The Five Elements for Modern Daoists with Heath Daly (EP#6)

Mason: Hi everybody, Mason here coming at you from the west of China. If you haven't been on Instagram and Facebook following this journey that I'm taking all through pristine mountainous China, looking at where we source all the herbs and all the practices, getting really candid really, and explaining the philosophy that drives us here at SuperFeast and why the herbs are so effective, get over and watch them. There's amazing videos I've put up on both those portals, live videos going up live from farms. Check out the Instagram stories and go to the highlights on the profile page on our Instagram just so you can get a little bit more connected to the herbs and really feel the energetics of them, it's wonderful. 

Mason: But today, I've got such an epic interview, such an incredible podcast for you. Heath Daly is on. I interviewed him with I was over in Perth and Fremantle and, far out, we just dove really deep. So, Heath is the owner of the Raw Kitchen, which is an institution over there, health institution. He's a naturopath. He's got 20 years of experience in holistic medicine. He was a senior lecturer at the Australian College of Natural Medicine and he's been public lecturing on health and wellness for 12 years. Now, he's pretty much, like what we call him is a progressive health educator. He's on a mission to connect people back to nature and health, but really he's just an absolute dude and this podcast, us chatting back and forth, we got really candid about how the Daoist herbal system, Five Element Theory and basically just our generally nerdery into the health scene. 

Mason: How it's played out over the years and, as I said before, we get really candid in sharing about how we've taken these theories. How we've taken the pitfalls of the health scene and we've used reflection, we've used tools, we've especially used Daoist theory and especially dive into how Five Element Theory has really helped him. I share as well how it's helped me and basically really land in reality. Take it out of philosophy and land it into reality in our bodies so life can be more rich, more healthy. 

Mason: I really think you're going to enjoy it. If you haven't looked into the Five Element Theory or maybe you just know it as a theory reading in a book what the five elements are, how they relate to life, this is going to be really a beautiful one for you to adapt that into your life so you can learn how to get really down, dirty, gritty with that theory through meditation, through the knowledge and basically have that affect the health of your organs, your disposition and your life. 

Mason: So basically we go massively into that, and then at the backend of the interview we're just going back and forth talking about herbs, nerding out, and you're basically going to get an insight into the conversations that I have every day, every week with people that have been doing this for a long time as well and really drawing out the wisdom of our experience and sharing it with you so hopefully you can get some good tips and insights to make yours and your family's health more better. 

Mason: So, with that, enjoy this incredible interview with Health Daly from Raw Kitchen in Fremantle, Western Australia. 

Mason: Hey Heath, how are you man? 

Heath Daly: I'm very good. Thanks brother. Yeah, I'm good. 

Mason: It is so good to be over here in W.A. 

Heath Daly: Good to have you hear man. Good to have the east coast coming over with all your wisdom and all your knowledge. 

Mason: Oh, thank you. It's good to come and like be ensconced in the wisdom over here of the west where I can actually get, you know, get a sunset. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, yeah. I don't know what's better, watching it rise or watching it set? 

Mason: I don't know. 

Heath Daly: I guess we're lucky to have either. 

Mason: Yeah, we are lucky to have either. There's something, I miss it when I'm not at the sunrise over in the east. There's something really special about that crack coming over the ocean, but there's something about ... because when I'm over there and when I'm on the land especially, like at may friends Tanya's place, a lot of people would know I'm spoken about Tanya's place on my on personal podcast. It's where I've done retreats before, Tumby Gardens up near Minyon Falls there, you have to ... like she taught me to, you know this is just like the sun would dip behind the mountains and you couldn't, you know, obviously we were not getting that sunshine, but it hadn't really gone down yet, and so she'd just pause every now and then and go, "Feel that? Feel that out breath? That was it. The sun's gone." So it's nice being like really directly connected with that when I'm over here in the west, so I've been enjoying it. 

Heath Daly: I think if I had a choice, I'd rather watch it rise because how you start something determines how you finish it. I'd rather get that perfect start, but I used to do Agni Hotra, which is the Ayurvedic fire ceremony and that was done at sunrise and sunset and they've been doing it for thousands of years because there is a tidal wave of energy, Chi or whatever you want to call it. Life force coming in at sunrise and sunset on the location of the ... you know, because of the curvature of the earth. That's why it's not exactly, as soon as you can see the sun or the sun is going down, it's not exactly at that time. But, yeah man, the more sensitive you become to that, the more you can absorb and feel it, appreciate it. 

Mason: What do say is the benefit of feeling it?

Heath Daly: I think when you can start to feel something, you're starting to integrate it and I think that's a big part of it because we might understand something intellectually, academically. Yeah, that makes sense to me, but that's not real yet. When all your cells resonate, when there's some sort of cohesion there, then you start to feel it. I mean, the energy body, the feeling body, the intuitive body, that is greater intelligence. At the end of the day, do you want to live in the body or do you want to live in the mind? Of course, we want to have integration, but you want to feel good instead of think you're feeling good. So I always want to check into how I'm feeling and I think that's an important thing in life be we somatize stress. 

Heath Daly: And quite often we're running around with tight neck, tight jaw or whatnot and we adapt. We think that's normal, and it's not until we've gone into a body worker or we've actually just done a meditation and we've body scanned and we realize that, wow, I'm actually holding a lot of tension here.

Heath Daly: So, yeah, I think when you can feel things, you're evolving in a beautiful way. Especially when you can feel the presence of other people because that's where we gotta get to. This connected society where we can play with synergy. Where one plus one equals three plus. Where we're getting everyone in a coherent state together. That's in synergistically, that feels amazing. You know, you're a lecturer, you're a speaker, and you know that when you're speaking to a crowd, bigger the better man. When everyone's coherent and they're on the same breath and the same wave and you dip into that pool, the feeling is, well it just forces you into a flow state. 

Mason: You've been in the health scene for how long now?

Heath Daly: Twenty plus years.

Mason: Twenty plus years, rocking out and you've been like deep into herbalism. You went quite big into the food side of things, right, and we've kind of talked about each of us dipping our toe a little bit more on the fanatical side of the health scene and the dietary scene. Kind of obsession with food especially and then started blowing that out and branching that out into a more holistic system. And kind of like we talk about Daoist tonic herbalism a lot here, to what like the type of herbs that SuperFeast's working with. But, you know we've kind of talked a lot about how it's not about the herbs. It's about a philosophy that's around the herb and then it's about even throwing out the term Daoist or any identification with diet and start getting a little bit further down to the nuances of what you're perceiving that's what's going to be beneficial for a general population or generally for your body.

Mason: So you've already hit on some aspects of just like tuning in with nature through that process in the Agni. Is that what it is? Agni.

Heath Daly: Agni Hotra. 

Mason: Agni Hotra, that's right. 

Heath Daly: Fire purification. 

Mason: I think Tahnee spent a bit of time on the Hotra farm as well, so always some fun stories there, but dealing with nature is generally, it's generally ... ooh, we're in a nice curve over there. Hey everybody. 

Mason: It's generally a ... Sorry, for everyone here, the phone's just kind of like tipped over and to a bit of a an angle for everybody watching that. So generally what I'm trying to drive down to here is I really like Daoist philosophy because it just has no agenda, and it's generally about getting ensconced in nature and then seeing that reflection of nature in your body, and then using to get deeper perception so that you can have ongoing balance and that feeling sense that you're talking about. 

Mason: Now, we've talked so much about the fanatical aspects of the health scene, what we want to be moving towards after talking with you is more of like an ongoing long-term conversation or a feeling sense where that feeling your body isn't like a task that you need to do every day, or something that you just do short term and then forget about it. But something that you do ongoingly because that's going to give you the sovereignty around your health, right? 

Mason: So I want to know how did you, first of all, get yourself thinking more long term and start think you've got like more of a life long philosophy on your hands, versus like I'm going to take on these principles and I'm going to be a Daoist or I'm going to be like, whatever. Like I'm going to follow this food philosophy. How did you use those as good stepping stones and then let go of them and move more into like a long term?

Heath Daly: Yeah, I think I just got older. You know, I think when you start getting older, you start looking long term as part of it. But also because I studied in my background, I studied naturopathy, so naturopath and their whole philosophy is holistic based. So we study our place in nature and the holistic model, so we're thinking long term. It's just kind of imbued in the philosophy of natural medicine anyway, and with tonic herbalism and Daoist philosophy and things like that, is that's just the superior way. So the longer you stay in the game, the more you study holistically, you just naturally end up looking at Daoist philosophies, and I hope Daoism and the Daoist ways, well I hope that's one word we don't drop off too quick. I think we should be dropping off a lot of, because it just simply translates into the way. 

Mason: It's kind of like always my, that's it. I'm always so in love with it, I'll tell people I'm a Daoist just because it's got the idea of a religion around it, but I might as well be because there is no deity, there is no religion, there's no, "Well you need to be spiritually developed so that you can see through this god's eyes or experience this god or whatever." It's just broaden your perception to nature and reality, right?

