Nourishing Her Yin: Live Podcast Event with Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin (EP#40)

Mason Taylor:  Thank you, you nerds for coming on a beautiful Saturday to learn about women's health and hear us ramble about tonic herbalism. Basically you are here to be a part of the Super Feast podcast. Some of you might not even know that we have a podcast, but we do and it's pretty rad and we've been going for quite a few months now. In this podcast, we've been able to dive deep into tonic herbalism, other aspects of herbalism. We're basically trying to bridge a lot of these, whether it's an ancient tradition or whether it's a system, we're trying to figure out how we're going to adapt it into everyday life. And a big part of that is Tahnee, Tahnee McCrossin everybody.

 

Tahnee:  Hello.

 

Mason Taylor:  Tahnee's been doing what we've called the women's series. Tahnee's been talking to a lot of beautiful women and diving down the rabbit hole of women's health, whether it's been talking to sexologists and women's hormone specialists, naturopaths, doctors, herbalists. It's been really beautiful. I mean, I've been learning a lot. Has anyone been listening to the women's series on the Super Feast podcast? Yeah. Okay, we got a few hands up.

 

Mason Taylor:  But what hasn't happened yet is Tahnee's going to continue with that because I'm basically co-hosting with Tahnee now on the podcast. However, I didn't have a chance, because we're running the business and have a toddler and then just having a relationship when we're not talking about work and all those kinds of things, Tahnee and I didn't actually have a an opportunity to sit down and tune in because Tahnee in her own right is an absolute force for diving down into women's health just by your own curiosity. Tahnee has got a really beautiful, curious nature. A couple of our friends, they've learned how to kind of take everything with a little grain of salt and not swallow official stories and actually go down and do some investigation to find what's true for you and standing in your own sovereignty, to kind of put it a little bit more poetically.

 

Mason Taylor:  But practically going down the rabbit hole of a particular issue, whether it's herbalism or whether it's looking at hormone health and making sure that you find some real good, decent, valid information that you can run through your own filter and find an outcome that's going to be actually really relevant to your health.

 

Mason Taylor:  We have several friends that whenever something comes up and they're like, "Oh, I just want to see how this fits in for me." Or whether that's actually true or what the best way that I can relate to that information, they call going down that rabbit hole, [inaudible 00:02:20] of Tahnee, she's really good at it. And it's great because it's not about Tahnee's bullshit radar really being on. And it's like one thing I've learned about Tahns, it's not being skeptical or anything like that. It's just a natural curiosity that bubbles up. And so that natural curiosity has led to Tahns having what I find a very impressive amount of insight into women's health and her own health in general. And after all those conversations you've had with these women, I thought it'd be really amazing for us to touch base. So I know it's kind of awkward because we work together and live together and do everything together, but welcome Tahns. Hey.

 

Tahnee:  Hi babe. Yeah. And also, I'm super nervous because I'm not used to crowds so please bear with me. I'll warm up a little bit. But yeah, Mase and I, we've been planning to do something like this for so long where we'd get together and just mutually kind of jam out about all the stuff we've both learned over the last, for me it's been probably since I was about 16 starting to really work out what the hell is going on with this body and how it all works. And yeah and Mase as well, having worked one on one with lots of women over the years, he's got a really incredible amount of information and wisdom to share. So when we sort of together conceived of this idea of a blend for women that is nourishing and kind of helps to just support and kind of care for the kind of internal space of the woman and also the spiritual mental space.

 

Tahnee:  This kind of seemed like a really natural fit and evolution to get together and and kind of, we'll talk more broad strokes today than specifics of the herbs. We will talk a little bit about the blend and why it is what it is. But we wanted to give you guys kind of some context, I suppose, for how we view women's health and how SuperFeast sees nurturing that feminine aspect. And I do want to just be really politically correct and say we're going to talk about women and women's bodies and I know some people don't identify with their bodies and I really appreciate that, but the perspective I'm coming from is that you've got boobs and a uterus and all this stuff and it's really important to know how that stuff works. So irrespective of how you identify, I think it's pretty cool to start to connect with that power and the kind of incredible stuff that goes on in the body and let the rest of that stuff go how it will.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, thanks for bringing up the blend. I mean, it's interesting having a herbal company and just when you're putting out something like we would loosely call, I'm not going to release the name to you guys yet. It's just called Women's Blend. But I was in California and my naming my blend block kind of cracked one night and I was like, "Tahns, Tahns." She said, "What are you doing?" She's like, "I'm in the middle of making dinner and the toddler's a bit of a mess." I was like, "Yeah, cool. Now do you want to know what just happened to me?" And it was the same with all the blends. I've woken her up at three in the morning when we had a three month old, I'd be like, "Hey, Tahns, I've got the name for for the brain blend."

 

Mason Taylor:  Anyway, it always happens like that. But it's an interesting thing because we're going to be offering a women's blend and we're going to be continuing to offer real nice juicy information about how to relate to tonic herbalism rather than just having this ambiguous women's blend that ambiguously helps women sort out women's issues, that's a really irresponsible way to go about herbalism. But tonic herbalism fits into this personal culture and this personal practice about ensuring that our organs, our endocrine system stays really nice and healthy and so in order to feel responsible in offering blends which have nice general intents, we feel we need to continue to have events like this where we talk about the broader nature on where herbalism sits in. You dig? Cool.

 

Mason Taylor:  So I'm Mason Taylor for those of you that don't know, so I founded SuperFeast back in 2011. Got really into tonic herbs, got really into medicinal mushrooms, detox practices, all that kind of stuff. We moved up about four years ago, four and a half years ago to the Shire. I brought the business up here and everyone was like, "Oh, it's such a genius move Mason, SuperFeast, the brand, having Byron Bay behind it, is so smart." And I was like, "Yes, branding. That's why I did it."

 

Tahnee:  You guys have no idea. He literally drove his car up with a bunch of shit in it and went to live out the back of Cooper's Creek, 45 minutes from Byron with no WiFi and no phone reception. And I was like, "How are you going to run a business from there babe?" And he was like, "I don't know. Don't ask me those kinds of questions." I was like, "Okay, cool." Anyway, it didn't go very well.

 

Mason Taylor:  No it didn't. And then since then Tahnee came into the business and I kind of wised up a little bit. I'm getting there. I'm the CEO and Tahnee is, well let me introduce Tahnee is the boss and the GM of the company. But Tahnee, you've studied a shit tonne of yoga, basically. So I know you've really ... part of what's, not what defines you, but I guess, what's one of the areas that's really paved the path I see you going in your life, these are studies of yoga. You've had two yoga studios in Newcastle that were donation yoga studios, like pay what you can. And Yoga For All is still going. I really enjoyed going to that, that was your little baby and that was really nice. I really loved going there. And you left that to come up to Byron Bay, I'm always very grateful for that.

 

Mason Taylor:  But you've studied heavily with a number of yoga teachers, but especially [inaudible 00:07:46] studying Yin yoga and going into the throws of anatomy. Then moving on to start studying Taoist arts and Taoist abdominal massage, which we're going to make sure that we ... were going to do a nice chunk here. I'm going to be interviewing Tahns and then we'll have a break and then we're going to go into some Q and A. So at some point during that chunk we'll get every question answered but also Tahnee is going to go through and show you how to give your organs in your belly a little bit of a rub because it's a really beautiful, important aspect of all of this.

 

Mason Taylor:  Now you were practicing for some time, then you kind of like checked out a little bit from that when you fell pregnant with [Aiya 00:08:26]. But look, all of these things, now you're, running SuperFeast and then preparing next year to get back into your yoga training and your yoga teaching in May. I think you're going to start having a retreat going or something like that. Now, besides the obvious, what has been this, in the last couple of years, something's really projected you into the area of women's health. And I know there's the obvious thing, you've always had an interest in your own body and keeping it really healthy, but what's projected you that's just taken it up to that next level, made you dive down that rabbit hole?

 

Tahnee:  That was a long intro. Yeah. I guess as a young woman I started seeing naturopaths really early when I was about 15 or 16. And it was really funny because I was just talking to my acupuncturist yesterday about this. So I was having a lot of dizzy spells and I'd find when I menstruated, I would pass out at work. I was working as a waitress doing split shifts from 7:00 AM to midnight and crazy stuff. And I would obviously faint because I was flogging myself. But the naturopath said, "Oh you should drink more juice and you should eat lots more fruit and have lots of sugar in your system so that you can kind of keep going." And so I totally swallowed all that, hook, line and sinker. And anyway I was laughing with my acupuncturist because he's working to kind of reverse that.

 

Tahnee:  The last probably five years of my life have been all around to trying to undo the damage that I did at those very early ages of my life. And so what I've sort of come to as I've been on this kind of adventure, from when I first came off the pill in my late 20s to the three years of amenorrhea I had after that, which means I didn't bleed and my doctor, my GP telling me that was totally fine while my gut and my instincts were like, no way, that's not fine. All the way through to conceiving my daughter and now having a girl child in my care, I've become quite passionate about just making sure that we understand our bodies and that we're able to educate our daughters and our children and our men folk about what-

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. Can I just say thanks to all the guys that came along today. It's an obvious place for guys to be. I think that's ... I think so. I don't really see there being any logical reason why a guy wouldn't want to come along and understand the woman's body and understand issues that women are going through. Whether it's just so that they can understand the women in their life. But just in general, I think that's just something very natural.

 

Tahnee:  Well, even if you don't date women, you've got a mom or you've got a sister or you've got a cousin or a niece or whatever. And I think what we're starting to really see happen culturally as well is that women are starting to reclaim their power and I won't get too political on all of this, but I do think one of the big opportunities now is for us to get very clear in what we need and how we communicate that in a way that isn't pushing away the opposite sex. And also that allows us to really feel like we're being heard and nourished and looked after. And all of those things by our culture. So for me, this is partly a philosophical exploration as well as a kind of practical one. Because I think, what I've really seen is that we can kind of talk the talk and push back and rage against the machine.

 

Tahnee:  But the best thing we can do is just fucking live like how we want to live. And I think what we have the power to do in this area, especially with such a supportive community, is start to really be a place where change is actually enacted and lived. And we don't even have to necessarily talk about it, we can just be the example, you don't want to be too gone, do you? But that's kind of what I really tend to sit in is like, there's no point complaining. I just have to do the things. So when the doctor didn't give me the care that I needed, I went to a naturopath. And when she couldn't give me the care I needed, I went to an acupuncturist and as I learned more about Chinese medicine, I started to see a Chinese doctor who did herbs.

 

Tahnee:  And then as I was taking those herbs, I was feeling that there was still something missing. And I met Mace. And so there's this kind of responsibility I suppose, which is really one of the foundational, I guess, kind of concepts that we built Super Feast upon, is this idea of sovereignty. That you are responsible for your own health and your own wellbeing and that you can take advice from lots of different people and take lots of ideas and you have to weave them together into the fabric of your kind of daily culture, as Mace likes to call it, your health culture, your family culture. So that's something that, that's a big thing to start with I suppose. But to me it's foundational. You have to start there. And my journey through that, it was through being put on the pill by my mom when I was 16 because I left home to live in a Combi with a boy and she didn't want me to get pregnant, and I didn't know any better.

 

Tahnee:  I was young and the doctor told me I wouldn't ever get another pimple. And I was like, "Well, this is amazing." And so I just took it and I took it and took it and took it and I had vaginal dryness and I lost my libido at 17 and all this stuff. I was depressed. I was miserable. And I had no idea that it was this medication I was taking until actually my boyfriend at the time, about eight years down the track was like, "Maybe you should get off the pill. That might fix all of this shit that you're constantly trying to solve." And what I learned in studying Chinese medicine now is what had happened is that it had caused all the blood in my body to sort of move into stasis. It no longer flowed because the bleeds that we have on the pill aren't real.

 

Tahnee:  They're just created by a chemical kind of obstruction, so you take the chemical out, the body releases some blood, but it's not this natural kind of process of bleeding that happens. So I'm actually about to bleed and my body, my acupuncturist could feel it yesterday, my blood was starting to move down and move into stasis in my womb as it prepares to shed. So this is this natural downward flow of energy that occurs at this time in my cycle. And every woman has that and we don't get taught it and we don't talk about it. We don't talk to our men people about it. We don't talk to our girlfriends about it so much, it's getting better. So these are things. So I had three years of amenorrhea because my body had to relearn.

 

Tahnee:  Because I went on the pill so young. I only got my period at 14 so I'd only been bleeding for two years. And you have to learn how to bleed. So lots of young girls have really shitty periods at the beginning. Most people maybe remember that they were sort of a bit abnormal. They might've had some period pain or whatever. And from a Chinese medicine perspective, you would want to look at nourishing that young girl through that process because that's an opportunity, these changes in our lives. When we first get menarche, when we have babies, when we go through menopause, you can either take them as these curses, which is a very biblical interpretation. Or you could look at it as an opportunity to actually improve your health. Because if you start shedding blood, that's an opportunity to shed and let go. So you could work on some gentle cleansing, you could work on taking some herbs and that would help to move any toxicity that had built up out with this new blood, start to train the body, teach the chi to move.

 

Tahnee:  This is all beautiful stuff that our culture just doesn't even ... who's doctor ever talked to them about that? Nobody's. So unless you're really lucky to have a mom or a alternative kind of care provider who can sort of give you this insight, I think so much of this wisdom isn't being brought forward. And even if you look culturally sort of all around the world, even if this was ancient wisdom, it got lost as we kind of industrialized because a lot of people started to see menstruation as dirty and bad and as kind of these women needed to be locked away, all that kind of stuff. And there's definitely a place for coming away to retreat and to kind of internalize and to process emotion and all of these things, for sure.

 

Tahnee:  But that needs to be the choice the woman makes not a cultural thing, in my opinion. So anyway, back to the question. I think once I had my daughter, I just really, I saw that my health ... I had an amazing birth, Mace was there, I had this beautiful child and I had all of these amazing gifts that I'd sort of been given through my research. And I just thought, it sort of seems unfair that other people don't get this information. And yes, I had to go find it, but it was from lots of different places and so I thought, if we can start to bring that stuff into one place, I think that's a really powerful kind of offering I suppose.

 

Mason Taylor:  There's a couple of things you kind of hit on there. One of that, be the change. There's something there that you, I know that's a real broad statement, but as someone, I'm kind of someone, I don't know if you've got anyone out there that's like real low hanging fruit and I drink the Koolaid really quickly and going like, "That's the way." In the beginning, I've kind of built up a little bit of a resilience to it nowadays, but it's something that I like about your approach and it's something that you aren't, I think that's why I'm enjoying learning from you and a lot of people, in talking to a lot of women and commenting why they love talking to you so much, when I sift through it, you're not seeking some resolution or complete ultimate understanding.

 

Mason Taylor:  It fair to say you've just got like a, not an insatiable curiosity because it's not curiosity for the sake of curiosity, but you've got like, is a curiosity something that drives you to just continue to learn, stay humble, embody the information. And therefore, I don't know if this happens to many women, but in my instance I would get exasperated about just the magnitude of things that there are to learn and just how much information there is. And so it would stop me being patient to just slowly embody what I'm learning, embody it and embody it, work with it, play with it at a nice sustainable rate, get your own personal culture going and then approach sovereignty that way without a need to actually find the official story of women's health or find the exact system of women's health. Is that fair?

 

Tahnee:  I'm kind of the opposite when there's like quantum physics and the cosmos, that shit excites me because I'm like, "We don't know anything. The more we know, the less we know." MIT has all their quantum physics lectures online for free, I understand about this much of it. But it's just like, "Whoa." And I think my experience is the moment I've thought I've known anything, I've been completely wrong. And I get slapped in the face with humble pie and I have to swallow my words and start again. And so I've learned not to know anything really. And I think what I've really, I guess emphasized is if someone's telling me something, I want to know where they learned it from and I want to know the source.

