 16:28
  us or not subconscious, but what you call it, the psyche.
• 16:30
  The psyche, yeah. The annoying roommate in your
• 16:33
  mind, that's what the author of the book that.
• 16:35
  Is that is so recommend reading that book.
• 16:38
  Anything else that you do you tell people cuz it's not like
• 16:40
  you. Was it just reading the book
• 16:42
  that helped you conquer it, or is there something else that
• 16:44
  really stuck out? I actually listened to that book
• 16:46
  my last semester of school, so probably 7 years ago.
• 16:50
  So that like changed my life actually listening to that book.
• 16:54
  And then I have been able to have more control over my psyche
• 16:58
  ever since. So there are a lot of other
• 17:01
  little tips and tidbits I tell my patients.
• 17:04
  One of them, I like them to actually their homework
• 17:07
  assignment is I want you to do something everyday, something
• 17:10
  once a week and something once a month to bring your mind and
• 17:13
  body in balance. A lot of times people come in
• 17:16
  with sort of like a negative mindset, so I have to recognize
• 17:19
  that and try to help them understand what's going on here.
• 17:23
  There is something called the nocebo effect.
• 17:26
  So a lot of people have heard of placebo effect, where people
• 17:29
  take a sugar pill and get better.
• 17:31
  There's something called nocebo effect, where they actually told
• 17:34
  people they have cancer and their hair started falling out
• 17:38
  and they were getting nauseous and they were having pain.
• 17:40
  All these bad things were happening, but they really
• 17:42
  didn't have it. So that's just proving how
• 17:44
  powerful the mind actually is. That's wild.
• 17:47
  So if I have a patient coming in telling me like, I can't sleep,
• 17:49
  I'm never going to be able to sleep.
• 17:51
  I haven't slept my whole life. I'm like, well, let's not nocebo
• 17:54
  yourself. You know, like the the body
• 17:58
  always wants to come back into homeostasis.
• 18:00
  Remember that big word we learned in 8th grade?
• 18:02
  Homeostasis. The body always wants to come
• 18:05
  back into homeostasis. We just have to give it the
• 18:07
  right tools to get there and make sure we're not noceboing
• 18:10
  ourself. That I saw the video that you
• 18:13
  posted, I think it was a Facebook or Instagram about the
• 18:15
  nocebo. And it just it, I wanted to talk
• 18:18
  to you about it today because I think it's just such a, it is a
• 18:20
  powerful reminder of how strong and powerful the mind is.
• 18:24
  I mean, here they are telling someone they have this disease
• 18:26
  that they don't even have, which by the way, that's, that's kind
• 18:28
  of crazy to tell someone they have a cancer in their tone.
• 18:30
  It's pretty bad. I mean, you got to sign up for
• 18:32
  something like that, but that's pretty, I think you'd be pretty
• 18:34
  damn relief when you found out you didn't.
• 18:36
  But it just shows we kind of we tell a story in our head and we
• 18:40
  get fixated on something and then we just like go down this
• 18:42
  rabbit hole and then we become that thing that we think about
• 18:44
  all the time. The good advice I got a while
• 18:47
  back was what story are you telling?
• 18:49
  What's the story that you're telling in your mind?
• 18:52
  And you're right. And I've heard people say it all
• 18:53
  the time, like don't say I'm bad with nay or I'm bad with this or
• 18:56
  I, I don't typically don't sleep, you know, I'm not the
• 18:58
  type of person that does this rewire that thinking, right?
• 19:01
  Is that what you have to do? Just kind of start by just what
• 19:04
  you say and then that follows actions and things like that
• 19:07
  follow. You got to put together a plan
• 19:08
  maybe or something like that. But.
• 19:10
  Definitely it's. That simple sometimes.
• 19:12
  Our thoughts create our habits, right?
• 19:15
  And then our habits become our lifestyle.
• 19:18
  Yeah, that really is how it works.
• 19:21
  I assume there's studies on that type of stuff, the nocebo stuff.
• 19:24
  I was looking a couple of stuff afterwards.
• 19:26
  But have you ever experienced that first hand with you or
• 19:28
  someone else that has come in? You guys don't do that type of
• 19:31
  studies I assume, but. No, but I was actually just
• 19:36
  battling my own mind the other day.
• 19:39
  I like to have a lot of different ways to heal for
• 19:42
  people because I've learned that people like to heal in different
• 19:45
  ways. That's why I encourage them to
• 19:46
  do things that bring you joy. At my clinic, I have
• 19:50
  acupuncture, a full herbal pharmacy for customized Chinese
• 19:53
  herbal medicine, red light therapy, chakra light therapy.
• 19:58
  I have a massage therapist. I do energetic healing.
• 20:01
  It's called biodynamic cranial sacral.
• 20:03
  It's kind of similar to Reiki. And I got a calling for the
• 20:07
  third time to get my own license and massage therapy.
• 20:11
  So I'm able to do massage as well.
• 20:12
  So I'm actually in school for that.
• 20:15
  And then for over 2 years I've been studying with shamans in
• 20:18
  Batavia. So shamanism is a whole nother
• 20:22
  way to heal that. I discovered when I was looking
• 20:25
  for a way to help my oldest son, he has mental health issues and
• 20:29
  he used to would tell me I don't want your needles.
• 20:32
  So I had to find another way for him to heal.
• 20:35
  One of my friends that I went to school with, her husband was
• 20:37
  studying with shaman. So that's how I discovered them.
• 20:40
  There's a place called Healing Arts Metaphysical Center in
• 20:43
  downtown Batavia. I started taking my son there
• 20:46
  and then I started receiving some shamanic healing myself.
• 20:49
  So the way I like to think about it is long, long ago, before
• 20:54
  modern times, when people were sick, they would go to the
• 20:56
  shaman. The shaman was the doctor back
• 20:59
  then and they had shamans all over the world.
• 21:01
  North America, South America, Africa, India, Asia, everywhere
• 21:04
  had their shamans, right, Which all practice sort of similarly,
• 21:08
  probably have a little bit different style, but that was
• 21:11
  the original way that people healed.
