Chiropractic Care & The Power Of The 5 Elements with Dr Aisha Ahmed (EP#192)

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Chiropractor Dr Aisha Ahmed joins Mason on today's show.

Aisha is an incredibly well-studied and accomplished individual with 20 years of experience working across many healing modalities.

Aisha has always been drawn to caring for others and began her journey in the industry at the age of 15 working alongside her father in his medical clinic.

With a deep reverence for the power of hands-on adjustment and a passion for the holistic approach, along with a myriad of tools in her practitioner belt; including a Masters in Chiropractics, certifications in Jungian Psychology, Dry Needling, NeuroEmotional Technique and 10 years apprenticing with a highly regarded traditional Chinese herbalist, Aisha uses the knowledge she's gained to restore her clients capacity to feel vibrant, energised and pain-free.
 
In this jovial conversation, Aisha and Mason emphasise the importance of viewing the body as one unified organism comprised of many systems and explore the role of integrative care in achieving positive client outcomes.

The pair passionately speak to the power of the Five Element Theory and Chinese medicine framework, highlighting the simple yet effective lifestyle approaches, that when practised with consistency, can be the difference between an individual's recovery and a life laced with pain.

An inspiring and informative listen for all, especially those who want to support the longevity of their body, mind and Spirit; an endeavour which could be seemingly as simple as wearing a scarf when it's windy, and socks when it's cold...

Enjoy.

 

"Pay attention to the natural cycles that are already there. So I'd tell them, wake up with the sun, and try and go to bed not long after the sun. If it's cold weather, you stay warm, keep your muscles warm. Don't get wind on you. Don't be around too much dampness. Try and drink warm water. Don't put anything cold into your body. And have a smile."

- Dr. Aisha Ahmed

 

Dr. Aisha & Mason discuss:

• The integration of holistic modalities within the medical system and the power they hold for positive treatment outcomes. 
• The marriage between chiropractics and Chinese medicine.
• The potency of physical touch and body manipulation in health and healing.
• The inadequacy of standard medical training in understanding the body as unified organism. 
• The simple lifestyle hacks Chinese medicine uses to help people live well for longer.
• Treating injury with heat instead of ice.
• Cancer through the lens of Chinese medicine.

Who is Aisha Ahmed ?

Aisha Ahmed is a Sydney based Chiropractor who utilises cutting edge neurological techniques across a broad range of disciplines to increase vitality and identify the physical, emotional and environmental stressors that weaken the nervous system and an individual's ability to thrive.

Before graduating from a Master of Chiropractic at Macquarie University, Aisha began her clinical experience at the tender age of 15, working in her father’s medical practice. Aisha has worked with practitioners all over Australia for over 20 years including Chinese Herbal Medicine, Orthopaedic surgeons, Physiotherapists, Osteopaths, Dentists, Podiatrists, Lower Limb Biomechanist's, Occupational Therapists and more.

Aisha combines Eastern and Western practices to create thorough and holistic care plans for her clients and believes consistency and patience are key in creating harmony in the body and mind.

Resource List

Guest 
Aisha's Facebook

Mentioned In This Episode 
Dr Simon Morgan Chiropractor 

Related Podcasts
Why Chinese Medicine Is Failing Us with Rhonda Chang (EP#80)
YinYang Wuxing For Inner Harmony with Rhonda Chang (EP#89)

Check Out The Transcript Below:

 

Mason:

Aisha, thank you for coming. Really a fun way that we met at the SuperFeast Christmas party. Have to go and look at, watch Cheeky Cabaret at the Brunswick Picture House.

Aisha Ahmed:

Very funny. Yeah. That seems how things go for me, I meet people on the fly. Very lovely to meet you in that way. I'd heard so much about you and then bumping into you just seemed like it was in the pipelines.

Mason:

Yeah. It's been a bit of a run-up since then, since December. And we knew we had to have this meeting. I mean, I just remember it really stuck with me hearing about your work, how your work relates to the organs, your mentor. And just wanted to get the, I just always really wanted to dive in.

Aisha Ahmed:

So where I started from was doing chiropractic and then I went on to Chinese herbal medicine and found how the fusion of the two is the best way to get the best health results in my patients and for myself. And it just seemed like a marriage made in heaven. And everything that's come from that, has just been amazing journey for me of learning. And that's always been my number one goal is how can I help others? And how can I help them get better health results from what's currently happening to where they could be?

Mason:

What's your current situation looking like with practise?

Aisha Ahmed:

So I had an injury two years ago and haven't been able to practise doing adjustments and high patient loads like I used to in Sydney. And so I've moved up to Northern Rivers. And now I've gone to more health advising and consulting because I found that I can use my energy better in directing people where they need to go instead of getting into chronic care or just seeing the same kind of thing day in day out of the same kind of injuries. When those injuries would get better if they had the knowledge of what to do with lifestyle, food, and all the other components of health.

Mason:

So did you start traditional chiropractic and then discover ways to-

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes, so my family are all in the medical industry and my dad's a doctor and it was very kind of nonconformist of me to go to alternative kind of manual therapy chiropractic. I started at chiropractic, I trained with physios and osteopaths and lower limb biomechanists. And then I moved into finding that people had large gaps of where they weren't getting better because their diets weren't great, or their lifestyles weren't great.

Or they weren't really aware of how much sun you should be getting every day. And they're in office environments in cities and they don't ever touch the ground with their feet. And simple things like that to more scientifically-evidence based kind of medicine where you're giving nutrition and those kind of things to the body, and alkalizing their bodies from being acidic and a whole lot of other things. It was so crucial as well.

 

And where are they going to learn those kind of practises when in Australia, we don't have that as part of our culture? What culture really are we? We don't have the indigenous culture as practises of how we should conduct our lifestyles and how we should eat and prepare our food. It's like where does that come from?

 

And that's why Chinese herbal medicine has been amazing in bridging that gap because they've got 1000s of years of tried and tested things that they do as part of their everyday practise, not something that you just go to a building and do.

Mason:

How did that creep into your world? Was it you had a practise near?

Aisha Ahmed:

So I was referred to see a Chinese herbalist. And I never ever would've gone to see her until my patients were telling me that they were getting cured of these things that modern medicine couldn't cure. There was a lady that had migraines for 37 years and this lady, my mentor, helped her and cured it. And she didn't have another migraine.

 

Or women who were trying to fall pregnant and told that they're infertile, were able to have babies. She's got a wall of full of babies pictures.

Mason:

The babies that weren't meant to be.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I went to see her out curiosity, and I didn't think I had anything wrong with me. And she just looked at me and said, "You were sick when you were little," which was true. I was born with a kidney congenital malfunction that got corrected through surgery.

Mason:

Was this complexion she was looking at?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yep.

Mason:

Or what did she do?

Aisha Ahmed:

She looked at my face and just goes, "Oh, you didn't have good nutrition growing up and you got better as you got older. Your Kidney Qi is low." And then she got me to stick out my tongue and then she told me even more. And then she did fingernail microscopy and she told me basically all of these things about me that there's no way that she would've known because I only just met her on the spot.

