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greetings hello good day everybody wherever you are in the world welcome to True Hope cast the official true hope

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Canada podcast my name is Simon and I am your host true hope Canada is a mind and

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body based supplement company that is dedicated first and foremost to promoting brain and body Health through

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non-invasive nutritional means now more than ever people are looking for ways to support their brain health and this is

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always a big part of what we're trying to do at true hope Canada for more information about true hope you can visit true hope canada.com and you can

0:32

find us on all the usual social media sites just search true hope Canada we've got another wonderful guest with us

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today registered acupuncturist and Oriental medicine practitioner daily

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Harper daily studied acupuncture nutrition and Chinese medicine at Pacific Rim College in Victoria BC a

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quite fabulous institution that has come up many times in this show Dy now lives and practices in Vernon British Columbia

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D's got a particular interest in mindfulness meditation and Buddhist spiritual medicine and this is the

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fascinating area that we're going to kind of dive into today the Buddhist psych psychology yeah that's where we're

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going to kick off our conversation and see where it takes us I'm sure we'll go

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down many different wonderful Avenues so first of all daily hi welcome to the

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show thank you so much for being here how are you I'm doing very well my friend thank you so much for having me

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no it's an absolute pleasure thank you very much we're just finishing off this cop two months um series of chatting to

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practitioners and how they apply their practice to um the realm of mental health and kind of learning a little bit

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about different practices as well so we're very excited to um have you here to to talk to us can you start by just

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telling us a little bit about your journey in becoming a Healer and an

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educator yeah um I think like most healers we

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make our way to this path by going through some kind of our own healing we've come up with some kind

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of mental or physical disease or imbalance in our own bodies or we've seen a family friend or a family member

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go through it on their own and it kind of draws us into starting to question what is health what is happiness what do

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these things look like so when I was in my teens I started to experience some intense anxiety and depression that just

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started to get more and more alive in my life and I didn't know where to turn it turned into OCD and then an

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eating disorder actually which spanned probably about a Whole Decade of my life and from there I think that really

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sparked my interest in nutrition first of all so I started studying nutrition I

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went to Vancouver started studying nutrition and started applying the idea that

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physical nutrients will affect not just your physical body but your mental body as well well your mental health and that

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was the first time I'd heard of that that was well I don't know 15 years ago now almost it was 17 I think at the time

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and um I loved this idea and it felt so powerful to be able to manage that

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anxiety on this level of nutrition but it wasn't enough and so I started to see

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a little bit of a shift in the way that my mental health was balanced and wanted

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to go deeper so I got introduced into Western herbal medicine moved to Victoria started studying there

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introduced into acupuncture started studying acupuncture and then was introduced into Chinese herbal medicine

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and I ended up doing the entire doctorate program at Pacific room College in Victoria BC now all those

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things combined together were amazing so the nutrition the Western herbs the

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Chinese herbs and the acupuncture I started to see my anxiety my depression my addictive behaviors around food and

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my eating disorder start to shift in a dramatic way where felt like I was

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regaining some of my health but at the same time there was still something

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missing and I couldn't quite figure it out and one day I was at a Chinese

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medicine seminar and I was asking questions there was a Q&A at the end of

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the seminar and the topic had kind of gone from

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Chinese medicine into philosophy and I started asking

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questions about unconditional love and and emotions and addictions and how all of these

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things contribute to our mental and physical health and someone walked up to

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me at the end of the seminar and said if you have questions about addictions and emotions and mental health you need to

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go see the Monk and they like handed me this little it was quite magical handed me this little piece of paper with a

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phone number scratched on it and that was it and I was like what the hell is a monk the monk yeah I was like the time

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had no idea hadn't been introduced to meditation yet shockingly um and didn't know what a

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monk was and turns out this man this brilliant man became my mentor for the

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last decade at least now um and trained me in the practices of mindfulness and

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meditation and what I love to call not stress management but stress realization

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so we're not trying to control stress you're trying to really understand the root of your stress the root of your

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anxiety and depression so you're not always just managing it on the surface as these things arise you're getting to