Heath Daly: Really or at least that's the way it's supposed to be, because it's like, it's just the way of nature, and one thing I found after 20 years of studying it, is the more we can just flow with natural ways, the better you feel. Everything just finds it's place, and I studied western herbalism, which was great. I liked it, but it wasn't as powerful as Daoist tonic herbalism because we didn't talk about the superior herbs. We didn't talk about the tonic herbs being super foods really. There isn't any such thing as a super food. Well it's the mushrooms and it's the Daoist tonic herbs because the longer you take them, the more you ingest them, the stronger they become in your body, the stronger you are. There's no side effects. There's no toxins. You know what I mean? So it's something that the longer you take it, the better you're going to feel the more you take it. And they have powerful beneficial qualities about them. 

Heath Daly: I know I was always skeptical about that. You're saying like, how do you ... you know, that feeling stuff. When I was younger I didn't really feel a lot of things, you know what I mean? I was too in my head and it's taken me a long time to be able to relax into a lifestyle, where I can actually feel more things and become more sensitive to reishi, to chaga, and stuff like that. 

Mason: Well I mean that's like I'll jump in there, because I was kind of like, when I started getting into tonic herbs, I said it last night. I did a talk and I was like, I did start with mega dosing of chaga and reishi, right? Like tablespoons a day of each, and I did that for probably like two years with the reishi that I was going at that megadose, maybe one year with the chaga, and then I ended that two years of reishi with a 10-day fast, going hard more and fresh chaga and chaga extracts. That's kind of when I was learning where I was going to be sourcing these for SuperFeast, and I joked. I was just like, "That's not the idea of tonic herbalism, is doing these mega dosing. That's not very sensible. It's a little bit silly. Not that it's a bad thing to do but it's silly long term." 

Mason: It's what the idea is, you're going to be having these herbs ongoingly in small doses over the long term so you can actually get some accumulated benefit, but I was like, that was appropriate for me because I just like, I just needed to feel something. I was like so stupidly in my head and it wasn't like, you know, knock my socks off when I took reishi. Some people have like spiritual awakenings when they get on reishi or their anxiety just cracks when they get on reishi for the first time. They might not stay that way but they might get an experience or a rush of Chi. 

Mason: This wasn't like that for me. It was just like hmm. The research, that data and the history is there. I got a little something for it and now I'll just keep on accumulating. And then over months I was like, holy shit, I can feel my immune system coming back online. Now after two years, spiritually, that sensitive and people go like, "Oh my gosh. What was it? Was it archangel Michael?" And then I'm like, "No, I don't talk ..." when I talk about spirituality, I'm not talking about that stuff. Dude, I'm talking about my virtuous nature coming forth and just getting a little bit of perception and that feeling some purpose and passion excitement coming through again, so I'm with you. 

Heath Daly: You're just simply feeling connected man. 

Mason: Well talk about connected. Yeah, because that's something. I've heard you talk about it and you know it's one of those things I can see that you've got depth to the way you experienced connection as an ongoing philosophy in a conversation, but how does how that play into this whole thing? 

Heath Daly: It's just once again it's another sign or symptom of growing health, and growing wisdom, growing health is this sense of connection, but it's also a commitment to self studies. You soon realize that we're nothing if not part of the grain of fabric. Also, when you study natural medicine, you start to study the effects of loneliness, and that's the beautiful thing about the era we're in now with the information coming through. There's so much research, so many amazing speakers, so many amazing podcasts. You can get so much great information coming on and I've always been fascinated by what effect loneliness has, separation, and I've always been motivated by, know thyself, that sort of Socrates type of mentality. 

Heath Daly: Men, one of the greatest things we can get to is when we realize that we are a super human organism. With the illusion that we're separate. Oh, try and live by yourself with no connection with anyone else and see how that works out for you. You know you, on a hormone level alone, your oxytocin levels drop down. The hugging hormone, you know what I mean? That offsets cortisol. If you want to offset cortisol, the destructive nature of it from stress, try a 15-second hug. Now we've got research for that that is actually like long, meaningful hugs and touch in connection on that level will release enough oxytocin to negate cortisol and things like that. So on every level, the more you start looking for it and seeing it, it's like the connection. The whole idea of the tribe, you know, and Junger's work and a lot of great research coming through now that we are at our best when we're in a group, a family, a tribe where you play a meaningful role. You are a dependent on other people. They need to play their role so you can survive. And this is it.

Heath Daly: And let's extrapolate that whole idea that we are only complete when we're with others, in nature as well. This is why when people, they expect a drug-like effect out of these tonic herbs. Like, yeah, it ain't never gonna be that man. It's not how it works, you know. It's not like you can take reishi now and your shitty life just changes into everything. Nah, you gotta still do the work. You still gotta like have some sort of meditation game. You still gotta exercise. You still gotta have a lifestyle. You still gotta have a Daoist way, you know, which is not just one phase, one angle. It's a lifestyle, but it's a simple lifestyle. 

Heath Daly: Slow it down, you know. Appreciate and then get up and watch the sun, so you do these things but the challenge now is we are in a dopamine addicted society and we've got kids now, this new generation that are growing up, they just need dopamine hits all the time from either sugar, Facebook or the tech or something, and they're addicted to this distractive nature of a dopamine hit, and they're going to miss the gems and the pearls and the golden life, which is found in that presence of being here now, in just a silent state, you know, which allows you to be the observer and then life, you can start to participate again.

Heath Daly: But I don't know how we unwind that one. That's a tricky one. But it starts I guess with everyone feeling that sense of connection, which has to start from the family. You know, you're a new dad. I'm a new dad. We see the value in just priority number one for us is make sure our kids from a young age sense that state of connection and then more importantly, feel. What does it feel like to be connected? You might not be able to find the words to describe it, but there's a feeling that you know and that becomes the foundation for your wisdom. 

Heath Daly: Then there's no greater feeling than belonging and feeling a part of something greater than yourself, and that's spirituality. Now we've got a roadmap. Now we've got a terrain. Now we've got reference points that if you stray too far, well you know what? I always felt good when I was with family that loved me or I had meaning and purpose in my life. I'll come back to that. Now, how are you going to get lost again. That's why your number one thing is your family, you know your tribe. And then a family that drinks reishi together, grows wise together. You know?

Mason: Well, I think as we talk about Shen a lot obviously and talk about the treasures, and we can go a little bit deeper into the Jing Chi Shen concept here, but I like what you're talking about there because there's, of course, when we're talking about toning those three treasures, we're not just talking about taking reishi to tone the Jing, or meditating to tone your Jing, we're talking about all the space between that, because it's not about the shiny things. It's not about like ... 

Mason: I told the story a bunch of times, a friend of mine, he was an Aborigine Shaman here from around the Rock Hampton region, and he was saying like, "You wanna know," he kept taking me outside, he was like, You wanna know the different between," he was taking the piss out of me. He said, "You want to know the different between you white fellas and us black fellas?" And I was like, "All right. Yeah. Come on and tell me." And he's like, "Look up." And he's like, "What do you see?" I'm like, "Beautiful skies and really shiny night. There was like milky way action going on." And he's like, "Yeah, that's the difference. You guys look at the shiny things. We look at the space in between the stars." 

Heath Daly: Amazing.

Mason: And it's something that we have to refer to the shiny things, but then how are going to see was the constellation and the story is unless you look into the space in between the stars. I like looking at the shiny things and the stuff, and the space, but in talking about like, we're going to be turning our Shen or our spirit or all these aspects that you're talking about to have lines for feeling alive, taking reishi, meditating, they're shiny things, and the space in between that is the life that you're living. You know, what fills in the space of all those things that you're doing in your life, and all your passion projects and all your work or whatever it is. It's like that time with your family. How fulfilled you feel with the way that you've set up your little tribe within yourself. 

Mason: So I appreciate you going into that because then there's a lifestyle that has Shen ensconced within it. Not just something that you're toning or working on and trying to bring through, but you're just like sitting and bathing in. It's also not all rainbows and lollipops because that's spiritual. If you're toning your spiritual aspect, and that whether you're cosmically inclined or whether you're just like this earthen, this one life inclined, it doesn't matter. It's your interpretation but that you're bringing forth your highest virtue so you can be, in this instance, a beautiful father connected to your family or just an amazing person, right? That is, you gotta make your bed, right? That's what I like what you're saying there. 

Mason: I wanna connect a couple of things you said. You were talking about knowing yourself. I wanna talk about knowing thyself, right, as a practice to connection or connection being that link or, because I talk about connection, it stays ambiguous for me sometimes, and how do I maintain that connection? I need to root it deep within myself first. Therefore, I need the power within my body to actually ground in that connection, so I need the Jing and the kidney essence and the lifestyle where I'm not exhausted so I can feel it, but connection for me, well it just kind of clicked when you said it, like it's rooted in that inquiry for knowing thyself. That's like, it's an ongoing adaptive force, just that general, like I'm just looking into sharpening my sword little bit by little bit every day, adapting here and there. That keeps me connected on this earth, so I just wanted to thank you for that because that was really nice, that coming through and you articulating it that way. 

