Latest / Homestead And Heal Podcast / Ep 11: When Success No Longer Fits: Listening to Your Body's Wisdom with Heather MacMillan

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Ep 11: When Success No Longer Fits: Listening to Your Body's Wisdom with Heather MacMillan · Homestead And Heal Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Homestead and Heal.
0:04
SPEAKER_03: I'm Scott.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Lindsay, and we live with our three children on a farm in Vermont.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Our lives revolve around growing food and medicine, working with the body, and trying every day to live in deeper relationship with the earth.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: And now we're welcoming guests to our farm for intimate retreats where they can slow down and feel deeply into this earth-body connection.
0:26
SPEAKER_03: This podcast is about remembering something many of us have forgotten: that we're not separate from the natural world.
0:32
SPEAKER_03: Our bodies are part of it.
0:34
SPEAKER_03: Our healing comes through it.
0:35
SPEAKER_03: And when we reconnect to both, our purpose often begins to reveal itself.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Through conversations with herbalists, farmers, body workers, and people walking unconventional paths, we explore what it looks like to step outside the modern paradigm and build lives rooted in connection, healing, and reciprocity with the earth.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay, welcome back to Homestead and Heal.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: We're here today with Heather McMillan.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm really excited to welcome you, Heather, and I want to just start off by describing how I know you, which is that we met when you came for my Fash Alchemy Professional Bodywork Training last year in the spring of 2025.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: And I loved you from that very first meeting.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: I've just always loved connecting with you.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: You're so wise and you're an amazing bodyworker.
1:31
SPEAKER_01: Especially having come with absolutely no background in working with the body, I feel like you just picked on it, picked up on it really quickly.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: And now, as someone that's in my light footprint wealth year-long master body, like a mastermind, but we really focus on the body.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: You have just taken so many brave actions towards your dreams.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: And really, anytime you've been out of alignment, you've just decided I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it differently.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm really excited to have you here and to speak with you.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: And I would love it if you could just tell our listeners just a little bit about who you are, give a little introduction to yourself.
2:13
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, thank you, Lindsay.
2:14
SPEAKER_05: Thanks for having me on here.
2:16
SPEAKER_05: It's exciting to be on a podcast with you and Scott.
2:20
SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, my life has been really full of all sorts of different wonderful things.
2:26
SPEAKER_05: And I, it's funny because coming to the body work was like a return for me because I actually have a Bachelor of Science in Human Kinetics and then that didn't really do anything with that degree for many years.
2:39
SPEAKER_05: It's been like 20 years since I got or I was in school.
2:44
SPEAKER_05: And then I got into cooking and farming, and I was raft guiding and cooking for ski lodges and all sorts of different things in my 20s, and then eventually came to farming with my now husband.
3:01
SPEAKER_05: And we also I also opened a sourdough bread business, and I did that for 12 years.
3:07
SPEAKER_05: And it was like, we've done so many different things.
3:11
SPEAKER_05: We still have cattle on our farm and chickens and a big garden, and I grow willow for basket weaving now.
3:19
SPEAKER_05: And like Lindsay said, I closed my sourdough bread business last fall.
3:23
SPEAKER_05: I was getting more and more disenchanted with that business.
3:26
SPEAKER_05: My body was suffering, and I just knew that I wanted to do something different.
3:30
SPEAKER_05: And so through the training that I did with you, I was able to jump in and start a new business and start experimenting again with so many different things.
3:40
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think that's about it.
3:41
SPEAKER_05: I have a son.
3:42
SPEAKER_05: We the three of us live on our farm with all of our animals, and that's a really beautiful place in the Ottawa Valley, which is called Eastern Ontario and really near the capital of Canada in Ottawa.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay, amazing.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing that.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: And will you tell us also just a little bit, maybe right now, about your work with fascia and human design?
4:05
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, this has been like a new thing for me that I've been developing this spring and summer.
4:11
SPEAKER_05: And I have been a certified human design reader for a number of years now.
4:17
SPEAKER_05: And as I like started doing more and more fascia bodywork stuff, these two things came separately, but also together.
4:26
SPEAKER_05: And human design helped me reconnect and get into my body more.
4:32
SPEAKER_05: And through being in my body and becoming a body worker and doing self-bodywork on myself, I realized how much I was able to embody and integrate the human design chart because sometimes human design is just a whole bunch of information and it can just be a lot of mind stuff, even though the whole idea is that it lives in your body because there's a body chart.
4:56
SPEAKER_05: And so I decided to combine the two, having a human design reading and then guiding people through a short fascia release session to help them to just bring everything back into the body that they learned.
5:11
SPEAKER_05: Because for me, I'm up in my mind a lot.
5:13
SPEAKER_05: I love I think a lot.
5:14
SPEAKER_05: And I love that part, but I also don't always love it.
5:17
SPEAKER_05: And so just being able to drop into the body, but also have the communication lines open between mind and body or mind and heart, mind and whatever part we are working with, or the whole body and the fascia, and how that's like lines of communication.
5:32
SPEAKER_05: I just I really love that, how that goes together.
5:35
SPEAKER_05: And so yeah, I started doing that.
5:38
SPEAKER_05: I'm still developing it, but it's really excited.
5:40
SPEAKER_05: I call it Rooted Fascia Human Design.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: And it really makes you one of a kind because I haven't heard of anyone else doing that.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: So it's a very special and unique offering that you have.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited for more people to know about it, really.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that sounds so cool.
5:58
SPEAKER_03: I think it's always interesting when people bring together different modalities and just bringing different lenses to allow people to see those connections and certainly bringing mind and body together seems like such a sort of interesting way for people to approach what they're moving through and that sort of thing.
6:17
SPEAKER_03: So that's cool.
6:18
SPEAKER_03: I didn't really know what you were up to.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: I've met you briefly a couple of times, but that sounds really cool.
6:24
SPEAKER_03: One thing we always like to do is ask people about what's exciting about where you live, where we are right now.
6:30
SPEAKER_03: I feel like you guys are last I had talked with, you guys are a couple weeks behind us where you are in Canada, but we just finished, I just finished harvesting Linden flowers this morning.
6:41
SPEAKER_03: They're just about past, and and elder, elderberry bushes are like full bloom right now.
6:47
SPEAKER_03: It's we're getting towards our midsummer.
6:49
SPEAKER_03: So many wonderful things happening here.
6:52
SPEAKER_03: But raspberries are just raspberries in the last week are ripening.
6:56
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
6:57
SPEAKER_03: Any anything that you're particularly excited about?
7:00
SPEAKER_03: I know you do a lot of gardening and are connected with your farm.
7:03
SPEAKER_05: It's interesting.
7:04
SPEAKER_05: I feel like maybe at this point in the summer, we're closer together in what's happening.
7:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was wondering if that might have been the case.
7:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:11
SPEAKER_05: Actually, our like elder black berries are like they're still blooms, but a bunch of them have already gone past.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
7:19
SPEAKER_05: Like they're done.
7:20
SPEAKER_05: Maybe it's because of where my bush is, like really full sun, southern exposure and sort of a microclimate.