 

Tahnee:  So I always try and find the origin of the information. So if a doctor tells me something or I got told that I was, I'm nearly 34 and I got told by a GP when I went to get some blood work done after Aiyah was born that I was getting a bit old and I should probably have another baby. I was like, "Where did you get that information from?" And she was like, "Oh, it's just your eggs are aging." And I'm like, "But I don't think that's the way I feel in my body and whatever." And so her and I kind of had this back and forth and didn't really go anywhere, but I didn't take that information on. It's not something that I'm concerned about because I just feel like what I've done in my life and where I'm at, 35 does not feel like a milestone. I need to concern myself with.

 

Tahnee:  But whereas, if I go back and read the [inaudible 00:20:15] or some of these like the Vedas, these really ancient texts. If you start to look at all this stuff that your yoga teacher spouts, where did they get that from? Is it from Tony Robbins or is it from the Vedas? Because I'd prefer the Vedas version then the Tony Robins version. And I just kind of constantly try and look for where the root of that came from. Because a lot of it's ideology, a lot of it's belief. It's not actually information. And I think one thing that's really easy to fall into is to get stuck in a belief system, which kind traps you, it doesn't really allow you to be free for new information to come in and change your course.

 

Tahnee:  So maybe one day I won't think any of this stuff, I don't know. But for now, this to me is replicable. When I apply it to my life, my life improves. So that's like a scientific inquiry. If you keep doing it and it gets better, that's good. And if you keep doing it and you're not getting the results you're looking for, try something else. And that's something I get a lot with women, where they're like, especially with diet stuff, "I've been doing keto, I've been doing the vegan thing, and I felt really good for a period of time and now I don't feel great." It's like, well that to me is a sign that it's time to change because it's not working for you anymore. And they kind of can't. It takes a little while for people to get that, to get that something can work for a little while, but not necessarily forever. And that's okay.

 

Tahnee:  And so I think we have to remember that at different phases of our lives, we're different. We've all got cycles. If you start to pay attention to how you feel at different stages of your cycle, you'll feel different. It's a kind of a running joke at Super Feast, whenever the full moon kicks or mercury kicks into retrograde, we all go nuts. But these are acknowledged kind of things. You watch animals, there's always more energy around ... like the cockies the other day when the rain was coming, all the black cockies, around all around our house. It's like, it's going to rain, let's clear the deck because everything's going to get wet. And sure enough that afternoon it rains.

 

Tahnee:  So when we start to tune in, like our friend Tanya, she sits on her deck and she goes, "Oh, feel that? The rains coming." And she literally will start-

 

Mason Taylor:  Or, "Hear that? Sun just breathed out. Sun's gone." And it's all cloudy.

 

Tahnee:  And we'd be like, "No, can't hear that." But I think because I was raised on a 10 acre property with no, oh my parents built a house. We lived in a caravan for four years and blah blah blah. Didn't have a TV. I didn't really have much to do. So we really spent a lot of time in the bush getting weird fungal things and leeches and ticks and you name it. I was in hospital for a tick when I was 10 for five days. Stuff like that. So I think for me that's definitely been some kind of training and being comfortable with nature's rhythms because of that. But I don't know, I just think we need to as a culture sort of start to be a bit more respectful that, again, we could talk patriarchy, we could talk all sorts of things. But this linear idea of things always being the same to me, especially for women, needs to shift pretty drastically.

 

Mason Taylor:  I mean that's something, I love one of your teachers, you're not giving me the middle finger on purpose are you? No, I'm joking. One thing I absolutely love about one of your teachers, Paul Greeley, Tahnee is like, one of the things you don't realize is the core things of what Tahnee is. She's an anatomy nerd and one of the, I think Paul Greeley's your major teacher, would you say, he is so against ambiguity in any way. I think that's like something-

 

Tahnee:  No opposite.

 

Mason Taylor:  He wants ambiguity?

 

Tahnee:  His line is, every philosophy is incomplete and every idea is wrong in some context. So you can disprove ... yeah, it's kind of like now with science. "This is a law." And it's like, it's only a law until it's not a law. And a lot of the time ... gravity, so far we haven't disproven. But there's lots of ... gravity's still a theory. A lot of these things are kind of accepted ideas, ontological ideas that we've had to accept to kind of stay alive day to day. It's like, "Okay, yep. If I take a step, the floor is going to be there." And if you go to Mars, that's a different experience, gravity's not the same there. So Paul's whole thing is like, if I tell you how to do something, you can't then go and tell someone else how to do that thing because that won't be the same for that person.

 

Tahnee:  So as a yoga teacher, I don't want to get to much into yoga because not all of you are interested in that. But when I work with a student, what I would tell Mason to do, would be completely different to what I would tell Sophia to do or someone else that I know because they're just completely different organisms and it makes no sense to give them the same thing. So you see a lot of systems of yoga promote that, "Oh you have to do this every day or that every day or the same, dah, dah, dah everyday." And my personal opinion is that's detrimental over time because that's not what bodies are designed to do. Bodies are designed to do different things everyday. And similarly with breathing practices, with meditation practices, we all need different things at different times.

 

Tahnee:  So if your mind is very busy, a mantra or something can help you to kind of focus and then maybe you can let go of that and you can just sit or whatever. There's lots of different paths obviously. But yeah, so Paul's thing is very much around, ambiguity is great. We need to embrace ambiguity. We need to accept that we don't know anything. It's one of the reasons I was so attracted to him, I think, was because I came into that first training I did with him probably like, what are we, seven years ago I think it would have been. And I just was like, "Oh finally, someone who isn't trying to sell me their belief system." Which was kind of very common in yoga. And someone who's interested in training me to think because that's what he does. He trains you to see the body and he trains you to think.

 

Mason Taylor:  Well I feel like that's what I mean, someone tells you to do something and you go, "Right because you told me to do it. I'm going to do it for ambiguous reasons rather than doing that, just cutting through it." But we're looking at hearing about the skeletal variation work that you do, which we'll get into a couple of podcasts about like exactly what that means and when you start realizing just how differently we're put together, you can see it's ridiculous to have a certain set of us and our physical movement for you to do. And you can actually start getting a little bit more in contact and connected to yourself because you get to understand actually how you're built anatomically. But then bridging on from that you realize there's going to be a differentiation in the way that women are bleeding or the way our endocrine system or our immune system is put together.

 

Mason Taylor:  And so bursting the bubble. Especially a lot of you guys have a high IQ in the health world because you've been in it for quite some time and you've kind of like your bullshit radar is going to be on, right? True. But I'm still kind of, if you get me in like a business sense, I always try and go into a business world and try and learn, I'm like a low hanging fruit. And a lot of people come into the health world and we've all been there, we've been low hanging fruit and we're susceptible because we don't have the understanding of the terrain quite yet. And that's one of the primary things I like to see taught in the health world is this variation. Variation in diet variation in times of life and what's going to work in terms of times when you're doing a cleansing or a blood cleanse and then moving onto a deep nourishing and we see that happening increasingly. We're going to get to talk about diet and get a real example.

 

Mason Taylor:  The amount of people who are getting onto a ketogenic diet and they're looking at their friend absolutely rocking it and going, "Why aren't I rocking it?" Or into the medical medium kind of thing. That's how we've had a lot of people come to us and going, "My gosh, why am I getting" ... some people absolutely rocking it for a short amount of time with medical medium and then a huge amount of people going, "Why am I deteriorating and getting so much worse?" Whatever it is, getting that kind of like that wit about you. I mean it seems to be one of the absolute pillars.

 

Tahnee:  Could I talk to that, because I think this is why for me, Taoism in particular is so powerful because it's yin and yang. If you take away all the other stuff, that's the basic kind of idea. And so if you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and things, you get very yin, which is really good for cleansing, it's that kind of the anabolic, catabolic breaking down phase. So everything starts to dissolve and all of the kind of toxic buildup and whatever, this is awesome. This is great for a while. But if you do that for too long, it's not good because there's nothing there for your body to rebuild with. So the anabolic phase, which if you ever hear gym guys talk, they're really into anabolic. So bulking and I don't even know the words, loading, what do they say?

 

Tahnee:  Proteins and stuff. Obviously not my scene, but that idea of mass, mass, mass, mass, mass, that's not great either. And you can use just even if you imagine a yogic vegan guy, he's all skinny and fun and a beefcake muscle man. And if you look at again how they're eating ones eating a very young diet, a very building, heating kind of putting stuff on diet and one's eating a kind of catabolic breakdown, dissolve kind of. Pardon?

 

Mason Taylor:  Cold.

 

Tahnee:  Cold. Yeah. And so this is this dance and we can dance between these states. Before Aiyah I wanted to prepare my body, I'd had years on the birth control pill. I had done a lot of party drugs when I was younger, all that kind of stuff. And so I was really conscious that I wanted to go through a bit of a catabolic phase in order to prepare my body to have a baby.

 

Tahnee:  But the yang to that was to then before I conceived was to rebuild as much as I could so that that tissue that I built after breaking down the stuff that I didn't want in my body anymore was really kind of good quality. So I was probably, I conceived a little bit before I was really content with that process. I probably would've liked to have gone another six months or so. But to me, that ideal situation preconception, is a period, I would say two years if you really want to have a conscious conception, a year of cleansing, very slowly and not stressing your body out too much and then a year of rebuilding and putting on a really good amount of meat, getting really healthy and fit so that you're prepared for what is basically a marathon of carrying.

 

Tahnee:  I had a massive belly and birth which is huge. Anyone who's given birth knows it's a huge process and you need a lot of resources for that. So that's my personal take on that as well is that you need both sides of it and I don't necessarily mean that you need to eat meat if you don't want to, any of those things. But I do see a lot of people who are kind of really committed to that vegan path getting really unwell over time. Certainly not straightaway. A lot of people do really well at the beginning, and I think it's a great cleansing diet. But after 10 years, it's like mineral deficiencies, they start to put on a lot of weight, which is the spleen just packing up because the spleen can't handle a lot of sugar. And so when we ate a lot of fruit, a lot of grains, all of these things, we start to destroy our main digestive organ.

 

Tahnee:  And in Chinese medicine, the spleen is responsible for taking what's called nutritive chi which is basically the goodness from the food that you eat and putting it into the blood. And so what will happen is the liver will start to get stressed as well, because the liver is not receiving the nutritive chi that it needs.

 

Tahnee:  To get stressed as well, because the liver is not receiving the nutritive Chi that it needs and it will start to rebel. And so, you'll get sometimes menstrual disorders, you'll get headaches, or tension, or that kind of thing. And it's effectively a blood deficiency. It's just, it's one side of it. The other side of it is if we don't have enough fluids, which would be more to do with kidneys and stress. So, and these are really common patterns that I get asked about all the time. And again, it would be, this is where someone might go on a paleo diet and they'd be like, "Oh my God, I feel amazing." It's like, "Yeah, it's because you've cut out all the sweet stuff and it's actually really nourishing your spleen." And so, but if you do that for too long, it's not going to work.

 

Tahnee:  So again, and this is why this is middle path. You study any ancient tradition and it always comes back to the middle road. And we don't like to hear that because it's not sexy, you can't gram that you can't kind of build a ideology around it. It's like, "Ah, sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not." Nobody wants to hear that. But that's a really, as I've gotten older, kind of wiser, I've really learnt that that's the truth. It's got to be a bit of both. It's got to be the yin and the yang, it's got to be those rest periods and those go periods. But if you don't have both, you're going to end up in trouble health wise at some point.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, I think it's one of the reasons we can get along is because, I mean, I, again, I went pretty far down the raw food route. I mean, I was not a vegan, I never identified with being a vegan necessarily, but I was vego for many years. You were vego since you were 14? Up until just before we conceived. And one of the things I'm not, never will be, yet can still have this discussion, is that person. Especially when I went vegetarian and looking at that person that was like... There were particular people that veganism wasn't working for and then they added meat and then all of a sudden, they've got the answer. And, "You know what? You just need meat and meat is the new super food."

 

Mason Taylor:  It's as much as sometimes that might be an appropriate conversation to have, it's an annoying and boring official story. And it's one of those things that just because if you're someone who has been super over identified with eating a traditional Western diet, or a ketogenic diet and you want to slip into a little bit of a vegan flow for some time. Or if you've been in a down that vegan thread and you all of a sudden you realize and notice that you were over identifying. Anyone had this one when you were over identifying with that label? And then you're in the shower and you're having a discussion with yourself. And you're arguing with yourself about why it's still appropriate for you to have whatever diet it is that you're sitting on, or whatever particular philosophy it is.

 

Mason Taylor:  And then you go and your research your books to make sure that you can counter argument next time, that place that you actually got yourself. That's for me, that's not an alarm that maybe I'm moving towards being unhealthy. That's an alarm that I'm getting boring. That's so boring. You're getting over identified that way. And I think it's one of the things that... The reason I bring up that, we're not, and I know [Tarnie 00:35:08] as well isn't, just one of these people that's just like, "I used to be vego and I've seen the light." And it's dripping red.

 

Tahnee:  There are some people that it's an excellent diet for if you run really hot, for example, if you have a lot of heat in your body naturally, a cooling diet. This is the thing, I'm a naturally cold person, so for me, it's not great. And again this is different constitutions. I, for example, my spleen gets cold straight away, so raw food has never worked for me. So, I've never really even been interested in that because literally the first thing that happens is I get bloated, and I feel shit, and I just walk around with this pregnant belly and I'm like, "Ugh."

 

Tahnee:  So for me, it just doesn't work. Juicing, I kind of went down the rabbit hole of, and I still believe in juicing, I guess if you want to say that. But in terms of using it a lot, for my body, it doesn't work particularly well unless it's the middle of summer and and it's naturally hot outside, then it's fine. So, that's for me, my journey with it. But it had to come through me understanding my own constitution, and my own kind of weaknesses, and my own strengths.

 

Tahnee:  So, I have a lot of jing, a lot of resilience in that regard. I'm really lucky. I know people that don't. So, I think these are things we need to be really aware of is that if someone's trying to tell you that there's one way, I'd probably run away because they're lying. And if someone's trying to tell you that they channeled something and it's right for you, again, that to me is the ultimate in giving your power away to somebody else or something else. And I personally find that really repulsive. I think it's a really dangerous kind of way to go because it starts to get into... You see it a lot in the spiritual communities.

 

Tahnee:  People go and give their power, and their money, and their worldly possessions away to some guru. And if you've got Netflix, you know how that turns out. So, it's not great. And this isn't to say that we don't share and we don't have a collective consciousness, or a collective sharing. I really believe in that. And it's not to say that we don't learn off people, but we reserve the right to kind of hold our own kind of compass inside that's able to say, "Yeah, that's really great. I want to try that." Or, "No, that's not for me today." And there's nothing against that person. I just don't want to do that. So, it might be that today, you guys might hear me say stuff and be like, "Ugh. Bitch, please." and that's cool. And you might also be like, "Oh yeah, that's really resonating. I'm going to go and dive down that rabbit hole."

 

Tahnee:  And I think one of the things that, I guess I'm grateful for that we have this kind of a platform is that we can expose people to ideas that they might not have heard before and then they're able to explore. And it kind of just widens the lens because I had to work really hard to find things. Like Chi Nei Tsang, abdominal massage. I was like, "I had an eating disorder, my belly bloats really easily. I'm always feeling really sensitive in my tummy, I hate people touching my tummy. I'm going to go study Taoist belly massage." Which I'd never received one, I didn't know what it was. I just knew that there was something that I had to do there.

 

Tahnee:  And I went to Guatemala actually on the way to Thailand, which is not on the way, if you ever think that's on the way, bad idea. But anyway, fuck, it's expensive and long flight home. But anyway, I went to Guatemala and I had a Chi Nei Tsang there and I hated it probably because it moved a lot of emotions. But anyway, I really just was like, "Ugh, what am I doing?" And I think I remember standing in a paddock or no, a fountain in Chiang Mai. Anyway, I was in Chiang Mai freaking out saying, "I've spent all this money on this course. I'm going to come home." And Mase is like, "No." I think you might've been like, "Come home." And he was like, "No."

 

Tahnee:  But yeah, I just, I think there was this calling for me to do that. And honestly, those weeks were just the most healing experience for me, having my stomach massaged everyday, I ended up having the vaginal massage as well, which is Karsai. And I think one of the reasons I had such an easy birth was probably because of that. When someone's therapeutically messaging you, in places that really not many people get to touch and that you just have no idea how much emotion, and kind of tension. Even if it's not emotion, but every time something happens to us, we have a physical reaction even if we don't realize.

