The Five Elements of Wellness: Chinese Medicine for a Balanced Life (Part 2) with Jaclyn Keoh

0:00 Hey there, before we get started on this week's episode, I would love to ask for your support by reviewing this podcast. We want to share yoga with as many people as possible and this free resource, this podcast is one of the ways that we can do that. And the best way that you can help support us is by giving us a review.

0:16 So if you go to Apple podcast or Spotify or whatever podcast platform you use, Scroll down until you find that star review and then give us some love. Thank you so much, and let's get started with this week's episode. If there's any kind of mania, joy is the emotion of the heart.

0:35 So there is such thing as overjoy. We can be too joyful. And that's when you see people, especially in really, really hot, it's been a super hot day. People go a little loopy, loopy because there's too much heat. And in a slow burner kind of way, if we keep going and doing hot yoga, Bikram yoga, more and more heat generates in the body.

0:57 Then we lose fluids. So there's not enough yin cooling to even hold that heat. And then we can get obsessed with it and feel like we have to. And we're constantly drawn to the sensation over and over until we lose our period. Speaking from personal experience. Welcome to the Going Pro Yoga podcast. If you love yoga as much as I do, then this podcast is for you.

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1:46 Whether you want to share yoga or teach yoga or just practice yoga, this podcast is talking all things yoga related. And we're trying to talk from the teachers perspective and also the students perspective to make sure we get a full 360° angle on what yoga is all about and how it's evolved in the modern world. Welcome to our podcast.

2:04 Hello and welcome back to the Going Pro Yoga podcast. Michael here your host. And thank you for tuning in this week. This week is a continuation of last week's episode. So if you started listening to last week's episode, this is just going to blend right back into the conversation with Jocelyn Kehoe, who is a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner from Australia, who is now currently living in Ubudbali and happens to be my main acupuncturist that I go to for checkups and ultimately

2:32 restoring balance in my body. So last week, Jocelyn talked to us about the overall arch of the elements. And I think for this week, we're going to actually dive a little bit deeper into each one and go through the seasons and the elements of traditional Chinese medicine and help you understand a little bit more about yourself and possibly your main element.

2:55 Thank you for tuning in and let's jump right back into the conversation. OK, so let's move into what other ones should we move into? Well. Let's let's go, let's go in its order. We, we was just speaking about wood before and its organs being the liver and the gallbladder and what I guess a few conditions in which wood can be out of balance.

3:18 And I feel it's only natural to move into fire because wood can generate fire. The organs of the fire element is the heart and the small intestine. The heart. The yin organ we'll start with because it tends to be a little bit more meaty and juicy, we'll say. So the heart is the emperor.

3:45 It governs all of our emotions. Same thing in Western medicine. It governs how blood is pumped around our body and the vessels. It's itself. I guess the a good thing or easy thing to relate to is Pitta. If you see somebody who is a little bit more, this is a very big generalisation.

4:09 Stocky. They're red faced. If they're out of balance, sometimes red eyes, a lot of heat, basically a fusing out of them. So fire people tend to be more prone to being hot and fiery also in nature personality wise. So fiery could also be like passionate maybe? So balanced fire people are really attracted to you, you know, because it's we're emanating this, this warmth essentially and people want to be around that because you know, there's a passion flame that's

4:50 really. Like palpable or like attractive? Attractive, attractive about it in all senses of of the word magnetic. That's a good one. So yes, that's when they're imbalanced. When you're out of balance, you tend to be overly emotional, quick to snap at people like.

5:10 Reactive. Yeah, yes, very reactive. Passionate in the other way. Yeah, yes. As well as having more conditions which are prone to excess heat. Essentially its nature is to rise up and out. So one of the conditions is if there is a hot fire blazing, you could actually see it in their eyes, in their cheeks, Rosacea being one of them.

5:39 There is all this trapped heat trying to come out and usually from the chest upwards. And what about like, I don't know, it just made me think of like sweating because I know there's a lot of people who practice yoga and some of them sweat a lot and some of them don't.

5:54 Is there any connection there? Yeah. So the fluid of the heart is sweat, it's relationship with the lungs in its proximity as well. The lungs govern the opening and the closing of the pores and thermoregulation, but the heart basically creates our sweat.

6:16 So it depends on someone's constitution. They might have a heart blood deficiency and not sweat so much. The energy of the lungs may not be opening and closing the pores properly, so might sweat, might actually leak out. If we are sweating too much, we are leaking in fluids even though we are detoxifying.

6:38 There's always a balance between too much and just right because our sweat is a yin fluid and yin fluids tend to be a little bit more difficult to regenerate versus our chi. Yeah. Like sweat? Yes, sweat, sweat. So there are times where it's appropriate to be sweating a lot, and then there are times which are not appropriate to be sweating a lot.