7:27
SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
7:27
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
7:28
SPEAKER_05: But yeah, there's lots of exciting things.
7:29
SPEAKER_05: We live on a farm that's mostly pasture.
7:32
SPEAKER_05: There's a little bit of marshy bit in it, and one half is high and dry and sandy, and the other part is clearly was more marshy before it was cleared, like probably almost 200 years ago.
7:42
SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
7:43
SPEAKER_05: And I walk the farm every single day, and there's been so many flowers in bloom in the pastures that haven't had the cattle in them because they've been rotating.
7:54
SPEAKER_05: We rotate them every single day.
7:56
SPEAKER_05: Yellow, red, white, clovers, and vetch blooming, daisies, the milkweed, and the milkweed is in full bloom right now.
8:06
SPEAKER_03: Same, same year, actually.
8:07
SPEAKER_03: Ours is full bloom.
8:10
SPEAKER_05: It's just so beautiful and it smells good.
8:12
SPEAKER_05: And we've had it's this is the third week of a heat wave here since the beginning of July.
8:17
SPEAKER_05: Oh.
8:18
SPEAKER_05: So we've had a lot of humidity building, thunderstorm, rain, and then a little reprieve and then back again.
8:24
SPEAKER_05: And yeah, the garden is also growing pretty well, and my garlic will probably come out soon, maybe another week or so.
8:33
SPEAKER_05: And starting to pick.
8:35
SPEAKER_05: I already have had peas for a while.
8:39
SPEAKER_05: Um yeah, and later things like tomatoes and stuff, I'm they're not ready yet because I'm not very on top of getting those ready early.
8:50
SPEAKER_05: That's perfect.
8:51
SPEAKER_03: I can really and you guys have you do graze some some beef there, is that right?
8:56
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
8:57
SPEAKER_05: We have oops, sorry.
8:58
SPEAKER_03: How do they hold up with the heat?
9:00
SPEAKER_03: Is that stressful for them and for you?
9:02
SPEAKER_05: Managers um they do pretty well.
9:05
SPEAKER_05: They lose all their winter hair for whatever.
9:08
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
9:09
SPEAKER_05: Right now they have access to a barn.
9:11
SPEAKER_05: We have a bank barn, so it's like cool and dark underneath.
9:18
SPEAKER_03: Like earth in on one side, but they can walk in on the other.
9:21
SPEAKER_05: They don't always get the barn in the summer, but right now they are coming back.
9:24
SPEAKER_05: So they have had the shelter from that and then shade here and there throughout.
9:29
SPEAKER_05: We're in the midst of like years of planting trees to make more tree lines because we live in a really agricultural area and everyone just cuts all the trees, like areas, so that there will be permanent shade for them.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, they manage.
9:44
SPEAKER_02: Cool.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: That's exciting, and that's where I grew up in Kansas.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: My dad had this property since the early mid-70s, and my mom and dad, and he doesn't have it anymore, but he had it up until a handful of years ago.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: And he planted a lot of trees and also just let a lot of trees grow.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: And he's surrounded by corn and wheat fields and lots of flat and big open fields.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: And now you can look on Google Earth and it's just like a green little mecca in this one area.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: There's just not nearly as much green anywhere else around.
10:24
SPEAKER_03: There's and there's a little creek that goes through, and yeah, expanding out from there.
10:28
SPEAKER_03: It's like this.
10:29
SPEAKER_03: You really can see it from quite a ways out on the aerial satellite imagery.
10:34
SPEAKER_03: You can see this place, which is cool.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: So it's cool to think that for you you all, if that's different in where you live, that will be just the legacy that you're leaving behind, basically.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: I think.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's really cool.
10:46
SPEAKER_05: We have a mentor that we lived with for two summers.
10:49
SPEAKER_05: He was a beef farmer and did grass-fed beef, and he planted, he's in his 80s now, but over the 30, 40 years that he's lived, he's lived on his farm for long, but he started planting trees 40 years ago.
11:04
SPEAKER_05: And this is a 200-acre farm and thousands and thousands of trees and the transformation.
11:09
SPEAKER_05: I've seen photos of before and after, and he has planted a legacy on his farm.
11:15
SPEAKER_05: It's so cool to see.
11:17
SPEAKER_05: So, yeah, we haven't planted that many trees or even close, but we're working on it.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about really love to ask just what were those little breadcrumbs from your childhood that led you onto your path that you're on now?
11:33
SPEAKER_01: You obviously have a lot of earth connection and body connection.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: So just curious, can you see the makings of your current life in your child self and what comes to mind around that?
11:44
SPEAKER_05: It's really funny because listening to your podcast previously, I was like, oh, this is such a cool question.
11:49
SPEAKER_05: And it got me like thinking about all these things.
11:52
SPEAKER_05: I grew up in the bush, very wetland area.
11:56
SPEAKER_05: My parents owned 20-something acres, and my grandparents had a farm like up the road and up the hill from me, from our home.
12:03
SPEAKER_05: And so I grew up in the bush.
12:05
SPEAKER_05: We had horses, we would walk the trails, ski the trails all the time.
12:11
SPEAKER_05: And my mom had a garden.
12:12
SPEAKER_05: She's a very haphazard garden.
12:14
SPEAKER_05: She lets everything go crazy wild.
12:16
SPEAKER_05: My grandparents, her parents, also had gardens up at the farm.
12:21
SPEAKER_05: And they had they had their separate gardens because they didn't like to garden the same way.
12:25
SPEAKER_05: So my grandpa had a garden further back on the farm.
12:28
SPEAKER_05: And my grandma had the house garden near the house.
12:31
SPEAKER_05: And yeah, we grew up eating asparagus and picking strawberries and with all of that.
12:36
SPEAKER_05: And we had chickens growing up when I was little.
12:38
SPEAKER_05: And it's funny because as I got older, I don't even feel like I really wanted to do any of those things.
12:44
SPEAKER_05: It was like, oh, I don't, or I don't want to help my dad cut wood for the fireplace and stuff.
12:49
SPEAKER_05: But obviously it infused into my bones because I came back to it in my mid-20s.
12:56
SPEAKER_05: So very interesting.
12:58
SPEAKER_05: And my mom and dad would always talk about how we lived in paradise.
13:01
SPEAKER_05: And oh, it was so embarrassing when I was little.
13:02
SPEAKER_05: I thought it was so silly.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: But oh my gosh, I'm having like future flashbacks because we talk with our kids about that all the time.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: Like how beautiful it is.
13:12
SPEAKER_03: They're not embarrassed by it yet, though.
13:14
SPEAKER_05: They not yet seem to think not that I was embarrassed, maybe, but I just was like, really?
13:19
SPEAKER_05: It was all I knew.
13:20
SPEAKER_05: I the looking back, once I moved away and into the city for school, then you realized how good you've had it.
13:30
SPEAKER_05: Because I didn't I don't like cities.
13:32
SPEAKER_05: I don't like being yeah.
13:34
SPEAKER_05: So I can see that like where all of this comes from.
13:39
SPEAKER_05: And my my paternal grandmother grew up on a farm as well, and she always had a garden in town and made lots of food from scratch too.