 

Tahnee:  And so, we clench our butt, or we... And you guys might even if you just pay attention right now to your bodys, you might be like, "Oh, why do I always lift a little to the side though? Why can't I relax into that shoulder? Or why do I cross my legs? what am I trying to protect? Because I'm terrified." But these are all things that we do and they have this memory in our body and our body holds it. And until we bring some conscious awareness to it and we release it, it's there.

 

Tahnee:  And massage for me is such a beautiful way of transmission. It's the transmission of the practitioner's Chi, or energy, and it's the transmission of our own awareness into those places. And once we've been touched there, it's a lot easier to come back to it. So, this is a massive part of when I teach, I'm very touchy, but I don't assist so much as I touch people, and I breathe with them, and I try and encourage them to start to move their awareness into the parts of themselves that are not receiving the breath. You'll see it if you ever watch someone, parts of them won't breathe.

 

Tahnee:  And if you imagine we're like a balloon we should really like, when we breathe. And a lot of people don't and so you can start to feel that. And same with the body, when you touch someone's organs and they're rigid, it's like, "Okay, there's something there that they're not processing." And again, it's not about you being like, "Oh, you've got a blocked emotion there you just better work on that." It's just about this ability to be present for someone and hold space for them, and use your touch to kind of move that.

 

Tahnee:  So, we can do that for ourselves. And that's a really big part of Chi Nei Tsang, so we'll talk about that at the end, how to do that. It's a bit hard to understand on a podcast, but I'll show you guys. And this daily connection with our physiology is so important. And again, these aren't things we're encouraged to do, right?We're not really encouraged to touch ourselves, we're not encouraged to explore our bodys. And a lot of people get shamed around even, obviously around touching their genitals and stuff. But just a lot of the time we're just not encouraged to be physical, we get pushed away if we try and hug too much. It's something I really am trying to be really aware of with my daughter is not discouraging touch because I just think it's such an important way for us to learn to self regulate and to become self aware.

 

Mason Taylor:  Well, since we're on Chi Nei Tsang , let's-

 

Tahnee:  Stay here?

 

Mason Taylor:  ... Let's just stay here. So...

 

Mason Taylor:  (silence).

 

Tahnee:  I've worked with lots of different women. I mostly had women come. I did have a few guys when I was practicing a lot, so I used to practice four or five days a week, with four or five people a day. It was pretty intense. And yeah, I had a lot of women come especially because they were really craving therapeutic touch that wasn't sexual. And I think that's a really big thing for women sometimes is just explored in a way that isn't someone's trying to take something from you, or wants an outcome out of this.

 

Tahnee:  So, I would work a lot with women that had had abortions, miscarriages, sexual trauma as well was a pretty common theme. As well as just general kind of health stuff, digestive issues. And yeah, so the we can have different things happen in our body that are energetic as opposed to... And I personally believe that we're multidimensional beings, physical, energetic and idea based, and this is from the yogic teachings.

 

Tahnee:  But if you consider what we can perceive on the physical plane is great. That's there, that's our kind of tangible 3D reality. But then there's this idea of energy kind of and this experience of us being in the astral plane, right? So, this is kind of where a lot of the healing work that I do and where the tonics work on as well. They work a lot on our energy and yoga does as well. And then the ideas is what we were talking about earlier about who we think we are. And this is a really fundamental one because this idea of who we think we are really informs how we show up in our lives. And day to day, this kind of subconscious will drive us and it's something that I see a lot with people I work with, that they have an idea of, "I had a miscarriage, I can't carry a healthy baby."

 

Tahnee:  This is an idea or a belief that they've chosen to internalize. And so, what my job is, is to on a physical level obviously move blood, and Chi into the uterus center, and to cleanse out anything that's not working well. And all those kinds of things. But on an emotional level is to provide some nourishment and support, and to maybe offer a different perspective that for example, miscarriage can be a preparation if the uterus has kind of not felt like it's been utilized much.

 

Tahnee:  So, a lot of women that come off the pill will miscarry sometimes and I often think well there is so much blood stasis in there. Why wouldn't the body prepare a couple of times by bleeding heavily and really pushing out anything? Because if you push out all that blood, you have to make new blood. And the fetus is especially... Oh sorry, the embryo.

 

Tahnee:  So, at the very earliest stages of conception, it's a completely oxygen free environment. There's no blood going there. The embryo is actually fed by serum through the uterine walls and this kind of blood thing comes in later. And if the blood isn't good quality, it doesn't nourish the developing baby. And that to me, makes a lot of sense because that kicks in around 11 or 12 weeks, and a lot of people miscarry around that time. So obviously, a lot of people also miscarry later and I haven't quite understood the mechanisms of that. But I think that that early stage miscarriage to me, makes a lot of sense from what I understand from the actual physiology of conception.

 

Tahnee:  So it's like, "Okay, well this is an opportunity now to get really well and to really nourish your body and prepare." And it's that idea of the anabolic stage again. So Chi Nei Tsang, we work a lot on the emotions and the psychological kind of aspect of being, because it's integral, you can't take it away. And in Chinese medicine, every organ has an emotion, has a kind of correlation to a particular kind of type of thinking or behavior. And so, when we were talking a lot about the spleen before and digestion, and things, it's this ability to assimilate and transport nutrients. But that's also a lot to do with the mothering energy and people that give too much, and people that care too much. So, you'll tend to see a lot of vegetarians are people that are also really passionate about social justice, and the environment, and politics, and all these things because they care.

 

Tahnee:  And so that's really awesome. But the flip side of that is they tend to have a really bad boundaries and a really bad sense of self. I am one of these people, so I do understand. And then a liver person is like a go, go, go, go, go, go, go doesn't give a shit about anybody else kind of a thing. They're really intense high power, full energy. But the flip side of that is they'll be very ragey and a little bit difficult to be around sometimes, and very opinionated. And so, a very good friend of ours is like that. And when I'm around her, sometimes I have to be really strong because I have poor boundaries and she's very pushy. So I have to remember to center myself.

 

Tahnee:  So, there's lots of different ways in which this organ kind of pathology can show up. So, it can show up as a physical problem in the organ. But it can also show up in our behavior and how we relate to life. And blood is such a fundamental part, obviously, of the uterus and this. So that's really a lot to do with the kidneys, the liver and the spleen. So, that's why digestion and food is so important to having a healthy menstrual period. And so, if you've ever go and work with a naturopath, they'll look at your gut health and stuff, and it's obviously hugely important. But then, it's also understanding for me, the energetics of that.

 

Tahnee:  So, the whole point of the spleen is that it cooks everything. Susan Wade is really adamant about this. When I was talking to her outside of the interview and she was like, "Oh, raw food." Because the body actually cooks everything, even if you eat it raw. So, the Chinese way is that you should eat it cooked because then your body doesn't have to work as hard. And they're very much around, "Yeah. Once upon a time we would have all eaten raw bamboo shoots or whatever." But we've been so far removed from that time, that we haven't evolved to do that anymore. We've evolved to eat cooked food. And there's some really interesting books on how we've evolved with fire and what that's meant for our brains and all of these things.

 

Tahnee:  And so, I don't know for sure, but I've definitely experienced in my body, with my daughter, with Mase, when we eat more cooked food, we all do tend to do better. Which is not to say you don't have any raw food, but it's just being really mindful that if you dump cold constantly on a fire, it's going to go out. And this is a Ayurvedic idea as well, of agni. So if anyone's studied Ayurveda, they'd know that that's a really important one.

 

Tahnee:  So, a lot of the time if you're having digestive issues, it's heating things up. So using ginger, using spices. And so, that's why a lot of the the Indian cuisine has so many spices because they're eating so much yin food, they're eating beans and rice and stuff. And that's very cooling on the body. Like mung beans are one of the most cooling foods you can have. So, you'll warm that up.

 

Tahnee:  So, this is the real wisdom of these cultures. It's kind of, we don't necessarily think about it, we just enjoy Curry, but that's what's happening on the background. when you do Chi Nei Tsang, you can feel that people's spleens will be really painful to touch. They'll have a lot of pain along here, which can also be related to the liver and the liver's obviously over here. We'll do a little organ adventure soon. But yeah-

 

Mason Taylor:  Well, let's just do that now. And you can you explain it and I'll hold-

 

Tahnee:  I can try. I'm just not sure the people at home will get it.

 

Mason Taylor:  That's okay. We'll describe it as we go along for the people at home. And I can hold your microphone for you if you want to stand up. Yeah. You massage and describe at the same time and then I'll point out for anyone listening at home where they need to be looking.

 

Tahnee:  Orientated?

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah.

 

Tahnee:  Okay. If you're sitting on your chair, come forward a little bit just so that you can kind of roll your pelvis around.

 

Mason Taylor:  Do you want me to hold your mic? Or are you fine?

 

Tahnee:  I think I need two hands.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. Yeah.

 

Tahnee:  My mic stand. So, we'll start with our spleens seeing as we've been talking about it. So the spleen is actually kind of behind your back ribs. It's pretty hard to get to from the front, but if you make-

 

Mason Taylor:  The left rib?

 

Tahnee:  The left rubs. Yep. If you make a little scoop with your fingers, stick your fingers as far under your bottom ribs as you can, you might not be able to get very far, and then try and push back. Some of you might be able to feel it. It takes a little while to learn to feel the spleen, but that's the spleen.

 

Mason Taylor:  This is quite often where I joke sometimes for those of you that haven't touched your spleen in awhile, your spleen will be like, "Be gentle with me." And you really should be.

 

Tahnee:  Be gentle with your spleen. So, spleen in Western medicine as well as the part of the immune system and in Chinese medicine too. But it used to be that if you got rid of your spleen, everyone was like, "You'll be fine." But now they're a bit more like, "Oh, maybe you need that." So in Chinese medicine it's like the mother of blood, it's where the idea of blood comes from and the nutrition for blood. And then that goes down to the kidneys, which again you can't really feel without going through you gut switch. We won't be able to do, because none of you will be relaxed enough. But your kidneys are kind of back here ish underneath your ribs. They're outside of the main fascial sack.

 

Tahnee:  So, this is really cool because in Chinese medicine there's this thing called the triple burner and they were always like, "There's no such thing as the triple burner. Those crazy Chinese people." And then in the '90s everyone started being like, "Oh, fascia's really cool. Look at fascia. Wow, wow, wow." And they discovered that there was actually these three bags in the abdominal cavity that actually directly correlate to the triple burner. Aren't the Chinese people amazing? They're so clever. They discovered this thousands of years ago before we had anatomy.

 

Tahnee:  So, they've got in the upper part of it, the pleural cavity, they got the heart, the lungs, then they've got the digestive one, then they've got the kidneys. And the kidneys are actually outside of the digestive one, they are hanging out with the bladder, and the uterus, and everything. And so, in Chinese medicine, jing, this idea of kidney essence, is integral to our ability to conceive, to have healthy menstruation, to have healthy sperm, all of this stuff. So, this was all mapped out by the Chinese, at least 2000 years ago, possibly 5,000 years ago, possibly before that, if you believe some of the anthropologists and stuff.

 

Tahnee:  So, that's a pretty cool thing. So, the kidneys are actually surrounded by fat and they're kept quite cool, you're not really meant to get hot kidneys, that's not great. And so, they're kind of hanging outside of the digestive system. Over on this side, on the right side, so if you could be my mic stand. Again, make a scoop, maybe two handed scoop and the liver is always a bit tough for people. But try and go right onto there and push up. You should feel something really firm and kind of meaty. Can you feel that? Yeah. That's your liver. Your liver is actually really up here, underneath your breasts. So, the top of the liver's around your nipple line-ish.

 

Mason Taylor:  On the right side?

 

Tahnee:  On your right side. Yep. And then kind of all the way down here, massive organ, really cool. Go have a Google if you've never seen a liver. And then the gallbladder is kind of, if you find your sternal notch and go down a little bit, your gallbladder is kind of in there. Again, pretty hard to feel because it's a sack. And if you don't know what your gallbladder does, the liver produces bile, the gallbladder holds the bile, the bile gets released to digest.

 

Tahnee:  So, you'll often see people say, "Oh, I had to get my gallbladder out." And this is again, in Chinese medicine, would be a lot to do with emotional stuff with energy blockages to this part of the body. We all sit like this all day. So again, in Chinese medicine this is not great because we're compressing our transverse colon, we're compressing our liver and our digestive system. So, as much as you can just obviously remember to move. We will go back this way and do the stomach.

 

Tahnee:  So, the stomach is again, if you kind of start at the sternal notch and come down and push right in on the left side, you'll feel the stomach under there. Again, depending on how recently you ate will be, how comfortable that is. And if you could hold that. The colon. So this is also, what else do people call it? The bowel. The bowel. So, it starts if you find your hip bone, sorry this dress isn't very helpful, on your left and walk in a little bit and push down. That's about where your appendix is-

 

Mason Taylor:  On your right?

 

Tahnee:  On your right. Yes. Sorry. And then if you come up all the way along that right side there and then underneath. So, the liver rests on the colon, this is really important for detoxification. If your bowel is not functioning well, you'll not be pushing bloodborne toxins out. They're going to go back in because the liver just cleans and moves blood around. So, the toxins ideally seep down and get pushed out. Otherwise, back into the bloodstream. So coming across here, so if that's really tender and tight it means again, peridialysis, which is this idea of pushing the poo along. Talk about poo. That's got to happen.

 

Tahnee:  And my Taoist teacher always says evolutionarily standing upright was kind of a bad idea because now we've got to go up against gravity, and then across, and then down, which has a bit of a hassle. And then the colon kind of comes in here and in a lot of people it goes up kind of behind the stomach. So, you can always feel that bit. But then down here and down into, if you sort of go really deep there, you'll start to feel the rectum and everything. So, these two gates here, are really important in Chinese medicine, so we'll work a lot on...

 

Mason Taylor:  So, where are they?

 

Tahnee:  So, Basically if you just think inside each of your hip creases just to be... So, your hip bones.

 

Mason Taylor:  Two valves, doorways?

 

Tahnee:  Two valves. Yeah, spirit gates they're called. So, we'll work a lot on those in Chi Nei Tsang. And then I guess while I'm upright, if you're a guy your bladder is kind of... If you find your pubic bone and just hook up your bladders there. Girls, your bladder's there, but then your uterus is a little bit on top of that. So, that's why if you've ever been pregnant your bladder is getting smooshed the whole time. So, depending on where you're at in your cycle, your uterus will either be very large and you can feel it when you're about to bleed, or bleeding. After that, it can be quite small and difficult to find.

 

Tahnee:  And if you want to find your ovaries and stuff, again, I'll usually use the woman's hand and I'll place, it's hard to do on yourself, but I'll place her hand that and spread her fingers. So, at my pubic bone for those playing along at home, and usually where the two fingers hit is where the uterus is.

 

Mason Taylor:  So, you put the base of the hand at the pubic bone and then you'll open the fingers up?

 

Tahnee:  I'll just kind of rest the hand. I just can't... Mason's a lady today. So, just kind of like that-

 

Mason Taylor:  Mace Sailor Moon returns.

 

Tahnee:  That's where Mason's ovaries would be if he had them. So, then the small intestine is this moodgey bit around your belly. So, we usually just spend a lot of time kind of just smooshing that and making it really soft, and-

 

Mason Taylor:  So, in and around the belly button there?

 

Tahnee:  Well, no. In and around the belly button is another special spiritual spot. So, that's a lot to do with the nutrition we received from our mothers in utero. So, a lot of people will cry when you touch their belly buttons and if you go really deep into that, you can feel these nerve plexuses that are from around the spine. So, again this is advanced. You probably won't do that at home, but if you are ever massaging yourself with a really empty tummy and you can feel into your spine and stuff, that's fine.