Mason: So let's talk about that a little bit because in having a tribe, I said it's not all rainbows and lollipops, of course, when Shen comes through, when you know we've got all of our shit to kind of dig up and our family stuff to dig up and all that kind of good stuff. When people get into this scene and the totalism, I kind of find, especially if you get into a health clique, the tribe you surround yourself with, and this is a bit of a generalization, but it was definitely the case with me. Generally if you surround yourself with a tribe of very agreeable people, yes men and women. Not necessarily, you know it's not the inclination a lot of the time if we're moving away from one aspect of society into another to really surround yourself with people that are really critically in a constructive way challenging you. 

Mason: And I talked about it with the benefit of having a partner, if you're on your own, to have someone that can give you the like, "Whoa, hey, you're going a bit left field with that one. Are you even connected to that message anymore? What's your intention of going there?" And likewise having a tribe that's doing that as well. I want to just talk to you a little bit about that. A little bit more of the finer art of developing a tribe and a lifestyle of connection that allows you to keep on inquiring and continue to, as you said, you've matured and you've grown. Did you do that through ...

Heath Daly: Yeah, I think it begins with you have to have a thirst for it. You can't pretend to want to know and then pretend to be playing the game. It has to be a genuine desire and curiosity to know more, to know what it's about and things like that from an authentic point of view. Then I think as soon as you start to inquire, it begins. Now there's no wrong way. You cannot turn a wrong way because it's always going to lead into a more deeper sense, but I think where it begins for me is studying myself with the five elements. That's with my way. 

Mason: I love that you just said that man. The elements right now, I'm like, are they saving me? That theory to allow me to get perception is giving me so much ground to stand on. Yeah, I want to hear about it from you. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, so I think it really begins by knowing that, okay, illusion number one that we're separate bony posts of flesh. That we're all physical. We're just a fleshy machine. I think a lot of us now realize, like okay, that's kind of an illusion. 

Mason: Even like this was stretching out to being like a bit more electromagnetic, like photon based aspects of our bodies, is that what you mean? 

Heath Daly: There's more going on with mind, body alone. The minds or the spirit or the Shen or whatever, it's not really a hormone or it's not really, you know it's etheric. 

Mason: It's not a neurotransmitter I'd guess.

Heath Daly: No, it's beyond. Beyond the physical. 

Mason: Well, yeah, well I guess there's like, if you're going to have a layer that is extremely physical, and even neurotransmitters are getting electromagnetic and only shows we're electrical beings, but then showing that there is a correlation or like a multi-dimensional element, right?

Heath Daly: Yeah, yeah. Don't be confused with the vehicle or the messenger. What is it, there's something beyond, but for those who meditate, it doesn't take long before you reach that flow state of meditation where you're observing yourself observing and then you start to go deeper, but for me, having a process of five element meditation, I just run through the elements because it's simple. Once again, for me, it's important that it's representing nature because I can see nature work. I can see the mechanics of nature. I can see water puts fire out. You know? I can see that the roots of water push through earth and separate earth. I can see all these elements the mechanics have been working in nature so I can understand them and I know their working myself, and so my process of inquiry is running through each of the five elements and just touching base again, with wood, with the wood element and just touching. My meditation I go on there and I know that the wood is about the new seeds sprouting. It's pushing out, growing, and also knowing a little bit about the meridians and the, you know the ...

Mason: Well, yeah let's go into it, I mean, because we're literally talking about that liver/gallbladder meridian. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, so the liver opens out to the sense organ of the eye, so when I'm going through my meditation and it's, I just felt physical. Like I know that meridian and the wood Chi runs through the sinews and the connective tissue, so straight away with meditation, I just, I mean, why start with wood? Because that is the start of the seed. It's the sprouting. It's the start of the idea. So I touch base with that. Where is my vision? Where am I looking at and then I just run through my body. Is all my connective tissue relaxed? Is my sinews relaxed? Am I motivated? What's my motivation? Have I got that juicy Chi that wants to create and branch out, and I connect with that. 

Heath Daly: Then I go straight away into the next element. Wood goes into fire. So now the fire, the inspiration, the meaning of life. You know, that ...

Mason: That fun, celebration, yeah. 

Heath Daly: What is it that gives my meaning? What is that makes my heart glow? And I touch base with that and I start giving gratitude for that. You get my heart. I breathe into the heart Chi now and I activate that. I touch base with what gives meaning in my life? Because I think as soon as you lose touch with what is meaningful in your life, and that changes. That's why I do this meditation, because it changes all the time. What used to be the answer I gave five years ago, aren't the same ones now. That's a journey going on. I run it through. But long story short, basically I get to know myself as a mix of mind body phenomenon virtues, always touching base with the virtues. The forgiveness. 

Heath Daly: And then when we get to earth Chi, after the fire, we get to the earth Chi and the grounding. Then I make sure, well can I feel the descending nature of and the centering nature of the earth Chi? Feel connected? That is the connection. That's the family. You know, all this type of stuff. 

Mason: Well, on that earth, like that's something like Tahnee alluded to me recently was just like, yes, earth in there that late summer, after the fire, sorry, yeah after like post fire, but then in between as the space holder, between all other transitional elements, transitions between the elements, like when there's like a bit of a gray area, the earth is still going to be there holding that. So it's like that's one way like I bring through that virtue of compassion, bang. Like you know, it's just like, bang, the compassion comes through and I like what you're saying. I'm loving it. I wanna dive more into this because I agree the five elements, for me it was so lofty but now I'm kind of finding it in a very relevant sense of how it's helping me to actually know myself a little bit more. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, it can be very simple. Because with the earth Chi, that's simply grounding. Now we know what the signs coming through now. The grounding is legit. You know it's just simply-

Mason: That's like physically being in contact with the earth. 

Heath Daly: Just touching the earth man, achieving resonance running through you. That 7.48 frequency. Same as the alpha brain frequency. Why are they parallel? Because we are a phenomenon of expression of nature. There's no coincidence that the earth pulses at a human resonance at the same as our alpha frequency in our nervous system. I mean, you know. But the whole thing with the earth is, am I grounded? Am I earthy? That mind state of an earthed out person is just rational thinking and I think we need that. Like you were saying before, with a lot of people that get on the health journey, all of a sudden they pick teams and they pick lofty ideals and they're not earth anymore and they're not real. And then they spin off, man.

Mason: Go on, talk about it. It's like, no, no, the China study. Yeah, but the China study is bad science. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, oh god. We're not attacking you. It's just look at the science, it's just poor science. 

Heath Daly: It's the science was the science but some of the extrapolations they got from that word earth. You know it was irrational.

Mason: Yeah, exactly. What was extrapolated from the science, yeah. 

Heath Daly: It's now, yeah the science was the science. It showed some very interesting things, but then the summaries that came out of that were like, hang on a minute. That's not actually what that showed. 

Mason: I think that's where I think, I mean the poor science coming from a scientist saying, "Here is the science." Like I said, this isn't an attack on anything. This is just I want to draw through this beautiful, grounded, logic womb, because if we're going to get into like cosmology of Daoist tonic herbalism, and going and dancing through the meridians of your body and your organs, and starting to know yourself through perceiving your Chi, you can fly out into the cosmos. You're off. Especially sometimes you're going through and you're meditating and you're dancing and you get in a beautiful way, lost, which I like at times. Getting lost in the story of those elements and the virtues and the archetypes, like in the liver. Like the visionary and the warrior branching out. All the shackles, stretching, checking it off. 

Heath Daly: Always finding a way moving around the block. And you need that. If you're stuck in life, you don't know where to go, and that's liver Chi depression now is locked. It needs the flow. It needs, as you know, liver Chi is smooth flow, smooth flow. So when that gets blocked internally, that's depression, then you know where to go now. It's like, okay, that liver Chi, that five element theory, liver isn't going. So then you can start to do a liver cleanse. You know what I mean? Do a fast. Do it, man do-

Mason: Well that's the logical grounded sense, right? You go like, oh cool, that's a clue. I'm gonna take some practical steps to unblock that or get it flowing again. 

Heath Daly: Yeah. And then if you really know your five element thing you got, okay, so it's blocked in the wood element, then you'd go to the controlling cycle, which is like, what controls wood? Well it's metal. A metal ax will cut through wood and it'll break that up and liberate it, so what's that? Well that's the lung, that's the breath. You know what I mean? So like if your liver's stuck, then you can support that or you can start to control that with breath, and you bring in the metal element, which is like the metal priest. That's the priest. Funny enough, through breathing. For those that have done the breathing, if you slow your breathing down, you slow your mind down, so what's going on there. 

Heath Daly: This is interesting stuff. The virtue of metal Chi is to know what's precious. It's precious minerals, precious element, precious mineral elements coming from the refinement of the earth. The earth turns into metal. The earth is processed and refined into precious metals, and the journey continues from earth being ... earth Chi is all about showing up. Your word means something. You know, you're a loyalist. You are connected to family is everything. You're the salt of the earth type person and show up. 

Mason: Yeah. Integrity. 

Heath Daly: Integrity. And your meekness, which is a word that no one knows, no one talks about. Meekness is an essential virtue of being earth, and it's not weakness. It means you just don't complain about stuff. You can fast and not need to tell everyone about it. You just do it. 

Mason: Does that happen anymore? Wait, wait, you fast and don't put it on Instagram? 

