0:00
This was like leaning into feeling and flow. I think about
0:06
when I was a little girl, and I would read a book, and it would bring me to a place that I'd never been before, like, I don't know the desert, and imagining a Desert Queen and how she how it must have felt there completely different place than I'd grown up in, in Oregon, Pacific, northwest, but I felt like I was there and I could picture it and imagine it. I think that's one of the things that we want to invite for people, is to explore their imagination again.
0:39
Just another casual Coffee Talk, here we go. Cheers, nice.
0:44
Cheers, what's everybody drinking?
0:47
I'm drinking chai tea without milk,
0:50
and I've discovered a coffee that's bourbon maple flavored without being alcoholic. Nice.
1:00
I'm drinking cumin, coriander fennel this morning.
1:05
Very nice.
1:07
Coriander fennel, yeah, I haven't used fennel lately, but I've been Cooking with the other two recently. Oh,
1:11
nice. Yeah.
1:18
Hello and welcome to the lettuce loves you, the Podcast where we explore belonging and nourishment through the perceptions of body, Earth and community. I'm your host. Jeanell Innerarity. For over 25 years, I've been helping people come home to themselves through somatic or body based practice, dreamwork, nature, connection and relationship with self, other, humans and spirit. I want to get beyond belonging as a buzzword and beyond nourishment as a fitness strategy, and get to the heart of what it really means to belong and what it really means to be nourished. Each of my guests has a unique take on these ideas, and I hope you'll take home a greater sense of what belonging and nourishment mean to you. I hope you benefit from listening to the lettuce loves you, and if you do, it would mean a great deal to me, if you would like rate and share the show so that more people can discover it and get the same benefit. Now let's dive into today's episode.
3:02
Good. So
3:10
Faye and EriK Krippner are massage therapists in Portland, Oregon, and for over two decades they've worked side by side in their cozy Massage Studio, becoming affectionately known as Portland's Couples Massage Therapists. Erik comes to body work with a fascinating background in forestry, and his years studying forest ecosystems give him a deep appreciation for how everything in nature is connected, much like the systems within our own bodies. And Faye, meanwhile, spent her early career as a technical writer breaking down complex concepts into clear, accessible language. So together, they're masters at helping people understand and tune into their own physical experience. But what really makes their story special is how they've combined their unique backgrounds to create nature, body connection, an innovative online program that helps people find embodied relaxation through story, guided imagery and self massage, drawing from their intimate knowledge of the natural world and their gift for clear communication, they've crafted experiences that help people feel truly at home in their bodies and connected to the natural world. Erik and Faye share a core belief that's woven through all their work, and I share this belief as well: you are a part of nature. You're not apart from it. They've seen firsthand how remembering this simple truth can be profoundly healing. So Erik and Faye, thank you so much for being here. I'm really looking forward to speaking with you.
4:48
Thank you, Jeanell. It's so nice to be here with you. We're excited about our conversation today. Yeah, thank you, Jeanell.
4:55
So I'd love to just dive into how you developed this work, because my understanding is that, as massage therapists, during the pandemic, suddenly people have simultaneously this tremendous need for rest and support and relaxation and healing, and they can't come in in person, and you can't work with them in person. And that that's where the spark happened for this work. So can you tell us a little bit more about
5:21
that? Yeah, gosh, it started actually years and years before that and COVID gave us this opportunity to develop something we've been thinking about for a long time. Erik and I met in massage school, and if we hadn't both quit our previous careers, we never would have met. Because he was out in the woods, in doing forestry, and I was at a at a desk doing technical writing. Yep,
5:47
yep. A simple twist of fate there, looking for a different direction, looking for more healing in our lives. I was coming in from the woods, looking for more people, and I had a lot of healers in my family, from nurses, nurse grandma, Nurse aunt, Nurse mom and surgeon uncles. So lots of lots of medical stuff that kind of guided me toward that healing end of the world.