 

Tahnee:  Just feeling for any... You might feel little nerve tangles which feel like a little lump, a little kind of tough lump and as you rub it they'll start to dissolve, and you might feel that nervey kind of tingle. So, that's really common as well around the navel. I get a lot of oil and go really deep into the belly button. Usually when I work on people, so you can do that on yourself if you're brave. You'll never massage as hard as anyone else will massage you too. It's usually quite safe just to have an explore. And then to do the heart and lungs, we usually just rub it in between the ribs. So, you can do that on yourself as well with some oil and just get right into that, and it will hurt.

 

Tahnee:  And I guess while we're here, that's a really good opportunity to do breast massage if you're a woman. So again, this is a really ancient Taoist technique for conserving jing. Have you guys all heard about semen retention for guys and it preserves their life force? So, this is the same for women. So, the two main ways we lose our essence is through bleeding with our menstruation and bleeding when we give birth. If anybody's given birth, there's a lot of blood. So, basically what we want to do is, you can do both clockwise and counterclockwise. It really depends on there's energetic variations that, but I just go with whatever feels appropriate for you at the time.

 

Tahnee:  I usually just go clockwise and you want to do that around 50 times, so you can kind of do that in the shower with some oil, or in the bath, or wherever you're hanging out. It's nice to do in the sun if you have a yard where you can be nude. And I think it's really important not to use a cold oil, like coconut oil. I always use a warm or a more neutral oil. So, I'll often use sweet almond or sesame. I use a lot of Ayurvedic oils because they're very warming. So, you can get a black sesame, toasted sesame oil by Aveda, who are a local company, do a really nice one, which I think you can get at most of the shops around here like Santos and stuff.

 

Tahnee:  But yeah, so you want to do that. And what that does, this is super interesting. So basically, you know when you're breastfeeding and you don't menstruate, right? It's this constant stimulation of the breast. It causes the blood to actually stay up here instead of dropdown. So, when we menstruate, the body goes through this cycle and the Taoists describe it as a pearl forms between the breasts, and if we don't conceive the pearl drops, and we bleed. And this is quite similar to what happens with men as well, but similar but different, obviously.

 

Tahnee:  So, when we maintain that stimulation of the breast tissue it holds the blood up there. So, a lot of women report that their boobs get bigger too, which is a side bonus. But what it... Or maybe a big bonus. But yeah, what it does is it kind of holds the blood and the chi up here. So, it means that your menstruation will get lighter. So, if you're someone who has really heavy period, it can be one way to manage that. But I do think you should every few months have a break from that.

 

Tahnee:  So, the ancient texts said every 100 days that. But again, it depends on your intentions and what you're doing. If you're doing it because you have really heavy periods, you might want to keep going a little bit longer. But if you hold that energy and that blood too long, it could cause stagnation and stasis. So, we wouldn't want to do that. So, that's a really common and simple technique that can be done. And it's quite quick to work. It's just you do need to do it for 50 rounds per breast because it takes a little while to really get that stimulation happening. So, that's kind of some of the basic stuff. Did I miss anything?

 

Mason Taylor:  No, I don't think so. I think we can just follow this thread. You've talked a bit about menstruation, you kind of started to dig in there and I feel we have to go into that just a little bit more, as when we branch into some of the other major women's issues. Because I know you're getting a lot of people reaching out to you constantly, especially a lot of women, and a lot of young women with various issues that they're having. Now, off the back of the Chi Nei Tsang abdominal massage, that's something hopefully if you're listening to the podcast, we'll have a video. If you go to the show notes, so you can click on it and everyone here can go get a little bit of a repeater. And Tarns will get a picture that can maybe show your anatomy a little bit.

 

Tahnee:  I was going to do a video. I've been meaning to do it for ages because I get asked all the time. So I might, if you want to film it or something, I'll do one on my belly and you guys can see how I would do a self message because it's something that I think is a really helpful tool. And you'll start to feel, I guess this kind of segues into menstruation because I had this amazing interview with this woman Lara Owen, who's bloody, our connection didn't work and it didn't record, devastating. But she is a Chinese doctor who also is now doing research for how businesses can integrate a kind of awareness of menstrual cycles into their daily kind of operations.

 

Tahnee:  And it was just such an inspiring conversation. And she's probably in her 60s now, I reckon. She's definitely not menstruating anymore. And we were talking a lot about how each period is so different. Each cycle is so different. And so, while there are themes, it's not necessarily fair to lump every woman into like, "Oh, before you bleed, you might just want to go and hibernate in a cave." Because some women feel really outgoing when that happens. They're like, "I'm bleeding and I feel fucking great. And I want to go and mmm." And that's true of that woman. It's not right or wrong. And so, her work is a lot around what are the generalities? And.

 

Tahnee:  Her work is a lot around, what are the generalities? And so she tended, she sort of said that most of the research that they saw was, women didn't want to be front of house when they were bleeding. They wanted to be more in an observing position, most of the time. They didn't want to be, necessarily, responsible for much. They might still be wanting to engage with the world, but they didn't want to be that main front of house force, I suppose.

 

Tahnee:  And so this business that they were studying were rotating their reception staff with every, so like, the women that weren't bleeding would go and serve. And the women that were would be out the back, doing other work. And so just stuff like that, which I find is there's such a really like positive and beautiful way to start to acknowledge this stuff, and let it be a very personal thing.

 

Tahnee:  So, you know, if this woman wanted to stay in that other role, they could. But a lot of the women chose to do it. And they found that all the markers for employee happiness and all that stuff were much higher.

 

Tahnee:  And one of the other things Laura spoke about, which I really loved, was how she noticed in her work was that women would be, who'd had a very emotional month, would have a much more traumatic bleed, or a more difficult bleed. And if they hadn't had space or time to process what had happened to them that month. And there's this really beautiful story. It's a, I don't honestly know the tradition it's from, but it's always stayed with me, where, it's a creation sort of story. And it was like man and woman were created and the woman's responsibility was empathy and to be present for the family and to nourish and to care for everyone else.

 

Tahnee:  And she had no release, because it was just constant. And so they spoke to the ocean and the ocean said, "Well, you can come any time. But some of you don't live near me, so I'm going to talk to the moon." And the moon and the ocean made a deal, and they gave woman the menstruation to let them flow every month, in cleanse themselves and to basically be renewed, I suppose, for their next month.

 

Tahnee:  Which, I love that idea of it being an opportunity to let go of the shit from that month and just move on, you know? And like, yeah, sometimes it's going to be a little bit of like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, that was some big things to move," and sometimes not. So, Laura, a lot of her advice was around finding ways to be very in tune with what's happened to you that month, how you're feeling and whether you would need to be more careful or less careful about your needs at that time.

 

Tahnee:  So that, to me, was a really powerful kind of message. And if anyone knows the origins of that story, please let me know, because I wish I could remember.

 

Mason Taylor:  Are there any, let's like, because we don't have infinite time unfortunately, because I'd like to keep on going forever. Is there anything just around menstruation that you find, like, common untruths? We've got the obvious ones. I remember like watching fruitarians, talking about how awesome it is not having to have your period. And you know, bringing a little bit of fat back into the diet and the period coming back. You know, "All that's very confronting, to have to bleed. I prefer to just take the fat out and not bleed anymore."

 

Mason Taylor:  We've got those kinds of things, obviously, I think we're getting to the point where, it's not so normal. Like, not bleeding isn't as normalized maybe, but in that little bubble, maybe it is. I don't know. But is there anything else you just want to speak to quickly around menstrual health, common patterns, practices beyond the [Chi Nei Tsang 00:03:34]. We'll talk about herbs next, just to help women maintain a nice healthy menstrual period.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, you need to have some fat on your bones, is really important. Unless you're naturally very, very thin. But so, I would say a solid percentage of women contact me with amenorrhea, which means they're not bleeding. And I would say a solid percentage of that percentage are in a career that is based on their bodies, and how they look. I won't name careers, but you can use your imaginations.

 

Tahnee:  And that was certainly something I have a, I guess an affinity or an empathy for, because I did a little bit of modeling and stuff when I was younger. And I ended up with an eating disorder because of my, I was just so young. I was 14, I just had no idea how to say no to things. And, yeah. So I believe now, having done a lot of therapy, that it was around control and feeling some kind of control over my body, when I felt like everyone else was trying to control me.

 

Tahnee:  So that's something I hear about, a lot. And that's a really sort of simple explanation again in Chinese medicine is that, you're not getting enough nutrition to create blood so your body is very smart and resourceful, and just says, "That's not a priority right now. Like fertility's not a priority. Let's cut that."

 

Tahnee:  Because really, in a survival situation, you're not going to be thinking about having babies, right? It's like, it's about survival. And we see this in nature a lot. A lot of animals, like wolves, they'll self abort if it's a really bad winter, just because they know they won't be able to carry the babies through healthily. And so, nature is very wise, and I think we really try and avoid the laws of nature a lot in this culture. And yeah, so that's something that I try, and I usually don't give advice in that situation, except to see a therapist.

 

Tahnee:  But I do think that it can be helpful to try and eat more fats. And try and look at, I often will look at Shen herbs, like, herbs that support the spirit and nourish the woman's ability to really stand on our own two feet and be in her own power. And start to really have the ability to conceive, and to see if whether this is the path she wants to walk down.

 

Tahnee:  I don't even like remember that person, you know? I can't identify with myself as being that person, but it's part of me. So I think that's a really interesting one.

 

Tahnee:  I see it a lot with vegan women. So that's, you know, again, I don't want to, I certainly don't want to tar every diet. I think it's unfair, but I think that what I see a lot with vegan women is they get very cold and they get very, very, very unstable in their spleens, and their blood gets very poor quality. And this is a difference between men and women, because men have a lot of Qi, well, men are sort of like ruled by Qi, and women are ruled by blood. So men can get away with stuff almost forever. Like Rich Roll, and all these guys, they're awesome. And for me, his body is designed for that kind of stuff. Like he can, he can do it.

 

Mason Taylor:  I was great, I was great as a raw foodist, my body was rocking.

 

Tahnee:  And you're a fire, [crosstalk 01:10:54] kind of constitution, too. Like, he's a fire. Not a hot [crosstalk 00:06:59]-

 

Mason Taylor:  I got bored with myself. It was really, it was one of those things I was like, and it keeps on coming up in this conversation and I think it's one of the reasons we talk about it, and you talk about it so much is, and it's not even about challenging yourself. But it's just like, know what's an appropriate amount of time for you to hold onto an experiment or a diet or a transition. And then once you, whatever your own little, your unique little, not even alarm bells, but just reasons. For me it's boredom. Just go, "Oh mate, it might be time to maybe integrate that, and then move on to something new. Or integrate and sit and rest with nothing and no labels for some time, to see what emerges that's me, and nothing external," or whatever it is.

 

Mason Taylor:  And I just feel like this is, we keep on coming up with, so many things could be avoided, if we just stay slippery within our minds. It always comes back to being, to that kind of philosophy again and again and again. But the other thing there, in terms of what I've watched you do around cramping, around menstrual issues. One thing I've got, because I've been talking to many, many women on the, and I'm not an expert by any means, but it's come up constantly in the podcast series. So I think a lot of women have really made tracks, in that area.

 

Mason Taylor:  But one of the things is just like, a very nonjudgmental about it being like, "Well, you shouldn't be cramping. You should be normal," while as well, not just ambiguously celebrating the fact that cramping is a normal thing and resting there, either. Just like a, "Cool." Acknowledge where you are, and then just, you might not have to be like full pedal to the metal, but don't lean away from actually doing something about it and striving for something to continue to improve your blood and improve, the way that you make that transition each month. Is that fair?

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. Well again, this comes down to if you get the physiology of what happens when you menstruate, then you can understand what symptoms are appropriate and what symptoms are not. Right?

 

Tahnee:  So the fascia along the back and again this is like, the liver channel. So the liver is responsible for the movement of Qi and blood in the buddy. And so the liver moves the blood down for the menstruation to occur. So the quadratus lumborum, the QL, which again you don't need to know this stuff, but it's like in here. So a lot of women will feel like a tensioning around their lumbar spine and the sacrum when they're about to bleed. And that's actually the body's, partly it's the fascia in there becoming less fluid. So the, I don't want to get too into anatomy, but the fascia contains this special stuff that is like, the fourth state of water that can exist as both a liquid and a solid, depending on multiple stimuli.

 

Tahnee:  So stress, for example, will cause it to tighten up, like this kind of experience. So drying it out, so this is why Chinese medicine is all about fluids, as well. So basically what we've got is, we've got like heat and we've got movement of Qi and blood drying out the fascia in the back of the body. And so then there's going to be this rigidity to the lumbar spine. So that's perfectly normal. So you might find during your menstrual period that you're not able to forward bend as much, or you're not as comfortable in a backbend, or something. And that's because of an anatomical, physiological kind of natural progress thing.

 

Tahnee:  You'll also find the uterus grows, so that women might feel a little bit bloated or they might feel kind of, like there's a lot more heaviness down here. Well, yeah, because blood's moved down there and it's actually, it's heavier. Like if you weighed the uterus then versus now, it's going to be a very different experience.

 

Tahnee:  So, these things are normal. So if you feel heavier, if you feel more aware of your lower pelvis, you feel more aware of your lower back. If you're more sensitive to, like you need heat or something to warm that up, these are all very natural things. Right? But cramping and suffering and not being able to get out of bed for three days and taking painkiller after painkiller after painkiller. That's not normal, right? That's the stuff that I'm super passionate about.

 

Tahnee:  Because a lot of docs, I've had friends whose doctors tell them "That's fine." Like, "Oh, that's just what it's like to have a period." And I'm like, "What the fuck? That's not normal." And I think that's starting to change, I think more and more. Like we've talked to a lot of integrative doctors and stuff over this little women's series journey and they're certainly a lot more aware of that.

 

Tahnee:  But it's a lot to do with inflammation. So we have really inflammatory diets, we have really inflammatory lifestyles, there's a lot of toxicity in our environment. This is why I think it is useful to do catabolic phases of your life, where you kind of break down some stuff and allow your body a chance to eliminate. So that's certainly a part of it. I think if we look at, that's why cutting out dairy for so many people is super, super positive in terms of their hormonal health and their digestive health, so both, digestive health as well. It's also very bad for the spleen. So if you're a bad digester, dairy is no good. But also the hormones in that, like there's lots of reasons that that actually affects us. So, I'm not against dairy, I still eat cheese and butter and stuff, love butter. But I just think you have to be aware of these things.

 

Tahnee:  But yeah, so kind of, that's what I was going to go to before. If men are doing these kinds of things, a lot of us women will be like, "Oh cool. I want to be a triathlete who lives on plants," and whatever. And it's like, "Yeah." And then it's like, "Our body's not designed for that, our body's not designed to run like a million,' you're laughing at everything I say, so you're my favorite person in the audience. You're like, the only one I can see, so.

 

Tahnee:  But I'm like, "We're not supposed to do that." And it's okay if you want to run and whatever. But like I was talking to Amanda from [NGO 00:12:34], who's a Chinese doctor and she's like, "Man, I have to constantly remind myself," because she's addicted to running. It feels great in her, endorphins, all that kind of stuff. But it just burns through her, it just burns through all of her fluids. It burns through her blood, and she just ends up not well. Right?

 

Tahnee:  And it's like, this is this constant thing we have to remind ourselves. It's like, there's an appropriate dose of everything. So how much exercise should we do? It depends. How much food should we eat? Well, it depends. How much yoga should I practice? It depends. Like, there's no one answer. So I think that's where, I want to encourage people to, I guess like we were talking about right at the beginning, be thorough and take responsibility and do some exploration. "Well, okay, so when I don't eat dairy all month, what happens? Like what if I," and again, be open for that to change after six months or so.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. Well, I mean, because there's nuance, I think, there's always going to be nuance to a conversation. It's like, "Oh my gosh, I cut out dairy. And then I was like, "Okay, what's the official story now? Dairy is evil, right? Okay. Anyone that eats dairy is killing themselves. Why would you kill yourself?"

 

Tahnee:  Well, it's again, both, like, yeah.

 

Mason Taylor:  ... "But I like cheese," [inaudible 01:17:37] if you, I don't mind. I just want to talk, they might, the next step, might be possibly looking at the traditional preparation of dairy in order to get it ready for digestion, which may work or may not work for you. Always, you've got just stay on your toes.