 

And that's what caught my attention. And she's always, her motto is always, "A good doctor will tell you what's wrong." The body's like a map and you can read it. And so when she started teaching me what kind of things I should look out and read for in my patients that came to see me as a chiropractor, I was blown away. I was like, "She was right." And they'd go and get those tested scientifically with evidence, with blood tests, and find that there was an issue.

 

And there is more subtle symptoms of illness and unbalance that can come up without showing up on a blood test because they usually find it when something's gone wrong. More subtle symptoms. But all of the stuff that she was finding, was true. And it was just, yeah, it made me go into an absolute catastrophe because everything I'd ever been taught just was upside down. And I was heartbroken that my university training was just not really as helpful to me as I thought.

Mason:

Can you take us? Because that's a very unique experience and it's unique in the way that we manoeuvre ourselves through it. But it's almost a cathartic experience that a lot of people here are going to recognise or maybe a lot of some people listening know that it's coming up.

 

And it's something I'm really interested in is in increasing the EQ and the IQ of this world that we have here within that, more in looking for more integration. How to move yourself through that heartbreak. Because I kicked against institution when I realised what was going on. You were saying that, and I went into complete, I'm going to dismantle you from the inside out. I'm like a weed. You talked, you felt that heartbreak. Just any advice around for anyone who-

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah. Well, I had to be careful about how I went about it because all my family are in the medical paradigm and in pharmaceutical kind of supportive industries. And I didn't want to go with a hacksaw. I had to go more with a feather and say, "Look, this isn't the only paradigm on offer. There are other things." But it was heartbreaking.

Mason:

What was heartbreaking about it?

Aisha Ahmed:

That I feel like I'd been betrayed. That there is more out there than what universities are teaching. And I made it my goal to just learn as much as I can outside of my university degree, which was an extra 13 years. Now I've spent over $100,000 on my education.

 

I've done extra courses, I've done everything possible. And you can see with how much I did in that time. And oh my God, because I just needed to find answers. And that was part of the fallout from that breakup with mainstream medicine.

Mason:

And it's almost just knowing, I mean, I know a lot of people coming through universities studying Chinese medicine are like, "Oh great, I get it now. And then discover they get nothing." That they've got good baseline practical skills, but no, no, no, now it starts.

Aisha Ahmed:

They've got the lingo. Yeah.

Mason:

Now it starts.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah. How did you learn in the old days? How did acupuncturist learn? You didn't sit in a room for six hours a day under fluorescent lights and look at paper. No, you were on the fly. You were like, "Someone's coming that's blind. Someone's got fallen off a building and broken bones. What are you going to do about it?" And yeah, that's how you learn.

 

And acupuncturist is the same. How do you know where to put the needle? A textbook isn't going to tell you everything you need to know. There's so many things unaccounted for. So many variables. Your patient might come in and say that they're on anti clotting or aspirin right before you're about to needle them, or you have a needle in them. And you know what I mean? All those things that you can't account for and you're in practise. And how to manage those things is what really makes you that practitioner.

Mason:

With your mentor, was she in the same complex or something? Was there a reason?

Aisha Ahmed:

I was doing my university chiropractic master's, hands-on experience, my practical component right next to where her clinic was.

Mason:

Okay.

Aisha Ahmed:

And so I just would go and she kind of took me under her wing because she didn't have children herself. And she's like, "You come. Come, come, come. I teach you how to cook. Okay. What they teach you in Australia?" She's like, "This is not how you cook food. You cook like this." And she'd grab me by the arm and pull me and show me how to prepare food.

 

She'd tell me how to treat your body. She'd tell you what times of day to eat fruit, for example. What teas you should be concentrating on, what seasons you should be eating certain foods. What sort of facial diagnosis signs that you can check on yourself. For example, your tongue. If you're sick or you're not well, and to check what's going on stagnation or is there too much heat? Or is there too much cold or dampness?

 

And all of those components just helped me. And then when I've applied it to myself, then I felt safe enough that I could offer that advice to my family and friends. There were the next guinea pigs. And then it just worked over every single application, that why wouldn't you use it?

 

I like to think that health is like, if you think of that, your five fingers, I felt like chiropractic was one finger and I still had four other components that I need to look at for health. Mind, body, spirit, a holistic approach. We know all that. And I can't wait for Australia to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of that type of science.

Mason:

Yeah, we're in a funny position.

Aisha Ahmed:

Integrative medicine.

Mason:

We're in a very funny position. It's either going to be the most revolutionary place that integration happens. Or it's going to be the last place in the world and it's going to be holding on to complete bureaucracies. It's like, I don't which way it's going to fall.

Aisha Ahmed:

That's right. No, I don't know where it's going to swing. It's interesting times. Yeah.

Mason:

Well, so I mean what aspect did you put into your practise? Really landed and in practise you started getting known as? Was it the organs?

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh goodness. I have a whole lot of names that I've been named because I've worked all over Sydney. One of the ones they call me is the dancing chiropractor because-

Mason:

That's your Instagram handle.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah, because that's what I got named. Because I'm always dancing and bubbly in clinic and in practise. And putting on different accents and being really cheeky because my dad came from southern India. I can be many different.

Mason:

Do you have a green card to do that accent?

Aisha Ahmed:

I did. I do. I still do. So yeah. But if a patient, for example, came in with back pain and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'll crack your back and I'll mobilise it and I'll do all the techniques that I do." And I'll traction it, but the pain still remains.

 

And you're as a practitioner, you're always inquisitive and thinking, "Okay, what can I do? Maybe there's something I haven't addressed yet. Maybe I need to do another kind of diagnostic test on this person." And in a lot of the cases that I was cross referring to my Chinese mentor, a herbalist, they had kidney pain or they were going through some sort of organ referral pain. And I know my limits as a chiropractor of what I could help with. And I'm not going to pretend that chiropractic's going to help you get your organ back to being perfect again. You need a multi-modality approach.

 

Yes, the spine supplies the nerves that supply the kidneys. You can definitely mobilise those, but you need more, especially if the person isn't even aware that that's going on with them. So I would send people to her and then she'd confirm and we'd get medical tests and confirm what was going on. And

 

Why can't we have medicine like that? Why can't that be mainstream? People are getting results faster, they're living better lives, they're out of pain. I hate seeing people in pain. And so that trying to find and get down to the real core of the issue was like no-brainer for me.

Mason:

Don't even know where the sweets, without awareness and the awareness of Chinese medicine and the need for a more integrated approach, and especially just how beneficial is it, like something like Chinese medicine, everything revolves around Yin Yang and then Wu Ching the organs.

 

And then just every single person who's going to go and treat that patient is going to have that same baseline conversation. The baseline marker in which they're measuring health, whereas we're chiropractic over here just looks at this. And then you've got the GPs only looking at this and everyone's got their own specialty. There's no integration possible because-

Aisha Ahmed:

 

Very secular, yeah. And our brains and health don't operate secular, yet the approach is so specific and boxed and labelled. No wonder people aren't getting results.

Mason:

So chiropractics still have a nice, sweet spot in your heart.