• 21:13
  Like even before acupuncture, people would go see a shaman and
• 21:17
  get shamanic healing. So it was really exciting for me
• 21:20
  to discover this experience it myself.
• 21:22
  And then just like when I discovered acupuncture, it was
• 21:25
  like a lightning bolt hit me and I was like, I have to learn this
• 21:27
  and study it. I had a little bit of mental
• 21:30
  battle. Then I was like, well, what if
• 21:32
  they don't want me or accept me or what are my friends and
• 21:35
  family going to think about this?
• 21:37
  But I just pushed through it because sometimes when you feel
• 21:40
  something like so much in your heart that this is part of your
• 21:43
  mission, this is what you have to do, you kind of learn how to
• 21:47
  overcome those mental battles and just go for it.
• 21:51
  So I've been studying with them about over 2 years and last
• 21:54
  Sunday was the first time that we would actually put together.
• 21:57
  We have a lot of different tools in shamanism.
• 22:00
  Just like with acupuncture, I have my needles, I have cupping,
• 22:03
  I have guasha scraping tool, I have moxibustion like a, an herb
• 22:07
  that we burn for healing. So there's lots of tools and
• 22:10
  Chinese medicine, there's lots of different tools in shamanism.
• 22:13
  So I've been collecting my tools over the last two years.
• 22:17
  And Sunday was the first time we had to put it all together and
• 22:20
  work on our partner for an hour. And again, that mental battle
• 22:24
  came up on my way to class. My, my psyche was saying, you
• 22:27
  can't do this. What are you doing?
• 22:28
  You don't know what you're doing, you know, so I had to
• 22:31
  breakthrough and just like my consciousness had to step in and
• 22:34
  be like, well, you're going to give it a try and hopefully you,
• 22:37
  you do know how to do it. So once I was in class and we I
• 22:40
  started working on it or I was working on my partner,
• 22:42
  everything just started to flow and it just went really well.
• 22:45
  And the partner, the partner actually let me know after class
• 22:48
  that it was really a helpful session.
• 22:50
  So I felt so much better. But that's the thing.
• 22:53
  Sometimes we just have to recognize that our psyches
• 22:55
  kicking in and kind of trying to detour us or almost sabotage you
• 23:00
  sometimes in a way you feel like you're like, yeah, so I just
• 23:03
  recognize I know I'm OK. Annoying roommate, Like be
• 23:06
  quiet, like, I'm going for this, you know, and.
• 23:08
  That's what's, if you go back to that same point, because I, I
• 23:10
  feel like I've had to have them come up with meetings or you're
• 23:12
  going to speak on stage and sometimes like it's almost like
• 23:15
  I'm psyching myself out sometimes and I'm like, dude,
• 23:17
  it's going to be fine. The meeting's going to go great.
• 23:19
  You know what you're doing. You've done this 100 times.
• 23:21
  Like, but it goes back to why would we try to sabotage
• 23:25
  yourself? Like what would be the benefit?
• 23:27
  I know sometimes it's like staying comfortable, but what
• 23:29
  would be the benefit of your psyche saying Hey, you can't do
• 23:32
  this or who are you to do this? Does it go back to safety and
• 23:36
  comfort? It really does.
• 23:37
  And in the book The Untethered Soul, he really goes into it
• 23:40
  deeply and it's very helpful to to listen.
• 23:44
  Some people don't like to listen to audiobooks.
• 23:46
  I personally love them. I say the brain wants to eat
• 23:49
  just like the belly, so we need to feed it something good.
• 23:52
  Yeah. So I love to listen to
• 23:53
  audiobooks when I'm washing dishes or folding laundry.
• 23:56
  Me too. Taking a walks.
• 23:57
  Or podcasts are great too for that.
• 23:59
  I actually prefer those more even though it's maybe sometimes
• 24:02
  not specific in terms of what you want to learn about.
• 24:04
  Order a book. But I like podcasts cuz it's
• 24:06
  like conversational sometimes the audio, depending on who it
• 24:10
  is though, if it's a good audio voice and their delivery is
• 24:12
  pretty good, it's OK. But I've had somewhere that's
• 24:15
  just like monotone and like today we're gonna talk about and
• 24:18
  it's just like, I can't do it. I can't do it.
• 24:21
  Yeah, it's good to feed your brain something good it is for.
• 24:23
  Sure. So if you can listen to The
• 24:25
  Untethered Soul, I highly recommend it.
• 24:27
  I recommend it to all my patients, especially if they
• 24:29
  have anxiety, because it really will help you understand the
• 24:32
  difference and just be able to control that psyche in whatever
• 24:35
  situation that you're going into.
• 24:37
  Yeah. What do you say to the skeptic
• 24:40
  of the kind of non traditional or maybe old school, you know,
• 24:46
  medicines and therapies and things like that?
• 24:48
  The people who go Chinese medicine, acupuncture, really
• 24:52
  crystal, I mean, is that like there's some other ones too, I'm
• 24:55
  sure in there. What do you say to the skeptic
• 24:56
  that's just not bought into that stuff?
• 24:59
  Oh, I've been, I've been doing that for years.
• 25:03
  Yeah, I've heard it all. I've heard that I'm doing
• 25:05
  witchcraft or voodoo or I was, I was kind of going to a church
• 25:09
  for a while and some of the women told me that what I'm
• 25:11
  studying is non Christian and I should change my, you know, my,
• 25:14
  my path of study. And yeah, some people told me I
• 25:19
  can't, you know, study shamanic healing because of who I am or
• 25:23
  whatever, you know, So I really just like to tell them that if
• 25:28
  it didn't work, it wouldn't still be being practiced or used
• 25:32
  thousands of years later, you know, and I've been practicing
• 25:36
  for six years. I've helped thousands of people.
• 25:39
  So if I would have listened to those people telling me not to
• 25:41
  do it, think of all the thousands of people that I
• 25:44
  wouldn't have been able to help. So I just also look at it like
• 25:48
  they're not ready to heal in this way.