Heath Daly: No. No. What I just do is I just tell everyone that talks about it. 

Mason: What are you talking about? What are you talking about? That's impossible. That's not a fast. 

Heath Daly: That's a fast, I don't tell anyone. I just have good eye out, you know what I mean mate? 

Mason: Dude, you're so meek right now. 

Heath Daly: I'm the meekest. The meekest of the meek. So you know, like breathing and asking what is precious. If you integrate the mind/body stuff, the virtue with the physicality of it, while you're doing your breathing exercise, if you hold your breath long enough, that answer is very clear. What is precious right now? Oxygen. The next breath. You simplify that, but for those that still their mind through breathing, you start to realize that, oh, wow, to be able to have the priestly vision and know what is precious in the moment, slow your breathing right down. 

Heath Daly: If you're stressed out and your mind is flicking around, I can guarantee your breathing is now not controlled. It's breathing or you're holding your breath. It's not slow man. 

Mason: Yeah. Canine breathing. 

Heath Daly: It's all there, so knowing yourself through breath now. Then moving into metal turns into water, and the water element, which is the stillness, but as the Daoist say, "It's the most powerful element, water." That yen power. 

Mason: The sage, the sage. The wise old sage just like ... 

Heath Daly: Most powerful. 

Mason: Yeah. 

Heath Daly: And for western herbs where I came from, that's you know, it's the kidney adrenal access, that's all the adaptogens, that's all the stress response, stress response, stress response, all the adrenal stuff. But the water element teaches us to always find that stillness, that calmness amongst the craziness. That's how adaptions work. They allow us to maintain a stressful situation and not blow the immune system up, not blow the nervous system up, but just stay calm, stay cool. So then know thyself. How do we know thyself? Well get to know water man. Just meditate on water. Being in water. Drink water consciously, do everything, but how about have a cold shower and then just focus on the water element. What is its nature. Okay, cold water would drive your energy in and down deep, you know? It's amazingly powerful. So we can start to have these practical experiences with the elements and you just start to collect more information, more information, you know? 

Mason: Get to know thyself a little bit more. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, through nature. Through nature. Not through book reading. Not through, like if you want to know earth element, then fast. As best you can for one day, two days, three days. Go with no food. Because the earth element is about the digestive stuff too. It's about the stomach, the spleen, digestive elements. The enemy of the earth Chi is sugar. Overly processed foods and things like that. Blood sugar problems and all this other stuff, whereas the strengthening aspects, moderate eating, bland type foods in a sense, but if you want the virtue, then you fast and then you learn the power of meekness and groundedness and just appreciation. 

Mason: A lot like that empathy and compassion without the excess, right? That excess of over giving of themselves and becoming a martyr, right? Just like the mom typical archetype of like an earth type body, right? 

Heath Daly: Yeah, mother earth. 

Mason: You're right, the earth element. But even for someone like over-giving, giving, giving, giving to the point they're tapped out and they're tapped out and they'll keep on giving, giving, giving. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, that's a weak earth energy as well. As we say, it's yin or yang. There's excess or there's deficiency. And that's another complicating factor, that in the western mechanistic philosophy doesn't account for, is that it can, the same element there can be too much or not enough. So there's this balancing yin-yang balancing of all elements and that's why you can seemingly have opposites in the same element. 

Mason: Yeah, I like to call it, like I mean I like the Woolsley approach to the elements, which Charles Moss has got that book. I've been banging on about it and everyone get it, Power Of the Five Elements, but good book like laying out. He kind of talks about it being like adapted or nonadapted elements, which has more of a continuous nature about it rather than, you know which is something like we've already talked about, is like excess and deficiency or balance. It's still very stagnant and it's very practical from a traditional Chinese mind for them to be at, or clinically it's very practical but not when you're talking about two decades, but even adapted and nonadapted, all the adapted Chi. 

Mason: Because that's what we're talking about here generally guys, is vital energy, or Chi, moving practically through a chain in the body or a meridian in the body and through the physical organ as well, right? Then the way that it moves, if it is adapted, or how I like to say, if it remembers the song and dance or if it's in rhythm with the song and dance of the body at that current time, then you're going to experience a free flow and a smooth flow of Chi and that gives rise to what we're talking about in terms of those more like noble attributes, being like patience and forgiveness coming through the liver when it's a nice free flow of Chi. 

Mason: Again, it's a very practical thing. The wood is just a story so you can get an external reflection of what's going on internally, ideally something that you can perceive. If you've got those blockages or if you're tense in through the meridian itself, or tense within the actual physical organ tissue around your fascia, you're not going to get a smooth dance of Chi, and therefore the experience of that unadapted, out of step, out of rhythm Chi is going to be the rise of the resentment in the liver's meridian case, so the anger and that frustration. There's something really sweet about this journey to, like you with the five elements, five elements. We're talking about these different things and then you can let it go and you just left with your body. 

Heath Daly: And it's like, what's the practical about it and things like this? If people do read that book, Moss' book, which is great, it's a really good book ...

Mason: I think we spoke about it last time I was here, that's why it was ...

Heath Daly: Right. There you go, there you go. It's more information that we can have because if you're in someone's presence and they just make you feel uncomfortable, you don't particularly like being around them, there's information coming through there and you're going get a trace it back to an excess, or deficiency, or block in one of the elements and one of the flow points because it's not flowing. If it's not flowing, it's a block. That's never a good thing. That's the very, because it can seem esoteric or why the mind/body thing. If you study the virtues and the five elements, then you're going to be able to trace back one of these energetic mentor psychological blocks, you're know how to remedy it and then it starts the flow. 

Heath Daly: Let's keep it practical. Say you have an arrogance problem or whatever and you just can't forgive people, that energy is reverberating out. People can sense that. They might not be able to verbalize. They might not even be conscious of it, but they will feel it and they won't want to be around you, they won't want to work with you. It's a problem. There's a problem now with connection. If this group is not connecting and then we can't experience the magic, so as soon as that person learns to forgive, their energy flows again and then that has impact on the physicality. People's liver starts to work better. You know, it does. It's bidirectional. 

Heath Daly: But then the reason I love the five elements is because it's never that simple. Just you've got to learn to forgive everyone. Yeah, well you try it man. Sometimes it's really hard to forgive, and sometimes there's more invested for you not to not forgive because it's giving you somehow more energy, until you get to another element where you like, let's go back to earth. Humility, be humble. There's power in that. That's the salt of the earth person that shows up, the person that you want in your tribe. If you say we're all meeting here tomorrow because we're going to build a fence because we have to, and only the people with strong earth energy show up, you know, and then you start to really respect that energy, and you realize, that wow, there's a humility here and then you start to model that and you start to see the power in humility. 

Heath Daly: Then you can back up to the liver warrior flurry yang impressive energy, and then taking that earth Chi, now have the power really to forgive, because you realize that all the problems in my life come in because I just am arrogant. I just can't forgive people because I think I'm that good. And if I don't learn to practice humility and allow that Chi, very real energy to flow through me, I'm just going to have a shitty life man. It's going to always not end well. It might seem like it's going well, but it's always going to end badly. And then all of a sudden, so that's how we can work it. Everyone's different, but like you bring humility in, "Oh, now I can forgive. Now I've liberated my liver Chi because of earth Chi." You know what I mean? 

Mason: Then you can start practicing all over months, because then it's like ...

Heath Daly: It takes years brother. It takes years.

Mason: Well, I think that's a nice, like you know there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow here. Which is beautiful, which is a beautiful thing. It's very practical. You get like a big pop on the inside about how you're such an asshole, and you're pushing everyone away and how your resentment is holding you down, and you got sick of your own shit and you've basically hit a pain threshold, which ideally you don't want to hit the pain threshold, especially as you're growing up. I know I've had to experience the pain threshold a bunch of times, so then I had the indologenous incentive to go and get on the front foot when it comes to these things and bringing the virtues forth and knowing my organs and knowing my flow of Chi. 

Mason: But once I get like a bit pop or an insight, for me, I was lucky enough, like Tahnee is like really hot on identifying what the dominant element is. Well especially with me because she lives with me, and I was like "I'm wood, I'm wood, I'm wood," and she's like, "No, I'm sorry babe, you are fire. You are hot. You are fire babe." 

Heath Daly: You consume, because you are fire. 

Mason: And that wasn't just intuitive. There's practical things in terms of the scent coming off the person, the color of the person and then the temperament as well, and it just basically means like where there's a high accumulation of Chi within the area, which is a bit of a king pin or a queen pin where you can focus on that flow of Chi through that organ, and it will often be like a releasing, like a dam of Chi through the rest of the body, and for me that was definitely the heart and the heart organ system and that fire system, and that was useful for me to get that pop. But then it's been six months of consistent, daily reflection. And it's not like, I'm not a wood type. I'm not super organized and like, oh, pop, there we go. It's 3 o'clock. It's time for me to do my element meditation. Here we go Mason. Sit down buddy. 