7:04 And would those times be related to like exercise or? I'm, I'm alluding a little bit more and being a Yogi, I'm still very happy to say this to doing too much Bikram or doing too much hot yoga, right? There are times for sure where it's appropriate. But if we're excessively sweating, especially around the time where we're moving into our menstruation, then, yeah, we're, you know, already building up to lose fluids if we're still, you know, sweating excessively and

7:34 losing more fluids. But over time, it can definitely, definitely have a detrimental effect. Like an imbalancing effect. Yeah, yeah. Not enough yen. Too much yen? Right. That's interesting because I know some people that, I mean, I've never practiced Bikram or hot yoga. It's not really been my thing for my own reasons, but I know that some people that love it, they love it and they like, that's the only way that they'll practice yoga or to some degree at least for a period of time.

7:58 I've seen some people kind of get out of it and go into something. New, yes. But yeah, I don't know, it's like the thing that came up for me was like the imbalance is like sometimes if someone's kind of going into a path of imbalance, but it almost feels like an like not a natural like pull, but like it's almost like an addictive, like kind of sticking with it.

8:17 It's almost like a go, go, go mentality. Sometimes it's hard to stop. It's, it's like, it's almost like the law of physics, like something that's in motion has a hard time actually stopping its motion into it's going to stay in motion. So I don't know if you have anything to say to that, but I was just thinking about that with regards to someone who's kind of like really in this imbalanced state. And it's almost like the momentum is keeping them in their imbalanced state, which I

8:38 could probably relate to with like being burnt out and just working and going and going and going. And then it's just like, you don't even realize that I need to slow down. And then all of a sudden you do. And then you just end up sleeping for like 2 weeks and you're just like oh. I love sleep.

8:52 Yep. Yeah. Well, if you think about it like fire speeds everything up, right? Heat speeds things up in our body and fire being addictive is not the word like very you said it before and now I've lost magnetic magnetic. They have this pull, this passion.

9:13 This is it. It's like you feel like you need to do it. You're kind of obsessed with it because it makes you feel so good. And then you're kind of using this feeling of, you know, feeling, feeling great and overdoing it. And one of the another this great segue it if there's any kind of mania, joy is the emotion of the heart.

9:39 So there is such thing as overjoy. We can be too joyful. And that's when you see people, especially in really, really hot, it's been a super hot day. People go a little loopy, loopy because there's too much heat. And in a slow burner kind of way, if we keep going and doing hot yoga, Bikram yoga, more and more heat generates in the body.

10:01 Then we lose fluids. So there's not enough yin cooling to even hold that heat. And then we can get obsessed with it and feel like we have to. And we're constantly drawn to the sensation over and over until we lose our period. Speaking from personal experience. OK, because it's all body fluids, blood, all of it turns into each other.

10:26 Interesting. Yeah, OK, that's really helpful, informative. Actually, someone was asking me recently about they're just like, I feel like I just, I love running and I just can't stop running. And I'd sometimes I'm like just I'm exercising and it's like I'm feeling emotions or certain things like I feel like I need to run it off and it's just like constantly burning, burning, burning. It's just like, do you think that's a good thing? I was like, seems like a little

10:46 imbalanced, but I couldn't really speak to it. But now I kind of hear where, you know, from what you're saying a little bit. Interesting. Anything obsessively is out of balance. Yeah, I think. Too much of anything. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a general rule overall. Yes, agreed.

11:02 Yeah. Too much of anything is no good. Yes. What about breathing? Breathing. We need that. I thought you could probably breathe so much that we're over oxygenated and you can faint, I think. Or even the opposite, yeah. There might be something there.

11:16 Yeah. You need a balance of oxygen, CO2, not to go too much into that. Yeah. It just made me think, like some people might be thinking this water is good for you. Too much water is not good for you. Exactly. Right. Broccoli's good for you. Too much broccoli?

11:29 Good for you. I don't know. No, I don't think so. Go and eat some pizza. Yeah, too much pizza. Good for you. Unfortunately not. OK, cool. So fire, yeah. Fire. I'm trying to think of some of the questions I asked with the last one with wood. Oh yeah.

11:49 Reasons why someone might be out of balance that you know, you might not know. Obviously you'd have to like scan and kind of do the whole thing, but like what might be some reasons why the fire element might be out of balance?

12:00 Similar thing in wood repressed emotions, because the heart governs all of the emotions. Even though there may be dominant sadness or anger for the wood element, it still all needs to be processed by the the heart. And if you think about how much, you know, we can put ourselves through emotionally as well as physically, it can have a bit of a hard time processing. And one of the ways that it can manifest is like, we're super wild dreams.

12:29 Really, really vivid, intense, not so much nightmares and that's more of a liver thing, but really vivid dreams too often. OK, Yeah, that's a that's AI guess, a not so extreme case, but then, you know, the other more severe case cause any kind of heart, cardiac arrest, stroke, those sorts of things. If emotions are not expressed, it's a very, very big, big cause of any kind of imbalance or disease, right. Repressed emotions, yeah.