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the very juice of why it's there in the first place and uprooting that for good and that transformed my whole life

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wonderful very cool makes sense yeah an know totally it's uh what I think Super

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interesting about most wonderful practitioners is they've totally gone through an

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experience themselves as a you mentioned and I'd love you to tell could you tell us a little bit about how your education

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and that application of that education to yourself helped you heal and helped

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you become more conscious aware more mindful of what the thing things that maybe have you have done in your past

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and those subconscious habits that sometimes rule us how that education piece helped you come to that

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realization the education you mean with the mindfulness training or yeah well anything I mean you say went to you you

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know first of all you studied nutrition and that kind of blew you away because of you know nutrients and and how they

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affect your body and then you stepped it up a bit and then you step and you couldn't get enough you know like it's that I think for a lot of people when

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they step into taking their own education into their own hands and they start to learn more and they start

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applying that to them themselves then they start to heal and then you know they become teachers and become healers

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and that's definitely the best way that people do it so how did it for you long-winded question but how did that

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educational piece cuz I think we hope to inspire people to really take their own health into their own hands and step one

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of that is is becoming educated and becoming aware and you know reading books and exposing yourself to new

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things how um how did that help you heal personally because it sounds like before

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when you were you know you you had some you had a lot of things going on how the educational piece help you

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out there yeah so I think as they say knowledge is power and I really feel that and felt that in the beginning when

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I was suffering and struggling so much mentally and physically with my health I didn't have any knowledge therefore I

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didn't have any direction to even begin to move in I didn't have any tools or

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any understanding of what mental health is and where it comes from and how

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someone creates mental health versus a a mental imbalance let's say or um what

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negative emotions are versus a positive emotion and how these things are created so as soon as I started to study even

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nutrition and get an understanding of how certain micronutrients create certain hormones in your body which then

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are precursors to molecules like serotonin and dopamine which create things experiences like love and joy and

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things in your life putting all those things together I recognized oh my gosh okay A plus b equals c so in the

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beginning it was very helpful because you can say well if I choose this

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prepackaged new nutrient void food or if I choose this

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whole nutrient dense food it's going to give me these certain building blocks which create inflammation in my body or

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I'm going to choose the food that gives me these certain nutrient um building blocks which create what I need for

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dopamine and what I need for serotonin so understanding that was extremely helpful in the beginning that knowledge

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just recognizing that wow these different things affect my experience in

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life it affect my mental health that was just so powerful cool yeah I mean as you

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say like before knowledge or before a certain level of understanding a healthy food and a good

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food that's put them in quations you know they could they just they just look like food right yeah but with knowledge

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and knowing exactly kind of like looking at the label knowing exactly what those ingredients are what they do and don't

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do for our bodies yeah absolutely you can't you can't even start to

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contemplate that cast in your head without knowing exactly awesome so I'd

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love to learn a little bit more about what Buddhist spiritual medicine is can you kind of give us an introduction to

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that yeah and I caution myself also using the word Buddhist

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because I'm not technically trained as like a Buddhist practitioner in any way my training was happened on a living

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room floor in someone's basement um in Victoria and

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my teacher was very I think intentional about not coming at it from an angle of

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labeling it as Buddhist psychology or Buddhist spirituality it was just about

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what how can I communicate these practices and this

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understanding about life so that people can apply this and live happier and healthier lives it wasn't about well

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let's define sure this style of meditation or this or whatever so I imagine a lot of intellect uals people

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that have studied Buddhist spiritual medicine or Buddhist psychology in University are going to have a very

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different understanding of it and description of it than my understanding and description but essentially the

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premise of Buddhist spiritual health is

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that every practice

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that is taught is taught with the

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intention to understand yourself more deeply on a mental and physical

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level because on that level of understanding they say that is where you

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release yourself from conditioned ideas around who you are and you become in touch with who you actually are

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and from that place they say true healing happens so healing comes from a root

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word in Latin or something which means Halen which means to make whole and that

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is the whole idea around Buddhist spiritual medicine is we're making whole we're not cutting off parts of us that