13:47
SPEAKER_05: And I I didn't really love cooking growing up, but then I came back to it and I started working in that industry and loved food and preparing it.
13:56
SPEAKER_05: And that's what brought me to farming and being with the land more.
14:02
SPEAKER_05: And also when I was like living that more pneumatic lifestyle in my 20s, I felt so unsettled.
14:06
SPEAKER_05: Lindsay, your story about not having stability in your childhood, and I don't resonate with that because I was so my parents still live in the same house I grew up in.
14:16
SPEAKER_05: They never move.
14:18
SPEAKER_05: I can go back home to it.
14:19
SPEAKER_05: But when I was in my 20s, I was moving around a lot and I felt so unstable.
14:24
SPEAKER_05: I was like looking for something again.
14:26
SPEAKER_05: Like, where am I going to build a life and feel at home?
14:29
SPEAKER_05: I didn't want to be where my parents were anymore.
14:32
SPEAKER_05: It felt for some reason I was just ready to go elsewhere, but I didn't know where that was for the longest time.
14:37
SPEAKER_05: And so finally when Pat and I started farming and settling, it was it felt so good to put roots down, even though it wasn't where I grew up.
14:47
SPEAKER_05: But yeah, and now I just feel that settled stability again.
14:54
SPEAKER_05: Beautiful.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: Also, does that lead into, you think, Herbert?
14:59
SPEAKER_02: Did you have more to ask on that?
15:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm curious.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: I would like to get into that kind of period in your 20s when you were feeling disconnected, but I'm wondering if you have kind of memory of body connection growing up as well.
15:11
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's a little bit tougher.
15:12
SPEAKER_05: I feel like I was a really active child.
15:16
SPEAKER_05: Like I was into sports.
15:17
SPEAKER_05: I compet competed in cross-country skiing like my whole childhood and into university.
15:25
SPEAKER_05: So I was like aware of my body as something to take care of because I wanted to be able to perform and do well in my activities that I did.
15:35
SPEAKER_05: But I also feel like I just didn't have a real strong connection, not in the way that I do now.
15:43
SPEAKER_05: Because I don't know, there were things like I wasn't sick a lot when I was little, but there were all the things like ear infections.
15:51
SPEAKER_05: I definitely was on antibiotics a few times at least, and and like suffered with constipation, but nobody would like nobody talked about these things.
16:00
SPEAKER_05: Like my I don't I don't remember there being a lot of like dialogue or explanation of or that it was even bad or could be improved upon.
16:09
SPEAKER_05: So it was just like a it was just like a non-factor.
16:14
SPEAKER_05: And I but I always did have this distrust of like the medical system, and I would always question things, especially as I got older in my 20s.
16:23
SPEAKER_05: I remember this one ear infection I had during exam time, and I just was like on antibiotics in an exam, and I like broke out in a rash, and I was just like, You're so stressed.
16:36
SPEAKER_05: I it was terrible, and so there were little moments where that started to come cl more and more into like my focus.
16:45
SPEAKER_05: But as you know already, Lindsay, when I had my son via this like terrible emergency C section, like that is what like shocked me right back into being like, What what am I doing?
16:57
SPEAKER_05: Like, I'm not I'm my body is here with me, but I'm not really like with it.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like sharing anything about that?
17:06
SPEAKER_01: And it's okay if you don't.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can share a bit.
17:10
SPEAKER_05: I I already had the mindset of wanting like a natural home birth.
17:13
SPEAKER_05: I was at home.
17:15
SPEAKER_05: I had all these ideas about birth and wanting to have I had midwives and everything, but there was just like something that didn't line up and like everything went wrong.
17:26
SPEAKER_05: And I ended up transferring to the hospital and eventually just it was an emergency C section.
17:32
SPEAKER_05: I wasn't, I was under anesthesia, so I wasn't even awake for the birth.
17:36
SPEAKER_05: My son was fine, he came out and he was okay, and he had went skin to skin with my husband, but everything that happened after that was just so difficult.
17:46
SPEAKER_05: He did end up having a really severe kidney infection at 10 days old.
17:51
SPEAKER_05: And we were in a children's hospital for 16 days, and I literally didn't go outside for those weeks.
17:58
SPEAKER_05: I couldn't leave him.
17:59
SPEAKER_05: The nurses were like, Oh, just like pump and leave, and you can come back later.
18:02
SPEAKER_05: And I'm like, No, I can't leave my son.
18:05
SPEAKER_05: What are you crazy?
18:07
SPEAKER_05: So it was a really rough start to motherhood, and it was within that year after that, like a whole bunch of health things started popping up for me.
18:17
SPEAKER_05: My skin was a mess.
18:19
SPEAKER_05: My digestion, I was like constant fight and flight kind of like stress response.
18:26
SPEAKER_05: And yeah, it really like now I look back and it's such a gift to me because it has brought me to where I am now, like almost 11 years later.
18:35
SPEAKER_05: And it really is what propelled me into like diving deeply into my wellness and like managing stress and nervous system stuff, and then of eventually like fashion bodywork.
18:47
SPEAKER_05: So now I see it as a gift, but it was very difficult for me, my husband, I'm sure my son, even though he was little, but things are way better now.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how you feel about it, but I know for me, I didn't have a cesarean birth, but I did have just what felt like a very tough first birth being induced with pitocin and really bad tear.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: And for me, that was coming up.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: It actually still even sometimes comes up a little bit in bodywork.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: It just, I'm just, I was gonna say, I feel like it came up for seven years, but then I'm like, I just had bodywork a week or two ago, and it came up without the emotional charge, but there was still this energetic imprint of that whole experience.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: And I wonder for you, does it still come up?
19:38
SPEAKER_01: I guess I want to, yeah, I'm just thinking of the women who might be listening who maybe have just had something traumatic happen and how for me it's felt like it's just lost more and more charge over the years in a way that feels like in the same way that you're saying you can see it as a gift.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: I feel that way about my first birth as well.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: But it took a while to get to that point.
20:03
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I don't think it's all gone.
20:06
SPEAKER_05: I can still feel even the physical aspect of the surgery, right?
20:09
SPEAKER_05: It's way better than before.
20:11
SPEAKER_05: Especially when I was teaching Mother Scar, where I it was a class where I was teaching women how to work on their scar, like their C-section scars, and like going through how to tend to your body after C-section and also just add identity piece of like what it means.
20:30
SPEAKER_05: Like for me, it was such a it was gut-wrenching.
20:33
SPEAKER_05: It was just like the worst thing that could happen.
20:35
SPEAKER_05: I felt like I couldn't even call myself a mother, which is just crazy to me now.
20:39
SPEAKER_05: But I was like, it was horrible.
20:43
SPEAKER_05: But yeah, it did take a long time, but also and also it is still there.
20:49
SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I agree with kind of what you said about that.
20:51
SPEAKER_05: And it definitely came up in the training when I came to the training with you, like with that body work a lot.
20:59
SPEAKER_05: I've had body work since and it hasn't been quite the same.
21:03
SPEAKER_05: Other things have been more present than that trauma.