 

Tahnee:  I completely agree with that. And, yeah. So did you want to go, because [crosstalk 01:17:50] running out of time?

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, I'd just like to talk about herbalism, quickly.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah.

 

Mason Taylor:  When we met, you said that the essence of tonic herbs was like somewhat of a lost piece of the puzzle, for you. What was the piece of that puzzle? What was the point of that puzzle?

 

Tahnee:  Very good. So I have used herbs my whole life. My mom studied herbalism, and we were raised on that whole herb thing. Yeah. We just were given them when we were sick, and when we weren't sick and all the time. And so then, I started seeing naturopaths, obviously, so we'd take lots of herbal preparations. So I was very intimate with, especially Western herbalism.

 

Tahnee:  Chinese herbs I'd always taken from the acupuncturist, but they'd never really explained to me what they were doing, or they've just written it in Chinese and given it to me. And I'd take it and you know, if anyone's ever done Chinese herbs, it's like a black soup of stink and you're like, "Okay, it's good for me." So I was kind of like pretty okay with herbs, but I hadn't really ever found them to be like, super effective. I'd get some benefits and I'm still a really big fan of nettle and some of those kinds of Western herbs. But I hadn't really ever connected deeply with that.

 

Tahnee:  And I had considered studying naturopathy and Chinese medicine, and had gone back and forward. Herbalism was always like, looking at it, I was like, "Oh, I don't know if that's," like you say, I just was like, not really convinced that they knew what they were doing, a lot of the time.

 

Tahnee:  And so when I first learned about what you did, and with the tonics, and I was very, I was actually very, what's that word?

 

Mason Taylor:  Skeptic.

 

Tahnee:  Skeptical of Mason, and all of his stuff. I was like, "Yeah, right, show me the data." Just, you know, I'm softening on that a little bit. But he had really amazing answers for everything and the data, so that was good. And he was just like, "You know what? Why don't you just try some?"

 

Tahnee:  So the first two I took were Reishi and He Shou Wu, and I didn't know much about them at the time. But what they did for me, which now I know, is that they were very strong liver and blood moving and nourishing herbs. So I'd had amenorrhea for about three years. I had a couple of random bleeds in that time, but never anything consistent. And then I basically was running this really long cycle, it would be like 38 days between bleeds, or something, and every now and then I'd have like a 21 day one. It was just, "Oh fuck man, this is really annoying."

 

Tahnee:  And, basically started taking these herbs and noticed that things were starting to be like, basically by the time I was coming over to the [Seas 01:20:36], so we'd been together about six months or something, I was completely normal. It was basically a 28 day, on average, cycle that could occasionally be 29 or 27. And I tracked my period, if you don't do that you should, and not to be shouldy, but it's a really hopeful way of just starting to get a sense of what's going on in your body and stuff.

 

Tahnee:  So, yeah. So that was like a massive game changer for me. And then I had these like really spiritual experiences as well with them, which was not expected. So I took reishi on a meditation retreat with me and was just like tripping the whole time. Like, amazing. Like I think I went through about 10 years of therapy in like, a week. It was just crazy. And I was just like, "What is going on? Because I've done long retreats, I've never had this kind of experienced before."

 

Tahnee:  And, yeah, and then I started getting deeper into the spiritual aspect of it. And so that's, for me, where tonics are really unique. That they're just nourishing, and they're coming in and they're opening doors and like little keys that unlock things. And they're very different when, I think when you use a herb, like a drug to like move, you know, fix something. Or you know, patch up a problem or cover up a symptom or something, which is I think how, that was the problem I think I was having with a lot of the naturopathic medicine. I was, I couldn't sleep, they gave me kava, which is like a sedative. I'm like, "That's not really getting to the root of why I can't sleep." Right? That's actually just giving me a drug, to knock me out.

 

Tahnee:  Which, it was great, I like kava, but it didn't really feel like it was unraveling the pattern that was causing me to not sleep, which if I'd been really honest with myself at the time, it was, I was deeply unhappy. Right? So I think that's where they worked for me. And what I, when I see people run into issues with them, like in the work that we do, we get people that are like, "Oh, this is going on, this is going on." And when I probe a little deeper, it's because of the psychological stuff starting to happen, the spiritual stuff starting to happen and they're starting to get scared.

 

Tahnee:  And, I've actually been working with a woman one-on-one, lately, who's having that experience. And yeah, she's now revealed to me how deeply unhappy she is. And so she's been blaming the herbs for making her feel all these things that she didn't want to feel. And so, that's a super interesting aspect to me of herbalism that I hadn't, and you know, I do think that Western herbs can have that, like I have relationships with some Western herbs, definitely. But I have really deep relationships with the tonics. I don't know why. I got told by a psychic I was Chinese, once upon a time. Maybe that's why.

 

Mason Taylor:  I mean, those things coming up, you could say the same for yoga. If you get into those early days, and you actually start moving some Qi through the organs and tonifying organ function and all of a sudden that organ function is remembering how to transfer the transform Qi into different expressions. And so you have to face that, the habitual nature of your emotions, and what you've been holding onto. And as soon as you start getting your emotions moving, all of a sudden your organs have that platform where they are really nice and healthy, immunologically, you're healthy and your mind can stop being isolated from the rest of your body. And you can start actually feeling those thought patterns and that history and that path, or that approach that you've had to the past come up.

 

Mason Taylor:  And when you get that feeling, it can almost be too much, if you're not expecting it. And it's not just within tonic herbalism, and sometimes people really get that experience and it opens up the floodgates. And sometimes you don't. Sometimes, in yoga especially, or sometimes people come out of getting a Chi Nei Tsang massage from Tahnee and they're like, it's been three hours, and I could just hear crying and crying and crying. For me it's, and I'm like, for me it's kind of like, "Cool, hour and a half, let's get on with it."

 

Tahnee:  But you know what, that's one of the reasons I love you. Because that's so, everything you just said then, makes so much sense. Because I was again talking to this, to my acupuncturist about this, and it's like we take things out of their framework. So I've done a lot of yoga and meditation and these are all things that were involved in the [Daoist 01:24:38] canon. I do the body work. So if you look at Daoist healing, it's like you use massage, you use acupuncture, you use herbs, you use meditation, you use Qigong, like, you're not just doing one of those things.

 

Tahnee:  And I think what I've really, and one of the things we're doing with SuperFeast as we grow and have more time now, thank God, we have all these beautiful people that work for us and can do some of the day to day, but we're going to try and bring in some of the yogic stuff and the breathing. And the stuff that kind of provides the container, because I think that's what I've really noticed is when people don't have a container or some kind of external, well not external, like a practice that holds them, or some kind of reference for themselves.

 

Tahnee:  And that's what I think yoga does for me. Like my sister is always like, "Oh, you're so beautiful after you practice." And I'm like, "It's because I'm, me. Like, I've just gone back into myself completely. I'm not thinking about anything else." I'm just like, and you can, that's Shen. That's that, you're looking through your own eyes, if that makes sense. Like, you're really there. And I think that's one of the things that we can take responsibility to be more, bring more awareness to. Is like, how do you fit this within a culture that, because our culture doesn't really have that, like, where do you go and talk about this stuff? Like, I don't know where.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. And you've got to kind of watch it still, you remember when I first got into tonic herbs? I was probably, "You've got to watch out," when you initially get into something, and you get cracked out on it. I mean I kind of like, I don't know what kind of phase we're in at the moment where people were a bit cracked out on say like, Jade Eggs. And it's like, "Oh my God, all of a sudden this is like, this is the thing." And it becomes really shiny, versus being able to, like with tonic herbs, when I first got into it I'm like, "Oh my God, there's this herb reishi and it's actually able to help you build, through your bone marrow, your ability to hold white blood cells." And then going and tonifying not only your nervous system but that unmediated nervous system pathway between the actual neurological heart and the brain.

 

Mason Taylor:  And therefore you're actually able to get your, that peripheral nervous system information that you bring around from your surroundings all the time, that runs through your heart. And you read and feel what's going on in your surroundings, and then that goes up to your brain. And then your brain, if you have that unmediated presence and that ability to then go back to-

 

Tahnee:  And they're coming down the line.

 

Mason Taylor:  [crosstalk 01:26:49] ... yep, come back on the past, like, "What's going on in the past, how am I going to interpret this information? And then, look at what I want in the future. Okay." Mentally, now, because you're actually able to have a nervous system that can do it, send that information back through that channel to the heart, to then take action. And that's, and this mushroom is helping procure that ability, it's so amazing.

 

Mason Taylor:  And then you go in and look at what it's doing on the levels of the spleen, and then tonifying the, and people, yeah. I've told this one so many times. People like, back then, everyone's like, "No one likes a crack head." Some people do, but you know, that's way back then. And I'm like, and I'm like "No." And everyone's like, "Hmm." They weren't trending it.

 

Tahnee:  That was like, a rant, when I met you. I'm [crosstalk 01:27:21] no. You were a little bit like, yeah. [crosstalk 01:27:22]

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. You got the legs of it, back, you should have seen it back in the day, when everyone's like, when it wasn't like a thing. Like mushrooms weren't on, and everyone's like, 'No thanks, I'm going to go have an acai." Okay? "Mushrooms, in coffee? No." Who knows this one? "I'm going to go have an [acai 01:27:42] bowl. [inaudible 01:27:47].

 

Tahnee:  Bad for your spleen. Unless you add ginger.

 

Mason Taylor:  Golden circle. Pineapple juice and five bananas. And it's purple. Yeah.

 

Tahnee:  I'm going to take this back to serious because this is something I think we intention, right?

 

Mason Taylor:  But can I just say what you, you taking the time when you learn to practice, to understand it, so it's not your cracked outness that is driving you, but you go beyond that phase, personally. And then once you've integrated the relevance of that practice for you and your personal culture, and your health, then you share via osmosis. Rather than an untethered or unbridled enthusiasm.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. So I was really scared about doing this podcast, because when we do them together at home, we sit really close and share a microphone, and he does that in my face. And we've had like four, or, three or four really bad fights. Because I'm like, "Don't yell in my face."

 

Mason Taylor:  But it's so awesome.

 

Tahnee:  And he doesn't, he can't not. He's like, he's just [Mase 01:28:49] [inaudible 01:28:51].

 

Mason Taylor:  I get it.

 

Tahnee:  I'm like, "And so, I'd like to think about that question, and." But I think what we both really, I think especially as we've grown up a little bit and together, and it comes down to like the, "Why am I doing this thing?" And one of my favorite teachings of Mason's, like wherever he got it from, I don't know, but it was like that whole 20 year thing. Like, "If I'm not going to be doing this in a decade or two decades or three decades, is it really something I want to go and invest a lot of time and my identity in?"

 

Tahnee:  And I think, we're both looking, I think that's one of the things I love about Taoism, is this idea of longevity. And I don't see it as living forever. I don't really have an interest in that, on a physical level. That may be in other dimensions, but that's another conversation.

 

Tahnee:  But I think, you know, that idea of like maintaining a kind of like, not homeostasis, but I always liked the word harmony, like this harmonious kind of existence for as long as possible. And you know, the body being in harmony, and the mind and the emotions being in harmony. And so we do try and work a lot with that idea of intention, and the why, and where it's really coming from.

 

Tahnee:  And you know we've got like severe, especially on the teams, like a little philosopher, and the stuff we jam out about a lot is like how we can better communicate that. Because it's not just like, I think a lot of people try and lean into things, like the Jade Egg thing, or whatever. Like, Jade Eggs is an amazing practice for like learning to feel your Qi and learning to harness that.

 

Mason Taylor:  Can you explain what it is, quickly?

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, so basically you get like a little, like it could be jade, but it could also be rose quartz, there's all these sorts of different things, now. You attach some floss or silk to it depending on how luxe you're feeling. You have to set it inside your vagina and you do contractions along, so you can imagine your vagina basically has three parts, and so you learn to, up near the cervix, the vaginal walls and down near the entryway. And most women will find that they're really able to do it at certain parts, and not others. So you'll kind of work on trying to get all of that working well together. And it obviously has great benefits for your sex life, and feeling like sensations and stuff. Great benefits for birth, and these kinds of things. And for healing postpartum. So once you've stopped bleeding, you can start doing Jade Egg practices.

 

Tahnee:  So after birth you will bleed obviously, as the placenta, I'm sorry, as the uterus empties. So just kind of let that happen and, because that's a downward energy, right? And Jade Eggs is an upward energy, a lot of the time. So as you get better at them, you should be able to learn to control them and push them up and down within your vagina. So the idea is that you can spiral them, because your vagina can kind of spiral them up and down. But again, that's sort of as you get a bit more comfortable with them.

 

Tahnee:  But the real intention of that is to learn to feel what we would call [spotastana 01:31:41] energy or this kind of sexual energy in the vaginal canal, because that's really healing. Like in, same with guys, like the, the penis and the vagina, both kind of correlate to all of the organ systems of the body. So if we have a healthy vagina or healthy penis, emotionally as well, then we will tend to, so like if we have emotional stuff. And people know that, with guys and with girls, if your brain's not there, you're not going to have a great time in the sack.

 

Tahnee:  So it's this idea of using these practices to feel where there's blockages to Qi, to start to kind of transform and move energy. And a lot of the time I've seen them kind of being sold as just, I don't even know, like people seem to just be running these Jade Egg workshops and it's kind of taken it out of the Daoist kind of container, of giving people a foundation in Qi and energy and that this energy is actually very healing. So these are all healing practices, because in Daoism, you can't heal other people until you've healed yourself.

 

Tahnee:  You have to start with yourself. And so, you see a lot of times people are still like, really working through their shit while they're teaching, and while the sharing. And to an extent, that's okay, but it needs to be really contained, like you shouldn't really step outside of what you know, in the Daoist canon, anyway. None of them pay a lot of respect to your teachers. And really that idea of like, that's what I mean about the traceability of information. Like where did you actually learn that from, and what's the source of that? Because a lot of people are, maybe reading stuff online, or kind of just like, I don't know, not always going to the source. So like when I learned Chi Nei Tsang, I was like, "Who kind of really kept that alive? Mantak Chia did."

 

Tahnee:  I could go on, I could have studied it for like 700 Thai [dollareedoos 01:33:29] and I, which was like maybe 400 Australian dollars, or whatever it was. But I ended up spending like 5,000 or $6,000 on this training. But I just, I was like, "I want to go to the guy that invented it."

 

Tahnee:  And it was the same with Yin Yoga. Like I could have studied with anyone, but I was like, "I want to go to Paul because he's still alive, and he's such an amazing teacher." So I go to him every year, and I'll probably stop going quite as often just because of [Ayah 01:33:54]. But yeah, you know, like these, these are for me, like that source, that transmission from source is really important. So.

 

Mason Taylor:  Oh, all right. So I mean, and just on that [crosstalk 01:34:04] I mean the last thing, oh, okay. Well, I'll cut it. Yeah. Hey, I do what I want. Like the last, I have ever, we will break soon. But there's something else on that. There's something about a teacher, which I don't feel like I've quite, not that we'll ever perfect. But something I've realized is when someone not only brings a tradition, especially when it's come from antiquity, and using that particular example with like Jade Eggs for example. Someone gets into it newly and then goes and shares. One thing as a teacher I think is important, and for when I'm looking for teachers nowadays, is for that person to be able to communicate the context of their lens, and how they're viewing it, so that then I can discern between the true art itself and then, sift that out from my own personal prejudice as well, if they want.

 

Mason Taylor:  And so I try and be upfront. That's why I try and take the piss out of like, adaptogens and tonic herbs and medicinal mushrooms and all these things. So you can kind of like, then, hopefully it lays everything out so then you can make sure that you can just like, "Oh, what's me, what's herbalism? What's all that kind of stuff?" So I find that's quite useful, and something to look for in teachers.

 

Tahnee:  Do you want to quickly talk about what like in the [crosstalk 01:35:12]-

 

Mason Taylor:  I do.

 

Tahnee:  ... Yeah.