13:07 And then I mean, I've read and kind of at one point kind of crossed paths with the heart chakra and grief. The emotion of grief not processed or being felt as a basically a chakra blocker is what it was kind of described to me. Which I mean, we're talking about all repressed emotions, but the heart being kind of the centre for like love or repressing or holding back love is being blocked from not fully experiencing grief or letting go or something like that, which might be related to the

13:34 attachment piece. Yeah, and it's funny because you are so metal. That's a that's a metal emotion. Grief. Yes, sadness and grief is the metals emotion and to do with the the lungs. But of course, definitely gets processed.

13:48 And because the lungs protect our heart, our pericardium is the muscle that protects our heart. But it's all so close to each other and they work together so, so intricately to govern, especially this area, the chest area of our our body, the upper. I love how you like, smile at me, like oh, you're so cute, you're so cute.

14:08 Little metal, little metal man over there. I I do it to myself as well where I'm like oh you're so fire boring. That's fun. OK, cool. And then where do we what's, what's the next move here? The. Next one is Earth. Earth is the next one in this cycle, but it generally sits in the middle in in some drawings as well. And it is basically the foundations of how we create chi and blood after we're born.

14:41 So the post Natal chi and blood similarities to the root chakra, how grounded we feel, how centered we feel. Also one of the I guess organs is the spleen, that's the yin organ. The stomach is the young organ. But our lifestyle nowadays, I started with the liver.

15:07 But our lifestyle, it's just so, so common to see people who are spleen sheet deficient. I rarely see someone who doesn't have a deficiency some way, shape or form in their digestion. And you know, the yin and the Yang of everything. We have everything so accessible. We could sit here and just consume knowledge to process information all day long because it's so easy to to get our hands on it nowadays.

15:37 But our digestive system, our spleen doesn't just have the job of transforming and transporting and blood from the food that we consume. It digests our thoughts and emotions. So if we are constantly stressed, if we are studying, you know, we say spleen brain where people like forget things like me because we're constantly in our heads using our heads for work, which is appropriate for some people, but maybe not for for others.

16:07 But basically this causes or one of the main causes of many digestive issues. And you know, IBS is one of the correlations that I'll use that when you are stressed, something goes wrong with your digestion, your stool Constipation or diarrhea. But that's directly correlated to the spleen's ability to be able to process, because you're trying to process all of the emotions and energy and thoughts that that come, that come with our everyday lives.

16:40 Interesting. Better word. Yeah, I mean, I thought you were gonna go with, like, all we have so much access to food and we're always digesting so much food, which is also true. Yeah, we probably eat. Wait. Yeah, I definitely.

16:51 It's not. It's not like, you know, we need to like hunt for food and we don't eat for a few days until we find some food. Right now it's like Gojek or Grab or Uber or whatever exists out there. You're just like I don't even if I leave my house and eat whatever I want at my fingertips.

17:07 There's that for sure. So there's that digestion, but that what I'm hearing you say is like just the digestion of information and stimulation like that all is processed kind of in that same general flow. Exactly so which?

17:18 Can be overwhelming. Yeah, and which is why so many people come in with digestive issues. It's like one of the main reasons or they've been having chronic digestive issues for the last however many years. And then if you sit there and have a little bit of a reflect on our lifestyles and how much we're trying to do all the time versus B and, you know, having short lunch breaks, eating while working on your computer, which I'm also completely, you know,

17:47 guilty of all of these things, doesn't put our state, our nervous system, our whole system in a state where we're supposed to rest and digest. If we're working. Oh, you know, we're in our sympathetic nervous system more than we are in our parasympathetic.

18:03 And while we're trying to digest what we're reading or what we're reflecting on so far during our day, that's taking away from our physical digestive system's ability to be able to break down and absorb and then excrete the food and drink that we consume.

18:23 Yeah, redirecting the energy, like not even redirecting the energy, but actually preserving the energy for the digestion or the processing of new energy eventually. Exactly. OK, I like this. My thought is going to be a side thought about eating yes, and this might not be a question for you, but eating and cuz like I'm hearing you say like, oh eat and then like take some time to allow that to kind of breakdown and process.

18:49 So is it like eat and sleep and lay down and do nothing? Or is it eat and like gentle walking like that's generally the. Yeah, the. Recommended thing. When you eat, you eat. When you walk, you walk. When we work, we work and ideally this gives our system or puts the system in the right frame to do what it's supposed to do.

19:11 So one of the things or two of the main things that we do in Chinese medicine, sure, I could tell you what to eat. There are a million, million different, you know, opinions on that. But I'm more concerned with trying to correct the state in which you're in when you are eating and the strength of your digestive system so that if you eat something naughty, it's going to be OK.

19:38 If not, especially if it's just sporadically. So ideally, we get your digestive system and your mindset when you're eating into a better place so that we don't have all of these digestive issues. And of course, don't go eat a cheeseburger and pizza every day, but you know, it can be more forgiving if you have that strength and mentality while you're eating.