Mason: It's like, no. I'm like it will just throughout the day I'll just, oh okay, it's that classic like, just watch yourself. I've got that little bit of space. I'm able to watch myself. But it was kind of juice and practical for me. It wasn't just watching myself for the sake of watching myself, because I know that's what spiritual people do and Daoists do, they watch themselves. I'm like, where am I going with this? I'm like, I'm going to the place where I don't get lost in may excitedness and my fun, or then when I get blocked in my heart because I'm super susceptible, right? To people judging me, and I'll guard myself with the membrane of my heart, you know, with that pericardium, it's so, and this is like for a lot of fire elements and fire element in general, and then summer. I'm super scared of criticism, so I'll shut off from not being joy anymore to just being out of adaption and being just the lack of joy. Not being sad ... 

Heath Daly: Yeah, you're shielded and now you're ... 

Mason: Just flat. And it's like, okay, cool. Let's start taking lots and lots and lots of little steps just making sure that the pendulum doesn't swing between heaps of joy and then no joy, so that I can have this beautiful appropriate amount of fun and excitement and joy that's actually contributing to my life and the people around me. 

Heath Daly: Yeah. And that's why the Five Element Theory is great technology, the Daoist techno thing. 

Mason: Technology boom. 

Heath Daly: It is the technology because it's like, when you can learn the language, that's why I try to encourage people to learn the language of the five elements because it's a language that we can use. If it's not useful, why do it? So then, okay we've got a lot of fire, a lot a heart and then we're starting to shield the heart and now that hate is getting out of control. So then this technology, it's like okay, so what is going to control that burning, burning, burning? Well just look to nature man. What puts out fire? It's water. So then the co-cycle or the controlling cycle within the five element cycle, water controls fire. So then you go to the water element. Okay, I'm not focusing on the hot spot. I'm actually now focusing on the water to put out the hot spot. So then when we immerse ourselves in the nature of water. What is it? And then straight away, what's the sense organ? You know, and that's when I sit in meditation of the water, it opens out to the ears. So it's listening. Ah, and it's yin, of course. Fire, yang. Water, yin. 

Heath Daly: Okay, so now we sit in meditation and we meditate on the water, the stillness, the virtues of water, and then we just keep that going and listening. So for me when I get to the water element of my meditation, that's when I just listen. I'm sitting, and I'll listen to birds. I can hear a hum, and I just enter through the ears now, and I just experience life through that listening. Then all of a sudden you start to realize, ah, this is very feminine, this is very yin. It's receptive. It's just allowing things in. For those of us that are very yang, it's always out, out, out, explosion, flick of fire, and then that's what will soften the fire is by actually putting more attention on the water and the listening and the meditations. 

Heath Daly: Then what happens, what I've found all the time, especially if you're taking the little helpers we've got, you know, the tonic herbs and all that sort of stuff, bringing Shen in, you start to hear. 

Mason: Let's get to that in a second. 

Heath Daly: Someone's talking man. Well that's the thing. What's now the technology from the reishi and stuff like that? There's information stored in these herbs man. It does get metaphysical and I'm always hesitant to go there because I don't want to sound dippy, hippy, whatever, but man, when you play with the stuff and you sit with it, there is stuff going on, and you have to be able to be open and listen. There's got to be enough silence in you to be able to hear it, the internal dialogue. 

Heath Daly: My experiences when I do the water meditation and get to the element, I just start to listen, listen, listen and after five or 10 minutes, I start to hear real information. Not just the shit rebounding inside my head. And it'll be like wisdom man and it's very discernible and it's like, wow, I need to do this. I need to be like that and it's like a flicker of inspiration, there's the sign that is from higher ground. There's got to be some sort of like, oh, wow, there's a flicker, and you're away. Once again, because I'm not a listener, like most guys, we don't listen man, we do. And like, "Okay, see how that works for you." If you're going to live a life where you don't monitor yourself, manage yourself and know that one of the most important elements is the water element, which the virtue is being receptive and receiving ...

Heath Daly: Because I always found it interesting like the Daoists take on the water element is that's where your power is. Your power is in the water. But when you look at the water, you must receive. So it's like we've always got power but can you receive the power? That's what I learned from the water thing, it's like it's all there but are you open to the power or are you so closed off? Is your cup so full that I can't pour anything into it? It's just overflowing. You've got to empty. You know what I mean? So this is an interesting concept that once again, know thyself by looking at yourself in five elements and that's it. Because it gets too complicated I think. But one element is not enough. It's not that simple. I think the five is perfect. And these forest Shamans, these wise Shamans that were in the forest working it out, they created Daoism and I think they nailed it. I really do. 

Mason: I do as well. I think it's really useful. It's a useful tool. I kind of like what you were talking about there. You kind of feel like you're somewhere of a conductor and you've got like the fire element on the drums, the water, kidneys maybe, I don't know, on the harp or something like that. 

Heath Daly: Sounds pretty sweet. 

Mason: And someone like, and you were just kind of, I was just sitting there and going, well that would be nice little meditation for me to sit into the water and actually feel that line. Again, this isn't, we're hoping this doesn't come off on like, okay, textbook, kidneys associated with the water and their associated with the hearing sense. If you go in any five element book, you have to because it's a book, have like the classifications, the color is black, this is the smell, it's salty, these are the associations, it's this time of day, and that stuff is very relevant but it's kind of like, it gets the cerebral and it just like, I don't know, I see it and I go blah, I don't know.

Heath Daly: Well it's not relevant man. People you want, knowing what direction things are coming from, knowing what's ... you might get some value metaphorically, but it's like, "I don't know man, like there's not juicy, it's yeah."

Mason: There's got to be relevance. It's got to ground in somewhere, and what you were just talking about there, keeps it dynamic for me. If I'm going to sit down and do that meditation, because at the moment my inner symphony, if I've got each of the organs and elements on an instrument, I'm kind of like, a lot of the time it's like leading on the drums Phil Collins style, you know? So sometimes for me to sit down, and that just gets excessive. If that's going to be the tune of my body, the body does know how to naturally bring itself back into rhythm if you have enough space, but not if you're only just giving it space. You need to at least have a foot involved in getting in there and consciously bringing yourself into balance as well, and that is scary for me when I get present to that sometimes, because it's just a gargantuan responsibility. But at the same time, feeling that responsibility of the sovereignty of the control of my own body and taking that on and just very gently learning little bits and pieces as I go along, gently just learning little meditations as I go along. 

Mason: I get that it's easy just to ignore it because the responsibility is too big to actually be in control, rather than just like, nah, whatever, I'm just going to stay in may head and not have anything to do with it, and realizing like there's an orchestra there. And if I just give a little bit of space and time to that stillness of that kidney physical organ even, you know. That's like for me, because I can't get connected to etheric meditations necessarily too often. But connecting to an organ and just sitting there and just sensing space of perception around a line, or around a meridian, that's relevant. And then to feel, that gives some space for the heart to kind of find its place, and then eventually, ideally all those instruments or aspects of the orchestra being in harmony and playing together, you are looking at such a rad preventative and longevity lifestyle, without that even being the intention, right?

Heath Daly: Now, and like I said, I've been studying it for 20+ years, everything to do with holistic medicine, everything from the fasting, the meditation, the microbiome. Every new paradigm shift we have, it's like, wow, I'm all in and I learn about it, and I can safely say, there's none of it doesn't find a place in the five elements. You know what I mean? So why not use it as a template to summarize everything because what we need for optimum health and wellbeing is a sense of purpose, a drive, goals, you know, because if you don't, we can find that research to say, well that does ... everyone knows that as soon as you retire, your life expectancy drops for those who haven't a goal. So simply a reason to live is huge. Purpose. Laughter. Joy. Okay, all the fire and stuff like that. 

Heath Daly: Then we go into, now the longevity studies, we know that there are periods that we need to fast. We know that part of being a healthy human is the ability to do little fasts, maybe once a year or twice a year, whatever, but that's it. That earth element and stuff like that. Breathing exercises. 

Mason: Sorry, but just as you said, there's an appropriateness, realizing though people get obsessed with fasting for example, but realizing that, yes, you do have an earth element and it does like a break every now and then, but if you're at a point where you're needing to nourish your water element or if you're in the middle of winter, it's maybe not an appropriate time to do it, right? 

Heath Daly: Balance. There's multiple things that we need to account for when we're making decisions and why we're doing it in the first place.

Mason: That's always a nice one. 

Heath Daly: But we learn by making mistakes. That's why there's no shame in like, mucking it up. 

Mason: Well, I mean that's half the fun of it. I know we've talked about our muck ups and our obsessions quite often, know what I mean? Sometimes I wonder why I talk about my obsessions. I like reflecting on my lessons in these kinds of conversations I guess. I'm such in a place of, I'm kind of coming out of a big reconciling time I think and that's why I like bringing up those times, when it's been a little bit fanatical for me, and also reflecting on the nature of that aspect of the health scene. 

Heath Daly: Life is, it's a game of smoke and mirrors man, you know what I mean? And that's why. We've gotta keep looking at ourselves and learning the role the mind plays and the heart and everything, because there's illusions everywhere man, and we're generating them. It's not as if truth changes. It's our perception of it's changing. Luckily as we grow and we accumulate wisdom from learning from errors, our vision becomes stronger. But it's not rocket science. There's not one good, look at Jobs. He gets to the end of his life with trillions of dollars or whatever, realizing that he mucked it up, you know, because he's got no friends. He's dying and there's no one around him. No one cares, and he can't take his money. 