 

Mason Taylor:  I want to just say, I want to, we're going to take a 10 minute break. I didn't get a chance to ask about Yin Yoga in relate and so, I'm not going, I'm not asking that-

 

Tahnee:  [crosstalk 00:01:35:21].

 

Mason Taylor:  ... but you know, someone might ask in question time, in regards to Yin Yoga and the impact on overall women's health. Meditation and acupuncture were the other points that I didn't really get to get into, with you.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, I think we kind of talked about acupuncture enough, maybe. And I want to, I'm going to do some, just some free YouTubes, I guess, or something for SuperFeast with some of the practices that I think really compliment the herbs that we sell. And also just the kind of common themes around women, not just women, women and men. But like, we're all really sort of whacked out, stressed and all these kinds of things. So just stuff that I'm really observing.

 

Tahnee:  ... Sort of blacked out, stressed, and all these kinds of things. So just stuff that I'm really observing a lot. So that's in the works. I haven't done it yet, but we're going to do that, and similarly with meditation. But I just recommend both of those practices if you can and I am really happy to answer questions about them. So we'll do a Q and A after a 10 minute, five minute?

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. I'm just going to quickly... I'm not going to hold you long, just talking about the blend that you got. So please don't share all of the ingredients out there, on Instagram or anything like that. That's just now our little secret and we'll launch that in October. But when walking down this line, because tonic herbalism is so much about procuring life and it's an interesting road we walk when there's so many of us, with particular issues and I had immune deficiencies and fungal infections and all these kinds of things that somewhat drew me into herbalism and somewhat got me attracted to Chakra and Reiki that were unable to upgrade me immunologically. However, it was more of that thinking like long term, what do I not want to run into down the line, degenerative disease wise? What do I want to actually cultivate in myself? What's my intention?

 

Mason Taylor:  And so that's where tonic herbalism lies. And so I've got quite a few blends coming up that I think will actually be able to be bridges for especially a lot of women with various menstrual issues and also when we're talking about other menstrual issues in stagnation, a blockage in there through the liver, which is quite often pivotal to a lot of women's menstrual issues. And as well, those that are emerging from a spleen Qi deficiency and especially possibly a little bit of dampness. We're going to have more specialist blends come about. But we started off with this women's blend here. It was just a very nice general, not to give it cheap languaging but a tonic herbal multivitamin. So this is a blend, which I'm not saying to put too much pressure on to into necessarily be a healing force for menstrual issues or for-

 

Tahnee:  Well, I've sent this out to a lot of women to get feedback and I've noticed for postpartum it's really, really effective. I've had women like, "My libido's back," and all this great stuff, which makes sense in terms of that nourishing aspect because we imagine how much nourishing you need off to give birth. And also I think it works...it would be more of normalizing and balancing menstrual cycles. I'm helping with blood. It's really nourishing to the blood and the yin-

 

Mason Taylor:  Very nourishing to the blood, very moving of the blood. We've got dong quai in there. Now, especially dong quai, especially if you're looking at the tips of the roots of angelicum, you're looking at more of moving of the blood, but if you're using the heads of the root, then we're looking at the building of the blood. And if you pair that up with a little bit of like white peony, you're looking at...and then rehmannia as well and a little bit of he shou wu in this instance. You're at a nice blood building and nourishing. However they got quite a few blood movers in there, also. And with the various herbs that we've chosen very much supporting that spleen function, we've got [poirier 01:39:11] in there as well. Beautiful fooling medicinal mushroom, which is they're moving moisture through the body.

 

Mason Taylor:  But then we've got the moistening nature of the asparagus root within itself. And so as you go down the line of, we have the warming of the rehmannia or in blood building. And really pouring into that essence of the Jing and the kidneys, which we're going to need to overcome most issues. However, without going into the therapeutics of it. And then we've got that warmness of the dung quai that neutrality of the poor and these are the four major ingredients. And then that coldness of the [ginni 01:39:48] moisture bringing asparagus root. You're going to see it comes out somewhat neutral and that's the intention behind a general nourishing life, preserving blend and so or formula. And so hopefully then you guys can see the other little secret ones. Little ingredients in there. And I hope you enjoy that.

 

Mason Taylor:  And reach out if you've got any questions in particular about how to use that. But this is just a general for the woman's body to support the spleen and the flow of the spleen and then the Maestro that is the deliver of the orchestra of the endocrine system, the hormonal orchestra, to make sure that there are herbs in there supporting that organ system on goingly and generally to so that you can maintain beautiful endocrine health and then supplementing that Jing within the kidney system, especially that yin Jing. So we can philosophically embody more of that feminine essence from the roots down. And then following the lines of the organs up and then having the jujube and the peony to an extent and other herbs that really help with that hot blossoming and that shen and coming through the [poirier 01:39:12] as well.

 

Mason Taylor:  And so I tried to track a lot of that story through the body. And so it can sometimes be subtle. It can sometimes be very impactful. Some women have had a lot of success when moving through menopause but some women not with this because it's not designed to necessarily get you over the line with menopause because it's not a Jing blend. Right? A lot of the time that's an extreme Jing deficiency.

 

Tahnee:  We want to do some more, this is a very gentle blend. It's very much on that nourishing aspect. But we were gonna do some more moving hubs once it would be more for things like your endos and your really serious reproductive conditions and stuff-

 

Mason Taylor:  Endometriosis, that is.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. Sorry. And menopause and stuff as well. Because menopause is really interesting because if you've had good periods, you tend to have a good menopause. If you've had poor period health, you'll tend to have a bad menopause. And also if someone who tends to run hot, you'll tend to really struggle with menopause because you have extra hot. Whereas someone who's cold like me, we'll actually probably have a great time in menopause because you get warmed up. Right? You'll notice I'm wearing socks with my [dockers 01:42:09]

 

Tahnee:  It's because I ain't going be cold. So this is a really...when we're talking about these things, that's why it's difficult to generalize like a menopause blend [inaudible 01:42:19]. it just doesn't really work like that. So the way we want to design these blends is this one is on nourishing, really nurturing feminine blend, fairly safe, fairly non-offensive. But then when we come out later on with the more moving ones, we want to be a little bit more careful with those, right? So just as a bit of a caveat, I guess. I find this one's just like a hug. It's just very nurturing and these are the herbs that I've really loved over my journey with tonic herbs. They're the ones that fully transformed me and yeah-

 

Mason Taylor:  All right everybody, if you can grab a seat then we're going to be able to get through as many Q and A's as possible. We're going to be going nice and fast. Everyone's been called in from outside. All right. Very grateful to have the always amazing [waza 01:43:15] who runs the Super Feast warehouse. He's going to be running the mic for us. So, if everyone has your seats, I know a couple of people are outside still getting some herbie's and hopefully not lining up for the toilet but we might as well get into it. Is there anyone that wants to throw the hat in the ring for asking the first question. All right. Down here he was we go down here and then we got the back. All right everybody, we've got our first question coming.

 

Speaker 1:          Yeah. So you touched on contraception and stuff like that. I find it really difficult to find good resources on it. And the pill didn't work for me and when I was 16 I had the impanon, which didn't work for me either. And then I'd tried nothing. But then it ended up in me getting pregnant. So then that ended up in abortion. And then I now have the rod, the copper IUD because I didn't want any hormones. Do you have any input on this? Because my doctor says, "It's fine." And yeah.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. So I obviously want to respect that everyone should be able to make their own decisions, but I think they should be educated decisions. So that's where I see the biggest issue is that we don't get given all the information first. So the biggest issue I see with the copper IUD is that it does leach called power into the body, which can affect your hormones. And again, having a foreign object inserted in the uterus to me is a little bit risky. But again it's supposed to be done under a sterile environment and all that stuff. So hopefully it was done that way and it's okay. I think contraception is super personal and I think we are, from a very young age, taught to not trust our bodies and that "We're going to get pregnant if we ever have sex ever," and we don't get taught about cervical mucus and about the ways in which our cycles flow and when we're actually ovulating and how to feel that and the life span of sperm and egg.

 

Tahnee:  And all of these things. So it's kind of one of those things, right? When you're young you're like, "Oh, we'll just do the fertility awareness or the withdrawal or whatever and it'll be fine." And obviously a lot of people get pregnant that way, but it's not because the methods aren't right. It's because the education isn't there, I think is really the problem and the support. And I think, again, it would be ideal that an older woman would guide a younger woman through that process and explain. And I think that was probably how it was done before. Now it's up to us to get educated. So you obviously have that and if it's working for you, it might be fine. You can go get your copper levels tested and stuff with a good naturapath.

 

Tahnee:  And they can have a look and, or good doctor should be able to order it as well. And that can have a look at that and interpret whether you're within kind of a normal healthy range and how your body's handling it. And it might be that it's fine and you can kind of thrive with that. If you're, I guess as a general contraception thing, in case anyone else is curious, I would look at learning fertility awareness and starting to become very aware of your bodies are in subtle changes. So if you've ever worn black underpants, you see stuff on your underpants, this is cervical mucus, right? And we don't talk about this and we really, a lot of women a disgusted by it or they're just like, "Ew." Wash, don't think about it. But the, the texture and the quality of that is actually super important and it can really help us to understand where we are in our [uritary 01:47:08] cycles and all of these kinds of things.

 

Tahnee:  So, that's too big to teach right now. But I can definitely recommend, there's some great books and I'm sure in this era there are people teaching it as a method. Funnily enough, Catholic groups are actually often good places to go because they can't use contraception because of their beliefs. But they often practice family planning methods. So it might be that you go and get a little bit of God download as well, but you also get the education. So that's possibility. I haven't actually looked into it in this area to be honest, so I couldn't, I couldn't give you resources. But yeah, I'd be looking at, if you're really interested then it's a process of probably saying, "Okay, for like six to 12 months I'm going to use barrier method and I'm gonna be very, very, very careful to track my cycle daily, to keep my all of my notes to track, not only my temperature, but my mucous and all of these things."

 

Tahnee:  You can buy that daisy thing, which I've not personally used, but it has really good, it's basically the same as the pill. It's same as preventing pregnancy. It's a finger measurer thing and apparently it takes your temperature and it adjusts your data based on your body over time. So that's supposed to be very effective. I've not personally used it, but I've heard lots of really good things about it and it's about $300. I think we did look into getting one but we kind of wait, if you don't mind me sharing. We do a combination of barrier and kind of fertility awareness and so if you're ovulating or you're not sure you would use a condom and if you aren't, which you'll know because you're like dry and you need to use lube. It's like your body's not ready.

 

Tahnee:  So this is just again stuff that you have to make a personal decision on. I know women that have chosen to stay on the pill but they chose after they got educated and they still made that choice and I think that's fine. I just think if you don't know and you put on something or you're taking something that you think is totally safe and you haven't seen the other data, then that's not fair. I think everyone should be educated by the prescribing doctor or whatever, gynecologist or whoever's giving the care. So yeah, it's a long way around. Is if you're going to pick anything, make sure you know the pros and cons. And if you are gonna do something like a fertility awareness, you need to give yourself a solid amount of time to learn the method, which is not one cycle or two cycles because you can be a little bit different from side to side of your ovaries as well.

 

Tahnee:  And there are like general like 28 days. It's kind of a general rule, but some women are much longer and some women are much shorter and each person's temperature's slightly different. And if you've had amenorrhea or something, it's not gonna be as reliable. So you do have to have a lot of bodily awareness and a lot of willingness to not be like, "Oh it'll be fine." It's like, "No, you really got to take responsibility for that." So I don't think it's for everybody, but I think it's a really good one. You've obviously had the experiences that you had, which are challenging. So I understand the decisions you've made and that might be the right decision for you in that situation. I don't know, but yeah, I hope that helped a little bit. Yeah

 

Mason Taylor:  And always a good idea with IUD getting them tested and then working with a naturopath and how to making sure that you've got other minerals there that can be the catalyst for the metabolism and then generally just having something like a bentonite clay or a zeolite, a binder in the diet just to be able to make sure anything untoward going on, any metabolic waste going on, coming out of the cells. But any anything that's not environmental or foreign substance coming in. I'm just a big fan of binders, generally, there is a bit of an insurance policy. Yeah. Cool. Pop your hand up so [was 01:51:00] knows who you are. Yeah, yeah.

 

Mason Taylor:  Thanks.

 

Speaker 2:          Before you were talking about the massaging of your body in different ways and having like doing it for a hundred days and then taking a break. How long would that break be approximately? Is there a specific-

 

Tahnee:  So you're talking about the breast massage specifically?

 

Speaker 2:          Yeah, yeah.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, so just to be clear, the general massage, the belly message you could do every day forever. That's fine. But the breast massage, she would want to have a break of at least a cycle. So I would do say three cycles. Doing the massage, then have a break. Do a whole month without message or, and then a normal bleed and then start again after the bleed. Yeah, you just want to make sure that that blood has a chance to leave the body and be restored. So yeah. Thank you.

 

Mason Taylor:  Good question. Next question. Oh, alright.

 

Speaker 3:          Hi.

 

Mason Taylor:  Oh right. Were next door and then we'll go and we'll come down here. Yeah, that's all good. No, I love it. So efficient.

 

Speaker 3:          Sorry, that was very rude of me. Can you recommend anything for polycystic ovaries?

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. So this one's a bit of a contentious one because there's some people that say it's being overprescribed or over-diagnosed I should say is more accurate. Other people say that it's actually quite normal to have multiple cysts on the ovaries, but it's a lot to do with inflammation. So I would tend from a the kind of perspective that I've seen it effectively traded, I would ensure that it's not hypothetic [amenorrhea 01:52:29] or anything else. So make sure that you're really clear on your diagnosis. If it is PCOS which might mean you need to see a couple of different practitioners just to make sure that you've got an accurate diagnosis. And then if it is PCOS, I typically have seen, and again, this is just with people I've worked with, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've seen it a lot to do with excess inflammation and digestive health and really needing to minimize those.

 

Tahnee:  So basically when we get inflammation, there's a lot of like [cytokines 01:53:00] and things created which affect the liver and create a lot of stress for the liver. And remember how I was saying the liver rests on the colon and it needs to move through? Anything that's not pushing through, we'll either go back into the bloodstream or we'll seep down into the uterus. And so we can end up with inflammation and issues in our menstruation, not always PCOS, but it can manifest as that. So it's often to do with the health of the spleen and the liver if it is possibly also it could also be a kidney gene component. So the simplest thing that I think would work really well is to go on a really low inflammation, probably a paleo keto-y style diet for a while and to look at really minimizing sugar and those kinds of things and to work with a good herbalist or a good Chinese doctor who could prescribe you some herbs to maybe clear through the liver and that kind of thing.

 

Tahnee:  That's generally what I find to be most effective and it's usually fairly quick to turn around, like a few months. I think anything with hormones tends to take at least three months is the natural cycle. But I think that can be quite effective with actual PCOS. But like I said, it's become quite popular to diagnose it. So it's just important to make sure that that's an accurate diagnosis. I also find them massage really, really hopeful because it gets [CHAM 01:54:22] blood to that area and helps to move through anything that might be stagnant. So any time you've really got any menstrual disorders, super important to touch and massage that area throughout the cycle. And you might not want to touch it when you're bleeding depending on your body. But yeah, all the other times if possible would be great because it gets a lot of stuff out.

 

Tahnee:  So, I hope that helps a little bit. Yeah.

 

Mason Taylor:  Great. And now we had a question down the front. Yep. Sorry, back rows. Can you pop your hand up ma'am?

 

Tahnee:  Ah, hello.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, it sure is, bring it up like an ice cream.

 

Tahnee:  You're from Canada, right? I remember meeting you.

 

Speaker 4:          I am from Canada, yes.

 

Tahnee:  You're still here. Well done.

 

Speaker 4:          I am, it's wonderful. I had a question regarding, I know traditional Chinese medicine doesn't really consider the thyroid directly with the five elements, but I do see a lot of people with adrenal burnout and then over a prolonged stress, going on and on. It affects their thyroid. Is there a connection between the adrenal gland and maybe the spleen to effect with the premenstrual system?

 

Tahnee:  Yes to the connection between the adrenals and the Spleen, but from my studies, the thyroid's actually so embryo logically, the thyroid comes out of the same tissue as the lungs.