20:02 Right, So this makes me think of like how you treat yourself or how you talk to yourself when you, as you said, eat naughty or eat something like, are you just like feeling guilt and like, you know, shouldn't be eating this or no, you know, you're emotionally like sabotaging yourself versus being like, I love this and this is great and I'm not gonna eat it every day, but I'm gonna enjoy it in this moment, like that state of being. Exactly, exactly.

20:23 If you're not gonna eat something with joy, then why? Then why, exactly? And it's also just not going to move through you as well or be absorbed as well if you do it when you're stressed or anxious or feeling guilty about eating that third scoop of chocolate Gelato.

20:42 I can relate. So does that mean that people who don't like certain foods that are good for them, and they're probably thinking this is gross, do you think they should probably like broccoli? It's like, oh, you know, broccoli's. Not really, you know, enjoyable, but like if I think like, oh, this is so good, like I'm enjoying this broccoli that it'll actually help but digest a bit more, you think? If I eat something or drink something that I, you know, generally don't like the taste

21:07 of it, I, I think I've gotten the neural pathway so in tune that it's like, I just tell myself it's going to be good for me and then it's fine. Right. It's fine. So it kind of goes the other way a little bit. I can see both sides of that coin. Yeah, yes.

21:24 Cool. All right, so one of the things that took away from from this little sidebar thing, it's just kind of like, you know, if you're going to do something, do that one thing to kind of like conserve the amount of energy that you're using to I call it context switching.

21:38 I don't know if that resonates with you or anyone, but context switching is like what are you? Are you switching between things? So like, are you eating and working? So you're focusing on the eating and then you're focusing on the e-mail and then, you know, back to eating. And so your context switching constantly back and forth. Or you're eating and watching a show and you know, or are you eating and actually like paying attention to your food and enjoying the food and every bite

21:59 is like, you know, that kind of thing. And that context switching, as I describe it, is actually kind of disrupting your body's ability to kind of stay focused with the flow of one particular thing. Yeah, I guess, you know, we think we have 10s of thousands of thoughts every single day that I sometimes feel like our body doesn't have.

22:21 It doesn't quite move at that particular particular pace. So, you know, mindfulness, being present when we do anything is probably the greatest gift present, for lack of a better word. And because I guess FOMO is real, but we I feel like a lot of us try and do so many things and try and squeeze so many things into the day that by the end a lot of it's disappeared. And, you know, we could probably say to ourselves that we weren't as present as we would have

22:56 liked to have been and therefore, you know, have not really experienced our day. Same goes with eating, spending time with loved ones, all these things presents. Yeah, yeah. And if our philosophy, man, the Jeff was here, one of the greatest ways to maintain presence is to just breathe. Breathe when you eat, breathe when you walk, breathe when you are connecting with someone, having a conversation, then you become more present, you know.

23:29 So anyway, going back to the yoga a little bit there. Absolutely. Yeah. Necessary to breathe, for sure. It's. Definitely a requirement for life. Yeah, that prana. OK, cool. And so where are we anyway? I think we're. Yeah, that's earth. Earth, spleen, worry, digesting.

23:48 What else? Yeah, it's it's emotion that's most affected by his worry. So as you can imagine, many of us have digestive issues. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure social media or not even so-called social media, but just the fact that Internet is everything's there.

24:03 It's like right there, right. So doom scrolling as they call it, and just like constantly stimulating, digesting, and whether you're consciously digesting it or not, yeah, your subconscious definitely is. Yeah, right. And your brain is definitely getting stimulated with every little flash and Bing and sound and all this stuff.

24:21 Exactly. So that's, I bet you that's a big one for people actually, because there's a lot of people that have digestive issues and maybe they're thinking twice about how much, yes, scrolling and stimulation that they're applying into their life. Yeah, Juicy, juicy.

24:40 OK. Are we ready? And then my favorite. Yeah, metal, Metal. So Earth is the mother of metal because we find metal in the earth, metal lungs, large intestine, our ability to let go, to discern before we let go. And the lungs, they also govern our skin, our first line of defence.

25:14 If we see the anatomical picture of our lungs, they're actually soaked in fluids. That's why they're a yin organ, and their job is to disperse fluids out to the exterior and to descend energy. The large intestine also is designed to descend energy into excrete, discern or take all the last little bits of nutrients before we we let go.

25:45 So the idea of letting go the metal element, we didn't talk about this before, but it's autumn, so things are shedding. It is the time of shedding. Round about that time in fall, there's a lot of fluctuations in temperature, things are getting drier and it just makes our lungs a little bit more prone to dryness, essentially dryness and wind.

26:16 In Australia it gets super windy in autumn as well, which the lungs don't particularly like as well. So somebody who has asthma since they were young constitutionally has a weaker metal element. That's not saying that they can't go and do incredible things, but a little bit more predisposed to having to work on their metal element.