6:16
Yeah, gosh. And then I think for me, it was living with a fair amount of anxiety really growing up and not having that physical expression. I didn't dance or play sports growing up. So I think that massage was part of my healing. It was a way for me to relax and really embody my body, too. It was so cool, like when you get into massage, you do all the studying, right? You get all the knowledge. And then, as you know Jeanell, then you're it's up to your hands, your the knowledge is then in your hands, in your body, in your intuition. It's not something you can study, and it's also never something you can really measure. You don't know if you got an A massage. So everybody's perspective is different. And that was so intriguing to me. I loved it. So Erik and I got into this, and we were like Portland's couples massage therapists, like you mentioned, and we were working side by side with people, and then it was really interesting how we were able to reflect at the end of the day about how much we could communicate just with touch. That it was almost like a conversation, a second conversation in the room. We might be talking with our client, but our hands were also talking with their body. Their body was responding, and then our hands were adjusting. And it made me just really feel the power of instinct and how beautiful and profound that can be, where a lot of us feel like instinct, you know, it's just, you just do it. It's an automatic thing, but it seemed like we were tapping into this language that was deeper than words. So that was,
8:07
yeah, I definitely sensed that as well. It was almost a third party feeling. And they mentioned that in school, school is mostly to give a safe massage to be able to touch safely. That's really its bottom line. So right before they kick you out the door, they introduce a whole lot of modalities and all kind of special interests that maybe you're interested in. So that's how you get set off in your career. And so it's really going through those first steps of making first contact, you know, with another human being, which takes some words and some permission, maybe, or other other kinds of approaches. But then when working on people, there's also the being informed and asking permission, which is still very open and outward and kind of outside of ourselves. And then there's that drifting off when the client, we finally reach that rapport and they're able to relax, and you're doing, doing your thing as a massage therapist and still checking in. We noticed that we'd give cues a lot, like, just let your shoulders go, let them be heavy, let your head be heavy, let your face be expressionless, like, like clay and kind of helping people toward that reset. Well, in saying a lot of those kind of phrases and helping people along, I found over time that my voice tends to be very low and sometimes kind of mumbly, and so people wouldn't necessarily hear me, and so there'd be times where they would say, Oh, what'd you say again? And I could feel and kind of snap out of it and go back into a brain thing, and other times where they're just sort of listening in the body responds anyway. So over time, I realized it didn't even matter if they hear me. It was almost like my stating the intention out loud. I could feel the change immediately in the tissues I was working on. On. So sounds a little bit of a mystery, but it was, it was very cool how there there's a connection that's happening in a third party, kind of feeling, as if the massage therapist is there to help facilitate this energy that the client is asking for to be in this new state of being, and so we do our best to help move any physical stuff out of the way. But in the end, I believe it's about their sense of flow, and that's a flow of energy. So again, you reach that mystery point where what was physical and what was energy, it's really as far as your imagination or mind can fathom.
10:43
Yeah, so we were doing all this cool work, and Erik had started doing this visualization and talking to his clients before I did. I but I was listening to him over at the next table, over and seeing this like connection happening that was really cool we would on our weekends, Eric and I love going out in the woods. And it's kind of fun to go out in the woods with a forester, because he knows how to find his way. So we could go off trail in some of these places, like the National Forest, and just go and be out there. And Erik will always help us find the car, even when I'm really nervous, like, it's getting dark and I'm like, oh, eventually, like, I think this is it, for sure. We're certain to have to stay the night out here, and then group of will end up on the road, like, 10 feet away from the car. So I was learning so much, and we were having so much fun hiking and kayaking and sailing and really feeling how restorative being out in nature was. It was for me, very much like getting a massage, where I felt better, more alive, more relaxed. So we started using nature imagery with our clients, and that was especially powerful. And they were loving it. They were eating it up. As I talked with my clients, they they just seemed to really respond to the words that I was using, the images I was using. And it was fun. It was really fun to have something to share with them besides just the touch. So they were relaxing more. And Erik and I started developing these images, and then COVID came, and all of a sudden we couldn't touch anybody. And we thought, Well, what about this other part of our practice that's so big with these visuals that are really beautiful, and we thought maybe we can develop this into something, a way to touch people when you can't touch people, a way to help people relax and help people feel that aliveness that they very often feel after a massage. Yeah,
12:58
that's what kicked it off. For sure that that feeling of, hey, we're smart, we're well educated, and all we're being asked to do is not touch people. There must be something else we can give we're the we're there's so many other ways to communicate the world. So with that kind of attitude, we we set out to do that. So we literally started from, usually from the head down, a lot like a massage, and the descriptions in the story will take you on an actual walk. And so the inferences of a body effect are happening along that experience. So it's not about necessarily, oh, feel this turbinate or feel this go up into your head. It's about I took a deep breath and I felt something. I felt the air come up and over the top of my head. I could feel it pouring down my spine and into my hips. It's through that kind of imagery that I that we make suggestion then toward we're inviting you to feel that way. You get to be the first person in the story. And that's how we build on the feeling of a full body massage, starting from one part of our body working down the spine, and it may encompass the whole body at times, or just pieces at times and generally, though, it's about being immersed in a story, as if you're just out in nature. And it's almost the mystery of, Oh, I feel better. I'm feeling so relaxed as you go.