• 25:49
  You know, they might still be looking for a magic pill.
• 25:52
  A lot of people are on this, oh, I'm going to find a magic pill
• 25:54
  to fix everything. Or they're going to get a magic
• 25:57
  shot to make themselves smaller or they're going to get a magic
• 26:01
  surgery that's just going to take away the pain.
• 26:03
  So if they're in that mindset, I mean, I can just plant the seed
• 26:07
  is what I call it. Plant the seed, maybe water it a
• 26:10
  little bit, leave it alone because it's hard to change
• 26:13
  people's beliefs if they're not ready.
• 26:17
  I just look at it like they're not ready to heal in this way.
• 26:20
  That's how I look at it. And when they are ready, they
• 26:22
  know where to find me. Yeah, that's right.
• 26:24
  You do have to kind of be ready to go on that journey or at
• 26:26
  least be open to it. At least say I'm willing to give
• 26:28
  something different a shot. It's funny how we trust the
• 26:31
  laboratory made stuff, but we don't trust stuff that like is
• 26:34
  actually just more natural for the human body.
• 26:36
  That's kind of funny how that. Works that's been used for
• 26:38
  thousands of years. Yeah, exactly.
• 26:40
  I mean, and I assume probably in a lot of parts of the world, I
• 26:43
  don't know if China or whatever else these are they still using
• 26:46
  these medicines or? Sure.
• 26:47
  Yeah, They told us in school if you go to a hospital in China,
• 26:51
  you actually get the best of both worlds.
• 26:53
  They use, they use both Western and Eastern medicine, smaller
• 26:57
  towns, they're only using acupuncture and Chinese herbs
• 27:00
  like they always have for thousands of years, you know,
• 27:02
  but you go to bigger cities, they're using a good combination
• 27:06
  of it. And I like to work
• 27:08
  integratively. Like I'll tell my patients, I
• 27:10
  want you to get blood work, have your tests and scopes and scans,
• 27:13
  like peek inside the body, see what's going on, rule out
• 27:16
  anything serious and then go from there.
• 27:18
  So I'm not against Western medicine.
• 27:20
  I actually like to work integratively.
• 27:22
  But if you can heal something naturally, let's try to do that
• 27:25
  first, right? Everything's on a continuum too,
• 27:28
  so when you first get unhealthy, it's a lot easier to bring it
• 27:31
  back, especially with natural tools.
• 27:33
  But if you've let something go on for so far and so long, like
• 27:36
  years and years of something or you're at stage 4 cancer, it's
• 27:39
  like, OK, now you might want to have a little bit of you can
• 27:43
  still work integratively and have the best of both worlds.
• 27:45
  I actually have quite a few cancer patients that are have
• 27:48
  chemo radiation. They're getting that side of it,
• 27:51
  but they're coming to me to help them with their nausea or their
• 27:54
  pain or their night sweats or their side effects from what
• 27:57
  they're going through. So working integratively like
• 28:00
  like I said the best of both worlds is probably the best.
• 28:03
  What would be some examples of how Chinese medicine can help
• 28:07
  heal you or herb Chinese herbs or whatever it is?
• 28:09
  What are some like use cases there because I'm just not
• 28:11
  familiar with it. So I have patients that have
• 28:14
  every kind of imbalance you can think of.
• 28:16
  I mean, a lot of them even have been through the whole Western
• 28:20
  medicine. They're at their wits end with
• 28:22
  Western. They've tried all kinds of
• 28:25
  surgeries and pharmaceutical pills and all kinds of things
• 28:27
  and nothing is working and they're not feeling heard.
• 28:30
  That's when they come to me. And so I really like take my
• 28:33
  time with patients. I have patience a lot of
• 28:37
  infertility lately because Google and ChatGPT are telling
• 28:41
  people to try acupuncture for infertility.
• 28:43
  Hey, that's a good bonus for. You yeah.
• 28:45
  So now I just see the Google and ChatGPT to tell them to try it
• 28:48
  for everything because basically it does work for everything.
• 28:52
  But with my fertility patients, I'll have one that went through
• 28:56
  IVF and it didn't work. So she came to me and she said I
• 29:00
  don't know if I want to do IVF again.
• 29:01
  And I said, well that's going to be your choice.
• 29:03
  What I want to help you do is just bring your mind and body
• 29:06
  back into balance. She came to see me once a week
• 29:08
  for four weeks for acupuncture and she took a customized
• 29:11
  Chinese herbal formula and she decided to go back to IVF.
• 29:15
  What does that mean? What is the formula though?
• 29:17
  Do you, is that something you buy on Amazon?
• 29:19
  Can you buy it around here like and what is in in the formula
• 29:21
  that's so? So Chinese just.
• 29:23
  Transmutial. Because I had to learn 300
• 29:27
  Chinese herbs and then I had to learn how to combine them into
• 29:30
  formulas. And these formulas have been
• 29:32
  used for thousands of years. So I would pick a base formula
• 29:35
  for my client and then I would customize it.
• 29:38
  Say she needs a formula to help her get pregnant, but she's
• 29:41
  having sleep issues. So I'm going to add this herb
• 29:43
  for that. So I have over 300 herbs in my
• 29:46
  clinic and then I there I have the granules, the powder.
• 29:51
  So it'll be the powder, a jar of powder that I give you and you
• 29:54
  mix it with hot water and drink it twice a day and.
• 29:57
  Now, how much of that is placebo effect do you think?
• 30:00
  Well, the herbs go into your body and they bring you back
• 30:04
  into balance a little bit quicker than if I do the
• 30:07
  acupuncture. We're telling your body to come
• 30:09
  back into balance and it can and it will, but sometimes can take
• 30:12
  a little longer. So the way I like to describe
• 30:15
  acupuncture, it's kind of like if you get a paper cut, it will
• 30:18
  send a signal to your brain and the brain will send a signal
• 30:21
  down to heal and repair, right? And a couple days your paper
• 30:24
  cuts healed up because your body has the ability to heal and
• 30:27
  repair itself. So when I put needles in, they
• 30:30
  send signals to your brain and the brain back down to heal and
• 30:33
  repair. So it's not me fixing you, it's
• 30:35
  not the needle, it's your own body starting to fix itself,
• 30:37
  right? We're able to tap into all of
• 30:39
  your Arctic, the same mechanisms like you have your immune
• 30:41
  system, your hormones, your endocrine system, natural
• 30:44
  painkillers, you have all that set up already.