26:41 People who find it difficult to let go, the personality type of a metal tends to be quiet. They like rules, they like things to be done a very certain way and for there to be order, which is the complete opposite from wood where it's like, yeah, we're just going to go with it. I love being really creative, no boundaries, I can just do whatever I want.

27:08 Whereas the metal element tends to flourish doing like not not being creative, but having times of process driven, methodical times of work. They can be really, really productive in those times. Lungs being the first line of defense when we catch something, it's sort of sitting just underneath the surface level. It's the organ which helps push that pathogen out of our system, prone to dryness.

27:41 So I mean, if we're smoking tobacco or smoking anything else, that can also impact the lungs function to be able to stay nice and juicy and disperse the fluids that it's supposed to. And yeah, it's emotion that affects it the most is sadness and grief.

28:00 So there's lots of sighing, trying to let go physically. I sigh so much. Sigh. So much. That's funny. Yeah. I also don't sweat a lot, which makes. I mean, I I can sweat if I go, like, if I'm doing something really intense.

28:20 Yeah. Sometimes only I'm practicing yoga, there'll be someone beside me just, like, dripping. And I'm, like, not even like, nothing. Yeah. And they're like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, what's wrong with you? Yeah, it could be because of the function of opening. Closing the pause is being a little dysregulated. Right, right.

28:41 Interesting. OK, the metal. So you said a lot of things and just to kind of like stay consistent with the other elements that we kind of spoke to thinking about. So a lot of things you were saying with regards to attachment and stuff like that, especially for me, like this is obviously more relevant to me.

29:03 So I might have a few more questions. Of course, please. It's one of the pros about being on that side of the chair. Right, I'm the host, I can do what I want is is the fact OK, so I'm metal, but that meaning like I'm dominant in metal or is it it's like my weaker like isn't there like a a nuance of opposite to that?

29:23 Yeah. So it's your dominant element, but it also makes you more predisposed for it to be out of balance and for you to feel that right when it does. So it's like supremely evident to you when it goes out of balance because you're dominant of it, OK.

29:40 And that kind of meant for me it, you know, it's my lungs or as you know, my lungs have, I've had a lot of allergies in my life and I go, I get allergy treatments and things like that. So I'm way more tuned in, especially with your help to be more conscious of my lungs and I drink these little lung teeth.

29:56 And things like that. And I've noticed the big difference as well, actually, Yeah. And then now I'm curious about the connection, which you mentioned was like the skin. And now I'm like a little bit more mindful of my skin. And just, I was asking you about like, you know, spots and things like that.

30:11 And, you know, you're kind of, you kind of alluded to me. Well, it's kind of like your lungs speaking to you. It's like it's the gateway connection there. Yes. Skin, biggest organ of our body, yeah. So basically it governs the skin in the sense that the opening, the closing of pores, the distribution of fluids out to the surface of the skin.

30:35 So if somebody has dry skin, that's where there could be many reasons behind why that is going wrong. There could be not enough fluids to disperse out. It could be the lungs weakness that it doesn't quite have the energy to disperse the fluids out to the skin.

30:53 So, you know, if you feel like you're holding a lot of water but it's not traveling out to the surface of your skin, then there is probably something up with your kidneys and your your lungs function. The relationship there is probably out of balance very simplistically, yeah.

31:11 Did I answer your question? Yeah. I mean, I didn't really have a question. Yeah, I'd just let you talk. Talk about lungs. Yeah. Lung, lung, lung. Yeah, You know, the it's super common that if we're holding on to sadness and grief and we're not letting it go, that there's lots of sighing that, you know, taking a deep breath in and out is is impeded waking up between the hours of three and 5:00 AM and not really being able to go back to sleep.

31:40 That's like textbook me. Yeah, God, how does she know? I'm like super metal. It's not even funny and it doesn't like dryness, so I can imagine that this humid climate suits you to a certain extent. That's why I don't live in dry, cold Canada anymore. Exactly.

31:58 We all find our place eventually, don't we it? All makes sense, so all those metals out there are comfortable. Exactly. Go to the tropics. Escape now it's. Nice here. It really is has definitely no complaints over here. Cool.

32:13 So I think we kind of touched on it a little bit, but I'll just ask the question formally. It was kind of like some of the hypothesized reasons why it would be out of balance. You've kind of touched on a few things with regards to sadness and, and the inability to or relating back to emotional difficulties with letting go or, or attachment.

32:34 Is there anything else that kind of comes up with that? One dry, annoying coughs that don't seem to have any explanation. The lungs and the kidneys have this relationship where the energy of the kidneys rises up to help the lungs descend Qi. So any kind of sneezing, coughing is all what we call, I love it, rebellious lung Qi, where it's not heading down, it's heading back, back up.

33:01 Yeah. Apart from that, dry environments, dry, windy environments. Yeah, when it gets when I get like little gusts of wind, especially living here on the valley. And sometimes I have sneezing fits. And now making me realize why. Yeah, because the wind, it carries all of the nasties. Yeah, yeah.