14:32
So we have eight stories. Then Erik and I thought about it like, how do we communicate a full body massage, but focus on a specific part of the body. And we thought about nature, obviously, like, if you want to let your spine unwind and your shoulders drop, think about being by a waterfall where your core is strong and you're you're lifting up through your spine. And stabilizing it while the water rushes down on your shoulders. Or, if you can, I interrupt
15:06
right then, because that's one of my absolute favorite visuals, is the waterfalls pounding down on your shoulders, and you feel like you're a salmon going upstream. Your spine is is literally trying to jump up that waterfall. And you're reaching out of the crown of your head. It's just a wonderful image to stand taller through the spine while letting everything else drip and drain back down to the earth and to your feet. And so let's do that that you can actually feel. So I feel it as I'm describing it to you, so I hope and pray that you can feel it too absolutely, yeah,
15:40
I feel like we just did a little mini meditation right there. Yeah,
15:43
yeah. It was so fun. And it was so it was really fun to start writing these stories, because they came alive in, like, what do they call it that? Um, Technicolor. That's what it seems like those old movies. It was so vibrant and beautiful and colorful, whether you're at on in a tropical sea, swimming down below the water, and seeing the water and everything undulating and just this, this feeling that you're being brought into this undulating, relaxing rhythm and allowing your body to to be a part of that, or if you're cross country skiing, and letting your hips open and feeling that, that expansiveness and that that aliveness, the awakening of your legs, so that we've got eight different stories. And it's been really fun to to communicate through story and visualization. And I feel like a lot of us are stressed and we're looking for that place to relax, and once we find it, it's like it it projects us to this place where we do feel more vibrant, more alive, more like we can taste the marrow of life and just really enjoy it, versus I just need to relax and, you know, feel that numbness instead of that, there's just this sensory explosion that can happen that's really fun and exciting healthy, right? We're
17:18
like, leaning into feeling rather than leaning into numbness or into away from feeling, yeah, yeah, yeah,
17:25
exactly what you just said.
17:27
Like, I really want to highlight that, because people often think that relaxation is a disconnect, is the ability to sort of disconnect from things, and what you're describing is deepening connection, and that that's what's actually restorative for the nervous system, like you can check out and get a moment of relief, and that's not the same as actually restoring your system with presence and attention and actually feeling what's happening in the moment And changing the way you're thinking about what's happening, like you're creating a scenario internally that actually changes your physiology.
18:10
That's right. That's right. It's a lot of suggestion. I have to admit, the with you'd mentioned that you had interviewed somebody with Feng Shui, and I would say it's kind of a Feng Shui building of the body to get things flowing. Because in our story, it could be a suggestion of color, it could be a suggestion of posture. It's not just, oh, I'm talking about your head. So feel this in your head. No, it might be more of the temperature of the water and how it how you remember that temperature feeling to you is what would be most important. So in using the nature body stories, we try to describe nature in a way that it elicits your own memories of nature, even if it's as simple as all your your feeling of the ocean is something to do with your time in the bathtub. That works, that works because it's yours and it's inside yourselves, and you can build on that image.
19:07
That was a question that I had, because
19:10
sometimes, if somebody spent most of their life in a city, they don't have a framework for some of these things. But then I can imagine, well, if you've never been to the ocean, but you floated in a bathtub, you still know that we're so we came from the ocean at the cellular level, like we recognize it in some way. Or if you've never stood under a waterfall, you've still probably stood under a shower, and you can still feel the essence of that sensation and recognize it on that deeper level.