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we think are bad we're not trying to get rid of negativity we're not trying to get rid of depression we're trying to

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fully come to understanding these things so that we can see them for what they

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are and integrate them into our wholeness and not personally identify with with the negative things that we

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think or experience and see ourselves for what we truly are something so much more than that and that's where we find

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our healing and holess does that make sense absolutely yeah I think that's um

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I think it's a really difficult thing to explain and I think you did it really well you say there's going to be levels

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of spiritual medicine from so many different cultures all around the world world and essentially I suppose they're

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kind of talking the same language in regards to to a goal of being able to kind of block out and

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separate yourself from the external things that we think make us the people that we

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are but obviously we've got this true authentic beautiful gorgeous self which is very very different from the

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personalities that we exhibit on a day-to-day basis and finding that thing is very very enlightening can you can

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you tell us a little bit about what because I we hear the word mindfulness a lot

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and I'm I feel like I'm quite familiar with what mindfulness means to me on a

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personal on a personal level but what does it what does it what what does it the word mindfulness mean mean to you

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and how would you kind of open that up to to somebody who's very unfamiliar

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with the Deep the Deep rooted pieces of meditation and

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Consciousness so meditation mindfulness is a style of meditation and meditation

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is kind of a poor translation for a word known as bavana in Sanskrit terminology

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so Sanskrit is one of the most ancient languages of India um and a lot of Buddhist script and things were tra were

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originally um written about in Sanskrit or or a language called

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so this term bavana which references our version of meditation translates to mental culture

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or mental conditioning and mindfulness is just another branch of mental conditioning so it's a specific

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meditation practice that conditions your mind to be a certain way essentially um

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now mindfulness itself is a wonderful style of meditation practice of or mental conditioning or mental

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cultivation I should say is a better word and mindfulness is simply being aware of

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what is that's it it's about being

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present with all of your senses with feeling tasting touching

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smelling anything that is happening here and now that is what mindfulness is it's the

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practice of being aware and I find this one extremely help

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help ful for clients in the beginning because you don't need to carve out special time for this practice you don't need to be sitting on a pillow in a dark

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quiet space to be able to use this style of meditation practice you can use mindfulness at any time you can be

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walking to the office and being meditating essentially using this style of meditation called mindfulness because

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it's about simply being aware of the weight of your feet moving along the sidewalk that's a style of meditation

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called mindfulness yeah that's beautiful and yeah becoming mindful becoming conscious

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becoming aware especially in the present moment we hear the word present moment a lot as well connected with meditation

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and mindfulness and for me in my meditative practice and becoming a little bit more conscious and aware of

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where my thoughts go What feelings I'm having and what behaviors I'm exhibiting

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and making trying my best to make sure that I am actually conscious and in

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control of those rather than 5 years ago you know my thoughts my emotions and my

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behaviors were very much subconscious very much just happening to me without really any thought you know I

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would a lot of and this goes for a lot of people especially when it comes to trying to change habits because you use

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the word mental conditioning and that's you know that's about strengthening and

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creating and cultivating different Pathways in your brain to get to a different different

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conclusion and you know if we're waking up in the same side of the bed and we're sticking our slippers on and we're going

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to brush our teeth and we are going to put the kettle on and we are going to the fridge and you know we're doing all

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those things all the way up until we go back to bed again a lot of these things were just kind of like walking through and our subconscious mind has learned

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those behaviors so so much that our present mind is doesn't doesn't need to

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be involved in those type of things we're just we're just going through yeah yeah and if we want to change a

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particular thought feeling or behavior to reach a different outcome whether that's to find more joy or find more

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happiness or find more you know anything um we have to start becoming aware of

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the thousands of little things we do every single day that just slip past our conscious mind and um we just end up

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doing them and yeah yeah and I yeah yeah I think your explanation of mindfulness is wonderful there do you have anything

17:23

else to kind of add onto that we I love yeah I love what you said about how

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everything we do most of the things we do anyways I would say a huge percentage of what we do every day is subconscious