33:23 But yeah, the first line of defence, it's it's even called the delicate organ because it's the first organ. That receives. Exactly. That receives the breath Yeah, yeah, that's why I breathe through the nose. Everyone, if you can, yeah, if you can, yes, breathe through the nose.

33:39 But yeah, those those are the main things like a really sad and the loss of a loved one for extreme case can definitely for anyone who hasn't even had really any lung issues can be quite a severe trauma to the lungs. And then lots of nourishment and acrid garlic, onion sort of style things help the lungs expand kind of like tobacco.

34:07 That's why the first couple of drags you actually feel like you can take the deeper breath in and out because it's a stimulant for your lungs. But obviously in excess it will have a detrimental effect. But it's the opening of the lungs. It's why we're one of the reasons why going for a run and getting that, you know, full expansion and contraction can be really like addictive because we are breathing so deeply. We're letting go, inhaling, letting go, choosing what we take in, choosing what we we let

34:41 out. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. I, I, I, I go for runs and when I, I went for a run yesterday actually, and I know this is like typical, you know, it takes time for your body to kind of warm up and your muscles and stuff like that.

34:56 But yesterday when I was running and I've been running pretty consistently, man, for the first like 2 kilometers, I was like, it's so hard to breathe right now. And I was like, what's going on? And then eventually it opened up, but I was just like thinking to myself, like, fuck, like, what's going on with me? What am I holding on to?

35:12 Why can't I let go of? It right yeah, it all comes back to emotions at some point for summarize life. Really. Oh yeah, absolutely. So definitely better out than in with emotions. Yeah, yeah, and your farts. Get rid of those.

35:28 Two, all of them better out than in. OK. I think, I think that's I probably have more questions, but I don't want to hog it so. I know the poor water people won't get. There. Let's get to their time. All right. When we melt metal, it becomes liquid metals, the mother of of water, our kidneys and our bladder. It's a very strong correlation with each other govern the way we, you know, let go of water.

36:01 How we oh, the word coming to me. Filter. Filter how much water we hold on to versus retention. That's the word. Thank you. This serves me right for trying to learn too many languages at the same time. I lose my English. Yeah.

36:18 So the way in which water moves around our body is mainly determined by the young of our kidneys. The kidneys are a special one because they are the foundations of all the yin and Yang functions in our body. They hold 2 very important substances, even though they're not necessarily substantial. It's a it's a concept.

36:49 One of them is our kidney essence, our Jing. This is based on what we have inherited from our parents, so our prenatal essence. Whereas our spleen and stomach, the earth element, generates our post Natal chi and substances.

37:08 So this Jing is believed to not be able to be replenished. What we receive is what we get and I think the most, the thing which comes into my mind the most is a women's store of eggs. Unlike men's, we don't regenerate anymore follicles.

37:33 We are born with a certain amount and then with menstruation we lose ideally 1 egg every month or every 28 day cycle, but it's not something we can regenerate. And that's this is the utmost representation of kidney essence. We are born with what we are given and then the rest of what we choose to do throughout our life either helps or hinders the other next concept is called the Ming men fire, which is essentially the the coal which fires all of the bodily activities that the kidneys

38:14 share with the rest of the organs, the rest of the elements. So these two things are extremely precious and it's believed that they are stored in the kidneys themselves. So, you know, if you are walking around with a mid riff top, you know, keeping those kidneys exposed, you are definitely more prone to having ailments, we will say of the kidneys, especially if you're feeling vulnerable or sick ish at the at the time.

38:47 So it's a, you know, every organ is precious, but the kidneys and the heart, if we were going to say most precious or this is my opinion, are, you know, definitely the ones we should be looking after. So adrenal fatigue, kidney young deficiency, basically it could be a mixture of kidney yin and kidney young. It most usually is, but it's mostly kidney young dominated when we are burning the candle at both ends when we, you know, have a burnout.

39:21 Yeah. The flame literally goes out. The kidneys, so just, I think I understand, but you said midriff, that's just like one of your lower back's exposed. I think so. So, but you know, our digestive organs are always at the front of our our kidneys.

39:37 So that whole area generally prefers to be warm, right. Then a spleen likes to be dry and warm, but the kidneys like to be warm. You know, a lot of people's lower back pain, they come in, it's because they have cold lodged in their kidneys or their kidney channel.

39:52 Another unique and beautiful aspect of the kidneys is that if we're talking the meridians and the channels themselves, it's the only acupuncture point that's on the sole of the foot. And it is designed to represent our first step in life because.

40:09 Even embryologically, that's not, that's not how you pronounce it, but you know what I'm saying? We grow out of our kidney cells and they become more and more specific as we start to grow into the being that we that we are. So seeing people wearing socks even though it's really hot outside because we're constantly walking on cold hard floors. If we grew up in an environment in a cold environment where we're walking in like water, for example, often like fishermen can almost guarantee you're

40:41 going to have a sore back in in later times in life. But protecting our kidneys is probably, you know, one of the most important things to do because they are our stores of our yin and our young in these two precious substances.