21:06
SPEAKER_05: But sorry, stepping into the leadership of needing other women in it, it felt a little nerve-wracking at first, but then after doing it and going through it and speaking with some of the women, I was like, oh, like I can I am at a place now where I can can like kind of confront those things without it being so scary or traumatic or upsetting because it has become that gift of where I've led myself to since then.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that totally makes sense.
21:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's amazing.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: It's transmuted and now you can hold that space for others.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: And is that class still available?
21:43
SPEAKER_01: I know you'll probably teach it live sometime, but can you tell people whether it's available or not?
21:49
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, a few of my classes that I've taught are available on my stand store, which I sent that link, so it should be somewhere.
21:58
SPEAKER_05: It'll be in the show notes, yeah.
22:00
SPEAKER_05: Instagram, those all those things are still available.
22:03
SPEAKER_05: And I did one called Hands On, which was like for a hardworking upper bodies.
22:08
SPEAKER_05: And then Mother Scar is available.
22:10
SPEAKER_05: And I have I'm starting like a series.
22:12
SPEAKER_05: We'll see how on top of doing this, I'll stay on human design centers and combining like learning about each each center of the human design chart with some body work.
22:24
SPEAKER_05: So I did one on throat.
22:27
SPEAKER_05: Gosh, when was that?
22:28
SPEAKER_05: In June, I think.
22:30
SPEAKER_05: And that's also still available.
22:32
SPEAKER_05: So slowly adding to my repertoire of classes.
22:35
SPEAKER_05: And I've always loved teaching.
22:37
SPEAKER_05: I used to teach Sardo Bread workshops.
22:39
SPEAKER_05: And so once I switched to gears, I just like automatically started teaching some in-person classes and have since moved online with some of them.
22:48
SPEAKER_03: Did you say one of them was for hardworking upper bodies?
22:51
SPEAKER_03: Is that what you said?
22:52
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: Is it appropriate for farmers?
22:55
SPEAKER_03: People who use a hoe?
22:57
SPEAKER_05: It's similar, some of it's similar to what Lindsay teaches too.
23:01
SPEAKER_05: But yeah.
23:01
SPEAKER_03: I mean I spend a lot of time with the stirrup hoe, and sometimes it manifests, and Lindsay's been working my neck because I just got like totally out of whack.
23:11
SPEAKER_05: But yeah, it inspired through my work with sourdough bread baking.
23:15
SPEAKER_05: And like I started doing self-body work and could feel like myself again.
23:20
SPEAKER_05: It was still so much work for me.
23:22
SPEAKER_05: I could I didn't want to keep doing it, but I could see how if you actually have a bodywork practice, a self-body work practice, you can really keep doing your work more easily than if you don't.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: This is one of those spousal situations where I'm like, yeah, you need to do, I'm like, yeah, you need the self-bodywork practice, but and board sessions with me, but absolutely Scott would benefit from that.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: And I loved when you taught that class, I think it makes so much sense because anyone who is hard working with their body, whether it's a farmer, a baker, a hairstylist, whatever, it's like all these super repetitive motions that I see when I do bodywork sessions with people.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: They really need that self-care because coming and getting a session from a therapist is one thing, but it's really that daily practice that's gonna help to keep you feeling really good in your body.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: So I love that.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I do have practices that help keep learning, hearing other people's take on it, or maybe coming from someone who has, like you, Heather, that that very personal experience of repetitive work that was hard on your body.
24:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
24:35
unknown: Yeah.
24:36
SPEAKER_05: It is different because I've taken all of Lindsay's online classes now, and it is different than what she her jaw, neck, her face, jaw, neck class.
24:46
SPEAKER_05: And then there was like a bonus video with other more like movement-based exercises that also has some fast release in it that I've just I actually haven't been doing much of it lately because my body feels so good now.
24:58
SPEAKER_05: I'm eight months out of clothing I bread business and I've received a lot of body work since then, and I am rarely in pain.
25:07
SPEAKER_05: I feel I cannot even believe it some days.
25:11
SPEAKER_05: But when that yeah, that's amazing.
25:13
SPEAKER_05: But when I was in a lot more pain and still trying to work doing the bread stuff, like I would I had all these little things that I did, and I added that into the bonus video of that class.
25:26
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
25:26
SPEAKER_04: Cool.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: Scott's sold.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm sold.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for him.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: Could you could we go back and could you tell us a little bit about those times in your 2020s when maybe you felt less connected, or maybe it wasn't that you felt less connected, but you had this lack of stability.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: So anything around disconnection to the earth or to your body that came out.
25:48
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I feel like I was really disconnected to my body in my early 20s when I was at I moved away.
25:55
SPEAKER_05: I guess it was like I was 19, right?
25:56
SPEAKER_05: When you're 18, when you go to college.
26:00
SPEAKER_05: And I was living in a city for the first time.
26:03
SPEAKER_05: And my first year, I was in this residence building and it on the 11th floor of an apartment.
26:10
SPEAKER_05: And I had literally been living in a bungalow with windows open where you could hear the peepers and the crickets, and just totally immersed by nature my whole life.
26:20
SPEAKER_05: And so I was like a real shock, and I really was not that happy, very homesick.
26:25
SPEAKER_05: Luckily, I made some really great friends through my ski team that I was skiing with or racing with and training.
26:32
SPEAKER_05: But I was doing 10 hours of training uh a week studying.
26:36
SPEAKER_05: I was very very academic, like very good student.
26:39
SPEAKER_05: I always wanted to achieve the best I could.
26:43
SPEAKER_05: So I was like studying in the library and many hours.
26:46
SPEAKER_05: And there were some really beautiful places in the city where I was, and the arboretum was right near the campus.
26:53
SPEAKER_05: I would run through it with my friends and or do training there and just go and hang out.
26:58
SPEAKER_05: Whenever I could, like be in nature, I was.
27:02
SPEAKER_05: But I think for those eight months of those four years that I was there, it just it was the first time where I felt like I didn't have that full immersion.
27:14
SPEAKER_05: And I did end up working in places in the summer where I had that.
27:19
SPEAKER_05: I was literally working in kitchens in uh whitewater canoe and kayak school and then a raft gutting place where we lived in like little platforms with a roof over our heads, and but we were in the fresh air, and we'd build walls and have buck net or we'd have a tent or whatever.
27:34
SPEAKER_05: And so I was outside and in in that way.
27:37
SPEAKER_05: So I was always searching out though to get back to that, but I wasn't feeling it, wasn't a consistent thing.
27:45
SPEAKER_05: So that was like really hard.
27:48
SPEAKER_03: What what city were you in?
27:50
SPEAKER_05: I'm always just curious, like yeah, it's Guelph, it's in southern Ontario.
27:54
SPEAKER_05: Literally, it probably only had 120,000 people in it at that time.
27:59
SPEAKER_05: But for me, that was huge, you know.
28:01
SPEAKER_05: It was really close to Toronto, so okay.
28:04
SPEAKER_05: You know, now if you're driving from Guelph, Guelph is west of Toronto.