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh, I love chiropractic. All of my friends and family know I'm touching people constantly or animals. And it has an amazing role. For example, I had a double disc injury on myself and I was in excruciating pain. If it wasn't for the chiropractor who I studied with and went to uni with, who's been fixing my neck, I wouldn't have been able to still lift my left arm. And maybe think about going in for surgery thinking that I have a really complex injury that's past trying anything conservative to fix.

 

And the fact that I can move it now and I'm not in excruciating pain is testimony to that. So there is a place for all of these sciences and all of these modalities, especially desk sitting. We're not made to sit at a desk. We're meant to be hunting, gathering, moving constantly. So chiropractic is more heavily relied on in the types of lifestyles that we have today than ever before.

Mason:

I don't think people realise just how much of a special, what a special position chiropractic holds within the whole ecosystem of how we approach health. Like Taoism. Well first of all, Chinese medicine's focus on palpation. Just observation of what your face is doing, what your tongue's doing. Feeling what the pulse is doing. That doesn't rely on any kind of tests that have them, like a myopic outcome.

 

The other aspect is how deeply the Taoist value physical touch. There's gua sha with stones. Then there's organ massage where you're really getting deep in there into somewhere. Sometimes the herbs and the acupuncture and the Qi is going to get in there and make the changes eventually, but sometimes it's going to take too long. So you can get elbows into Livers.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

And thumbs into Livers. So that is so far from the approach in western medicine, that chiropractic is there still for me it seems like so mainstream. But for the modern medical world, it's such a scallywag medicine. It's still not seen as anything. It's like, "Oh god, whatever."

 

But it's in there. It's in the modern lexicon and it's physical touch. It's physical manipulation of the body to get it back into harmony and get the Qi moving. It's a huge spot that it holds and represents in our little-

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. And I don't think that you can just look at chiropractic on its own. And a lot of my colleagues and friends that I studied with are the same. And that they've gone and studied and learnt other things just to fortify their knowledge and help their clients more.

Mason:

Sorry, guys. Wrong hole.

Aisha Ahmed:

Are you clear? I was like-

Mason:

Water went down the wrong hole.

Aisha Ahmed:

But yeah, mainstream medicine, I don't feel accepted by mainstream medicine. My dad's 77 and he's been a GP for 40 years. He only let me adjust him for the first time just last year. And he was like, "Oh, it actually, I feel better." Like, "Oh, it works." And I think he was genuinely surprised that he wasn't going to have a stroke.

Mason:

And that's what I mean, there's so much of a lack of trust. Just the way massages are at remedial massage. You're only allowed to touch these big muscles. But it's like, "Right, well what about ..." I always think chiropractor just holds that space of it's just like, "Oh, we're going to touch the spine. Far out. This is such a big deal."

 

And likewise, I think that's the only place it's going to be able to go. You've got liver disease, touch it, go and touch it. And it's just like chiropractic is the only one. Osteo a little bit further outside of the. The inner circle, like there. I don't think anyone realises just how much it does represent. And then it's no doubt you are moving into getting interested in the organs.

Aisha Ahmed:

Well, osteopathic students learnt how to do visceral release on organs. And then when I went over to the chiropractic, because I started off with the osteopaths into chiropractic at Macquarie University.

Mason:

That's where I went.

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh, no way.

Mason:

Yeah. Down with Macquarie.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah, no way. I was there 2003, 2004 for five, seven years because I went part-time with my masters.

Mason:

Yeah, right. A started '07.

Aisha Ahmed:

No way. We would've been there at the same time. So I have seen you before. Not just at Brunswick-

Mason:

Didn't have the beard then.

Aisha Ahmed:

That day. Yeah. And you were skinny as well when you were younger. Like lanky, like-

Mason:

Gaunt. Raw foodist skinny.

Aisha Ahmed:

Before you came across SuperFeast. Yeah, pre-SuperFeast days. Yeah. But yeah, it's so important and that's why learning that off the osteopaths is kind of probably got me into thinking about all the other 3D components of the body, there's so much involved.

 

And I had to go and do extra courses to find out how to do visceral releases on newborns who have colic. Or how to do things with pregnancy. Webster technique, which involves a very gentle way to turn the baby when the head's not engaged.

Mason:

I mean that is

Aisha Ahmed:

That should have been taught in university. But-

Mason:

Absolutely.

Aisha Ahmed:

Insurance and all of those things have changed the way that things have been taught. If you can't prove it in a lab, then they're least likely to let you learn it in university. And the version of chiropractic now I find in the universities off my colleagues and friends who teach, they're like, "It's just such a rinsed down version of what it used to be."

Mason:

And they have definitely moved further away. I mean just, you look at the way it's going with childbirth at the moment. It used to be common practise for nurses to be able to turn a baby, let alone midwives. Of course you know how to turn a baby. And then there's techniques that of course you should be layering that in there.

 

Oh my god, there's a technique which safely can turn a baby. And all right, maybe it's not a super scientifically validated because the modern scientific model doesn't actually work in the same way in measuring these kinds of outcomes. But the fact that that isn't even anywhere near. That they just opt straight away, even though the evidence is there that babies quite often turn themselves. And if not, even breach births are quite safe compared to what they're going to be able know, what they're going to be telling you.

 

Oh my god. It's just that whole thing, the whole university thing. Having the heartbreak, me walking out of uni, walking out of Macquarie uni after my graduation. I don't know what came over me. I don't have the same animosity towards it, but just was like, "I really can't. I can't believe what you are doing to minds, to young minds."

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

I can't believe how poorly and badly you are corrupting and putting these ideas based on the lowest common denominator. In terms of do not touch a baby, do not touch an organ. Do not relate it to anything holistic because you're not covered. It's paranoid. It's manifesting more fear.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. That's correct. And a lot of these things are created with how do I avoid any trouble coming onto me? And that shouldn't be the motivating force with how a course, or should be taught in a course.

 

And who writes these courses? Are there Chinese herbalist writing Chinese herbal medicine courses? Are there chiropractors doing the course codes and course content for chiropractic? No, they're not. So where is this knowledge coming from?

Mason:

So I mean I remember you were saying mushrooms popped up at one point in terms of being used by your mentor.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

That was the first time you started getting aware of them.

Aisha Ahmed:

So all of her herbs she gets from China. And she would tell me, "You need to take this power. You mix this." And we called it the brown cocaine. You mixed this brown stuff into mud.

 

And then she started teaching us what it's about. Me and all of my friends that went to go see her and were so curious about this woman. But one of the big ones she taught me about was cordyceps mushroom. And how it was really expensive gift to give to an emperor back in the day because it was worth more than gold.

Mason:

And now look at us.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

Now look at us taking it.

Aisha Ahmed:

Isn't it? We live in the most abundant times that the most appropriate medicine for someone's ailment can be accessed now. Where look at where we live in Australia. We can access all of these amazing herbs that are made in small batches, grown in the highlands, and then brought here for us to use in our daily life. In our daily kitchens, in our lunches, in our meetings with people. It's so amazing and I love that.