40:57 Interesting. So I should go put a warm pack on my lower back? I mean, that's what people do when they have lower back pain. They put a hot. Well, they do different things, but I imagine a hot pack to help soothe. Yeah, but it's actually not necessarily soothing the actual, I mean it is soothing the muscles, but it's actually helping to support the kidneys because the kidneys is what you're saying is wants to be hugged basically. Yeah, basically.

41:22 I mean, if I could walk around with one of those like hot packs, there's those little patches on my kidneys or on my feet, I would be extremely happy. I'd be much happier, to be honest with you. But yeah, generally speaking. But then you can also have, you know, kidney deficiency with signs of heat.

41:41 And perhaps you don't want heat anywhere near you, but it's not because you are excessive, excessive of heat bringing back to yin and Yang. It's because you don't quite have enough yin to balance your young. So it feels like you are hot, but it's not because there's too much heat or too much young. There's just not enough yin to balance out the young and the warmth that's already there.

42:05 Interesting. Yeah, tough one, but. Yeah, I'm with you. Maybe not everybody, but yeah, the balance I think is just the kind of the main piece. Yes, definitely, definitely. The other thing that comes up for me with the kidneys is just detoxifying.

42:25 I mean, I've done some detoxes before and these, you know, different types of dietary things to kind of try to flush out and let go of some stuff. And I was, I've been often like reminded like you need to strengthen your kidneys.

42:36 You need to be mindful of your kidneys during this process because it's kind of at least what I was just told is that it all kind of goes through there. Filter. Yeah, it's our filter. It's filtering it through, so just being mindful of how much you're actually detoxing and if it's too much then maybe the kidney gets overwhelmed or overloaded or something like that.

42:52 Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you know, the kidneys way out is the bladder. So that particular connection is really, really strong. But yes, I mean, in terms of detoxing, I don't want to speak for anybody else, but there are definitely more appropriate times to be detoxing versus versus others. And generally, you know, if you're feeling quite strong, if you're not super deficient in chi because essentially we're trying to drain toxins out of you and in that draining action comes out, you know, your chi,

43:22 your fluids as well. So ideally you're in feeling, you know, at least energy wise, quite, quite strong before we go through any of that. And then also the emotional side of things which comes with that. When we detox the kidneys, there can be, you know, really deep seated fear because that's the the emotion of the kidneys fear and not just like a, oh, that frightened me or startled me like a really deep seated PTSD, you know, any kind of phobias, those sorts of things and which

43:56 are basically stored and held in the memory of our kidneys. Interesting. So a lot can come up when we detoxify. Oh my, yeah. I mean, I can relate. I'm sure people have elements of that, but it's kind of OK. So we're detoxifying things are kind of getting processed and sometimes, you know, people have certain symptoms, you know, maybe there's emotional things that are, are being present as well.

44:20 But Byron who you know, he's recently done a water fast and he was telling me about it and how his body was obviously clearing and detoxifying. I think it was like 6 days he went or something like that. Wow, his skin, he started at one point he had a bit of a rash, which I'm sure his body was kind of like detoxing it out that way.

44:43 So I thought founder was all really fascinating and obviously he I mean, not obviously, but he was being supported. There was a guy there to kind of like, you know, support the process. So it wasn't too much to some degree. But what what I was thinking about with detoxing, you said like it was kind of like a good time to do it and then not so good time to do it.

45:01 And the good time being like, you know, where's your state before you go into it? Like how much energy you're like, you know, are you coming off a burnout? And like, you know, you're going to get, you know, you're doing this heavy big work thing and you're like, OK, I'm going to detox after this. Like, is that actually an appropriate time to do it? Or is that actually going to possibly, you know, empty it out more, for example?

45:20 So something to kind of think about there. Yeah, for sure. You know, kidney detoxes, liver detoxes, they're all, you know, draining things which shouldn't be there out of your system, but all of the things that have been there for a long time can almost feel like a loss of self.

45:36 And then as the body starts to re regulate, it figures out different ways that it can express things out, one being a rash. But then the recovery period is probably where you will see the most struggle if you're not in the right state before you go in because it's the replenishment, right? It's coming back into a normal pattern, a normal way of of living that can take a little bit longer if you're already depleted and deficient, for example. Interesting.

46:11 This is helpful because I'm going to, you know, this, but I'm going to go to Nepal and I've been preparing and training for that, especially because I had knee surgery in January. So I'm, you know, working through it, running and doing all these things. And I'm also in a 200 hour teacher training right now with, with Paul and Byron and I'm gonna end that training. And then I had a week before going to Nepal and I was like, maybe I'll do like a 5 day water

46:34 fast. No, no, don't. Do. That and then I was advised not to do it. And now you're saying don't do it, don't do it because I was thinking, oh, you know, that's the only time that I'll have off to be able to do this. But then Byron's like, maybe think about that one.