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we're not actually paying attention like how many times do we drive to work and not remember seeing a single tree or

17:43

person or we don't even know if it's cloudy or sunny outside because we're so consumed by thoughts in our mind we're

17:49

planning we're thinking we're doing we're reviewing that argument we had with our spouse before we left we're not

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actually in living in the moment at all and my mindfulness is such a good way to

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break up that cyclical P the cyclical patterns that we've created for ourselves in our lives and just reset

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come to the moment let everything go and then choose where do we want to put our

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attention in energy is this story that I was thinking about about two minutes ago

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is it serving my highest good or is it creating more stress and anxiety and making me feel out of control

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mindfulness is becoming aware of those things rising and pausing and saying do I want to continue to invest in this or

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not and then bring you into the present moment and maybe in a different direction it's so helpful that way I

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love it absolutely what do you think are some of the biggest challenges when it comes for people

18:46

becoming mindful because obviously becoming mindful or meditative or conscious at some point would have been

18:52

a normal thing for most people I think um especially when we're going about

18:58

thousands and thousand thousands of years you know it was a very very common practice that probably most people did what do you think of the challenges that

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we have in like 2021 people have got you know we we don't have this uh Consciousness or

19:11

awareness to become conscious and aware I think one of the big things that I run into with myself personally and

19:17

with clients is that we're so obsessed with IDE an idea of a future self we're

19:23

TR always trying to get somewhere we're trying to get more or be more or have more so it takes us away from the

19:31

present moment the present moment doesn't hold as much power or interest even for a lot of people because Here

19:37

and Now depending on what their ego mind has told them they need to be or have or

19:44

do Here and Now doesn't give them what they want and so they're constantly projecting themselves out of the present

19:50

moment they're not attracted to being here and now and paying attention because what they want and what they

19:55

think they need in order to be worthy in order to be successful in order to be smart enough they need to get in a

20:02

future self so they have to constantly be living in their minds around what should what do I need to do next who do

20:08

I need to control what do I need to focus on in order to get what I need we're all coming from this place of not

20:15

being enough or not having enough and I think that is a big barrier to being in

20:21

the present moment I remember when I first started meditation I hated it I

20:27

absolutely hated it because a lot of addictions as you

20:32

probably know are founded on this idea that Here and Now who I am isn't enough

20:37

there's something in me that's lacking or missing or is suffering and I need to

20:42

get away from who I am now in order to be somewhere more comfortable right they're pleasure seeking habits that's

20:49

what addictions are so you're always seeking some kind of pleasure because here and now you're not comfortable

20:54

enough and when my teacher first started to get me to do mindfulness practices and medit ation practices he said okay

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day start with five minutes of sitting and breathing and just being anytime a thought arises about you trying to

21:09

control your marks on that exam or trying to control your food and you're eating disorder or your body and your

21:15

body image or any of those things just let them Float by and bring your attention back to your breath and I had

21:21

so much anxiety around that practice my ego said no you cannot sit here and be

21:28

still for 5 minutes because you will miss out on what you need to control in order to be good enough you will miss

21:35

out on controlling your body you cannot spend the time sitting here because what you actually need to do is control your

21:41

food or what you actually need to do is study harder so you can get better marks on that next test so I ended up starting

21:48

my meditation and mindfulness practice with five seconds of sitting I literally

21:53

could only sit for five seconds before the pain of that ego voice rising in me

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became overwhelming and too much that I had to get up and kind of participate with it so it took me a long time wow

22:06

yeah I think um yeah super true and I think everyone who's ever really got serious about

22:12

doing meditation yeah has always got a similar story in regards to how difficult it is to sit with your own

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well just sit with yourself and try and become you know like no one in no place and no time yeah there's there's people

22:26

out there that like go to the gym and like Crush go hard for an hour but you sit and do meditation for an hour

22:31

without your with your without your awareness slipping that's that's so so

22:37

much more difficult that's true strength right there yeah it's the struggle I think in our culture the difference