28:09
SPEAKER_05: So if you're driving east to Toronto from Guelph now, it's a consistent city.
28:13
SPEAKER_03: Gotcha.
28:14
SPEAKER_05: You're not gonna but at that time you could still like I had a road bike and we would run also outside of the city into the a very agricultural area as well.
28:24
SPEAKER_05: There.
28:25
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's funny looking at it from that lens, because I don't think I was aware of that when I was there.
28:30
SPEAKER_05: It wasn't part of my awareness in the same way I can look at it looking back now.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: I feel like hearing you speak about it, like especially just because we live in a place where we're, like you said, like we're hearing the peepers, we're hearing the frogs, we're hearing like so much bird song and nature, and then to think of living on an 11th floor apartment building or whatever it is, residence building.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: I had like a physical, my body, like had some sort of like internal shutdown of like probably more than anything, just imagining Ella, our daughter, like if she were to choose something like that.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: I think that's what it was projecting in my body, but it was like a physical, oh gosh, yeah, like that's such a huge shift for someone, especially just at the end of your teenage years, which I know so many people do that sort of thing and make that sort of move.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's interesting to think about.
29:26
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I didn't choose to live in that residence.
29:28
SPEAKER_05: That was just where they put me.
29:30
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
29:31
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
29:31
SPEAKER_05: There were other residences that were much nicer.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: I just didn't get lucky that you I'm wondering, like, when after that experience, a little bit more about like how you got onto the path that you're on now, either through meeting Pat or what that looked like, kind of getting back to where you are now.
29:51
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's a little convoluted, but I I spend a lot of time in my 20s.
29:55
SPEAKER_05: Like I'd work in the summers doing cooking and then eventually raft guiding.
30:00
SPEAKER_05: And then in the winter, I'd go back to my parents in the fall and hang out, and then in the winter I'd go somewhere else, like usually out west to the mountains for a few winters there.
30:10
SPEAKER_05: But I I thought maybe I would end up out west, but like a lot of people do that, right?
30:15
SPEAKER_05: They go west and they're like, oh, you're gonna live in the mountains.
30:17
SPEAKER_05: And some people stay, but I but with Pat and I did that separately.
30:21
SPEAKER_05: And then we just wanted the lakes and rivers in Ontario and the forest.
30:26
SPEAKER_05: It's so different than being surrounded by mountains.
30:29
SPEAKER_05: Although I absolutely love the hills slash mountains in Vermont.
30:33
SPEAKER_05: It feels like this beautiful between we have we don't have that big of hills, or we have some here, but not the same as in Vermont.
30:42
SPEAKER_05: But where was I going with that?
30:45
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I had another boyfriend, a different boyfriend, who got into farming.
30:49
SPEAKER_05: And we I also was working at a lodge at West for one month where the cooks were like really into the local food stuff.
30:57
SPEAKER_05: And that's actually where I learned how to bake sourdough bread was through them.
31:01
SPEAKER_05: And they were like buying beautiful tomatoes from farmers and like all the multicolored tomatoes when that was not as popular.
31:08
SPEAKER_05: What year was that?
31:10
SPEAKER_05: 20 2009 or 10, maybe.
31:15
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, 2009, maybe that fall.
31:18
SPEAKER_05: And it just blew my mind open of what could what the possibilities were.
31:24
SPEAKER_05: And also I read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen, and that book just took me for a full right turn, totally different idea of thinking it.
31:33
SPEAKER_05: And then I had this boyfriend who was like, I'm gonna go apprentice on this farm, and he wanted to kind of leave.
31:40
SPEAKER_05: And I was like, he didn't really want me to come with him, but I was like, um coming.
31:44
SPEAKER_05: Sorry.
31:46
SPEAKER_05: We stayed together for that period of time, but then we broke up afterwards.
31:50
SPEAKER_05: Anyway, we were I was on a farm, a biodynamic farm for nine months.
31:54
SPEAKER_02: Oh, cool.
31:56
SPEAKER_05: So we milked cows, we had an illegal raw milkshare, we had 200 member CSA, they grew grain, we had pigs, chickens.
32:06
SPEAKER_05: So I learned so much that year.
32:09
SPEAKER_05: Being there for nine months was crazy.
32:11
SPEAKER_05: We worked insane hours.
32:14
SPEAKER_05: I was really competitive.
32:16
SPEAKER_05: Me and my boyfriend at the time would compete like how fast we could weed beds and stuff.
32:20
SPEAKER_05: My body performed so differently then than it does now.
32:23
SPEAKER_05: I was probably not doing great, anyways.
32:25
SPEAKER_05: I was so skinny.
32:27
SPEAKER_05: We worked 12-hour days, then would go to the market on Saturday.
32:31
SPEAKER_05: It was just insane.
32:33
SPEAKER_05: But learning all of that, I'm the one that ended up farming, not him, in the end.
32:39
SPEAKER_05: Which is really funny.
32:40
SPEAKER_05: That's funny.
32:42
SPEAKER_05: Right immediately after that, that Pat and I got together, he was we were already friends.
32:46
SPEAKER_05: We had met raft guiding, and he had always been interested in all the things I was talking about, like cooking, farming, and being like, wow, she wants to do all these things that I've known about, but not really.
32:56
SPEAKER_05: And so that's after that, we there were a few years where we were doing, you know, we lived somewhere else and we weren't farming, we had a garden, and then eventually came back to this beef mentor of mine that I had spent a summer on, and we helped him with his business, and he let us start ours.
33:16
SPEAKER_05: So we started growing garlic, raising meat chickens, and he let me build my first wood-fired oven and start my business in his house.
33:26
SPEAKER_05: It was just crazy.
33:27
SPEAKER_05: It was so nice.
33:29
SPEAKER_05: Uh, we only stayed there one year, and then we rented a farm for four, and then we've been here on our own purchased land for this.
33:36
SPEAKER_05: Is our eighth growing season here?
33:39
SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
33:40
SPEAKER_03: That's great.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: I will read our version of it.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: That was the span of many years.
33:46
SPEAKER_01: No, that's great.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like we have that similar story of our mentor being just a super generous person who allowed us to really get started.
33:56
SPEAKER_01: One of our mentors.
33:57
SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, gave us our start.
33:58
SPEAKER_03: He basically gave us the equipment we needed, piece of land.
34:02
SPEAKER_03: We used his refrigeration, his wash station.
34:05
SPEAKER_03: He gave us an old greenhouse frame.
34:07
SPEAKER_03: We're gonna have him on sometime soon.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: Yes, we definitely are.
34:09
SPEAKER_03: And then we come then we set up our market stand for 12 years, was like right next to his.
34:15
SPEAKER_03: So he gave us our start, and then like a lot of people would see that as growing your competition, but he just gets a big chuckle out of that because he just really wants He won't wants to change the world and see the better sort of version of agricultural economy and what's possible and all of that.
34:31
SPEAKER_03: But I heard a bunch of parallels with Deer's Story, I feel like.
34:35
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
34:36
SPEAKER_03: Bunch of things.
34:37
SPEAKER_03: We started our farm in 2010, and our entry point, there was like so much produce at the market that we went to back then.