Heath Daly: So it's not as if it's rocket science. It should have been at some point in his life where he realized, why am I so driven? Am I surrounded by people that love me, that I love them? What does that feel like? There should have been all these Daoist elements that should have been telling him, "I'm off course here man. I'm pushing way too hard. I'm too aggressive. I'm leaving a wake of upset people around me, so what's going on?" 

Mason: It comes back to come back to the whole tribe thing. Have a tribe that you actually respect enough to talk to and they show that you're going into a little bit of excess, which is, if you tune into your inner tribe, which is your organs, your major organs and the minor organs or the yang organs, you're going to learn when there's a little bit of excess of the general of the liver that loves being in control, for example. 

Heath Daly: Dude. And where as a culture, where we're falling out earth. If I had to pick one element that we should all be focusing on, it's just simply earth Chi, with the virtue and all that type of thing, and the humility is the most important thing now. Making a study of humility is the best thing we can do as a culture right now because we've got none of it, man. And we've got science and technology just snowballing out of control and we've got no humility to keep the reins on that thing. Case in point, with the nonnative electromagnetic frequencies, we're about to put satellites up in the ionosphere to beam down microwave so we can have the Internet of Things. 

Heath Daly: Where's the wisdom? Where's the earth Chi? Where's that rational thinking that's going to ask the question, is that going to have any impact on the ionosphere and on the natural electromagnetic frequencies that we are so dependent upon? No. You know, so there's completely ungrounded decisions being made here, not keeping in check the flashy ideas, and man, that could be the end of us. You know what I mean? I'm not a fatalist but this is why it's so important to do the practice because, what, are we going to complain about other people? No. We are a super organism. No one cell is more or less important than that greater whole body, so just as an individual, do the work. Ask yourself the question. It takes five seconds. Am I practicing humility? Am I practicing passion? Whatever. I think we need to do that because that bleeds out to everyone around us. 

Heath Daly: When you meet somewhere that has humility but strength also, passion, a sense of purpose, a sense of joy, they are powerful people but they laugh and they're smiling. When they're balanced, the feeling of being around that person is magnetic, and that's the key to health. It's magnetic. Nothing is forced. Why do I take your mushrooms and your stuff every day, because it's magnetic for me now. I get up and put all this stuff in my hot drinks because it just does it. It does me more than I do it now. Now, that's like, yep, take that one off, because now that's integrated into my lifestyle and it becomes me. It defines me. I don't have to force myself. I don't have to instagram that I'm doing mushroom coffee right now. I don't need to prove it to anyone. It just is what it is. 

Mason: Yet it still happens. 

Heath Daly: Yeah. And it happens now authentically and now it happens in a positive way. That's another thing man, about positive and negative. All these things are very simple but we've got to keep in touch with that as the Daoist way. But a big thing of it is, is the tonic herbs and the mushrooms. They definitely help. 

Mason: Well let's talk about them and five elements. 

Heath Daly: Yeah. So if we start with the wood, okay, so every element has a taste that energetically nourishes that, so all of these ones, they're almost all bitter and so forth, but let's talk about just the one. Let's give people one for each one. Like for me, on the huge Schizandra fan, so if it's only one thing you do for the liver, you're not into taking stuff exactly. 

Mason: Bring up Schizandra / Schisandra and then Kombucha Ginger, yeah.

Heath Daly: Yeah, you got Schizandra. 

Mason: Again the Gypsy Elixir's Five Berry Buch, Goji, Inca, Hawthorne, Schizandra, and Blueberry. 

Heath Daly: Definitely. Schizandra is a tonic herb. What does that mean? A tonic means you can take it every day of your life. It's not going to have side effects. It's not going to hurt you, and that's one of the stipulations for these ancients to call it a tonic herb. It had to be centuries, not just 10 years, but it had to be a couple of hundred years of proven efficacy and safety, because it was all of the emperors. As you know, it was back in the day man. It was only really the emperor taking this stuff. He had to shag 20 concubines a day, so this and that. So he employed the best medical people, Shamans, herbalists to keep him, and they found out. Anyway, so Schizandra has amazing liver tonifying effects, and it's ... I was going to say tridoshic ... but it's that's really, it's probably-

Mason: It's probably appropriate. Probably appropriate. 

Heath Daly: Probably is. So liver chi, wood chi, I would just use Schizandra. It's got a little bit of Shen action in there, so it's going to help with the vision. 

Mason: Yeah, it's just very calming for the mind. We can talk about Schizandra being like that quintessential. It's very calming of the mind, does a lot for the gene, however, it does have a focus. It's entering all the five organs and all the five elements. It's generally the one that people say if you have to take one most Daoist Shamans, we'll say, I'd take Schizandra as a practical answer, but at the same time, you can use it with an extreme focus on the liver and wood element right? 

Heath Daly: Yeah. It'll do it. It'll take a little bit longer because it's a tonic. It's not a medicine. It's not a drug or anything like that. But that's what we're talking about, that tonic herbs are ones you take every day. You just keep them going. Reishi, another one with bonafide, validated liver effects. Beautiful stuff. 

Mason: All right. I was just getting our little video sorted for everyone there, so that's why I was away from the microphone for a second guys. 

Heath Daly: Now we're rocking back the other way. I feel like we're on a cruise ship. 

Mason: I know. This is just like, we're just surrounded by pipes. We've got our podcast pipe, we've got our Instagram pipe. You were talking about reishi there. Okay, we're talking about the wood element. So, we're talking about herbs that can get in there and we've talked a lot about turning Jing Chi Shen just on this show already and people following SuperFeast and myself, and people who have been following you out here on the west coast, you know, you've been doing workshops like endlessly for years now talking about tonic herbal philosophy, and I know that we're going to be doing a workshop tomorrow. 

Mason: We're going to be going into Jing Chi Shen and those treasures, but we don't get to talk about too much how they tone the element to flow of Chi, and for me, it's kind of why I feel in a workshop directly, it's why I kind of wanted to do this project so I can go deeper into these kinds of concepts, but it's why Chi kind of feels like I'm just skirting over it a little bit when I talk about it, because I don't get into the breakdown of those five elements. And, yes, within the five elements we can talk about there being Jing within the organ itself and the Chi and then Shen. In the liver's instance, the hun spirit. The Shen of that liver that brings through the divinity of that entire organ system and the virtues from heaven of that organ system. Heaven just being formless matter in this instance. 

Mason: But then we really want to focus in on Chi and on the elements. Say the wood element, you want to be focusing in on the flow of Chi through the body and the transformation of that Chi and the emotions that it give rise to, and it's kind of something where I'm excited about where SuperFeast is going, because there's so much focus around just smashing out adaptogens right and just taking adaptogens for anything and everything. It's like, you've got financial problems? Take adaptogens. That'll help you out baby. But when you start looking at what you were saying, you know we've got a big job here to do and we've actually got a life long practice here to get in, do work, become awesome humans so that we can contribute to the general beautiful evolutionary direction just about ourselves or our family, right? 

Mason: If you are going to be taking herbs, why not take herbs that are potent and have been used and have the intention to support the transformation of that Chi so we can bring through our emotional virtues, right? People don't associate with it too much and it's a lofty one in a sense and it's one that I don't like just talking about it in workshops because it can very quickly fall without context in like what we've brought here, carrot in front of the donkey, in terms of take Schizandra if your angry and that will transform anger into patience and forgiveness, which, of course, it's one piece of the pie. 

Heath Daly: Yeah. Its doesn't kind of work like that. What is important for people to know is that, and this is coming from someone that's studied the game for 20 years, is okay, there's several thousand herbs out there that have medicinal properties, right? But there's only 50 that are considered superior tonic herbs. Tonic herbs mean that their nonspecific. They just build and nourish health and vitality, and then if you have a belief system that it's health and vitality in the body with its own intelligence that knows how to heal, then that's your positive focus. You don't need to focus on the disease to remove the disease, because then simply by the focus on the negative, to some extent, you're nourishing the negative. 

Heath Daly: That's why I love the Daoist approach. I love tonic herbalism approach, because it's like, no, no, no. How about we have faith and we just focus on the body healing? Let's just focus on health. Let's focus on the tonic herbs. So of those 50, there's only really 10 that you need to get and of that, most of us boil it down to three or so, like that. 

Mason: Yeah. Like ongoing longterm tonic friends. 

Heath Daly: Yeah. Why have number 10 or number 20. Why not have number one, two, three, four. You know what I mean? Obviously then determined by your, by individuality. You're going to pick and choose and then energetically I feel, nah, I feel better on this one, fantastic. 

Mason: That's a good point. 