22:42

between being and doing we're so conditioned to be doers and that

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associating our internal worth with how much we do and how much we achieve and

22:54

when we move into a mindfulness practice that says oh no we're going to let go of the doing for a bit we're just going to

23:00

be the ego freaks out and the more identified you are with that ego image of yourself and how much you still have

23:07

yet to achieve in life the more uncomfortable your meditation practice is going to be for sure brilliantly put

23:13

yeah exactly Society is definitely put us into this position where we have to be you know the busy

23:19

the busier that we think that we are the more success we're having or you know the more we're contributing and the you

23:25

know the the the go go go of like actually having things to do and you know creating things to do rather than

23:33

actually actively creating space where we're actually doing nothing and as you say

23:38

like going to the gym and pumping it for an hour is very very different to

23:45

sitting with yourself for an hour and making that time for you to actually become aware of like what's going on for

23:51

you inside and was obviously so so much stimulus happening in our external world

23:57

it's very very difficult sometimes times for us to actually separate our internal from our external world and a lot of

24:03

it's a lot of the things that happening around us really kind of control where our thoughts go what

24:09

emotions we exhibit and what behaviors that we do so yeah yeah there's so so

24:14

much going on that's and I think that's why it's a massive massive tricky thing to do in Western culture is to sit and try and meditate and and go inwards

24:20

because we're so unconditioned to do to do that and so we have to we have to train to do it if you want the amazing

24:27

fruits that come from it mhm we have to kind of go through it a little bit on that that's exactly it um in regards to

24:35

your own practice what benefits have you seen in your clients when you introduce

24:40

mindfulness and meditation into their lives yeah that's a major part of my

24:45

practice in fact sometimes I have people come in and the majority of our treatment session is discussing

24:53

the mind and is discussing their attachments and how they mental habits

24:59

and behaviors are contributing to their current state of physical and mental health and

25:06

so with my clients when I introduce mindfulness practice to them or these meditative practices or self-inquiry

25:14

practices the first thing I see happen for them is they'll come back

25:20

and ex explain and experience of calmness that they've never had before calmness is a huge one where they've

25:27

just pressed the pause button on their kind of rat race kind of life and they

25:33

feel peace for a moment so I've seen a anxiety dissolve for people I've seen

25:38

decades long experiences of depression resolve for people I've seen people tuning

25:45

into yeah a general sense of calmness and peace that they've never experienced before and it's so

25:52

beautiful I love that that's my favorite part yeah that's great just allowing

25:57

allowing that person to give themselves permission to step into a different personality a

26:03

personality that doesn't consistently have anxious thoughts or somebody who doesn't have an depression or anything

26:09

like that yeah just and that just giving that person a little bit of a taste of that is I'm sure often very much a

26:15

um The Catalyst for them taking this practice outside of your office into into their own lives I've seen a lot of

26:23

people too even come back and there'll be things that they weren't even aware of in their own life and that

26:30

we didn't even discuss in the treatment room like issues in their relationship or something and they'll come back and they be like d I've been practicing the

26:35

pause and becoming more mindful of you know my attachment to these anxious thoughts arising and I just breathe and

26:43

I bring my attention to my breath and I let those things go and they'll say you know I come home from work and I'm less

26:49

reactive I didn't even know I was reactive but I'm noticing now that I'm less so and my relationship is

26:55

blossoming so it's very cool yeah what I love about meditation that's becoming

27:01

more available to more and more people is that there's so many different applications and ways that it can

27:08

connect with a certain individual it's kind of like um I don't know some people

27:13

like doing Yin slow yoga or some people like going like really hard and doing the Hot Stuff there's so many different

27:19

amazing teachers out there who teach kind of the they all teaching this pretty much the same thing but they do

27:25

it in different ways that connect with different people because we will learn in different ways um and that's you know

27:31

that is available to everybody like right now like the amount of meditation really good quality meditation apps that

27:37

that are available that you can just kind of like go for and just have an introduction to and find something that

27:42

um connects with you yeah it's it's super mainstream now and you know if you go to go to PubMed or green Med info and