• 30:47
  We just go in and get them fired up and start to work properly
• 30:49
  again. So different points are sending
• 30:51
  different signals to the brain. How much of it is placebo?
• 30:55
  That's up to a patient, I guess. I mean, people can come in
• 30:58
  thinking. If it works, it works.
• 31:00
  It doesn't matter exactly. Yeah, they can come in like, I
• 31:02
  don't know, it's gonna work. And then they leave and they're
• 31:05
  like, wow, I actually feel better so.
• 31:07
  But I assume there are studies and stuff like that done on that
• 31:09
  stuff and. Yeah, Oh yeah.
• 31:11
  I love evidence based acupuncture.org.
• 31:13
  It's a great website to go to. Even doctors can go there and
• 31:17
  see all these studies that are being done and how it's being
• 31:20
  translated. When I talk to my patients, I
• 31:22
  don't use a lot of Chinese medicine words like chi and yin
• 31:27
  and Yang. Those are Chinese medicine
• 31:28
  words. And if I say that to you, you're
• 31:30
  going to be, it's like me just throwing in a Spanish word and
• 31:33
  you're like, what's that word mean?
• 31:35
  So I really like to translate it.
• 31:36
  That's what they focus on. When I was getting my doctorate,
• 31:39
  they're like, how are you going to translate what we're doing
• 31:41
  into the Western minded people? You know?
• 31:44
  So that's why I talk about inflammation.
• 31:46
  I talk about signals being sent. The herbs are not going to,
• 31:51
  there's no placebo effect on the herbs.
• 31:53
  I mean, you're going to feel it. I'm going to give you a formula
• 31:56
  for a week and you're going to start to feel changes within
• 31:59
  that week. Now you might need a refill or
• 32:00
  two depending on what we're working on, but the herbs are
• 32:03
  not meant to be taken forever. We're just going to quickly
• 32:05
  bring you back into balance and then you maintain with foods and
• 32:09
  self-care. Wow, so you're pretty convicted
• 32:11
  around the herbs and their power.
• 32:13
  Oh yeah. I mean, I've been doing it for
• 32:15
  six years, so I. And and like give me a spectrum
• 32:18
  on what it might be able to help somebody with.
• 32:20
  Like would you give it to someone that is struggling with
• 32:21
  addiction or sleep Obviously seems like a natural one.
• 32:25
  What are some of the common ones?
• 32:26
  Just the herbs, the herbs. I do a lot of fertility, herbal
• 32:31
  medicines, digestive stuff, a little bit of pain with pain.
• 32:37
  I like to use a lot of cupping with addictions.
• 32:41
  I actually. The stuff you put like the.
• 32:43
  Yeah, yeah. The cups will pull the skin away
• 32:45
  from the muscle and allow anything that's trapped to flow
• 32:47
  through. So there's an old saying in
• 32:49
  Chinese medicine, when you have pain, you have lack of free
• 32:52
  flow. So there's always blood and
• 32:54
  fluids and signaling traveling up and down your body.
• 32:56
  And if it gets stuck, it's going to cause pain.
• 32:59
  So all of my tools tell the body to flow properly again, just in
• 33:02
  slightly different ways. So I like to start out with
• 33:04
  guasha. It's a scraping technique.
• 33:06
  A lot of women are using the facial guasha tools for
• 33:09
  wrinkles, you know, but guasha is an old technique that's been
• 33:12
  used for thousands of years, along with the acupuncture.
• 33:15
  So we do some scraping into the pain.
• 33:17
  A lot of people have pain in the neck and shoulders, so I scrape
• 33:19
  that area out. And then it helps to find any
• 33:23
  knots you have, start to break them up.
• 33:25
  And then I'll use the cups to pull the skin away from the
• 33:28
  muscle and allow anything that's trapped to flow through.
• 33:30
  And then I typically use a liniment, which is like an oil
• 33:33
  with Chinese herbs in it to help with circulation and pain.
• 33:36
  So I like to do a lot of physical work for pain.
• 33:40
  Sometimes we'll go to the herbs if we need it.
• 33:43
  Now, how does acupuncture actually work?
• 33:46
  Just like I said, like sending the signals to the brain and the
• 33:50
  brain back down. So there's over there's, I can't
• 33:53
  remember how over 400 points from the bottom of your feet to
• 33:56
  the top of your head and everywhere in between.
• 33:58
  So we diagnosed by patterns of imbalance.
• 34:01
  So it's my job to bring you in, spend a lot of time asking you
• 34:04
  questions about a lot of different things.
• 34:06
  We always want to treat the whole body.
• 34:07
  So even if someone comes for pain, I will ask them the first
• 34:10
  time I meet them, we spend 90 minutes.
• 34:12
  I will ask him questions about sleep, digestion, emotions,
• 34:16
  everything. And from the questions I ask,
• 34:19
  then other part of our diagnosis is to feel your pulse and take a
• 34:23
  picture of your tongue. So a lot of your main organs are
• 34:25
  represented on your tongue. So we're actually able to see
• 34:28
  what's going on inside the body based off the tongue as well.
• 34:31
  So then I put everything together, everything you've told
• 34:33
  me, the tongue and pulse, put it all together and I figure out
• 34:36
  which patterns you have going on.
• 34:38
  And from those patterns, then I know which points to needle to
• 34:41
  bring your body back into balance.
• 34:43
  That's. What I was curious about is
• 34:44
  like, you know, how far does it go?
• 34:46
  Is it a certain type of needle? How do you know where to stick
• 34:49
  it in like? That's part of my.
• 34:50
  Five years of. Training.
• 34:52
  Yeah. So.