Heath Daly: But this is the approach now and it's focusing on that health, and then for me, my journey has led me to the mushrooms. I'm just in awe of mushrooms. The more I study mushrooms, the more they spin me out. The thing that people can feel safe about with mushrooms is, okay it's got all the intelligence of the plant world, right? Everything that plants do, and they take all the best things about the environment and they condense it into a form that we can ingest now and then we can integrate. But they do that, but they're more like an animal than they are a plant. So the mushroom, the mycelium, has more in common with an animal than it does with a plant, but it's kind of like a plant, but it's ... And so to me it makes sense. The kings are the mushrooms. They've got the most information technology and they're more like us than plants are, so for me, that's where my journey's ended. It's like okay, these, this is where I study now. 

Heath Daly: And I've seen the results with mushrooms as well, and now I'm seeing all the research just avalanching in from the west confirming how powerful mushrooms are on every level, because once again, these tonics, they're not so much medicines. They are foods. They have a food-like ability in the body but they have concentrated compounds that aren't anywhere else. Like the polysaccharides in mushrooms. The beta glucans, we have receptors for those things that only these mushroom molecules tweak and turn on. We're designed to eat these things. There's no doubt about it. So there's certain lock and key pathways in the body that are only opened through the mushrooms. This tells us something man. You should be excited by that. You should be like, "Oh my God, I'm on the right path here. You know what I mean? 

Mason: Yeah, we're coming home baby. 

Heath Daly: And so totally elementic, oh great, so you start to narrow in. On a food level, they're a resistant starch that feed the microbiome. Oh, I get it. So their feeding the microbiome, that microbial colony that outnumbers my human cells in the gut and then informing, educating, it's just all there man. Mushrooms are key for me now. 

Mason: That's cool man. 

Heath Daly: I think, if nothing else, you can focus on these guys. Take chaga. Take reishi. Get these mushrooms in. Because it's about the long game man. It's about prevention. Preventative medicine. And there is no better way on a physical level with something that you would ingest than the mushrooms for longevity, which is my humble opinion. They're amazing for what they can do. 

Mason: In terms of the ongoing inquiry of yourself, an inquiry that you use the tool of the five elements in order to get in and know yourself a little bit deeper, what intention do you have around tonic herbs and medicinal mushrooms when you're taking it? Is that a direct thing that's effecting that flow of Chi or is it more so making sure your body is rocking and healthy in a longevity sense, so that you don't have symptoms or suppressed immune system, so that you're safe to go and inquire. 

Heath Daly: It's just simply nourishment. What is the most nourishing things I can ingest in my body. Because food is inflammatory by nature. Digestion is inflammatory by nature so that tells you to be careful of how much you eat and what you eat, because there's a deal being made. Okay, we're getting this nutrient stuff in that we need to rebuild, to nourish and replenish the system, but that's going to come with a bit of a skirmish battle. There's going to be inflammation created there. There's going to be a lot of your metabolic energy going to go into digestion as well. There's a lot of energy used, digestive energy. 

Heath Daly: So you've got to be conscious about what you eat and when you eat, so then for me, that's what it comes down to. So I'm going to be selective of what I eat, and I'm going to make sure I ingest the best things that nourish my body, and when you're in the game for a long time, you realize that, yeah, I want to nourish my tissues, but it's nourishing the glands. You want to nourish the glands. That's when it becomes a hormonal game. That's were the food is medicine stuff comes in and then the king of that is the mushrooms. So that's why it was a very easy decision to spend my money and a lot of my time and effort into, okay, I want these mushrooms get in because they do give you the most for your time. And that's it. It is about the hormones, man and the glandular system. That's why I like to talk about the adaptogens and all that, that's all hormonal stuff. That's all hormonal. 

Mason: And the adaptogens and stuff, it's like, it's fun but I want to take that off of the pedestal as much as possible because like, yes, all tonics, or least this is generally, all tonics are adaptogens but not all adaptogens are tonics. 

Heath Daly: Yes. That's true. That's true. Because and by to explain that is because a tonic you can take all the time indefinitely, and it just grows in strength for you and stuff like that. It's not over stimulating. It's whatever. So, yeah, that's where it's at man. And, once again, why did I want to strike up a relationship with you, because you're doing it so well man. 

Heath Daly: Just because we're talking mushrooms now, "Oh, I'm gonna get mushrooms. Oh I might gonna get that one because it's the cheapest one or whatever." No, because you can get the wrong type compounded the wrong way. There's no effect. No effect. You're wasting your time. And there some really high quality brands. I'm a naturopath so I know there's some high end companies with a great reputation now jumping into the mushrooms game. And it's like, what? Look at all these fillers in there. It's orange. Then they flavor it with this or that. It's like, okay. Something is wrong here man. And then they fractionate it. 

Heath Daly: That's what happens in the west. Like turkey tail. One of the most studied mushrooms around for the immunity. Amazing. In Japan, they actually say it's an anti-cancer medicine, right? In the west, no, we don't, why? Because they can't find the one active ingredient that's doing the work. Because in the west we're very reductionistic. We're very mechanistic. I wanna find the one chemical that's doing the work. 

Mason: You know what the funny thing is there, they have identified the two and they still won't say because they can't patent the PSK and the PSP. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, but even that. There's the synergy man. 

Mason: Well of course it's not going to work. Like ongoingly.

Heath Daly: It's this packaged thing that's happened over the millennia that has created this. It's a compound effect. So I think it's very important that we just start to realize, forget the silver bullet man and just start taking this. It's about prevention. When it's broken, it's broken man. And if it's broken because we've been violating nature's laws for 20 years, you might just have to pay the piper man and try and learn from it, and just hope that when you pass on through it keeps on going and you can take what you learn here going through, which I think got us down, but it's a proven of the game. 

Heath Daly: Especially, like we just finished a workshop on menopause and I looked out and we had like 40 people there and everyone was like 40+ and I was like, God, I wish we had 25 year old girls here. I wish we had 30 year old girls or something because that's a preventative measure there. Because if you're living a stressful life, there's something called the pregnenolone steal, where you're starting to deplete your kidney adrenal access of pregnenolone to make so much cortisone, because you're always low level stress and you need to make this cortisone, this stress hormones. Twenty years of that, 10-15 years of that, you end of depleted, and then when it comes time for those kidneys to take over into the change, there's none left. There's no pregnenolone left to make enough progesterone to make enough estrogen. It's a depleted system now, whereas if you were taking the mushrooms all the way through nourishing the Jing. Now we're talking Jing. So if there was in the west an appreciation of the concept of Jing and nourishing that kidney essence and the juiciness and the hormonal system, it would have never happened. 

Mason: And talking about menopause and just talking about the fact that, all right, we've got 40 women here who are either looking-

Heath Daly: Or in menopause. You know, it's like-

Mason: ... I mean looking down the barrel of it or they've been stung by some symptoms, and power to them that they've had the balls to actually go and get, like have the fallopian tubes to actually get in there and learn a little stuff about it, but like you said, why aren't there 25 year olds there. I kind of, I sympathize because when I was 25, I wouldn't have been there, but at the same time, this is where I feel it's very important for us to acknowledge that we're creating a longterm culture for ourself, not just trying to get short term gains. 

Mason: What does that mean? We are not trying to overcome symptoms anymore, but we are kind of preparing ourselves wherever we are in our lives, no matter what age we are, to be able to bring back that folksy remedy and knowledge, like for instance, when we do a men's health podcast. I'm like, are you a 25-year-old woman? Absolutely this is relevant to you and you should be listening to this. You might have a son. What if you have a son? What about your husband in the future? Where you want that culture where you're not the practitioner but you might have a little bit of insight and knowledge when you're sitting around the breakfast table, and you're talking about some little things that you noticed and you can go, oh, you know, I might have some clues about what's going on here. I might be able to contribute. Maybe we should bring this herb into the fold. Maybe you should go get this tested, because you have that knowledge in there, you become, no matter who you are, you become an old wise ducky in that sense. 

Mason: Now the other thing that I wanted to talk about in menopause is, I didn't realize how severe it got man. I've talked to, you know at this point it's probably hundreds of women, and of course men going through andropause as well, but especially hundreds of women going through menopause who have been so depleted and going through incredible symptoms and very much having a disturbed life because of them, and that's largely why, one of the biggest reasons I brought Jing herbs into the fold, kind of somewhat in a clinical sense, or in me kind of being like a market practitioner, as I was, is contributing to alleviating those. That's why I brought deer antler into fold, because for some women it just wouldn't break and about 5% of the time I needed an animal herb like deer antler in order to bring that back. 

Mason: But my last two were up in the Sunny coast and I did a talk at Organica in Newserville, and I had two women come up to me afterwards and she was already kind of a little tearing in and I was like, "Oh my gosh, did I say something?" And that woman was just like, "Mason, I got to tell you, three weeks ago I kind of came across this stuff. My symptoms for menopause were so extreme, I can't tell you how excruciating it was for me living with them, and I just want to explain to you so you get the significance. There are so many older women who are getting to the point of being suicidal." I don't whether it's actually happening or whether there's statistics on that. Maybe that's going to start emerging a little bit and come more of a significant issue. But she was like, "The amount of women are getting to the point of suicidal thoughts because their symptoms are so bad." And she's like, and this isn't an advertisement for Jing. It doesn't always work like this, and I just want to be clear on that everybody. 