27:50

you look at the scientific data for meditation on changing people's brains

27:56

to become more coherent to start healing things very very quickly um yeah the

28:02

amount of science connected with meditation right now is astounding and rightly so because you know there's a

28:07

really interesting um bridge between science and like the mysticism of of

28:13

meditation and and Ancient Ancient practices that we've kind of just got

28:19

distance from over in a little while but I think these things are certainly starting to come back and it's great that we have practitioners like you

28:25

where people can go and have conversations and learn a little bit about the practice what's going on for them personally and then having

28:33

something having a tool like meditation and being guided through it which is obviously a really important part when

28:39

you're going to make any changes to have have a support system there with you that's just that's great that's great

28:44

I'm sure all the people that come and see you are really really thankful for you allowing them

28:50

to find that present moment and find out what is going on for them that they that

28:55

that that they really want to work on to improve and they I think that's really awesome what um what effects on the mind

29:03

and body do you think meditation has oh man I mean it's huge it's a

29:09

massive question maybe in your in your in your practice in your experience like what have you seen you know because

29:15

obviously I think when it comes to to meditation and S and sitting and thinking and then we have that

29:21

agitated you when we start meditating we we have this ad agitated feeling in our bodies to get up and go and do something

29:29

for me that's kind of like the mind and the body are just not communicating you know the body is certainly taking a lot

29:36

of people through their days without our mind being really engaged but meditating

29:41

and it's a really really strong strengthening thing to do and really

29:46

difficult thing to do to really align the mind and the body to be able to sit

29:52

still and then kind of reassess you know what's really going on in the mind and kind of creating that still illness it's

29:58

a very difficult thing for people to do yeah I agree um yeah so in regards to

30:04

like the benef I mean there's many many benefits of meditation but what have you seen in regards to Let's kind of focus

30:09

on maybe the mental health aspect of it what the the real good benefits of sitting meditating and starting a

30:15

practice and those benefits and effects it has on the on the mind yeah on the Mind specifically one

30:24

of the greatest things is like I said just a sense of calmness people really

30:30

lack a sense of groundedness I think because we're all trying to move so fast in the world and we don't realize how

30:36

exhausting that is and when people start to meditate and they're like oh okay I feel like I can relax I can breathe

30:43

again I'm finding calmness Clarity of mind is huge so many people live in chaos and inability to make decisions

30:50

and they lack Clarity and when you can just stop and step out

30:56

of the cyclical thoughts and see them for what they are your decision-making capabilities improve dramatically so

31:03

calmness Clarity of mind um less stress and anxiety in general

31:10

people see huge reductions in just general disease and discomfort in their

31:16

day-to-day even if they wouldn't necessarily label themselves as an anxious person or a stressed person I'll

31:23

still give people mindfulness practices and they'll come back and say I enjoy my life more I feel more fulfilled and it's

31:34

it's not because they had an anxiety disorder and now they're feeling more calmness there's just something to being

31:40

present that fuels you that's different than just chasing

31:47

happiness yeah and it's so far from like a a Hokey Pokey thing you know when you when you do have this practice and

31:55

you're meditating well you are literally changing your biochemistry to to create

32:00

balance and to create coherence and that's kind of what the body really really needs in regards to repairing and

32:06

healing and the fact that a lot of people um heal some in some many cases

32:12

physical things wrong with their bodies that you know can be described as

32:18

in as incoherent frequencies these begin to heal very very quickly because we're

32:23

able to put our mind and our body together and we're actually by chemically changing ourselves in a much

32:30

more positive Healing Way exactly yeah and it's it's so profound and so

32:36

powerful I think that um more and more people actually becoming um beginning to

32:42

understand that mental health especially of anxiety and depression is so much more than just kind of the old school

32:47

theories of biochemical deficiencies and simple genetics what factors do you think are

32:55

important to discuss and focus on with your clients um that that those people that are experiencing mental health

33:01

concerns yeah I think in my practice anyways I start

33:08

basically with recognizing their nutritional deficiencies because often when someone is struggling with some