 

And the amount of good health that I've enjoyed because of this beautiful knowledge that was given to me through my mentor. And then being able to access the herbs and learning about them, is amazing. It changed my life. My blood pressure was chronically low and every doctor told me that's normal. Until I met this Chinese herbalist and she goes, "Oh, you feel cold all the time." I'm like, "Yeah." I took her herbs, I felt the life come back into me.

 

My adjustments got better, my life got better, my energy levels got better. I was like, I didn't even know that I was feeling fatigued because it was such a normal feeling that it became the new normal. And she showed me a new normal of how good you can be. And since then I'm like, "Everyone needs to know about this." Everyone needs to be at their optimum and at their best. Because what they've accepted as a normal, I don't accept that. I expect better.

Mason:

What are the key things that, in terms of you, because what I'm taking away from they impacted your practise a lot, but really impacted the way that you personally regulate yourself and keep yourself healthy.

Aisha Ahmed:

Exactly. How can I look after 80 patients a week, patient load, if I'm falling apart? I have to practise what I preach. And if I'm going to ask my patients and my clients and my community to do something, I'm not going to sit at home and do the opposite, be a fraud in that way.

Mason:

What were the biggest things you were asking them to do? And that have found their way as the big hitters in your now?

Aisha Ahmed:

Probably awareness on lifestyle. Putting caffeine on an empty stomach or something was news to a lot of people. Especially working in cities-

Mason:

It terms of what it did to the body?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah, what it does to the body. Getting up at strange times and being cold and not putting appropriate-

Mason:

Well do you want to talk about, let's talk about the coffee first? Because I know it's a big thing that people do in fasted states and it's something that happens. You can go find evidence for everything everywhere. So I know, what's it called, the bio-hacking community have found scientific evidence that it's good to go fasted and then put coffee on an empty stomach. But are you talking about from what it does from ... Or I'll let you talk to it.

Aisha Ahmed:

Well, for the people who have it as part of their routine every morning. There's a big coffee culture in Sydney where I grew up. And it's you get up in the morning, you don't eat breakfast, you jump straight in the car, you've dropped the kids to school, you get a coffee because that's what kick starts your adrenals because you're so depleted that you don't have anything else to give you a startup.

 

And when people are adrenal fatigued and trying to use coffee when they're in states of exhaustion, it changes their posture, it changes their alignment. They start slouching more and then they come into me with back pain. So I have to think about all of those components when I'm seeing them.

 

So I get into their shoes, I put myself in their position. And things like coffee every single day, coffee has an application, is a beautiful thing to use for certain things in the body, but not to have every single day, two, three, four to keep you going. And then, yeah, I saw your coffee jitters remedy as well to have, which is excellent. Because people start asking questions, "Oh, I shouldn't have jitters?" And it doesn't even occur to some people because they're just-

Mason:

It's so wild.

Aisha Ahmed:

In a different page or different world. Or they work in a field that doesn't relate to health. And so therefore they have to really go outside of their normal patterns to understand and learn about this, which is where people like us come in.

Mason:

Yeah, I mean it's wild going into the city environment or clinical environment. I just went up for a meeting in Brisbane the other day. It was like for a 2:00 PM meeting and everyone was like, "Oh, does anyone want a coffee?" And they were like, "Oh my gosh, yes, please." And I was like, "Oh god, you guys are like, you need this." Forgot about it. I was like, luckily I brought up a few herbs.

 

But that jitters remedy was just popping an ashwagandha capsule everyone, I believe was the way that we did it. And you can just, yeah, we all know here you can pop the mushrooms in the coffee. But yeah, I mean that's just a bit of fun. I think it is really an important one for everyone to get a reminder of exactly how you're using it. Any particular reason you remember the way it was? We were saying she was saying not to put it on an empty stomach of what it does?

Aisha Ahmed:

It's just your hollow tubes in your body have been stagnant all night and you need to go and flush that. Your body constantly needs flushing and cleaning, which isn't as part of our culture as Australians.

Mason:

We talked about-

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

If you heard of Jost, the German, German Jost, the Taoist. We talk about the organ wheel and something hearing about this. Someone, a Chinese, essentially you're a Chinese mother who's smacking you on the head for being barefoot like I am now. And smacking you for having a smoothie because it's going to cool your stomach down. There's such good basic principles.

 

I'm very aware I'm barefoot. I generally am very aware, but I have to try and be my own Chinese mother and smack myself. But the next, he was just talking about in terms of that 3:00 to 5:00 AM, maybe even a little bit later is that's where you fill yourself with cosmic Qi. And if you don't fill your tubes with cosmic chi in your practise and your meditation and your breath work especially, that then you fill it up with whatever you consume first.

 

And it's always interesting thinking the first thing we're going to consume is coffee, and your hollow tubes rather than having cosmic Qi is with a liver yang tonic that drives you, drives your adrenaline. It's like it's going to be good for a short amount of time. That's the thing. The studies are going to validate it for a very short amount of time.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah. And you want longevity, you don't want to crash.

Mason:

The scarf, that's a massive one we're in that. I lost my bloody scarf, my favourite scarf last week.

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh no.

Mason:

I know, now I got to go get another one.

Aisha Ahmed:

It's not the same. It's not your favourite one.

Mason:

No it's not. It was such a daggy, touristy, Australian touristy one. But I am amazed when I first went fine, I'm just going to go. Especially just getting a windbreaker kind of scarf for that. But it's a bit hotter at the moment. I'm warm.

Aisha Ahmed:

It's warm. That's why your barefoot is fine.

Mason:

I think it is.

Aisha Ahmed:

Still warm. Yeah.

Mason:

Thank you.

Aisha Ahmed:

I'm not going to whack you.

Mason:

You justify, I justify. But getting up in the morning, I went for a walk this morning and I was like silly. That I need just a little light scarf around my neck right now. I'll let you talk about that in terms of practise because quite often people do have this pain. And well if you know the most basic thing about cold invasion in the neck, you'd know how quickly that's going to implicate itself and become back pain.

Aisha Ahmed:

That's right. Or even jaw pain. People are, or athletes are out in the wind. And we are lucky it's warmer up here, but down south this time of year it's freezing. And exposing yourself to the elements and not realising that's having an impact on your health and your muscles and your nervous system, is something you really people need to highlight and look into.

 

And so my job of raising awareness around those kind of things, made my results as a chiropractor with my clients so much tenfold. And they're understanding, "Oh, that's what's not good. Okay. I need to change this." And then I'd always teach my clients on how to better themselves so that they don't become reliant and dependent on me.

 

I just refuse to do the style of chiropractic where I'd have to recycle them to come back in to pay off my bills. I found a big ethical issue with that. And so in order to be my best authentic self, I have to look at other components. And I spend, I'm infamous for spending so long with one client. And going overtime when you have back to back bookings and only 30 minutes because I don't stop until the problem's solved. And if it's not working with something that I'm trying, then the onus is on me. Why isn't my patient getting better?

Mason:

Well that's where Chinese medicine's so good because these basics of putting shoes on when it's cold, putting a scarf on, eating at a certain time of day. I think you said it was another one.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah. Waking up at a certain time, eating at a certain time. What kind of food do you put into your body on an empty stomach is huge.