• 34:52
  So during our training, we not only learn where the points are
• 34:55
  and what they do, how to find them, but what needle size
• 34:58
  you're gonna use. There's different links, there's
• 35:00
  different thicknesses. What angle, depth and direction
• 35:03
  are you gonna put it in? Yeah, it's all part of the.
• 35:06
  Training, it's a lot of memories.
• 35:07
  You're putting the needle in your body.
• 35:09
  They're about as thin as a piece of hair, so how keep?
• 35:12
  Is it going though? Not very.
• 35:13
  Doesn't go in very deep, especially like on the legs, the
• 35:17
  feet, the arms, things like that.
• 35:19
  Do you feel a prickle? Kind of.
• 35:20
  You might, you might feel a little something when I put it
• 35:24
  in, but then anything should go away.
• 35:26
  I always tell my patients if anything feels uncomfortable,
• 35:29
  you let me know. Because after I place all the
• 35:32
  points and I use my Max Abush and I use all my tools on you, I
• 35:35
  actually give you a little call button and I leave the room for
• 35:38
  about 2025 minutes. The reason we do that is because
• 35:42
  a lot of people, we get stuck in our fight or flight mode, right?
• 35:45
  So acupuncture kind of forces your body back down into your
• 35:49
  rest and digest mode and that's where healing occurs.
• 35:52
  So the more you can relax, even take a little nap while I'm
• 35:55
  gone, the easier those signals are sent and more healings
• 35:58
  happening. I call it going to accu land
• 36:00
  sort of halfway between awake and asleep.
• 36:02
  I say it's everyone's new favorite place and that's where
• 36:04
  all the magic happens. Interesting.
• 36:06
  I'm gonna go back to the the food stuff and I know
• 36:10
  necessarily you're not like a food specialist necessarily, but
• 36:13
  obviously it's Wellness in general.
• 36:15
  What do you think about grass fed beef and things like that or
• 36:18
  organic chicken and stuff like that?
• 36:20
  Yes. So that's kind of stuff I do
• 36:24
  feed my kids and I have been eating but.
• 36:27
  I do too, so I'm eating grass fed beef tonight so that's why
• 36:29
  I'm asking. I'm hoping you're gonna tell me.
• 36:31
  The more, yeah, the more I study, the more I stick with the
• 36:35
  Perian people. I mean, a lot of people are kind
• 36:37
  of shying away from meat these days.
• 36:39
  You know, my shaman that I study with, he's a vegan.
• 36:43
  So I'm kind of at a crossroads lately with like, should we be
• 36:47
  eating this meat or not? I think it's very, it's a very
• 36:50
  personal decision, just like with a lot of things.
• 36:54
  So I can't speak too much on that.
• 36:58
  The meat is very personal and everybody has to decide for
• 37:01
  themselves. The few things I can tell you
• 37:04
  about nutrition from a Chinese medicine standpoint is we we
• 37:08
  want to be careful about how much cold we put in our body,
• 37:11
  especially if you have a weekend digestion.
• 37:13
  So if you're drinking ice water all the time, you're putting a
• 37:16
  bunch of ice in your smoothies, you're eating a bunch of salads,
• 37:18
  you're actually burning out your digestion because your digestion
• 37:22
  has to work harder to heat it up and break it down.
• 37:24
  What about if it's like in the fridge?
• 37:26
  I gotta drink these all the time.
• 37:28
  We we recommend like room temperature to warm beverages
• 37:31
  are are better for your digestion.
• 37:34
  I drink my superfood shakes, you know, I mix powder and water.
• 37:38
  I don't add any extra ice if I add frozen fruit, maybe a few,
• 37:43
  but I try to do fresh. So just try to be mindful of the
• 37:47
  cold, the amount of cold you're putting in your body because
• 37:49
  you're forcing your digestion to work harder and breaking.
• 37:52
  Down a can of ice cream. Ice cream is not your kind of.
• 37:55
  Nice things, guys. You can't have nice things
• 37:57
  anymore. No, you definitely can.
• 37:59
  I mean, but so we'll say like, OK, you love salad.
• 38:02
  If you're gonna eat a salad, drink a hot tea with it, OK?
• 38:05
  You know, that's why people have soup and salad, because it helps
• 38:08
  warm it up to break it down. Now if I'm drinking tea, do I
• 38:10
  need to? Is it important to get organic
• 38:12
  or not? Does it matter like I'm always
• 38:14
  like does it really matter? I don't know.
• 38:15
  In my mind I think it does. I try to get as much organic as
• 38:18
  I can. Yeah, they say those those
• 38:20
  chemicals and pesticides that they spray on everything.
• 38:23
  I mean, right, there's a lot of information out there about the
• 38:26
  glyphosate, the Roundup, how it's damaging our gut lining
• 38:29
  that's even being proven as a known carcinogenic.
• 38:32
  So the more. They don't care.
• 38:33
  They'll keep putting it on the damn food as long as it's making
• 38:35
  money is the cheapest thing. And so that's what bothers me
• 38:39
  about the system is like where is people intervening that are
• 38:41
  like, hey, this isn't good for our population.
• 38:44
  But the problem is we got lobbyists coming in and they pay
• 38:46
  for people to get elected. And that's a whole rabbit hole
• 38:49
  we don't have to go down, but. Yeah, well, the more people are
• 38:52
  aware, the more they can try to make changes.
• 38:55
  And that's where I that's why I decided to start, you know,
• 38:58
  supporting the company Perium because they do regenerative
• 39:01
  farming. They are help, they are eco
• 39:04
  friendly. All their packaging is
• 39:06
  compostable. They do care about the earth and
• 39:09
  they're not using the chemicals and they're using or all organic
• 39:12
  farms. So it's just important to be
• 39:14
  aware and try to make little changes when you can you.
• 39:18
  Know and the problem is too, it's just expensive to eat
• 39:20
  organic and supernatural and regenerate, right?