33:14

kind of mental health there will be some physical deficiencies for sure so I look at their diet I look at their lifestyle

33:21

I look at their history of antibiotic use which can disrupt microflora which as everyone mostly knows now is the

33:28

bacteria throughout your digestive tract which govern immune function they govern mood hormones and all kinds of things

33:34

inflammation in the body and so I look at all of these things and understand okay what kind of

33:40

micronutrients could you possibly be missing that are not allowing you to form these certain building blocks in

33:46

your body so that's where we like to start because that feels more tangible for a lot of people and then once we get

33:52

their body kind of more physically grounded and more

33:58

accepting of treatments and moving forward with their mental health then I

34:04

introduce those mindfulness practices and um one of the things I stress in my

34:11

clinic is the importance and not the importance but the power of your mind because I've seen a lot of people even

34:17

come in that are athletes and they eat really well and they train every day and

34:22

they're doing all the right things so-called on a physical level to produce

34:28

these happy chemicals in their body and they're not experiencing happiness and they're not experiencing fulfillment and

34:34

they're not experiencing love or connection or joy and one of the things I think is really powerful and important

34:41

to know is that your

34:48

conditioning and your habits around how you use your mind can override the

34:54

physical chemicals in your body so just like you mentioned the word frequencies a minute

34:59

ago emotions have certain frequencies in the body emotions have a certain vibration like judgment inner criticism

35:07

negativity those types of things that we're all kind of prone to at some point or another in our lives they have a

35:13

frequency to them that can actually affect physical hormones in your body like cortisol like dopamine like

35:20

serotonin and make it a lot harder for you to experience things like joy and peace and love so it's a combination I

35:27

think of being aware of your physical deficiencies and what you can and cannot control on that level and then also

35:33

being aware of how you're using your mind on a day-to-day and is it serving

35:39

you to become more joyful and more connected or is it harming you because you have a pattern of self-doubt and

35:46

self-criticism and negativity and that kind of thing and how can we shift those in order to create a healthier happier

35:52

life for you cool yeah and I know you've got a really big focus on Digestive Health in your practice and yeah we

35:59

can't you can't be talking about mental health without talking about its intimate ties to the gut and I know you

36:04

just mentioned briefly about kind of about that connection can you talk a little bit more about you know our gut

36:11

the health of it what we're eating and how that it's got a very very close connection with how how we think and how

36:18

it's connected to the mind yeah there's a term I don't know when it came out maybe two decades ago already called the

36:23

gut brain access so it they've noticed in Western science now that there is a big correlation between what happens in

36:30

your intestines or in your digestive tract and what's going on in your brain chemistry so mood hormones um serotonin

36:36

for example as everyone knows as the happy chemical in the body 80% of it is

36:43

actually produced by the bacteria in your digestive tract so depending on what food you're directly putting into

36:49

your body and how that is influencing that gut bacteria or microf Flora it's

36:54

going to result in how your body produces or doesn't produce those

37:00

certain chemicals does that make sense ABS absolutely yeah and um we've not actually done a particular show on the

37:07

microbiome yet or the microflora in the gut and um I think for a lot of people maybe you could just kind of introduce

37:12

that idea yeah so the gut microbiome um is the word that you just used love it um or gut Flora again is it

37:22

refers to the environment within your digestive tract most people think oh the intes Ines are just there to break down

37:29

and absorb nutrients and then it gets sent to the rest of the body and then maybe the brain makes your mood chemicals right that was the old idea or

37:37

your liver does certain things in the body but so much activity actually happens right in your intestinal tract

37:43

right in the environment of your gut so and the way that the gut is regulating

37:51

these things is through the bacteria that actually exist there so depending on what foods you eat you will Nour

37:57

certain bacteria and not nourish other C other bacteria depending on what Pharmaceuticals you take or like

38:04

antibiotics for example they wipe out a lot of that gut microflora or bacteria

38:10

so then it makes a lot of those jobs like mood regulation like inflammation regulation like immune response

38:17

regulation a lot more difficult because those are jobs of the gut microflora or the gut bacteria themselves so there's a