Mason:

What's the basic download that you give people when they're like, "What are you talking about?"

Aisha Ahmed:

Just what do you mean in terms of?

Mason:

Clinic. You're in clinic with someone and you just need to give them, you have 30, 60 seconds to give them a download on how to get into a flow with the Qi of the day, in terms of the times you're eating and what you're eating.

Aisha Ahmed:

So pay attention to the natural cycles that are already there. So I'd tell them, wake up with the sun, and try and go to bed not long after the sun. If it's cold weather, you stay warm, keep your muscles warm. Don't get wind on you. Don't be around too much dampness. Try and drink warm water. Don't put anything cold into your body. And have a smile.

Mason:

Simple as that, isn't it?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

I mean the smile thing, you you talk about the organs, the Taoist Inner Smile. Just smiling through your organs. Genuine, smiling, not fake smiling.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

And you just mentioned, you just pumped out those basic things. We all want a Chinese grandfather or grandmother giving us this advice.

Aisha Ahmed:

But you can be it yourself.

Mason:

Absolutely.

Aisha Ahmed:

Let's embody that.

Mason:

Or we have to because it's all, everything's at so much scale at the moment, and Chinese medicine can feel really restrictive for a lot of people. I understand because it's just like, "What do you mean? Am I ever going to be allowed anything cold again? Am I ever?" It's like you just need to get intimate with these principles.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

And quite often I can feel, like in Summer I run so hot that I feel myself being in the guilts about having an icy drink.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes, yes, I understand.

Mason:

I just gave you a little product there. We won't talk about the details of it, that had a bit of warming herbs in it. So I'm looking at developing those kinds of things. But once the wind actually chills, and this is where you get out of your head and get into your body, once it actually starts chilling, I'm like, "Nah, there is no way anything cold's going to enter into my body." It stops becoming a rule and it just becomes like, "Ah, this is a really great principle."

Aisha Ahmed:

It actually feels really good. And your digestion is better and you're not damaging your Spleen either, which is so important for digestion and health.

(31:15)

The other huge thing that I should mention is that I always get my clients and remind everyone to diaphragmatic breathe. Because as soon as you get up to your fourth or fifth diaphragmatic breath, your posture aligns itself and you come back with your shoulders and your forward head carriage comes back. So keeping proper alignment.

 

So instead of telling my clients, "Make sure you don't sit there." I go, "Just diaphragmatic breathe as long a periods as you can every day. Whether you're sitting at your desk or you're walking or make a practise of that." Because oxygenating your cells and your body is free, first of all. And it's so easy for anyone to do and you don't have to change your life to do it. And that's one of the main principles that I always try and get people to do is something that they can replicate and do every single day without having to change too much of their life. Because everyone's too busy.

Mason:

Everyone's too busy and everyone needs a baseline. Everyone wants to do something big whizzbang, some big fan dangle, new diet, some miracle new product. Even in SuperFeast we have quite a few people we have to talk off the ledge. And they're like, "Isn't this product going to do it?" We're like, "No, this product is an ally that's going to layer into a lifestyle and help you cultivate in a particular direction."

 

And the only place you can start is with Jing and Kidneys and foundational lifestyle practises. And there's generally not going to be anything special about it. That's where Chinese medicine is the most, it's the oldest, the veda's not as organised in documenting and making it relevant to civilisation.

Aisha Ahmed:

But what they're teaching from RMIT is that Chinese herbal medicine goes back 5000 years plus.

Mason:

Plus, yeah.

Aisha Ahmed:

So if they've worked that all out and tried and tested from 5000 plus years ago, why wouldn't we be trying it?

Mason:

And it's open source. It's available to be used not only clinically all around the world, but in the way that we, I call it scallywag herbalism, in the way that we are able to actually apply these herbs. And then, yeah, it's just such a good baseline. We talked about, just look at trying not to put cold things in your body.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

It's so simple. I know it's different if you're living in Bali and blah, blah, blah, blah. The amount of women especially have these huge Instagram accounts and they write to me and Tahnee. They're like, "I'm really, I kind of like ..." And they're health coaches and they're like, "But menstruation is completely out of whack. I've got heaps of hormones stuff going on. I've got breaking out in acne."

 

So we're just like, you go look, "It's just like all smoothie bowls." It's like, "I know you live in Bali, but you need to just ... What if you just got off the smoothie bowls, covered up when it was cold. If it's always hot, go and get yourself exposed to a little bit of cold every now and then. Even just to make it get some diversity. And then eat a good brekky, get up early, exercise in an appropriate manner. Then eat a good brekky. And then have consistency in your Spleen knows when you're going to feed it. Put a scarf on if it's cold."

 

The amount of stuff that just gets rectified straight away by just putting in those. That's why we have annoying awesome grandmothers and grandfathers coming out of China.

Aisha Ahmed:

That's correct.

Mason:

And from Asia telling us these things.

Aisha Ahmed:

And telling us, "Whack, you know if I put cold shoes, cold feet on the floor." One of the major things about what cold drinks do to women's health, because I worked a lot in women's health, is that your Spleen controls your tissues. So people that I found were drinking lots of cold drinks, were getting hernias more often because Spleen helps control the integrity of your tissues. Is it fascia and organ and your visceral organs?

Mason:

Yep.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah. And so the other one was vaginal prolapse. So when I start telling them what is the worst case scenario, if you keep damaging the Spleen and damaging your organs by having cold drinks in your stomach, that kind of extreme warning is the only kind of thing I find that wakes people up.

(35:17)

And so if someone is going through hernia surgery, I'm like, don't put anything cold in there. And they're like, "Oh, all I have is cold." It's part of our culture to have cold drinks.

Mason:

Well, you pour cold on, you lose your capacity to cultivate Qi. And cultivating Qi is the thing that has bring, there's an up upright Qi, Wei Qi, that's what keeps you upright. That's what keeps you from prolapsing, are the chi tonics.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

And that's why we have Qi tonics. This is a lot of our therapy. Qi tonics with cinnamon, with ginger. These warming up her, these warming up. That's why we get heat packs and we put them on the uterus and we put them on the Spleen. These are ...

 

And everyone, I'm sure you would've seen it in practise so many times. The amount of people who were like, "Oh God, I can't believe how well that works." It's like, "Yeah, it wasn't surgery. Wasn't some like hormone expert doing all this stuff." It really is that simple.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

The Qi and your organs do control that which prolapses.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. Yeah. And I was so against cold that even in my chiropractic training and working track-side with athletes and ankle sprains, I still never put ice. I always put heat. And I've gone from helping people limp, not be able to walk in with Achilles, for example, in Achilles tear and using gua sha chiropractic and taping and heat, and they walk out of there. And they're like, "My goodness, this is amazing." And I want this knowledge everywhere for everyone to access.

Mason:

Can you talk more about not using ice and using heat? Because that's trips out a lot of people.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah, well there's so much online about ice and increasing your neural adaptivity zone by exposing yourself to cold so that your body starts to adapt in your nervous system, is the basis of doing all of those things. But if your body is not in a state of equilibrium and you add cold to it, if you are adrenal fatigued, or you are somewhat depleted in some way, and then you're applying ice, it's going to further stress your system.