• 39:23
  I mean for I mean, I think in a lot of cases, if you go for the
• 39:25
  organic grass fed beef, it's going to be more expensive than
• 39:29
  the traditional beef that's probably got hormones and a
• 39:31
  bunch of crazy stuff in it. That's just the reality of and
• 39:35
  maybe it always is that way because it just takes more
• 39:36
  effort to be able to grow it that way or you can't mass
• 39:39
  produce it. They can.
• 39:41
  Like in the 60s or whatever it was, we in America, we got into
• 39:44
  mass production and just highly processed foods.
• 39:47
  It just was a wave, cereals and meats and chips and candy and it
• 39:52
  just became like a huge and somewhere around before then it
• 39:56
  was like you ate a pretty home cooked meal, like you got stuff
• 39:59
  at the market that day. It was just different.
• 40:01
  Yeah, everything was mostly organic, right and right.
• 40:03
  Gosh, yeah. It is unfortunate that we have
• 40:06
  to pay more for organic foods, but you know, you can find
• 40:11
  companies that are affordable like I have.
• 40:13
  I mean, when I started the with Purium, I did their 30 day
• 40:16
  ultimate lifestyle transformation.
• 40:18
  So I got my super food shakes for breakfast and lunch for 30
• 40:21
  days. I got a supplement to get rid of
• 40:24
  the glyphosate, repair the gut lining.
• 40:26
  I got a vegan protein, I got a parasite cleanse, I've got a
• 40:31
  tart cherry juice to drink at night, and I got a portable
• 40:33
  blender. I got all of that for $12.00 a
• 40:36
  day. Wow, that's not bad.
• 40:37
  It's not bad. It's like. $75,000.
• 40:40
  No, Yeah, you think that when you look at the.
• 40:42
  Package at all. And you see the price of like
• 40:45
  360 or something, but if you break it down it's $12.00 a day.
• 40:49
  And I tell my. Spend more than coffee.
• 40:50
  Exactly, I was doing that as well, getting the lattes for 10
• 40:53
  bucks and across the street having tacos 15 bucks.
• 40:56
  You know, so when I looked at the so originally I was like,
• 40:59
  oh, that's a little expensive, but then I broke it down and I'm
• 41:02
  like, this is breakfast and lunch and all my supplements and
• 41:05
  my blender for 12 bucks a day. Like that's that's.
• 41:08
  Affordable, that is very affordable.
• 41:10
  So you just kind of know you. Just kind of ship the mindset
• 41:12
  too. So now I treat it like an online
• 41:14
  grocery store. Like every month I go on there,
• 41:16
  I'm like a kid in a candy shop. I'm like, oh, I want to try
• 41:18
  this, I want to try that. So it's really about shifting
• 41:22
  your your finances. So say you're spending all this
• 41:24
  money at the grocery store and you're bringing home like you
• 41:27
  know what people bring home, especially if you have kids,
• 41:30
  like snacks and goodies and this and that.
• 41:32
  You just have to make a conscious effort.
• 41:34
  Like I'm not going to allot my money towards that.
• 41:36
  I still do go to the grocery store.
• 41:38
  I like fresh fruits and veggies. I like coconut water and some of
• 41:42
  my shakes. And so there's certain things I
• 41:45
  still get the grocery store. I make a healthy dinner at
• 41:47
  night. You know, we eat meat and we eat
• 41:49
  potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, things like that.
• 41:51
  Brown. Rice or rice?
• 41:53
  Either one. OK, I've been getting on brown
• 41:55
  rice recently. It's actually found a good
• 41:57
  product and there is some organic options at Whole Foods
• 41:59
  too where it's good. It's really.
• 42:01
  Good. Have you tried black rice?
• 42:03
  I don't think so. Yeah, that's a good one.
• 42:05
  I've tried it in like the mixes, you know, where it's like black,
• 42:08
  brown, like that wild rice kind of stuff.
• 42:10
  But no, yeah, it's good. It's a little adjustment because
• 42:13
  I love white rice. I'll eat rice with anything.
• 42:15
  Yeah, I'm obsessed with it. It comes from the earth, so it
• 42:18
  does not bad for you I. Think that, but sometimes that
• 42:21
  stuff is they say the white rice like spikes your glucose and
• 42:24
  things like that too so. For certain people.
• 42:27
  But isn't that better than McDonald's or a lot of other?
• 42:29
  Things right? Yeah, for sure.
• 42:31
  No, I think that's such a good point that you bring up is like
• 42:33
  people, we have to stop making excuses and saying, oh, it's the
• 42:36
  and it is. There is a reality of yes, it's
• 42:38
  true in a lot of cases, but control what you can control.
• 42:42
  If you can swap this for swap that and it's not gonna make a
• 42:44
  huge difference. Or if you can look for 12 bucks
• 42:46
  a day, most people are spending more than that on a lot of other
• 42:49
  stupid stuff. Exactly.
• 42:51
  So how important is your health? It's pretty damn.
• 42:52
  It should be the number one thing pretty much, right?
• 42:54
  Or one of the number one things. Definitely, yeah, there was the
• 42:58
  same other day. People have 99 problems until
• 43:01
  their health goes bad and then you only have one so.
• 43:04
  I love that saying. I think the one I've heard is a
• 43:07
  healthy man or woman has, you know, hundreds of problems.
• 43:11
  An unhealthy person has one and it's just getting healthy.
• 43:16
  That's it. And we don't think about that
• 43:18
  because we take our health for granted sometimes until
• 43:20
  something happens and then we go, I would just trade
• 43:22
  everything to be healthy right now.
• 43:23
  Then nothing else really matters.
• 43:25
  Exactly. And that's why preventative is
• 43:26
  the best thing you can do because you can, you can get
• 43:28
  ahead of it, you can control it. You can make the, the chance of
• 43:31
  you getting unhealthy less likely.
• 43:33
  Things can always happen, but what do you think?
• 43:35
  Because we got a lot of founders, entrepreneurs,
• 43:37
  business owners, executives that listen to the show.
• 43:40
  What are your thoughts on the hustle culture and you know,
• 43:43
  people overworking sometimes? Or do you have any thoughts on
• 43:46
  that right now from like a mental health perspective and a
• 43:49
  Wellness overall? Because I, I know a lot of
• 43:50
  founders personally that definitely trade their health
• 43:54
  for growing the business and making more money.