38:24

lot of different influencers on that environment when it comes to food or Pharmaceuticals

38:29

or what we actually put in our body that then will affect the outcome of our mental health and how our body can

38:35

perform in that way yeah so yeah hu I mean the microbiome is a is a huge huge topic and

38:43

kind of relatively relatively new to a to a lot of people and the science is

38:48

still in its infancy in regards to you know the three to four pounds in so many

38:54

cases of bacteria that and other microorganisms we do have a lot of fungi and viruses that live live in Synergy

39:01

inside of our gut that are super important towards every aspect of our health and as you say they're super tied

39:07

to our um to our cognition and our mental health and you know we are kind of not necessarily what we eat we're

39:13

kind of what we absorb exactly yeah and the bacteria that we do have in our G

39:18

you know they've got thousands and thousands of different jobs and creating neurotransmitters and and is one of

39:26

those huge roles so yeah it's absolutely what we're eating what we're drinking the

39:31

Pharmaceuticals we take even to the extent of like how you were actually born into the world and how long you

39:36

breastfed for these things play a huge role into the potential Integrity of your of your microbiome and these are

39:43

things if you're talking to an naturopath or a nutritionist or a Chinese medicine doctor these are

39:50

certainly things to to be taken into consideration and as you say like antibiotics that are in circulation kind

39:56

of everywhere um these things do wreak havoc on our um on our gut Flora but there are so many

40:03

things that we can do in regards to our diet and our habits and supplementation that we can do to strengthen that flora

40:09

and if we've got a good happy gut we're going to have a much we're going to have a much better potential for that to um

40:15

Ascend into our mind as well it's really interesting when I was in Victoria um

40:22

and doing a little bit of clinical practice there there were I saw a lot of mental health patients as well that's kind of where my mental health

40:28

career kickstarted I suppose and a lot of schizophrenia

40:34

um schizophrenic symptoms were being presented in a lot of my clients some

40:40

with diagnosis some without and the turning point for almost every single one of those clients

40:47

was focus on gut health we would do probiotics we would a lot of them had history of antibiotic use a lot of them

40:53

had um poor diets and poor Lifestyles that contribut to sluggishness in the digestive system a lot of them had

41:01

corresponding um IBS symptoms and all kinds of things and as soon as we started to focus on that I remember

41:06

doing so much abdominal massage on people just simple abdominal massage and they' say day for the next five days my

41:13

symptoms reduced by 50% it is huge wow that's really cool yeah it was really

41:18

cool yeah um I mean off mean true hopes Flagship product and power plus you know it's a broads Spectrum micronutrient

41:25

that has been break broken down so much that it's so super absorbable that people are able to obtain the nutrition

41:32

that they're unable to do through food and some people experience remarkable things in days and it's a simple case of

41:40

just getting those right building blocks ex into the bloodstream around the body so the body can do what it wants to make

41:46

you feel awesome I agree cool well that kind of wraps it up for today daily thank you so

41:54

much how can people connect with you at the moment my platform is Instagram

42:01

uh daily Lane d a y l y l a y n e very

42:06

simple I'm there every day talking to people answering messages privately and on posts and stories and all kinds of

42:13

things mostly on Mental Health that is my jam on mindfulness meditation so if

42:18

you have any questions please find me there I'd be happy to chat perfect yeah

42:24

we will put all of that information in the show notes so if anyone wants to check that out and connect with daily they should certainly do so but thank

42:32

you so much for joining us today um I really appreciate your time um yeah it's

42:38

uh it's so nice to connect with people who have been to a Pacific Rim and people who love meditation and mindfulness and it it's always inspiring

42:45

to know that there are other people out there trying to um well being there to

42:51

support people to make these different transitions to let them know how how

42:57

kind of easy it is to feel great and they deserve to do so yeah so thank you very much again

43:03

daily thank everybody so much for listening this is true Hope cast the official podcast of true hope Canada I

43:08

hope you've enjoyed this episode we will certainly see you again next week goodbye thanks Amon