 

And how many of us are in our equilibrium in optimal stage that we are so in tune with our bodies, that we know when we're out of balance. Often we don't because when you're stressed and overloaded, you're not thinking about what's going on with your body.

Mason:

And you're talking about when you get an acute injury as well, like a sprain, that kind of thing?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah. Sprains, muscle tears, hamstring tears, meniscus, all of those things.

Mason:

Because they still do that. That's still exactly what they do on every football team, every football field.

Aisha Ahmed:

They still do that. And athletes operating at that level and they're being fed nutrients and they've got nutritionist and they've got all of those things that keep them in optimum health, that it squeezes the cells from going from cold to hot and flushes out the inflammation.

 

Fantastic use if it's in the right application. But to just use it as a blanket statement that cold is ice therapy. No, I certainly don't use it in my practise. But because of the Chinese and a lot of my chiropractic colleagues might say, "Oh, I don't agree with that." But that's how I found through experience, works. Yeah.

Mason:

Applying a heat pack. Do you like the herbal heat packs? Do you ever do those?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

Yeah.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. And I send them home with my clients as well.

Mason:

Like the patches?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes, the patches. I worked a lot with patches actually. And the reaction I have from every day Australians when they see these patches is, "Oh, wow, this is fantastic. This felt fanta, it felt great after it happened. We don't have these as a part of our mainstream."

Mason:

So much Qi and so much Blood goes there.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

And you pop those heat packs on. Yeah, we've put a few there.

Aisha Ahmed:

Well, I even saw them used for people with breast cancers and put on areas that were malignant or had malignant cells or tumours or cysts. We use the patches for.

Mason:

So the cancers thing, like we were talking about practise. It's one thing talking to Rhonda Chang who's like the closest I've ever come to, I've just had her on the podcast a couple of time.

Aisha Ahmed:

You said the C word, yeah.

Mason:

Well, she-

Aisha Ahmed:

You finally said the C word.

Mason:

We finally said the C word and we got to be really careful with it. She was saying where she knew something was wrong with where Chinese medicine had ended up within TCM, the modern TCM landscape that it is. Is because they were told, "If anyone ever comes to you with the C word, then you can't, you're not allowed to treat that. You have to send that over to a western oncologist or whatever."

 

And she was like, "Well what are you talking about? We've got 1000s of 1000s of years of evidence and proven ways to treat it. Why aren't we allowed to treat it as well?" And then that kind of like it interested me in terms of talking about your mentor, having patients going to her. Her working on on it and the things that she'd use.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. And so she had to be very careful about her wording. And often her clients, her patients were coming from RPA, having combination therapy for their cancer at the-

Mason:

RPA is a hospital.

Aisha Ahmed:

Sorry, yeah. Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and-

Mason:

That's where I was born.

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh, well. That's right next to where she works actually. So she used to see cancer patients who have got specialists and doctors managing them and also wanted to try something alternative at the same time. And what she saw in the success of her treatment, which she never said she cures cancer. And there's not even a Chinese word for cancer. It translates into hot dampness if I'm mistaken.

Mason:

I think it ... Yeah.

Aisha Ahmed:

Or sickly immune system. There's no such word in Chinese herbal medicine. And why is that?

Mason:

It's quite simple. Well, it's all-

Aisha Ahmed:

It's something we have to ask you. Yeah.

Mason:

That's the biggest thing that where it breaks down. People go, "Can you treat my cancer?" And you're like, "The cancer doesn't exist." It is a Yin Yang issue. And there is something happening within the transformation of Yin Yang through the five organs. That's it.

Aisha Ahmed:

Exactly.

Mason:

Which is, it's too simple for many practitioners because then you need the kind of relationship that you had, where she's communicating to you in an apprenticeship kind of setting.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

Where she can say, "You are ready for this. You can digest this. No, you're not ..." You can stumble your way through any kind of exam. You can remember a bunch of stuff rote about how the body works and be really logical. But with a mentor they're like, "Can you perceive it?"

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

Can you go into a feeling and a sensing state and then have enough theoretical data as well so that you can manoeuvre, come up with diagnoses. But you have to be able to sense what's going on internally. That's why Yin Yang isn't scalable as a diagnostics.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

But anyway, so-

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah, so true.

Mason:

It's so weird.

Aisha Ahmed:

She started getting so many patients coming to see her from the hospital. And over years and years, when they would go back to their specialists and get their blood tests done, they found that their cancers were shrinking or going into remission completely. And their platelet levels went back to normal and their red, all their blood work was just showing up as amazing.

 

And some of the specialists would come to her office and say, "Right, what have you done to my patient?" And she's like, "Why? Well, why are you so passion? Is it passion? Is it anger?" And they're like, "What did you do? We want to know."

Mason:

Oh, that's amazing that they even came and wanted to know.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

So many are like, "Oh, don't tell me."

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. And a lot of them were supportive if the patient was getting better, which is so nice to see in this day and age. That instead of saying, "Oh no, Chinese medicine is bad, or it's not good for you." They were like, "Yes, try it. If you are not well, give it a go." And then they were in support of both therapies.

Mason:

And what's going to happen I think is they're going to stop relating to the Chinese medicine as you are trying to treat diabetes or treat cancer. They're going to go to people getting treated and be like, "Okay, this person happens to have this disease or this symptom as we see it. What did you do to treat it?" And start.

 

This is where the Western obsessive mind, it does exist in China as well, but the West is going to start measuring it, realising it. It's not their diagnosis first. It's just people that happen to have this diagnosis. This happened to be the classical Chinese medicine diagnosis and what they did to treat it and what direction they went in. They're going to see that there's like 50 different ways applied for the same disease. And they're going to start hopefully over the next, I'm saying like 50, 100 years.

Aisha Ahmed:

I would love to see that in my lifetime, but I know it would take a lot more time. That would be amazing.

Mason:

Well, there's small pockets that are doing it, and then eventually the market wins.

Aisha Ahmed:

That's right.

Mason:

Which is, yeah, whatever it's called. I don't think we are even in real capitalism, whatever that is. Whatever we are in, we know that you can try and control it for as long as you like. And my gosh, they will continue to try and control it for a long time in there. That oligarchy is going to-

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah, well look at the internet and social media now. Where people can go on and comment, for example, on your Instagram page for SuperFeast. And they're like, "Thank you so much. It helped me with this and helped me with that." And then other people see it and then more people see it. And the testimonials that you have speaks volumes.

Mason:

Yeah. You can't stop it. And it's an abundant world and you can only have faith in that. But that level of, because that's what happens time and time again. Where people have extreme go in, have the big C, and we don't guide them. We guide them in just a very general way in terms of what herbs to use, but they work with their practitioners to pick a bunch of mushrooms. And maybe some Kidney tonics to help them through some of the more aggressive treatments that they're doing.