46:46 He's like, maybe you could do it. But I was like, you're probably not the person to know the answer to this, but hearing what you're saying. Plus you just actually said don't do that. Don't do it. I was kind. Of thinking it probably wouldn't be good, even though I might actually be able to do it. It's the aftermath.

46:58 Of yeah. My body recovers and the time after that. Yeah. And when you're going up to that altitude, we want to be able to increase your stores, you know, so that you have a certain capability and ability to adjust to your climate up there.

47:16 We can deal with it afterwards. Yeah, Yeah. Do with the rest afterwards. Right now we need to be increasing those oxygen levels, getting you building it up, Exactly building it up. Cool. Well, that's helpful and supportive.

47:29 Thank you. I appreciate that. You're. Welcome. Cool. All right, so we touched on all those. I feel pretty complete. How are you feeling as? Do I? Yeah. Yeah, I feel pretty good. This has been really fun. It has been, you know, we've talked about this a little bit before, but I kind of like the different angle and diving deeper into a little bit more of the clinical perspective, so to speak, and just how things can manifest in your experience. And hopefully this was helpful

47:55 for some people to kind of relate. Just a few things to think about a few things. The big one for me was definitely the digestion of information, not just food, among other points, but I just thought I'd reiterate that one. But yeah, any final thoughts or anything else that you'd like to share before we kind of wrap this up? Yeah, I guess there is.

48:16 The main thing I want to reiterate is that there is not one solution that fits all. And even just because you felt amazing six months ago, you are very, very different than you were six months ago. The state in which which you're in, whether it's physically or emotionally.

48:36 So there is, you know, it's hard because there's so, so much information out there and there's always somebody, you know, that has even just the next fad. Detoxing is, I don't want to say it's a fad. I think it's a very appropriate thing at certain times.

48:57 But before you actually do it, please go and speak to your health professional to make sure that you're in the right state. Because there have been instances where I have seen many clients, rather than it having a positive effect on them, we're working on building everything back up so that their immunity is better, their digestion is better.

49:19 They're not, you know, exhausted but not able to sleep, for example. It, it is super powerful. You know, all of these medicines, all of these practices, it's really, really powerful. And that it can be appropriate at times and it can be inappropriate times, but best to make sure that you see somebody that you trust because not one size does never fit all.

49:44 Right. Yeah, that's, that's a good plug for sure. Yeah. And I think very relevant for at least people that live in Ubud and Bali and stuff like that. There's a lot of detoxing and things that go on here and I'm sure in other places in the world as well, but definitely in the yoga space.

50:00 It's like cleansing and healing and clearing and all this stuff. But I really like the emphasis of like, well, like think about it or like have some support there and make sure that you're doing it properly and at the right times.

50:14 So thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. How fun. Yeah, if anybody, cuz I know some of our listeners are actually living in the area and stuff like that. So just kind of maybe a little reminder of Tau medicine. Yeah, Tau medicine, we have a clinic in Ubud in Karabakhon and in Padang, sorry, in Uluwatu, in Padang, Padang.

50:39 We're also running a 12 week herbal medicine course coming up soon, which touches on the foundations, a little bit of what we've spoken about today as well as some patterns that we've also spoken about today. And then we're going into a deep dive of how we can use these patterns and our knowledge to self diagnose, diagnose, and then use the part of herbs to help yourself heal. Rebalance.

51:10 Yeah. And rebalance. Yeah, rebalance. Nice. Okay, cool. I didn't know that. That's fun, yeah. Thank you. When is that? Starting on the 4th of October and we're running it at our Karabokan clinic face to face. But we are, we're recording and live streaming as well.

51:28 So for those who aren't in Bali or who can't quite make the times that that we've set, you can always watch online or join in person a little bit later if you happen to be coming later. Lots of flexible ways. Cool. Well, maybe I'll get some of that information from you.

51:49 We'll put it in the show notes so it's easy for people to access if they're interested. Yeah, of course. And if anybody wanted to reach out to you to just kind of follow up, ask a question, maybe even book a session with you or anything like that, what would be the best way to do that?

52:00 Yeah, to WhatsApp, the Tau Uber number, which I'm pretty sure you can find on our Instagram or our website. OK, maybe I'll link the Instagram there or the website and let them do a little searching. Perfect. Yeah. Cool, Awesome. Thank you so much.

52:16 Yeah. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate you pleasure and thank you everyone for tuning in this week and listening, and we'll speak to you next week. Take care for now. All right, before you go, let me just tell you about the goingproyoga.com platform.

52:29 So right now you can go to goingproyoga.com and check it out for free for seven days, where you can actually learn more about yoga in the ways of alignment, queuing, sequencing, yoga anatomy. So that if you've done a 200 hour teacher training and you want to continue to learn, practice and grow, this platform is definitely for you.

52:45 So I definitely suggest checking it out goingproyoga.com right now. You can try it out for free for seven days.