Mason: She's like, "I got onto your Jing three weeks ago. In five days, I had 50% improvement." And she's like, "I don't know what these herbs are. I had just someone randomly recommend it. I felt something of relevance. I will try that." She acknowledged that it didn't feel like another treatment or a drug or something to fix her. It felt more like a functional food, something that you include. 

Mason: Then after the talk she was like, "What I really appreciated is understanding." I'm just talking about because you can branch out, whoever is listening, make this relevant to you and your life and the way you perceive these things. She was like, "After the talk, I realized I don't owe all the credit to the Jing but I'm starting to owe the credit or acknowledging that my organs, my glands and my endocrine system is just starting to come back into harmony a little bit." Which is magic and is a concept where we're like, of course. But it's ensconced in tonic herbalism, it's constantly a pop.

Mason: She had a friend with her was very teary and she said, she was like one week ago, she was like, "I'm going through menopause. One week ago I couldn't get a wink of sleep. The hot flashes were so intense and my exhaustion was so intense and I just couldn't get up in the morning because of it." And she was like, "I don't know what the hell is in this Jing thing." I'm like, "They're just Jing herbs baby, that water element in restoring that foundation." She's like, "I'm sleeping." She's like "I'm actually able to get out of bed in the morning." 

Mason: And hearing stories like that, I'll talk about it in this landscape because we've been able to bring context to them and not put these herbs on a pedestal. Of course its lifestyle too. But the significance that comes forth when you get those kinds of stories and the opening of that conversation, it's something so, so, so special and I'm interested in what went down, what's your experience in the menopause, like when you've gone through these menopausal workshops, and were you presenting them? 

Heath Daly: Yeah. And I should say I haven't practiced with one on one with my clients for about seven years now because of the restaurant and so busy. 

Mason: The Raw Kitchen in Freo. Get down here guys. Open from 11:30 every day except for Monday and Tuesday. 

Heath Daly: Not anymore. Monday and Tuesday's were shutting as of next week. Anyway, back in the day when I was practicing with clients, clients, clients, I would have been using the western naturopathic approach and we were using maca and stuff. We were using adaptogens. We were using other things, and ah, you know, hit and miss. 

Mason: There where I kind of see maca is one of the adaptogens that isn't a tonic herb.

Heath Daly: Yeah, exactly and it was, you know. So no, basically when I do my lectures and things like that, I just pull in all the relevant information, keep it to a holistic template and then disseminate it with the best medicines that represent that information as I can and it just so happens that it's always SuperFeast herbs plus a few other things, you know.. 

Mason: What do you recommend?

Heath Daly: Well, Jing. Jing formula all the way. And then whatever else is relevant. But Jing, Jing, Jing. It's a Jing concept. This is when it's like depletion of Jing. That's when it hits a woman worst and it's because they're being in a male dominating culture that is depleting them right through, it's because they're using all their Jing energy to nourish their kids, to nourish their family. They usually just so undernourished themselves. That's just all depleting Jing. That's what people need to understand with Jing is lik, it's okay, it's prenatal. You're born with so much of it, but then if you can think of your body, your physical body as a candle, a self-regenerating candle and the Chi is like the flame of the candle, the light, and then the Shen is the luminescent, it's like of what we are if we want to know thyself in a sense, right? 

Heath Daly: But if you're burning the candle at both ends, I mean if you're burning the candle because you're using up, you're so stressed, and you're burning hot all the time, you sort of burn down, and you're going to deplete your body so much and that's all depleting Jing. You're just depleting this life essence through stress. That's why I say this pregnenolone steal is the stress, man. You can take everything you want. It's not going work if you can't get on top of stress because that's the physical pathway that's depleting the hormones, cutting it at the root because the pregnenolone goes into a fork, either get used up to make the cortisol stress hormones or go into the steroidal hormones, the pregnenolone, DHEA, the estrogen and testosterone. 

Heath Daly: Same for guys. So it's about getting a lifestyle down pat, straight away where you're learning to still yourself, nourish yourself, be in a positive environment, get supported, feel supported, and then supplement that with Jing tonics. Its pretty much what you've popped in your formula. That's why it's just easy. If you're taking nothing else, take Jing, Jing, Jing, Jing and let it build up. For women, that like it's a couple of weeks or something, good for you. Your lucky. A lot of other women it's going take ... 

Mason: That's I said. I was like, you're a lucky ducky. 

Heath Daly: It's going to take time. Make no mistake, it definitely builds up and it definitely works. Then there's no other great way. If they're not going to work then you might have to look at bioidentical hormones and things like that. Definitely don't do synthetic estrogen and synthetic progesterone. There's problems with that. But we wouldn't get there if we had a culture that understood Jing, understood that you've got to live a moderate life. You can party hard. You can have fun, but a long life, a healthy life is based on a lot of moderation. So good sleep. Now we know sleep science. Now we know in the west the science is out about how important sleep is for regeneration and longevity. It's massive.

Mason: And putting wax back on that candle. 

Heath Daly: Exactly. Putting wax back on because it's a self-regenerating candle if there's enough Jing. And you know, there's prenatal and like what you've inherited and stuff. It's all about that, but once you get those last olfactors down, Jing, Jing, Jing, Jing, Jing, Jing herbs. And that, you know. 

Mason: I love it, man. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, it's important. If you only took one thing as a woman, I would be taking Jing formula. I reckon. Because you've got all the good stuff in there, but if that's what your concern was, I mean, bypassing the symptoms of menopause. 

Mason: Yeah. Sometimes hitting that with a bit of a liver tonic, especially if there's been long usage of the pill or pharmaceuticals or antidepressants or just a lot of plastics, you know just start getting that liver meridian moving. 

Heath Daly: Look, and I don't take, what do I take at home? I take multiple. I take all of them. I love chaga. I take a lot of chaga. But I'm a reishi guy. I like reishi every day. Schizandra I've started to do every day as well. And that's wonderful, and that's in Jing, though isn't it? 

Mason: No, Schizandra's not.

Heath Daly: Ah, then I'd be adding Schizandra to Jing because that's the last of the beauty, the moistening, that's you know. 

Mason: Yeah. That's another thing, that's like we're both on that same page there and that issue, like you get that moistening going, you get that astringent sealing of the sex fluids and the movement through the liver so the toxicity as well isn't bleeding over to the sex organs and creating a rough ride for you there. 

Heath Daly: That's right. And the whole thing about Jing is the leakage of the bucket. If Jing is leaking out through stress and excess and sugars and toxins and everything else, then you're depleting fast, so the astringent things like Schizandra plugs up those things. You gotta do the work then, you've got to get the sleep and you've got to do everything else. 

Mason: That's it. You can plug it up for so long and give you some space so you can get in there and actually drain the excessiveness. 

Heath Daly: Yeah, refuel, man. Renourish. Reassess your belief systems.

Mason: Oh man. I love it. Hey, is there anything you want to leave everybody with? 

Heath Daly: Nah. I think that's pretty much. Just there's one thing then, like I said, I've been doing the work for a long time and I've really refined it down to only a few tools now, and the SuperFeast range is that for me, you know what I mean? And I think everyone should be taking it because you've done the work to source quality stuff. One thing we didn't talk about, it's source dentin. 

Mason: Yeah, de dal.

Heath Daly: De dal, so it's growing where it's growing. This is very important. It's high quality. Some of the aracia or stuff like that, if you get it in a powdered one but it's not properly compounded, it's not going to really work. But you guys have got the properly compounded powders, so you can have faith in it, because there's nothing worse than doing a longterm protocol and not being sure that what you're taking is actually high quality. 

Mason: It means a lot that you're saying that as well because you're actually sensitive to it and you've been doing this a long time. Yeah, I like that. I find that really affirming for me, kind of like you get that same sense of it. 

Heath Daly: It's an industry man, and I hate when people ... people, one thing I know because I'm in the game, is that when we're ill, when we're not strong, we're vulnerable, and man, our species is like vultures. These industry people are like, ah, I like people that are sick. They're vulnerable. Use my thing. You need my, my thing will heal you forever. 

Mason: That's the parasitic archetype within us all and acknowledging the fact that, yes, a virus, people are trying to go to war with viral load within the body. Just remember that you have viral DNA within your DNA and viruses are those forces that are going clipping off little bits of DNA, and merging you with other parts of DNA and RNA within this planet, so we're very multi-cultural genetic expression. So just when it comes to, if anyone is getting into this world in whatever business it is, try not to bring about too much of that parasitic preying energy, no matter how good your intention is. 

Heath Daly: Yeah. Know that you're more than yourself. You are the greatest when you're connected with others that are sharing a similar positive message. That's when you always feel the best. But for that to happen, stay healthy, be strong. Take your tonic herbs and be happy. Be positive. 

Mason: Thanks bro. 

Heath Daly: Thanks brother. 

Mason: Everybody, thank you so much for tuning in today. Now time to take that information, round it into your lifestyle so you can amplify your health to the next level. You can really help amplify the help of this podcast by going onto iTunes and subscribing and leaving us a review. It really helps us spread this information around tonic herbs, around sovereign health further out there to the community so we can help more people experience the best out of this life. Thanks guys. I'll speak to you next time.