 

And then all of a sudden out of nowhere where they come and talk to us about the testimonials. We don't put those testimonials out there because it's not really fair to put it out there when they're so grand. And a lot of people without context won't realise how that's coming about. But nonetheless, the information around using mushrooms in conjunction with particular treatments and watching that the platelets are still present at the end of that, that's spreading.

Aisha Ahmed:

Or a stage four breast cancer patient in her 40s came in and the doctors had told her, "There's nothing more we can do." And that's often the state that she finds her clients in.

Mason:

That's so lameness.

Aisha Ahmed:

To sit and observe with her for 10 years. And this one particular lady came in and to see her breasts, I felt so terrible for her. And my mentor gua sha'd all of her upper body, and it was black from all the toxins that were being released. And then the use of the mushrooms, she got better. She went into remission.

Mason:

The physical touch.

Aisha Ahmed:

She would've otherwise have died.

Mason:

Physical touch.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

Just there's nothing we can do. No one can possibly do it.

Aisha Ahmed:

No one can replace it. No machine, no AI, no technology, no robot. There's nothing like physical touch. Yeah.

Mason:

No, no. There's never ever anything. And that's the whole thing with AI at the moment, is everyone going like, "Oh, what's going to replace us?"

Aisha Ahmed:

Am I going to lose my job?

Mason:

Hopefully we are going to see people move away from a style of modern medicine. Modern western medicine is going to become so robotic and it's going a lot. Diagnostics is, humans are going to get replaced by AI. Let it, almost just let it happen. And what does the skill that humans have, which nothing's ever going to be able to replace? The physical touch, the sensing.

 

You know, you go, it seems so woo-woo now, but it's not going to be. We're going to see it. It's the reason that Chinese medicine colonised itself. It's because it needed to scale so fast that it couldn't rely on people being able to really feel where the Yin Yang transformation was breaking down in a person. All modern herbalist know that feeling of how you ...

 

Sure, there's all the working theoretically around what's going on. Getting the questions, getting the palpation, getting the pulse and all that kind of stuff. But at some point, you need to be able to sense and put it all together. That is an impossible equation that our heart, people think the brain's amazing. No, the heart as a perception organ is incredible.

 

And what it can really, you can really feel and sense where these, and this is where the five elements start coming in. You start to really feel what the Water is doing to the Wood. You can start feeling why the roots aren't taking because they are sopping wet, but is it because there's too much water or there's something, what else is happening? Ah, there's no Metal, there's no actual Metal to. And then you feel, ah, there's a linchpin. That's very difficult to replicate.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

And imagine if we have humans all of a sudden freed up rather than doing the busy work of a system that is just like a machine. And start bringing the soul and the heart perception back to medicine.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

Wow.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

Incredible.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

I'm really, I like that story of her having these patients with the big C come in and having to get them at such a late stage.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

I mean, simple gua sha, people touching themselves. It's seriously, that's like where the revolution really needs to sit. Is bringing these modalities into your household and just go and do. Just go and look at some YouTube videos maybe.

Aisha Ahmed:

That's where, yeah, that's the space I mentioned that I'm working in at the moment, is that I'm already offering that to family and friends of Zoom. Okay, you've injured your knee, get gua sha, do this, tape it, have these herbs and supplements. That's amazing. And then they can replicate that and don't need to rely on me or someone to look after themselves. Yeah.

Mason:

It's the best.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

Yeah. Headaches, here. This is what you do.

Aisha Ahmed:

Or endometriosis type symptoms. I'm like, "Get on SuperFeast mushrooms." I've had a lot of success with a lot of my community with it.

Mason:

Have you really?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yep.

Mason:

What have you gone towards for endos?

Aisha Ahmed:

One of the Qi mixes, because often the pain comes from their body not having enough oxygen and able to eliminate and that creates issues. And then the adaptogenic mushrooms and what they do for reproductive system is amazing. Yeah, I can't recommend it enough. Yeah.

Mason:

Yeah. They're just-

Aisha Ahmed:

Try it, what it is.

Mason:

You just have them there in the background. If you're way too far along and it's only maybe 5% of the time when people do have a disease that the herbs are just like, "Oh, you are really symptomatic. This is just not appropriate."

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

But you'll feel it. They're very gentle. You'll feel that happen pretty quickly. That, "Ah, no, I need to be under a practitioner right now." But your symptoms should tell you that as well. Otherwise, they're just like, you just have these wild card mushrooms in there that are doing this regulation of all this invisible stuff that is just absolutely no point in not having them in there.

Aisha Ahmed:

The other huge one is anxiety. Some of the symptoms of anxiety that I'm seeing is because they're not having enough organ support or their Liver stressed out and they're not an actually anxious person. And once they get the organ support. Is it chaga and lions mane and they're calming. And they calm the organs and give them what they need. That the person can then operate in their body and nervous system at their best and not feel like something's off.

 

Anxiety is a symptom that your organs are stressed. It's not something external to you that is happening or your brain chemicals. It's always, it seems to be very popular now is that people are like, "Oh my brain chemicals are off." No, your organs, think about the organs.

Mason:

So the work you're doing now, it's mostly so not in practise, not in clinic.

Aisha Ahmed:

Just because of the injury that I had. And I know I'm almost better, but I know that if I go in and get too enthusiastic, I could lift 100 kilo patient and then, yeah. I don't want to put myself in that scenario at the moment.

Mason:

You're all right. You did go and climb a jackfruit tree.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

And bring us a jackfruit, which I'm very appreciative.

Aisha Ahmed:

I had help. I had help. My toe strength is not that great yet. I'm working on it.

Mason:

You're working on it.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

Yeah. You need that. Yeah. That southeast Asian kind of toe strength.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. Thanks, Dad.

Mason:

Yeah. Jackfruit. I don't know, what juicy fruit tree. Did you ever have a Juicy Fruit gum. Did you know that's where they got that flavour from?

Aisha Ahmed:

No.

Mason:

That was like jackfruit was inspired Juicy Fruit flavour.

Aisha Ahmed:

Really?

Mason:

Yeah. I don't know why. It's always one of my favourite stupid facts that I can't not repeat when I've gone around jackfruit.

Aisha Ahmed:

No way. I've eaten so much jackfruit in the last day or two that my stomach is so full everywhere. I'm walking around, I can just-

Mason:

That's a good place.

Aisha Ahmed:

Can't stop thinking about it. Very good place. Very lucky.

Mason:

Full of jackfruit, full of medicinal mushrooms. So the work that you're doing, you're doing mentorship? And-

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes, I'm doing mentorship. I'm doing one-on-one consults with clients that want just that extra kind of wellness care.

Mason:

Cool.

Aisha Ahmed:

All the clinical pearls that I bring from 20 years of working in clinics, 13 years of being a chiropractor, are all in there. And the Chinese herbalist and things, practical tips to teach people how to look after themselves better and their families. Yeah.

Mason:

So it's especially if someone's just like, "Right, I want to." It's like you can get fancy because you can get into the clinical stuff. You've got all that, but you just really want to build a basic foundation for your whole family to operate from.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. Yep.

Mason:

I love it. You got a website and all that?