 

Tahnee:  So I tend to see good results with out using tonics that support both the lungs and the gene or the kidneys. So I'll use [quadriceps 01:55:56] a lot we obviously work with a limited scope of herbs, but if you're a practicing herbalist, you have a lot more options. Yeah. So I tend, as well, so when you look at the hormonal pathways as well. Yeah, the thyroid does pick off a lot of the messaging that's going on between the brain and the adrenal glands. And again, if you're looking at the spleen as being like, so when we look at the digestive system as well, serotonin, all these things being produced by the gut and that's part of that spleen energy in Chinese medicine as well.

 

Tahnee:  So this is why, when I'm just talking about PCOS and anything really with this menstrual stuff of diet is so important. And I also think we're just chronically overstressed as a culture. So I rarely don't see a stress component, which is a tough one to address because people are so used to being stressed that they don't even know what it feels like to not be stressed and they don't. And that's what when I was talking about touch and that ability for people to start to be aware that, Oh, like that's chronically tight. So a lot of the time with thyroid stuff it's like until you're really willing to change...I see when things get that chronic, when I'm talking real chronic, autoimmune thyroid stuff. I think that's really like lifestyle change needs to happen. I'm a bit blunt about it at that point.

 

Tahnee:  I'm just like at that point it's too far. You need to really stop probably and slow down and change direction. So in terms of supporting that, yeah, I personally work a lot with supporting, because I think again, on a psycho emotional level if you think about courage and grief and these things that we push ourselves too hard because we're afraid that if we're not enough and all of these things that, a lot of the underlying patterns there that I see with that stuff. So I would tend to look at herbs that can support that as well. So, I hope that's sort of answers your question. But yeah, from that factual embryological connection, I tend to look at it more treat it that the thyroid gland itself is more of that lung kind of nourishing channel.

 

Tahnee:  And then from in terms of that relationship with thyroid conditions, there's always a adrenal component, a gene component that's always a digestive component and it always manifests with those symptoms. They've always got some kind of digestive thing going on and then I do obviously I tend to find when the spleen, if you know Chinese medicine, when the spleen goes out of whack, the liver gets stressed out. So then the circle of life, right? So this, I mean that's why that blend that we've created is literally liver, spleen, kidneys. Because it is such an important combo for women. And I don't want to, I guess for those of you who don't know, Chinese medicine basically says there were five controlling energies of the body. So the hot, which is the emperor, the fire does the Spleen, which is basically the mother energy, the kind of nurturing, nourishing energy.

 

Tahnee:  And then you've got meadow, which is your lungs, which is that kind of contracting energy. If you think, and again it's all correlated to nature this or is that moving from earth being, I personally relate more to the earth being a transition time as opposed to late summer. But it's this idea of coming from summer into autumn and then winter's the kidneys, which is your water element, which, so that's the absolute bottom of yin. And that's where wisdom comes from, right? It's like that stop, reflect wisdom, move into yang, right? In this upward yang into spring until liver energy. And then we move back into fire, which is summer and outward yang, which is that full expression. So this idea of our days, our lives, having these cycles to me is so important and we don't honor them.

 

Tahnee:  Who after a big project has a rest? Who after they've gone all day at work, actually does something wisdom, nourishing, you don't usually veg out. So this is this idea of learning to use the Chinese medicine energies as a guide for how we live. So when we're looking at something like a chronic condition, like with thyroid conditions, which you'll hear, like Hashimoto's or graves' disease, all these kinds of things I often say that it's just very much in that yang, yang, yang, yang, yang, either side really like they're both kind of come out of that same habit. And then it's just different manifestations usually depending on the individuals. So do you have anything? Because [Mas 02:00:44] does a lot with-

 

Mason Taylor:  well, I completely agree. You've got to have a macro and micro approach to it. And the macro approach, like 100% pretty much with all disease, but I agree, once the thyroid starts to get chronically autoimmune or overactive or underactive, you need to make some dramatic changes most of the time, which it can be so harrowing and I hate leaving it at that. "This is on you. [inaudible 02:01:11] If you need me." It's such a crappy place to...that's when a nice gooey conversation needs to begin at that point when you're staring down the barrel of the fact that, it's...you don't really have to make changes. You have modern medicine and surgery and things like that that can slowly manage it if you want to stay on this path of holding onto emotions doubling down on this career.

 

Mason Taylor:  Not reevaluating the way that you're dealing with the kids or not just making allowances that you just don't have room for ambiguous social obligations in your life in order for you to actually get your stress out or whatever it is that needs to be. There needs to be some serious conversations going on there internally or with your family and start planning out your future, of course. But that's on that macro conversation as well. That's when you get herbs where if it's an underactive thyroid, it's when the Jing herb start coming in and being really effective. [inaudible 02:02:08] and [quadriceps 02:02:10] because the foundation starts to get effected so quickly and that's why ashwagandha is just such a revered one as well because your, your ability and notification of your nervous system gets so in the gets toned.

 

Mason Taylor:  So with such ethicacy, and of course it's not just a one size fits all with tonic herbalism, same with medicine. But tonic herbs are generally in that macro space where you get your foundations and the roots of the body rocking. Your endocrine system, especially your adrenal glands are going to be able to get back in consortium and in time with the rest of the orchestra of your endocrine system, which is super important to bring the intelligence back or bring the balance back. But that's why I like thinking of it as a song and dance because it has less of a, all right, let's get you treated enough. You're popular lady, all right, now you're balanced, you're healthy. And it's like, no, it's like an ongoing song and dance. You know?

 

Tahnee:  Can I quickly, and that's the thing about the eastern approach is so much around educating the patient and getting the patient to be standing on their own two feet. So I think there's a real place for a therapeutic relationship. I think it's essential. I have sober mentors who have now become friends because I no longer need the therapeutic relationship with them, but they were able to guide me at different times in my life and I really, really, really emphasize that. But the first thing you learn in [chinasong 02:03:29] for example, is that you need to do yourself out of a job after six sessions. If they're still coming to you after that, you're not doing your job properly. They need to be educated. They need to be taught what techniques to use on themselves. It's very much around empowering the person coming in with information and knowledge and skills as opposed to, I'm over here on a pedestal, you have to come and see me and I'm the only one that can help you.

 

Tahnee:  So that's why I think sometimes it gets called a practitioner shop if you're not really happy with the one you've got, if they're not empowering you and then you're not feeling...I ask questions and if they don't answer me, I don't go back. It's just...If you're not going to tell me why you think what you think or like why you're telling me what you're telling me, I'm not going to come and spend money and my time here. So I think that's a really important part of this is to not just be like "Oh, we're saving this treatment." You can re-save obviously, but I'm not completely passive in this. So on that whole working with someone thing, if you've got something chronic, go work with a good herbalist or a good doctor, or good naturalist, or whatever, but also keep working toward your own sovereignty.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, getting your relationship, what it's like being in a place where you actually feel like you're restoring and you've got space. It's one of my ultimate flaws is I can't get myself into a place where I'm actually restoring that I work on it again and again and again. I think a lot of you could understand the feeling of getting dejected and being like, "It's been 10 years." And I'm still seemingly like harming myself by agreeing to too many things and then not actually understanding how to ask what I need when I need it or that don't get too don't go too down on yourself.

 

Tahnee:  [crosstalk 02:05:08] better than you used to be.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, exactly. And I'll continue to whatever that's like I'll just brush off and I'll just keep on going because that's one of the reasons I like doing this.

 

Mason Taylor:  One of the reasons I stepped out when I was younger and doing a lot of talks and all these kinds of things, I became a little bit more, I became a little bit over identified with my stage self and then it was just all this stupid and being ambiguous pressure. I had to be like the health guy and be perfect, but I knew I wasn't. But how do I communicate that? And then you just end up in this mental quagmire. And so I stepped out of it and then came back and just to and then take my piss out of myself a little bit more. And all those kinds of things, it helped me, that's just my, the way I'm built and helped me educate while being like, "Eh, whatever. I didn't really know anything." But on that thyroid side of thing, it's just developing a relationship with actually getting into your healing state.

 

Mason Taylor:  Just the classic old prioritize those things, your personal practice, your yoga practice, your walks on the beach watching the sunrise. You can't actually underestimate how much those accumulate over your life and really laid down the terrain of your function of your nervous system. And then those are all the classic things like hydration. People kind of just bypass hydration so quickly in terms of just how healing that is. And especially in most endocrine situations. And then you look at thyroid. You want to be kind of careful. I've been a little less hardcore with the recommendation towards iodine because you might have an overactive thyroid, you might have a general sensitivity to iodine. But for me it's been a real good one that I, this is one of the only things I really come back and supplement iodine and selenium especially before I travel.

 

Mason Taylor:  But if you're unsure, and I'm not the one to educate you, getting with a naturopath and having someone test your iodine levels and getting them back up to scratch because that's of course that's going to have a lot to do with thyroid disruption and as well general toxicity. So getting a heavy metals, I'm sure you'd be happy for me to hear me say heavy metals as well because that's what you do and it's like, "Maybe we should talk about that a little bit more," because I haven't had that conversation on the podcast yet. But that's going to generally those positively charged compounds that are toxic in the body, especially heavy metals and other radioactive forces are going to be attracted to that negative pole of the thyroid.

 

Mason Taylor:  So getting onto even like those chelator and the chlorellas and the zeolites and having the infrared saunas and all those kinds of things, as well as just like making sure that you haven't dips in the ocean and not spending too much time around all this EMF, which is hard but make sure you're doing what you need to do to get yourself back in nature and then feel yourself coming back to harmony. Because when the chi of your organs and your mind and your nervous system can get a little recharge and come back to harmony, you actually become more resilient towards those EMF forces within itself. And as we can go into the whole gadget conversation, but you want to become the gadget as much as possible, as much as possible with how intense it's becoming. But yeah, and then that's the-

 

Mason Taylor:  How intense it's becoming. But yeah, and then that's the macro conversation, and then the micro conversation in the intricacy of the energetic origins of why that is occurring within the thyroid. That's when it's amazing to practitioners shop and have... I love the combo of a naturopath and a TCM doctor, an acupuncturist who can actually help you understand your unique pattern of your branch illness. And then you can, at the same time, be hitting it from that root level of your lifestyle, and making sure you're giving your body everything it needs to heal on that root level.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yup. Thanks.

 

Mason Taylor:  Alright. Just stop there. And then after you, we'll go, just start passing in front.

 

Speaker 5:          I was wondering, you mentioned postpartum before, and I was wondering which of your products you'd recommend most for women postpartum? Both if they're breastfeeding and also if they're not.

 

Tahnee:  Yes. So generally I think the one you guys got today, see you guys, is great, and then usually you want to look at the Jing herbs. So traditionally it was things like cordyceps. It was astragalus actually, which is a chi herb, but that was used a lot. Eucommia Bark, which is a young Jing herb. So the Jing blend is a really good one because you don't have to buy heaps of different things and it's great. So that was to me the foundational one that you should really be on.

 

Tahnee:  And then you know, it could depend a little bit on what else is going on for you. But that, the other one that you got, I don't have one here, so I can't show you, but that nutritious blend that you've got now would be a really good one to add in because it's got the asparagus root and it's got all those ones like the He Shou Wu, is really good to help to move blood. And yeah, just that to me it would be a really great combo.

 

Tahnee:  I didn't have that when I was postpartum. I was making my own blend. So I was using a lot of Schisandra, and I usually do take [inaudible 02:09:55] just because I like it.

 

Tahnee:  But yeah, Jing was pretty much the every day staple. And then I do use a lot of kind of chi herbs as well just because I'm constitutionally a bit more deficient in that spleen energy. But yet what we usually recommend and work with is our Jing blend. And now it would be this women's nourishing blends that's coming through.

 

Tahnee:  So it's going to help, because what you'll feel, I don't know if if you've really sort of sought to chin into what you feel. Post partum is a lot of emptiness around the kind of lower dantien, the lower part of the belly. And a lot of women will start to get like low back pain and stuff and that's a real sign that you need to slow down. But it's also where the young Jing herbs can be really helpful. So that's where the Eucommia Bark especially would come in. And then cordyceps was used traditionally for recovery, and because you know it's just been such a big marathon of an effort to give birth. And they're all fine with breastfeeding. So yeah, hope that answers the questions.

 

Tahnee:  Actually, I'm going to do a really awesome podcast in two weeks with a woman, a Chinese doctor who's in her sixties from New Zealand on the golden month, the 40 days after birth. We'll talk about herbs and tonics because she works with the tonics a lot in practice, but also just the lifestyle stuff. So all the other kind of things that are, and she's got this amazing book, it's so gorgeous and beautiful. It's really short but wonderful and she talks to African women and Indian women. So she's kind of got this real cross-cultural take on it, and they all just get spoiled rotten after they have their babies for at least a month or often, you know, six weeks. And yes, the stories are really gorgeous. But yeah, so hopefully that'll be out probably a little bit after to this one.

 

Mason Taylor:  And I think, yeah, the asparagus root is there, and as well with the schisandra. The schisandra, it's kind of like astringe, especially if you've got an excess bleeding, not that you want to get into diagnosing yourself and using tonic herbs when diagnosing. But it's generally the idea to kind of tighten things back up, and then help with the building back of the fluids and the asparagus for a nice big dose of that real moistening bringing back the fluids, the yin. That cold, you know it needs to be a coldness.

 

Tahnee:  Well and this blend will for helping restore a lot as well. Which you know, after birth we lose so much. That's just a good restoration. So I just took heaps of schisandra as well postpartum because it helps with uterine contractions. I just forgot to mention that, but that's in that blend. So, you know, again, without going and buying a whole bunch of things and having to work out you postpartum, just take one thing and you're done.

 

Mason Taylor:  Postpartum for us, it was a really nice hot, sunny day on December four, and I know, and so we had a nice fresh cut of placenta. That it was about 15 minutes old, at what it was older than that, out of old [inaudible 02:12:47]. And then I mixed that with a bunch of blueberries, cacao, some fresh coconut water, coconut flesh, but deer antler, velvet. You know, just to immediately kick that Jing back and the Yanjing back into times after that Herculean effort. And get Jing blend a little bit of Schisandra in there, and then local raw honey and we drank that. It was good.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. Deer antler's one I always forget to recommend because it's not vegan and I get a lot of backlash about it, but it as a herb, it's fantastic for postpartum, especially if you've lost a lot of blood or you are having the lower back stuff.

 

Tahnee:  I just, again, it's one that I don't, I personally love it and I'll recommend it if I know someone eats meat. But yeah, it's kinda one of those ones. But yeah, it's both yin and yang, right? And it's...

 

Mason Taylor:  The deers don't die, so that's one to be really clear about. You're still a vegetarian if you do deer antler.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. It's more just that you should say some of the emails and things it's like oh.

 

Mason Taylor:  But then you send an email, you write back and show a live video of me at the farm going around looking at the deer and talking about the process and my process of why I introduced it in. And normally people who get really uppity about it and then they leave. That's happened once, and the rest of the time I feel like I have a lot of vegan friends that have appreciated the effort to go and show that. And just make sure the deer stall is actually mucked out every day. They've got lots of wild acreage that they can forage on to make sure that they're nibbling on all the wild foods and barks and all those kinds of things as well. So generally that...

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, they're very happy deer. But yeah, so that one is another one. It's actually used during pregnancy a lot for settling restless fetuses, and for...

 

Mason Taylor:  Under developed.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, if there's like a fear that the child may not be fully developed, it's to prevent deformities and these kinds of things. So that's kind of it's used during pregnancy. And then for the mother, postpartum, it's a lot to do with recovery. So that's another good one again.

 

Tahnee:  But I think for me, the Jing, I've given that to so many postpartum women. I have this chick in America who buys it by the kilos, just like this has saved my life because she wasn't able to take a break after having her child. She's gone back to work and she's like this is the only thing I've taken that's made a difference. Even for her, the placenta pills weren't doing much. I did eat my placenta and I found it really helpful. But yeah, again, different people need different things I guess. But yeah, that's for may Jings. Amazing.