• 43:57
  And I sometimes I question, you know, and that's everyone has
• 44:01
  their own life and their own prerogative.
• 44:02
  They can do whatever they want to do, but sometimes I think,
• 44:05
  man, you're trading your health, you're trading time for kids,
• 44:07
  You're trading all the stuff to grow the business for what?
• 44:10
  Like it's good to grow the business.
• 44:11
  Nice job. I want to grow mine.
• 44:13
  We all you probably want to grow yours, but not the trading off
• 44:16
  of our health and our kids or our well-being, right?
• 44:20
  I see that a lot, even in women. I get, I treat a lot of women.
• 44:23
  So they come to me like, so out of balance, like all the
• 44:26
  questions I'm asking, like, everything's out of balance.
• 44:30
  Yeah. And I often tell them, like, you
• 44:32
  know, we do get busy as women, especially moms, like taking
• 44:35
  care of everybody and everything else.
• 44:36
  And at the end of the day, you haven't done anything for
• 44:39
  yourself. So, and you can't pour from an
• 44:41
  empty cup, right? So if you can just squeeze out
• 44:44
  that little bit of time, like one thing every day, one thing
• 44:48
  once a week and one thing once a month, start there.
• 44:51
  And if you can get those in, then you can build from that.
• 44:53
  But you can definitely be happier, healthier, able to.
• 44:58
  And I tell people like, I have to do it or else I'd be a
• 45:01
  hypocrite telling my patients to do their daily, weekly
• 45:03
  monthlies. And then they don't.
• 45:05
  And if I don't do these things, I start to feel all out of
• 45:08
  balance and I'm not being the best mom I can be or I'm not
• 45:11
  going to be able to come in and treat my patients if I'm all
• 45:14
  feeling out of balance. Now, stuff does happen.
• 45:16
  It comes up, you know, you can come into work feeling a little
• 45:19
  stressed. I like to help people build
• 45:22
  tools in their tool belt to quickly bring yourself back to
• 45:24
  balance. One of my favorite things is the
• 45:26
  417 breath. So you breathe in for the count
• 45:29
  of four, hold for one and out for seven.
• 45:31
  If you do that three times, you can already start to feel a
• 45:34
  reset. I also love tapping.
• 45:36
  So say you're feeling extra frustrated that day over
• 45:39
  something that happened. You can just tap and say, OK,
• 45:41
  frustration, you got to get out. OK, sadness got to go.
• 45:45
  Like just tell those feelings to get out and tap yourself.
• 45:47
  It actually works. And then I also, I love the
• 45:50
  tuning fork. I don't know if you've ever
• 45:51
  experienced tuning forks, but I love doing the one on the heart
• 45:55
  just like 3, like strike the tuning fork, put it on your
• 45:58
  heart a couple of times. You feel the vibrations and it
• 46:00
  really does help bring you back to balance.
• 46:02
  So it's different for everyone because everyone likes to heal
• 46:05
  and come back into balance in different ways.
• 46:08
  But definitely having some quick tools in your tool belt of
• 46:10
  things you do to kind of quickly bring yourself in balance is
• 46:13
  helpful. And then making sure you're
• 46:15
  hitting those daily, weekly monthlies to keep everything in
• 46:18
  balance too. The more imbalanced and centered
• 46:21
  and grounded we are, the more productive that you can be, or
• 46:26
  that's what I think you can take on anything, you know?
• 46:28
  I've been in business pretty much as long as you have.
• 46:30
  I started my business in 2020 and I was always like, I never,
• 46:33
  I'm never going to sacrifice my time, my relationship with my
• 46:36
  kids. I'm not going to sacrifice my
• 46:38
  health. I've certainly been more healthy
• 46:41
  and less healthy, but I've never like really sacrificed just, I
• 46:44
  don't know. I, I think the balance is
• 46:45
  important and I don't like when people talk balance.
• 46:47
  They're like, oh, there's no such thing as balance.
• 46:50
  And I hear what they're saying, but I think I don't look at it
• 46:52
  like exact perfect balance at all times.
• 46:55
  I just look at like, if you have kids, you have a good
• 46:57
  relationship with your kids, your spouse, your business, your
• 47:00
  health, you can do those things at the same time.
• 47:03
  It's not that one. If I look at Monday, last
• 47:05
  Monday, it's like, it's that that may have not been a
• 47:07
  perfectly balanced day. Doesn't need to be.
• 47:09
  But over the course of this year, I plan on taking care of
• 47:12
  my health. I plan on having a great
• 47:13
  relationship with my friends, my family and loved ones.
• 47:15
  I plan on growing the business and I think you can do all those
• 47:18
  things. Yeah, you can.
• 47:20
  It's always evolving and changing too, so you just gotta
• 47:22
  learn how to go with the ebb and flow and make your adjustments
• 47:26
  when you need to. Exactly how's your journey so
• 47:28
  far been as a business owner, as a founder?
• 47:30
  Is it what you thought it was going into it in 2020?
• 47:33
  Well, I am not a businessy person, so I love taking care of
• 47:38
  my patients. I love that part of it.
• 47:40
  But the business side of it, I am just like, Oh my goodness.
• 47:43
  And we had one class in business in Chinese medicine school at
• 47:46
  the very end. So I really feel like I've just
• 47:50
  been winging it. Basically I.
• 47:52
  Think we all do in the beginning, yeah.
• 47:54
  Yeah, I got lucky enough to meet someone who was, what do you
• 48:00
  call him? A business consultant.
• 48:03
  He was living in New York for eight years and helping people
• 48:06
  build their brands. Yeah.
• 48:07
  So he helped me build my website.
• 48:09
  Cool. His name is Luke.
• 48:11
  Hey, Luke. Thanks.
• 48:12
  Thanks for all your help. Yeah, I had to give a shout out.
• 48:14
  I actually invited him to come with me because he did help me
• 48:19
  in starting the business but he it was busy today but.