19:37
Yeah, yeah. A lot like you were describing with relaxation can be a form of leaning into touch versus leaning away from touch into some kind of numbness. This was like leaning into feeling and flow. I
19:51
think about
19:54
when I was a little girl and I would read a book, and it would bring me to a place that I'd never been. For like, I don't know the desert, and imagining a Desert Queen and how she how it must have felt there and completely different place than I'd grown up in, in Oregon, in Pacific Northwest. But I felt like I was there, and I could picture it and imagine it. I think that's one of the things that we want to invite for people, is to explore their imagination. Again, as adults, we're all about, you know, to do lists and and we get, we get so stressed that our imaginative, daydreaming minds aren't something we attend to, but through imagination, through daydreaming, you can tap into so much so, just like watching Finding Nemo, that even if you have never been scuba diving before, you can kind of imagine what it would feel like to be in the waves underwater our our minds are really powerful.
21:04
That's right kind of leaning into that willingness to know what you do, know what your experience is, rather than immediately facing something new and saying, Oh, I don't understand that. That's not for me and turning away. I think that's part of that integral shift of finding change in yourself, as you have to have that willingness, of course, to start with. And so with a little bit of willingness, these stories can take you a long way into finding your own feelings of relaxation.
21:36
Yeah, and I love what you brought in
21:38
about the importance of imagination and being able to kind of immerse yourself in that world, and how part of the stress we experience in modern at least in industrialized countries, in modern life, this sense of something demands your attention all the Time, and there's at every second of the day, from the moment you wake up, there's the opportunity, if you take it, which most people do, to fill your awareness with other people's agenda, with other people's intentions, with where somebody else wants to take you. And that, as humans, we used to spend a lot of time in just sort of imagination and wondering and boredom, which is like this, this taboo thing, like you're not allowed to be bored anymore, but all the great ideas come from boredom. You're just kind of like walking around doing something that is not an agenda and and I hear you say, making the invitation for people to create that space for themselves?
22:44
Yeah, totally. Well, one of the things I just heard recently was about when people started using, scientists started using PET scans to scan the brain and our activity, and they were like finding out, if you raise your right hand, what's that part of the brain that that does that? Or if you remember something or think about, you know, imagine something. They were like mapping the brain. So cool. And somebody had the great idea of getting a baseline and said, Okay, well, let's see what happens. Let's put somebody in the scanner and then not have them think about anything. And we'll, we'll see what a relaxed brain is. Kind of this, this place before activity. And so they had somebody get into the scanner, and they got bored. And what happened was the whole brain lit up, and different sides of the brain were talking about like there was just synapses and neurons firing all over the place in their brain. And it turned out a bored or daydreaming, inactive mind is, I forget how much 20% more active? It was something a lot more active than a mind that's focused, wow. It's almost like stopping our agenda to allow our brain to do what it wants to do and needs to do. And it's a lot. It's got a lot going on, yeah, that
24:00
strikes me as the same purpose as dreaming. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
24:03
No, go for it. I like that. Go for the dreaming thing. Mine was more physical. I was thinking of part of the physicals we learned was about nose breathing. And nose breathing can be a very powerful thing. You can spend some time doing it one nostril the other. It can be very powerful. As far as communication goes, it's if Faye was experimenting with it for a while with breathing only through your nose while you speak. It very much changes the whole pace of speaking. My gosh, with all this political stuff going on in the world, it's very easy to see they couldn't get those words out fast enough without just mouth breathing. And they're like, I gotta tell you, I got something else I know I gotta say, and this is what that means. And then I gotta tell you this. And like, Oh, wow. No wonder nobody else has a chance to speak. Somebody barely even has a chance to receive what they're saying before they're on. To their next idea. And so there's personally, that's one of those things that sends up my personal red flags. I call them the caution. Caution. This person is too often rolling and tumbling down the hill. This person is having a moment. Let's hope it's a good moment. So breathing through the nose is a nice way to finally come back and slow that down. And that's a physical kind of massage thing, to set a whole different tone and energy vibration to your being.