 

Mason Taylor:  Thanks. And was it, yeah, oh you already got it? Great.

 

Speaker 6:          I have just for a teenage daughter, she's 12 and a half and has her periods. And so what would you recommend of your, the women's blend, or would you suggest something else for as a tonic for her?

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, I'm so glad we have the women's blend. Yeah. Because back in the day, I'd be like, okay. Yeah, I think that would be perfect for her because that time is supposed to be a bit funny. The yogic take on that's really funny. My yoga teachers always like, you know, that's when your sexual karma kicks in. It's just you're not a rational being. So that's okay. So yeah, supporting, nourishing care, keeping her warm. She won't want to be warm because she'll want to be, I know this from personal experience, but you know, those are really important things. And I think about this a lot with my daughter, just having those conversations and letting it be a really open home around. Because I think there's so much peer pressure to be like, "I use tampons, I do this or whatever." It's like a bit of a thing when you're a young girl. So I think give as much as possible. The home is a container for a certain type of culture and conversation around menstruation, and then you know, society is doing its thing and that's cool.

 

Tahnee:  But yeah, it'd be lots of warm foods and just really trying to kind of nourish her. I think that's from all the interviews I've done, what I've read, all the studies, everything. It seems to be that the more stable you can keep them through that time, the easier they transition. And that sets them up for their menstrual health through their life as well. I mean that's why it took me so long to get healthy again after because I just started bleeding and bleeding for two years, and then bang like nothing for nearly eight.

 

Tahnee:  So yeah, it's a big, see as much as possible. I probably would start with my daughter talking about birth control and those kinds of things. Even though you don't maybe want to have the sex conversation fully, but it's just that idea of, what it means to bleed. Because I think that's something, who was I talking to?

 

Tahnee:  I had this amazing conversation one time with this woman in the middle of nowhere in the Hunter Valley. It must've been Margaret. And we're talking about bleeding and the power that comes with that and the responsibility, and how we don't as a culture really ever tell our women and our young women that you actually have the power to create life now. This is pretty cool and pretty amazing.

 

Tahnee:  I think for a lot of women it's not really discussed and it's not really honored. And so if there's any way that that's possible for younger women, I think that I personally feel that that would be a really beautiful conversation to have.

 

Tahnee:  So, and that's where the herbs, I think if we talked about that spiritual aspect of them, they can kind of allow us that connection to self. And I think that's a really, it's hard to force that on a teenager obviously. Because they just don't want to know. But if there's something that they can do that kind of helps them come back to themselves. And I think yeah, sometimes a herb or something outside of the family can help. But yeah, those are my thoughts on that. So thank you.

 

Speaker 6:          Thank you.

 

Mason Taylor:  Thanks. And then Sav popped, easy if he was.

 

Sav:                I had a question about fluid retention. I don't know much about it. I assume it's associated with kidneys, but especially before my period, I feel so swollen and like I'm full of water. And I just sort of wanted to hear your take on that. Why maybe it's happening or...

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, so, hi Sav. I know Sav quite well, so I've got a bit of a background as well. Normally it's kidneys and again. So if we look at what's going on, it's usually the kidney spleen sort of thing. And so I had the privilege just then of looking at Sav's tongue while we were in the break. And I can say that she's got a lot of damp and a lot of fluid going on anyway. And I think it just, it's going to be more pronounced before your cycle. Because again, it's a big movement of chi and it's getting blocked.

 

Tahnee:  So, my take on it would be that that will go away as your chi harmonizes. That if you focus on that as a symptom, it's probably not going to be the most practical way to go about it, which would look like, dialing in your digestion and your diet during your cycle, and looking at ways that you can keep the fluid.

 

Tahnee:  So to me that's the relationship between the spleen and the kidneys. So if your digestion's not functioning as well as it could, and a lot of times we are like, "no, but I go to the toilet regularly and whatever." But it's that idea of the food being cooked by the spleen. Right? And this idea of it not having to work too hard, because like all of us, if we have to work too hard, we get burnt out and then we get like a bit feisty or we collapse.

 

Tahnee:  And again it depends on your unique pathology as to whether your organs get too hot or whether they sort of get deficient. And again, this is a bit complicated in terms of TCM pathology, but for you I would look at dialing in. I would look at really minimizing any adrenal stimulation and keeping it very low and slow throughout.

 

Tahnee:  I'd try it over a couple of cycles and see if it works. And then I'd look at a real kind of, similar to the KCLS, a not quite as hardcore as a keto sign, but more of a paleo kind of, and your sprouted breads. Not having a lot of like dampening foods. So that's anything, dampening stuff tends to be dairy. It tends to be cold foods. It tends to be raw foods. A lot of the things like that we all love nowadays cause we were all alternative [inaudible 02:21:27] folk. Your almond milks and your coconut milks and all these things aren't so great.

 

Tahnee:  You know, it's kind of really like the maten three veg and a bit of starch on the side. It's like happy damps plain diet. It's not very exciting, sadly. And then, a lot of changes and things that are gonna warm you up without overheating you. So again, I know that heat can be a thing with you. So yeah.

 

Tahnee:  So this is the thing with premenstrual symptoms. It's like what I was talking about if you have kind of crappy periods and then you hit menopause, you have a really tough time. If there's an imbalance in your chi and then you're coming to this big movement of chi, this big movement of energy, then you're going to end up with symptoms because your body is blocked in some way. It's manifesting them.

 

Tahnee:  So this is obviously much more than we could discuss in a little workshop situation like this, but it's this idea of how do I smooth out the flow of chi throughout my cycle.

 

Tahnee:  So often we know, we just don't want to know as we go on. Ask someone else and then they tell us, and then we're like, "Oh yeah, okay. I don't want to know that." This is my talking to myself. It's like, "Okay, I'm gonna pay you $100 to tell me what I already know."

 

Tahnee:  But I think there's something really to that where it's like, I'm going really hard. And oh, I'm having a really emotional month. It's been a really tough month. We've had lots of stuff going on, and hospitals and death and things. And it's like I could feel that if I'm not really aware of moving that energy and those emotions through, that I'm going to have to really focus on that when my period comes. So it's just these opportunities as we live to kind of constantly make sure that we're moving through stuff and not holding onto it. So we can have a bit more of a talk about what that would look like.

 

Tahnee:  But if anyone's getting fluid or PMS sort of style stuff, I would try and look at what is the general state of your health throughout your cycle because you'll probably find that there'll be keys to that that you know is actually what's causing the PMS. If you sort that out, it goes away on its own. There's no need to really treat or address the symptoms because you can do diuretics and stuff, but I just personally think that's putting a bandaid on it. Yeah.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. I think that comes, do that first and then afterwards, once you've got that non seeky kind of way of going about herbalism, then it might be appropriate to look at a herb like poria or something that will help regulate your water chi.

 

Tahnee:  We'll see, I'd be using that through, I'd actually be using your spleen, your Chi tonics. So if I'm talking herbs, with someone like Sav, if you've got this constant, like I could see that her tongue was swelling, she had not cracks but like dents down the side. Which means that...

 

Mason Taylor:  Of her tongue.

 

Tahnee:  Of her tongue, yeah, which means that her tongue is sitting fat in her mouth, which means it's holding fluid. Right? So a normal tongue is not doing that. It's not pressing against the teeth. So that means that her digestive system is kind of struggling, basically is what I can say from that.

 

Tahnee:  And then it's not though as bad as damp heat, her tongue wasn't white and coated. So I would be able to say something different if there was something else going on.

 

Tahnee:  But what I'm seeing is that she's holding a lot of fluid, and she's also got a lot of heat. So that's why I'm sort of thinking for Sav, that if she focused on working to reduce, to balance her chi throughout her cycle. She's going to quit coffee, those kinds of things, and to work on managing her diet and her emotions, then she's probably going to find that those symptoms will disappear on their own. So again, this is a little bit of a less general one because I know Sav but yeah.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. I maybe have a blend that I wouldn't mind getting you on to just try and sample. Especially with that combo of Poria that gets enhanced by the wider track of [inaudible 02:25:24]. It's a really good tonic herbal way to make sure that your body is getting the ability to regulate the water chi. Not just, as a diuretic, as an action as well. But a combo that helps your organ system remember how to transform that water chi. So hopefully you can get to the crux of the water retention.

 

Mason Taylor:  So we've probably got time for one more.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. Just.

 

Mason Taylor:  Okay, one more question is boom, there we go. It's up there at the back was, where are you? Oh, we've got one already and then I've already promised. So we'll go out the back there.

 

Speaker 7:          Is milk bad for your skin? Dairy products.

 

Tahnee:  Yes. Nobody wants me to say that. Yeah. Yup. So this is kind of along the lines of what I was talking to Sav about, but a bit different. So milk is cooling and it's quiet high in fat as well. And I also believe the processing that we do is not very good.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, that's a good caveat to add in there first.

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. But as a general rule, if you look in Chinese medicine, they're not very big on dairy in general, at past child baby years. And even with children, they don't recommend cow's milk. Yeah, so basically what it does, is it creates a cooling and a dampening. And so if you think again of your spleen as being that immune system part of the body, and you'd think about what acne is, which is those immuny white globule postuley [inaudible 00:18:44]. It's that sense of, basically that the spleen isn't creating enough nutritious chi to kind of support the skin in that area. So a lot of the time you'll see with spleen and stomach acne, it'll be around the sides. So this is a bit of a, has everyone seen those face maps where they're like, "If you have a pimple here at spec oh zero, you've got a bad liver or something?"

 

Tahnee:  No, it's actually because your liver chi is not able to nourish that area. So it's not that your liver is not working well. So when you get acne around the face and stuff, and you've been pouring a lot of damp dairy on it, it's actually because you've awakened that system so much that it can't nourish it and so it's able to get infected and that immune system part of the body isn't working well. Because it's this idea of surface immunity, which is way chi in Chinese medicine, which is this, it's sort of this force field that protects you I suppose. This kind of an analogy I guess.

 

Tahnee:  So yeah, if you do really desperately want to have dairy, again you can have it with, chai is kind of the better way to do it. With spices and warming spices and stuff, and cooking it in general can make it more digestible, but it's probably better to choose another option.

 

Mason Taylor:  Very colorful conversation. I can agree with everything, but then you know you can get a little bit more into the fermenting of dairies and preparing them in ways where that you can actually adjust the temperature. So just so everyone's not coming here like, "Got it. Tiny said dairy is bad."

 

Tahnee:  Well, and I think dose is really important. So I'll eat cheese and butter. I'll eat butter by the slab, but I'll only eat small amounts of cheese. And I wouldn't probably rarely drink milk because it has a quite a... If I drink milk, I actually get diarrhea immediately. It just goes straight through me because my spleen just doesn't handle it. So for me, I'm much more sensitive to it than say, other people. But, oh, I just turned my mic off.

 

Tahnee:  But I do. I think for most people as you get older, you need to really moderate how much of it you consume. Because especially as you age, the enzymes that can digest lactose start to disappear. If you do have them at all. Lots of Asian people don't even have them. But if you do have them at all, then they'll start to, you won't produce them as you age. So a lot of people that could tolerate lactose when they were younger can't tolerate it when they're older as well.

 

Tahnee:  So it's not a simple, gosh, this is a short answer to a complex question. But yeah, in general, yes, it's going to help. And it's also really, really correlated with PMS. So if you do a lot of dairy and you get PMS, it's a really good thing to try cutting it out because it's a pretty simple solution for a lot of people.

 

Mason Taylor:  That's great. Okay, and one last question that I accidentally promised. Oh, were you over there? I kind of pointed out there, but the other hand has gone down over there. So we'll go up over there.

 

Sam:                It's Sam. Hi guys. How are you?

 

Tahnee:  Hi Sam. I've got a spotlight in my eye. I can't see anything.

 

Sam:                Yeah, I know. So I'm trying to, how do I ask? If we've been talking about men's health today, the topic of testosterone and hormone rebalance probably would have come up. What about women's sex hormones and the balance of estrogens and progesterone?

 

Tahnee:  Yeah, so the reason I didn't get into that too much was because it would take three hours alone. It's super nuanced and complex and depending on... So ideally, we have this kind of start of our [inaudible 02:30:14] estrogen comes in. Our egg ripens, this is kind of a cooler time. So similar to how the sperm needs to be away from the body to produce, this is kind of similar with women. It's the more that you get inside of the cycle, I guess. We get the kind of cake when we ovulate, and then the progesterone and estrogen both drop, and then progesterone kind of rules the last half of the cycle, in a kind of dream world. Sometimes it doesn't work quite like that.

 

Tahnee:  So that's kind of mostly what a healthy cycle looks like. And again you can think of them as yin and yang. So the estrogen being more the yin and the progesterone being more the yang. But unless you have a really specific question given that I have over time, what helps?

 

Tahnee:  Yeah. So I think a lot of what we've talked about today helps with that. Because basically, like when we talked about the thyroid and all of these things. So if you, basically on your ovaries are hormone senders and receivers. In your adrenals, in your brain, in your guts, every organ basically. They're producing yin and yang hormones. Are producing these compounds that float around and converse, and talk to each other and create cascades and effects in the body. So what I think is super important is to be really aware of why things are out of whack and how you can start to encourage that communication.

 

Tahnee:  So when we're talking to Sav about, what's happening throughout her cycle, is manifesting at the end, when she's about to bleed. It's not about looking at that symptom and being like, "Oh my God, take a diuretic, let's get that water out." It's about, well, what messages are the kidneys sending to the brain? What messages are the ovaries not receiving? So again, if you're looking at someone's menstrual cycle, like I'm a close friend of mine has hypothalic amenorrhea and it's like her brain and her ovaries and her adrenals just don't talk to each other anymore. They are not communicating properly, and until there's a safety there, then the way I say this and it's very philosophical, is you have to like come back to treating your body like you would treat a child.

 

Tahnee:  So you would put it to bed every night. You would make sure it gets some sunshine every day. You would make sure you feed it regularly. It would have a nap. It has to really start to feel safe. And I mean this in the least patronizing way possible, but I think we push ourselves so hard, and nobody cares for us and we kind of, it's like this kind of need to then take responsibility for finding our own boundaries.

 

Tahnee:  And when I look at home, I know stuff like that's generally what's going on. It's like people are so busy, they're sewing their heads, they've disconnected from their bodies. I used to work, like every woman I worked with teaching yoga who had these kinds of issues, she was like, "I can't feel my body. I don't know what to relax feels like. If I lie here and you told me to feel my feet, I don't know. I can't."

 

Tahnee:  It's just like they're kind lying on the ground, they're almost like off the ground, because their bodies just don't know how to relax. And I always call myself the relaxation fairy, but my first job was teach them how to feel themselves and to relax and to like. That's the start and usually most of those women within like three to six months would start bleeding again, or things start to kick back in and they could go do all the tests and all the things. And it really comes down to how well are you caring for yourself. Because I believe these things want to be in balance. I believe nature is smart and homeostasis is normal. And you know, health is our baseline paradigm. That's what I believe. I just don't think nature would fuck with us, I guess. Not meant to be that way. I think our culture fucks with us and I think we fuck with us, but I don't think nature does.

 

Tahnee:  So I believe that the closer we can get to nature and the closer we can get to a natural rhythm for a human, which is not always what we're doing, because a natural rhythm for human. If you ever traveled to a third world, not even a third world country, a place where they don't have to work for white people or Westerners or whatever. Someone where they're still living the normal ways. There's a whole lot of sitting around, and a whole lot of naps, and a whole lot of not doing much. And we do not do that. And they are very reproductive, they have great cycles. They're very healthy a lot of the times. So I think that rest is a really big one if there's hormonal imbalance. Yes, we really have to wrap that up.

 

Mason Taylor:  Well, I think everything [inaudible 02:34:59] we talked about, always comes back to endocrine health. But thank you everybody for coming out. We really appreciate all your time and attention and thank you. Tiny, you've been amazing, and can't wait to release this podcast. Make sure you're on the SuperFeast podcast. You can grab some last minute herbs out there as well if you need, guys. We'll see you out in the front. Bye.

 

Tahnee:  Thank you, see you in the front. Thanks Mace.