34:45
SPEAKER_03: And our sort of like our first thing that we wanted to try to do was grow a lot of visually appealing, unusual stuff.
34:54
SPEAKER_03: So all the colored tomatoes, weird colored orange eggplants, just like people got so much attention, did so much for us.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: Didn't sell that many.
35:04
SPEAKER_03: We didn't sell that many, but we drew in so many people, like, oh honey, an orange eggplant.
35:09
SPEAKER_03: Can you believe it?
35:10
SPEAKER_03: Like this sort of thing.
35:11
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, that's I love hearing people's stories.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: And your sourdough bread business, when like at its peak, or you were baking a ton of bread, right?
35:22
SPEAKER_05: It was like it was instantly a success.
35:25
SPEAKER_05: And I didn't ever feel like I was like good enough to be selling bread.
35:28
SPEAKER_05: I just had this dream that I was gonna do it, and I did, and I just got better and better as I went.
35:33
SPEAKER_05: But I go to the market the first day and I sell out really quickly, right?
35:38
SPEAKER_05: And so that was from day one.
35:41
SPEAKER_05: And I wasn't even able to bake that many loaves.
35:44
SPEAKER_05: Really, I have this oven that I could flew loaves in, and the heat you have to have really good heat mass and insulation in a wood fired oven for you to be able to bake multiple batches.
35:54
SPEAKER_05: So I was like baking bread up a couple days up to the market, like the dark rise and more whole grain stuff a day or two before because they can withstand a day of being chilling and not be stale.
36:08
SPEAKER_05: Actually, none of my bread really went stale very quickly.
36:11
SPEAKER_05: It was just that's what sourdough, when you do it right, is known for as you know, a natural product.
36:18
SPEAKER_05: But yeah, towards the COVID years, like 2020, I was starting to bake like 200 plus loaves for the market every week.
36:28
SPEAKER_05: And I had a bigger oven by then.
36:30
SPEAKER_05: I was we Pat built me a masonry oven.
36:34
SPEAKER_05: So it made out of bricks instead of cob, which is the mixture of clay and sand and stuff.
36:39
SPEAKER_05: So it was like a way more robust oven.
36:41
SPEAKER_05: I could bake in it all day long.
36:43
SPEAKER_05: It held its heat, and so I was able to do that, but it was still ridiculously insane hours on my seat.
36:50
SPEAKER_05: Yes.
36:51
SPEAKER_05: And I didn't, I just was doing this from home.
36:53
SPEAKER_05: I would transform my kitchen, my home kitchen into a bakery every week.
36:58
SPEAKER_05: But yeah, it was super successful, and and I did it for yeah, 12 years.
37:04
SPEAKER_05: But those last few years I really downsized.
37:07
SPEAKER_05: That's yeah, and I stopped going to the market.
37:11
SPEAKER_05: I was selling wholesale instead at the end, which was a little easier.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that many loads, it's just a lot of repetitive motions, and I would imagine would take a toll on your body.
37:23
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and it's so clear to me now how much, because I feel like I can steal because so for so many years it was just my normal, right?
37:32
SPEAKER_05: You don't even so many people then when they're in pain or discomfort, you get used to it.
37:38
SPEAKER_05: And even though I knew it, it was like, this is just me.
37:42
SPEAKER_05: This is how, but now that I'm out of it, I'm just like, wow, I can't believe I did that to myself for so many years.
37:48
SPEAKER_05: It's wild.
37:49
SPEAKER_03: I feel like also, even over a 12-year span, aging into your capacity changes.
37:55
SPEAKER_03: My capacity as a farmer when I got started was pretty different than it is now, sad to say.
38:01
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, and I always we always have this debate of like, I feel like farming generally is really good for my body.
38:09
SPEAKER_03: Lindsay felt like it was really hard on bodies, and it is.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: It's it was hard on my body.
38:15
SPEAKER_01: I recognize the ways that it's much better in a lot of ways than sitting at a desk nonstop.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: I think that I would love to actually ask Heather this because I feel like we have a career in doing bodywork, the type of body work that I teach and that we do, this fascial work that it doesn't tend to feel bad in my body at all.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: It actually I feel really good.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you it sounds like you're not in pain, which I'm super excited to hear.
38:41
SPEAKER_05: Uh the first couple months, like in December, like November, I'm gonna say December, January, I there were things that were like bothering me while I was doing the body work.
38:54
SPEAKER_05: And I could tell that it was like remnants of patterns that I had been doing over and over again with my bread baking.
39:03
SPEAKER_05: And I've since received some really good like MFR in in Ottawa and just released it so when I was loading my oven, I it huge long peel, which is the paddle that you load the bread with, and I was always turning forward with my right hand, and that's my right hand was forward, my left was stabilizing the other end, and my right arm would go forward to load the bread and to unload the bread over and over again.
39:35
SPEAKER_05: And so much of that has released and changed from this body work, and I'm not having this the even just doing uh an SCM pull with my right finger and thumb.
39:47
SPEAKER_05: I used to be in some crazy cramping pain.
39:50
SPEAKER_05: Even if I wasn't like I had to be, I'm I have to be very aware that I'm not over-gripping.
39:55
SPEAKER_05: Cause I'm so used to, I don't know, my body is just so used to being like tight and I don't know.
40:00
SPEAKER_05: But now I don't have that problem anymore after the fascia work.
40:04
SPEAKER_05: So it's been and I guess I just didn't, I couldn't, I didn't know about that to do it for myself.
40:10
SPEAKER_05: I just needed someone else.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: It was just, yeah.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: Totally makes sense.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: And I love that you brought up that pattern because this is, I feel this a lot in my work is that people have repetitive patterns in their work, but for some reason we aren't really trained to see those.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: Maybe a competitive athlete or something thinks through those very specific patterns.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: But I feel like I just know a lot of people who in their job, it could be a simple little thing.
40:41
SPEAKER_01: They're always turning to maybe they have two computer screens and they're always like turning a certain direction, or something that's much more visible where they're like twisting every time a certain way or something like that.
40:51
SPEAKER_01: But that's some of my favorite detective work to do is to have people really think about what their patterns are.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: Often you see this with a mother or a father, where they're always carrying their kid around on one hip and hiking that hip or just those sort of patterns.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: So I love that you brought that up.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm wondering, oh, go ahead.
41:10
SPEAKER_05: Go ahead.
41:10
SPEAKER_05: I was just gonna say there were things in my bread baking day that I had worked on better form instead of bending and hurting my back, like I would squat and stuff.
41:19
SPEAKER_05: And also over the years, like really working on some of those things.
41:22
SPEAKER_05: But that twisting motion was not something.
41:25
SPEAKER_05: I don't even think if I tried to do it the other way, I could have done it.
41:29
SPEAKER_05: You know what I mean?
41:30
SPEAKER_05: It just wouldn't have worked.
41:31
SPEAKER_05: I would have been dropping bread.
41:33
SPEAKER_05: I would have felt like so wrong.
41:36
SPEAKER_05: So it wasn't something that was one thing that I couldn't stop doing if I was to continue the way that I was.