• 48:23
  He's the founder of a business. Well, he, he helped me with my
• 48:26
  website, he helped me with marketing, he helped me with
• 48:29
  branding. I didn't really know a lot about
• 48:31
  that stuff. So I feel lucky that I met him
• 48:33
  and he was able to help me so I can learn some of that stuff.
• 48:37
  Because like I said, we had five years of Chinese medicine
• 48:40
  training and one class in business at the end.
• 48:42
  And I was like, what am I doing? And as a doctor of Chinese
• 48:46
  medicine, acupuncture and Chinese medicine, it's not like
• 48:48
  there's a bunch of places out there hiring in my field.
• 48:52
  So it's either like go to work for somebody like 45 minutes
• 48:56
  away or make your own business. You know, that was basically the
• 49:00
  choice I had. So I sort of was, I feel like
• 49:03
  kind of forced into to business side of it and it does get
• 49:07
  tricky to balance. A lot of people want me to
• 49:10
  accept insurance and you know, billing insurance is a whole
• 49:14
  another thing. So right now I'm like, I'll give
• 49:16
  you a super bill. It's a special receipt you can
• 49:18
  send to your insurance and get reimbursed.
• 49:20
  But it's just a lot when it comes to the business side of
• 49:23
  it, especially in a clinic like I have.
• 49:26
  I have to do all the marketing, the advertising, I have to do
• 49:30
  the the billing, the checking out of people, I have to do the
• 49:34
  scheduling, you know, like I do all of that.
• 49:36
  And it gets to be a lot to balance the business side of it
• 49:39
  and then the treating patient side of it.
• 49:41
  So I was lucky that I met someone to kind of help me get
• 49:45
  that up and going. And now he's kind of doing his
• 49:48
  thing and I'm doing mine. But at least I got to learn from
• 49:51
  that. And then joining the company
• 49:53
  Perium, they have zooms all the time on business stuff, like
• 49:56
  free Zooms that I've been trying to do too.
• 49:59
  So I'm always just trying, trying to learn as I go about
• 50:02
  the business side of it. But it's honestly, it's not
• 50:05
  personally my favorite part of it.
• 50:07
  Like, I really love treating the patients and the whole business
• 50:11
  stuff is like, oh man, I have a pile of stuff like papers on my
• 50:14
  desk. Like OK, I gotta get to that.
• 50:16
  Yeah, I could say it doesn't surprise me from talking to you.
• 50:19
  You're very passionate about the the patient service and things
• 50:22
  like that, which I think is great.
• 50:24
  But unfortunately there's other stuff that comes with the
• 50:26
  business. At least you got a good mentor.
• 50:27
  I think it's important. I've had a couple throughout my
• 50:29
  career too, just good mentors that, you know, were able to
• 50:31
  stop and give you some advice and you know, hey, this is
• 50:34
  probably gonna happen around the corner here that you might want
• 50:36
  to be aware of. And that's really important cuz
• 50:39
  you can't do it alone. It's tough to do it alone.
• 50:41
  Yeah. Gotta have good people around
• 50:42
  you. I love good mentor.
• 50:44
  Yeah. So what is your the next couple
• 50:47
  years? What is your goal in the
• 50:48
  business or do you have something that you're excited
• 50:50
  about or that you want to accomplish or?
• 50:52
  I'm gonna finish massage therapy school at the end of July, so
• 50:56
  I'll be able to offer massage. I haven't at least another year,
• 51:00
  maybe a little more with studying with the shamans, and
• 51:02
  I'll be able to offer full on shamanic healing.
• 51:06
  Right now I kind of squeeze a little bit of it into my
• 51:08
  acupuncture sessions. So that's fun.
• 51:11
  But for me, it's just having lots of natural ways for people
• 51:15
  to heal. And I like to encourage them
• 51:17
  like scan all your options and whichever one's kind of lighting
• 51:20
  you up, that's what you should try or do.
• 51:23
  So just finishing out those studies so that, you know,
• 51:27
  there's more options that people have and you know, getting the
• 51:32
  word out there that acupuncture is good for everything.
• 51:34
  So if you're struggling with an imbalance, like come on in.
• 51:37
  I do offer free consultations, which I'm really excited about
• 51:41
  because I love it when people come in and just talk to me.
• 51:44
  I show them the tools, I explain how it works, ask them how I can
• 51:47
  help them, help them understand, you know, all the different
• 51:51
  options. And so the more people I can
• 51:54
  help, the better. That's my my goals, I guess.
• 51:57
  I love it. Just help as many people as I
• 51:59
  can. Yeah, doing my.
• 52:00
  Mission. Well, my #1 mission in life is
• 52:02
  taking care of my kids. My second mission is helping my
• 52:05
  patients heal. So yes.
• 52:07
  Yeah, I totally get that. Well, I appreciate you coming on
• 52:10
  the show. Is there anything that we missed
• 52:11
  that we didn't talk about, that you think it's important that
• 52:13
  was on your mind? If not, no.
• 52:15
  But I just want to make sure it wasn't something like pressing
• 52:16
  you think the audience needs to know about that we didn't cover.
• 52:21
  Just get out there and start healing.
• 52:23
  You know, the more you do, the better you're gonna feel.
• 52:25
  Yeah, I can't really think of anything at the moment.
• 52:28
  Cool. Well we'll definitely where can
• 52:30
  people find you and get to know more what you guys do?
• 52:33
  I know we're gonna link the website and things like that,
• 52:35
  but where should people go to learn more about you guys?
• 52:37
  Downtown Sycamore across from the movie theater.
• 52:41
  I've been there for almost 6 years.
• 52:43
  So yeah, the website I am on social media, the Facebook and
• 52:48
  the Instagram. Yeah and like free consultation.
• 52:53
  So come in and let's talk. Yeah, cool.
• 52:55
  Love it. Well, we'll link everything in
• 52:56
  the description. I appreciate you coming on the
• 52:57
  show. It's a great conversation.
• 52:58
  Thanks so much for having me. Thank you.