Aisha Ahmed:

I've got a social media. Website's coming soon. So my social media's The Dancing Chiropractor on Instagram. And then you can find Dr. Aisha Ahmed on Facebook. Dr. Aisha Ahmed, chiropractor. And there'll be website coming and more information on there.

Mason:

Cool. This is like a whole new phase of life for you.

Aisha Ahmed:

A journey. Yes. I was feeling into where I should be going and it came to me only recently. And it just feels like everything's clicking into place and it feels so natural. And you can be access to help more people, which is what I want to do.

Mason:

The injury thing, you going through an injury would've been like an introspective kind of like generating for process.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. Well, I just applied everything I knew about what I learned about health to myself and my recovery is remarkable. And that's to do with the knowledge I have of chiropractic to the Chinese herbal medicine. Your body can't heal if your organs are stressed. The MSM powder that you guys have. Fantastic tremella and all of those things for your cartilage and ligament, I can't recommend enough. You need a multi-modality approach. I'm walking, talking proof of that. Proof of the pudding, I'm not just saying.

Mason:

We love pudding.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

Are there any other key things that you've done that have surprised you that have new modalities? Or new lifestyle basics you've had to bring in order to facilitate that reconnection with your body?

Aisha Ahmed:

Probably just being more present is huge because then you're breathing better and then connecting and grounding yourself and getting out into nature is huge.

Mason:

It's so understated. And it's one of those ones we can go and listen to a, I don't know, we can go, we can get our Buddhist affirmations. And we can try and layer in another meditation into our lifestyle. But in terms of being present, quite often, if we can't naturally be present ... We often have all the information and maybe cultivating the skill a little bit more, for sure.

Aisha Ahmed:

The answers are there if you look.

Mason:

It seems like you really went about and changed your entire life.

Aisha Ahmed:

I did. I changed everything. And yeah, it means that I'm going to be functioning for a lot longer than what I anticipated. Thank goodness.

 

And also the chiropractor that I see who I studied with 20, 18 years ago. Is it 20 years? 18 years ago, Dr. Simon Morgan up at Miami has been phenomenal. I have not had the same results with anything else. Having someone who's skilled and professional in their field and knows exactly what's going on is just amazing.

Mason:

So good.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

Yeah. I reckon, yeah. I think a lot of people obviously are going to be having a great time working with you and building some basics. And it seems like, you build the basics. It gives you enough of a platform and a reality to realise maybe I do need to make some really big fundamental changes in my life in order to prioritise my capacity to be present more consistently.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

Get the feeling you advocate for that a lot.

Aisha Ahmed:

Very much so. Yes. You got me.

Mason:

Thank you. Is there anything else on the top of mind for people to hear?

Aisha Ahmed:

I have a terrible dad joke for you.

Mason:

Do it.

Aisha Ahmed:

What did one mushroom say to the other?

Mason:

What?

Aisha Ahmed:

Move over, I haven't got mushroom.

Mason:

So bad.

Aisha Ahmed:

I just wanted to put that out there to hurt your ears.

Mason:

Oh, I've been trying to think. I think that's what we need, like a little segment on here. It's like some bad Taoist jokes. I need to-

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah.

Mason:

That's I think-

Aisha Ahmed:

I think humour is the way forward. We need more.

Mason:

What have you been doing to bring more humour into your life?

Aisha Ahmed:

We do little projects with me and my friends. We do skits and videos.

Mason:

Do you do them?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes.

Mason:

Where do you put them?

Aisha Ahmed:

We have a Be Spiritual page that we started.

Mason:

Be Spiritual?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. It's a B3, it's B then the number three, spiritual.

Mason:

I'm going to look it up right now.

Aisha Ahmed:

Because we just like making fun of ourselves. We don't like to take ourselves too seriously. We live in such a beautiful place, so we get a lot of local pictures and skits.

Mason:

There you are. That's how you're keeping light. I think we've got a healthy amount of taking the absolute piss. Oh, this is about a bit of an old page.

Aisha Ahmed:

It is an old-

Mason:

2022.

Aisha Ahmed:

It is. It is. But I just got so busy with the injury and stuff, I haven't had enough time to dedicate to that. But we have some things in the pipeline that we've been recording to put on there.

Mason:

Who's this good-looking fella?

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh, that's my brother from another mother, my fellow housemate.

Mason:

This is where you live?

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes, this is our lawn mowing.

Mason:

Is he your lawnmower?

Aisha Ahmed:

No, he is a lawnmower. He's the best lawnmower. He's trying to find inventive and ingenuity ways to mow the lawns.

Mason:

That's insane?

Aisha Ahmed:

AJ.

 

YouTubed that and tied a hitch knot.

Mason:

Ooh.

 

Going to push this bitch down the hill and then pull it up with the rope. What could go fucking wrong?

Mason:

Oh, awesome. This is funny. So he's push, he's got the rope attached to the lawnmower and rather than go up and down the hill, he's just ... Oh no, that's working.

Aisha Ahmed:

He did it.

Mason:

Oh, he did it. He's just sending it down the hill and then pulling it back up. No, he's working smarter. He's not working harder.

Aisha Ahmed:

That hill is really steep and we rolled our ankles on it. And if anything, yeah, good. Yes. So I do, I used to be pre-injury, acro yoga and salsa. And always trying to find more ways to just take the piece out of ourselves actually. So we would talk, teaching how to be more spiritual on this Instagram account.

Mason:

That's what we need.

Aisha Ahmed:

Be Spiritual.

Mason:

We've got such a deficiency of spirituality in this area.

Aisha Ahmed:

I can just help you so much. There's so many easy ways to teach you.

Mason:

Well I can bring, I've got like, it's not me, but I have an alter ego.

Aisha Ahmed:

You have an alter ego.

Mason:

I have an alter ego. The Conscious Cucumber.

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh, nice.

Mason:

He's the Conscious Cucumber and Tahnee's the Conscious Clam. And yeah.

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh, I want to see more of that. Maybe we'll do a collaboration together.

Mason:

A collaboration. I was even thinking of getting a podcast going at one point.

Aisha Ahmed:

Oh, I like it. I like it.

Mason:

Because you obviously you want to be very spiritual, you want bring a little bit of the-

Aisha Ahmed:

But sometimes I can bring the Ayurvedic, because I get all the veda's and I feel very aligned with the Indian. Try it.

Mason:

You've been studying Ayurveda for two months. I've been studying astrology for four weeks. We should do a collaboration and do master classes.

Aisha Ahmed:

I am liking it. Your numbers are showing up very good. Much fortune is coming your way.

Mason:

Oh my God. Good. I really do want to get the Mason Taylor Show cracking up again. No, that's my other podcast. Just so we can do scully waggery. But for now we will this. We'll leave this here and everyone can be saved any more Tomfoolery.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yes. Thank you for having me. Thank you. No more dad jokes, I promise.

Mason:

Thank you so much for coming. Everyone, go check out Dancing Chiropractor on Instagram.

Aisha Ahmed:

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Mason:

Yeah, and your Facebook.

Aisha Ahmed:

We'll see you on there. Look forward to seeing you there.

Mason:

See you, guys.