41:43
SPEAKER_05: Now, of course, if I was expanding or changing to a big bakery setting, I could have there are things, but I wasn't doing that.
41:50
SPEAKER_05: So it was like, yeah, it was just a really repetitive strain on my body.
41:54
SPEAKER_05: But until I stopped, I didn't, I wasn't able to change.
41:59
SPEAKER_03: So you're mentioning just the the general tightness in your body changing as your work has changed.
42:05
SPEAKER_03: So I wonder about that.
42:06
SPEAKER_03: I feel like the body work.
42:08
SPEAKER_03: I went to a uh myofascial release training once and aspired to help Lindsay more, work on her more.
42:16
SPEAKER_03: I love the idea of it, but I actually found that work to be like quite straining and tiring.
42:23
SPEAKER_03: But maybe it's because I just tend towards a lot of tightness in my body from being out there with a hoe too much or doing repetitive farm work.
42:31
SPEAKER_03: I always had Lindsay as a good reminder to at least change the orientation of like when I'm planting, if I'm like moving in this direction, like instead of swapping out at the end of the row to plant the other side, go start back at the beginning so that now when I'm facing the bed, I'm like working in the opposite direction.
42:50
SPEAKER_03: And I do try to do those things, which I'm sure is helpful because it can be just so repetitive.
42:56
SPEAKER_03: And yeah.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes people can do, sometimes people can switch and do things ambidextrously.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: And other times, like you said, with your peel, it's impossible.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: But it's just even things like shoveling snow for those of us that live in north country.
43:11
SPEAKER_01: It's like most people have their preferred side that they do that.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: And that's the type of thing that I always just say, you might not be as efficient or effective with the other side, but it's gonna benefit your body so much to think about which foot is forward, which arm is forward, which side are you pitching the snow over and really trying to switch that up every five shovels or something.
43:34
SPEAKER_01: For the people that live in Hawaii and are listening to this and laughing at us.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: It's it is a very real thing for those of us who live in deep winter for half the year.
43:41
SPEAKER_03: I know when are our kids gonna kick in and start.
43:44
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
43:45
SPEAKER_01: We need to start getting them on that more.
43:47
SPEAKER_03: I think, but I think it's it often gets more to it's not the mental thing of this is less efficient if I do it this way.
43:52
SPEAKER_03: It's just actually training yourself to do it in the opposite direction feels so awkward or actually difficult to.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: I'm trying to imagine as you're saying that, like shoveling in the other direction.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: You don't do that?
44:04
SPEAKER_03: That feels like next to impossible.
44:06
SPEAKER_05: I mean I try to do it, but I don't love it.
44:08
SPEAKER_05: I always want to do it.
44:10
SPEAKER_03: I'll try to do these things and I'll do five shovels in the other direction.
44:13
SPEAKER_03: And then just naturally without even thinking, I'm like back to doing it the other way.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: There you have it.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: I have I don't have pain in my body very often.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: Scott does.
44:22
SPEAKER_03: Not that often.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay, fair enough.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: I wonder, Heather, if you would just tell everyone like what you're the most excited about in your work.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: And I really just want to celebrate you because, like I said, you came to level one with you had your college training or your college studies, but you didn't have any bodywork training and you just picked it up so quickly and then came to level two.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: And then basically it was I guess it must have been, I'm trying to think of when level two was.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: Was it later that month or the next month that you just went for it and closed your business?
44:58
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
44:59
SPEAKER_05: I was already I was already taking some clients in October when I was when I came down for the training, but it was the week after that I did my last bread bake.
45:09
SPEAKER_05: And yeah, somewhere around the 20th something of October last year.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: And you've, as I think anyone who starts a business, maybe it sounds like your sourdough business just took right off, but I think for anyone that I've seen starting a bodywork practice, there are these ups and downs.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: But I know that from what you've shared with me, like you've had weeks where you've had nine clients or something where I'm like, wow, in the first year, to me to have really any weeks like that, it took me years to build up that sort of practice.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: I know you've been feeling into your online work and your bodywork practice, but I'm just curious if you'd speak a little bit about like what is most exciting to you right now if you've had some really amazing body work sessions, if you want to share anything or anything like that.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: It's a little slower right now.
45:57
SPEAKER_05: It's summertime.
45:58
SPEAKER_05: I'm home with my son.
45:59
SPEAKER_05: My husband works off the farm quite long hours.
46:02
SPEAKER_05: So a lot of my work, like my actual work right now, is moving the cows, weeding the garden.
46:08
SPEAKER_05: My son is helping take care of our meat chickens right now.
46:11
SPEAKER_05: So we just got them.
46:12
SPEAKER_05: They're like a week old.
46:14
SPEAKER_05: So that's really all this land stuff is really in my periphery right now, really forefront and navigating summer, which is always challenging with me figuring out how to work and stuff.
46:25
SPEAKER_05: But I have had some really dear repeat clients that I two women kind of come to mind where they don't come weekly anymore, but they did at the when they first started, and they've been coming on and off every month or so.
46:39
SPEAKER_05: And I just it they just love the work so much, and it feels really good to have that connection with them and for them to have that open mind of I think one of them really knew what they were coming into, but the other one was like, I don't really know what this is, but I'm gonna try it.
46:53
SPEAKER_05: And just like yeah, just having that expressed to me every time they come in how much they love the work and how much it's changed their life.
47:03
SPEAKER_05: And it's not even in the physical aspect, not just the physical aspect, but just that expansion of everything change things can change, your life can change from this work.
47:14
SPEAKER_05: There's so much that opening the fascia does, and then also the connection, like having that deeper connection with a specific person that you don't get with everybody.
47:26
SPEAKER_05: That's been really nice.
47:28
SPEAKER_05: And yeah, I've actually been in a very kind of like introspective spot right now with how and where my online work is going.
47:37
SPEAKER_05: And I'm by the time people are listening listening to this, there will be a new post in my Substack.
47:43
SPEAKER_05: So I started a Substack two years ago and then just let it fizzle out, and it was always like something that really felt really close to my heart to be writing, and but I wasn't doing it, and so I took a little break in the past couple of weeks of to just listen to myself and not as much to consuming other stuff.
48:05
SPEAKER_05: And this has really come back to me, and it's really come back to me from being with the land and just connecting really deeply with where I am right now and the relationship I have with it and how much that influences who I am and what I do.
48:21
SPEAKER_05: And I want to speak to about it more, so that's what I'm really excited about.
48:26
SPEAKER_05: It's new and scary right now for me, but here I am.
48:29
SPEAKER_05: I'm like putting it out there.
48:31
SPEAKER_05: Once you know that sometimes this is what I do, I get stuck, and then we all do this, right?
48:35
SPEAKER_05: And we talk about this a lot in Light Footprint Wealth, and I know that I just have to go for things and experiment, and that's part of my human design too.
48:44
SPEAKER_05: And just make mistakes and whether they're mistakes or not.
48:48
SPEAKER_05: And so I'm really excited about that.
48:50
SPEAKER_05: I definitely will have some more classes like coming up, probably more in the fall than this summer.
48:56
SPEAKER_05: And I'm gonna teach Mother Scar again.
48:59
SPEAKER_05: So if anyone is listening who has had C-section, it doesn't matter like how recently or far away it's been, that class is so near and dear to my heart.
49:10
SPEAKER_05: And I'm definitely gonna do that at some point in the fall.
49:13
SPEAKER_05: So yeah.
49:14
SPEAKER_01: I think that's just so needed, that class, and just from all the clients I've worked with.
49:20
SPEAKER_01: And I love that you're bringing both the body and the deeper and more emotional aspects of it too, because as we've talked about, not everyone who's had a cesarean feels the same way, obviously.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: Every single person's experience is so different.
49:37
SPEAKER_01: And some people might even choose that.
49:39
SPEAKER_01: They might choose that they want a cesarean, and but there's still these, there's these physical aspects of that surgery that are so important to tend in our body, even years after.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: And then all of the the more kind of emotional aspects are as well, especially for someone who's that's been their experience, like coming into motherhood.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: So I'm really excited you're teaching that again.
50:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and that sounds cool.
50:03
SPEAKER_03: A theme that's been, I feel like repeatedly coming up is that the medicine that people most powerfully bring to the world is stuff that they have a deep personal experience of themselves.
50:15
SPEAKER_03: So it sounds like that was like a major sort of turning point or awakening for you that you've still that is with you now, nearly 11 years later.
50:25
SPEAKER_03: And so to be teaching on that, I'm sure it's very special magic that you're bringing.
50:29
SPEAKER_03: So that's cool.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: One other question we have for you is best advice you wish you would have received earlier in your path, on your path.
50:41
SPEAKER_05: Wow.
50:42
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I wish I listened to my body more.
50:44
SPEAKER_05: I don't know how to talk to that part of me at that time where if I would have actually listened.
50:52
SPEAKER_05: But yeah, I've I feel like I've always I've always thought I was like bouncing around so much and not really ever doing anything like cohesive, like building a career or whatever, which I did with my sourdough bread business, but then had to transition.
51:08
SPEAKER_05: But I just wish that my 20 to 30 year old self knew that all of those quote unquote mistakes are what I felt like were failures because I just didn't get into something right away that I could build on.
51:21
SPEAKER_05: They weren't mistakes.
51:22
SPEAKER_05: They're not mistakes or failures, they're just building blocks of your experience in life.
51:26
SPEAKER_05: And especially this time in the world where you can make yourself into anything, essentially, that kind of life experience is just valuable.
51:38
SPEAKER_05: So I think that's what I would say.
51:41
SPEAKER_03: Our farming mentor, the person who gave us the opportunity, he told me that very specifically at one point.
51:46
SPEAKER_03: He's like, Scott, you could fail miserably at the next hundred things you tried and be only all the better for it.
51:52
SPEAKER_03: And that was like such important advice to receive.
51:56
SPEAKER_03: Just that like it's all part of the path, it's all an evolution.
52:00
SPEAKER_03: And often I feel like what we call failures, we turn that on ourselves more than the world turns it on us.
52:07
SPEAKER_03: I felt that way stepping away from farming commercially.
52:10
SPEAKER_03: It felt like a failure.
52:11
SPEAKER_03: Like, why couldn't I make this business like become what I wished for it to be?
52:15
SPEAKER_03: But it had been for many years, and then like our reality had just shifted and it was a different thing, and it made sense to pivot.
52:22
SPEAKER_03: But it was like really hard to face that as a failure.
52:25
SPEAKER_03: But like my community didn't feel that way largely, I don't think that oh, he's failing at that.
52:31
SPEAKER_03: But I think it's pretty easy to be more self-critical.
52:34
SPEAKER_03: So I think that's a great piece of advice.
52:39
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we felt like a failure, or I felt like a failure when our like meat business we just decided to it was hard.
52:46
SPEAKER_05: We were like, we aren't making it, we have to just stop because we're mostly just homesteading now, but now I see it differently than I did when it was happening.
52:57
SPEAKER_01: And but you are still raising beef for your family, right?
53:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which I think that's very often the conversations that Scott and I would have about it's just the system is so broken, right?
53:08
SPEAKER_01: It would, at least for growing vegetables, it's like everyone would be a lot better off.
53:13
SPEAKER_01: Or let's see, how do I say this?
53:15
SPEAKER_01: We felt like teaching people how to grow their own food was actually going to make a bigger change overall and work better for most people because it's just so challenging to make it as a farmer.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: Not to say that there aren't farmers who who do make it, but I know at least for Scott, it was like he didn't want to have a big team.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: He didn't want to be like go in production and not actually having a relationship with the plants he was growing.
53:40
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, so it's just I think it's it's great.
53:43
SPEAKER_01: Your advice is just perfect because it is just so true.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: What I love about all the time that we spent farming, and I would say mostly Scott, I was like definitely his sous-chef supportive, not a sous-chef, but his supportive farm hand helper the whole time, is that I really do feel like were we to need to provide for our community and grow a ton of food, we could absolutely do that.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, I'm not a prepper or whatever, but if there were like systemic collapse, we absolutely could fill that role if we needed to.
54:18
SPEAKER_02: And would, I'm sure.
54:19
SPEAKER_01: And wouldn't, yeah.
54:20
SPEAKER_01: And as it is, just to really have that holistic outlook on life.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: And I I see this a lot with my bodywork clients, is they've just gotten into this routine of whatever their life is.
54:33
SPEAKER_01: And then suddenly through the fascial work, they just have this opening of, oh, I don't have to stay in this job that I hate for 50 more years.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: I can actually change.
54:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what I see as possibility is that I feel like I'm rambling here, but just that, like you said, you can choose.
54:52
SPEAKER_01: You can choose how you want to live.
54:54
SPEAKER_01: And it's not all about making money, it's not all about any particular thing, but it's like how you feel your life wants to feel in a given moment.
55:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: Sorry for that ramble.
55:08
SPEAKER_01: This has been amazing.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: And I love speaking with you, and I know that our listeners are gonna love speaking with you.
55:13
SPEAKER_01: And if you could just share where people can find you and learn more about your work.
55:18
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'm on Instagram, heather.c.macmillan, and I have a website too.
55:25
SPEAKER_05: It's more for my local body work, though.
55:27
SPEAKER_05: There isn't much on there.
55:29
SPEAKER_05: And then the stand store and my substack.
55:31
SPEAKER_05: Okay, this seems like a lot of things, but the Substack is newer.
55:35
SPEAKER_05: I sent that link to you so you can share it in the show notes.
55:39
SPEAKER_05: But Instagram will lead you to all of the things you can find me there.
55:43
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: Okay, perfect.
55:45
SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you so much, and I'm really excited to share this conversation with our listeners.
55:53
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to this episode of Homestead and Heal.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: If you loved it, please help us spread the word by subscribing to this podcast and leaving us a review.
56:01
SPEAKER_00: For more information about our work, visit homesteadandheal.net.
56:06
SPEAKER_03: We're wishing you the life of your dreams, one that feels deeply rooted, fully alive, and connected to the earth beneath your feet.