25:32
And notice, as you say, that I'm like, Oh, what is it? What does it happen? What happens if I consciously focus on breathing through my nose as we're having this conversation, and it really does slow me down and make me feel more present. Yeah,
25:46
cool, yeah. Breathing through the nose can accumulate nitrous oxide. You're getting more efficient with getting oxygen to your blood. So it's wonderful when science backs you up there and helps you say, Oh yeah, there's a reason for feeling that way,
26:02
yeah, and just like what you're saying and what Faye was saying about the brain scans. And there's definitely science that also supports that you have physiological change through what you imagine. And there's been research where people imagined working out and their muscular structure actually changed. And so I want to emphasize that, because what you're talking about is not it's not just imaginary. It's using your imagination to actually change your everyday experience, your physical experience, the wiring of your brain, the way that your hormones are responding to life the way your nervous system is functioning. It's very tangible. Yeah,
26:47
sure, it's very powerful. They've even done studies on people who are lifting weights, and they'll have they did a study where they separated people lifting weights into two different groups. One, they did a set of reps, and then they took a break and did another set of reps. The second group, they did a set of reps, and then they took a break and imagined themselves doing a set of reps, and then they did the second set of reps. And I think that second group got 20% more muscle mass. Wow,
27:20
that's a significant percentage, right? That's
27:24
why we decided to use story we're we've been sitting around a campfire, listening to stories, passing on stories of our of our ancestors, since time began, since humans began, and we're Wired for Story. When somebody tells you a story, you put yourself in that place, even if you haven't experienced it before. They can tell you what it felt like to climb up the mountain and see the the expansive view and feel that full body glow of that achievement, and you're there. And I just think it's just so incredibly powerful. Yeah,
28:02
I love that that really does work physiologically, and I do sincerely pray for the willingness from others, because the changes can be so profound, and it does just take that willingness to be there in your own mind, and by doing that, it can reach so many people with we all have our own challenges in life, and some can be extreme, from people who have quadriplegic or paraplegic, major accidents in their life, and yet their mind is still intact. This is a way to still talk to that physiology. You know, I'm not saying they're going to get up and walk by any means, whatever. I believe in miracles too. But in the meantime, there's still a conversation that they can have with their body. There's a conversation of the what kind of person and who they want to be, or how they want to feel like, and I think helping to imagine those places in all of its glowing sunshine and its physical attributes, whether it's sweaty and hard or whether it's just peaceful and still, all of those positions are very important for everybody, for every human body, mind, yeah, yeah, Yeah.
29:20
That's something that I've thought about a lot. There was a stretch in my own massage career where I was doing a lot of outcall massage, and it was with a corporation. So I wasn't it wasn't like clients who were choosing me because they were drawn to me. It was just sort of like I was sent to their house. So I got a real broad diversity of people with all kinds of life experiences and all kinds of orientations towards what bodywork meant to them. And one of the most interesting requests I would get is I would bring music, but sometimes people would want to play their own music, and then, not infrequently, I would have people ask me if it was okay to play a true crime podcast. During their massage, yeah, and that was a hard line for me as a massage therapist. I Was like, I don't want to be listening to murder stories while giving massage, right? And I always had this question of, like, what about that is relaxing? Like, where are you taking yourself, that that's what you're requesting. And people always understood when I said, that's that's my boundary.
30:24
You can listen to another podcast. It doesn't have to be music, but, but we're not going to do true crime. Yeah, you're
30:30
not going to scare me while I'm giving them
30:31
massage. But on your headphones, maybe
30:37
clients who come in couples and one of them loves to chat and the other one would rather just be quiet. And with some of them, we've played one of our stories, and it is so cool because the person who likes to chat is brought into that story, and it's a safe place to go to the person who doesn't want to chat, just like lets their mind go, listens to the music and drifts off. And I loved that all four of us, as we listened to camping under the night sky, we were brought to that campfire, and we were able to all explore what it feels like to let your neck and jaw go feel your throat soften. The visual is you've listened. You've just been sitting at the campfire with your friends. Campfires died down to a warm glow, and you go and lie down in your sleeping bag, and you feel your head rest back into the pillowy softness of the sleeping bag, and you look up at a sky full of stars, your head sinks back into the ground. Your throat softens. The back of your neck lengthens, and you start looking at the stars and thinking about them. So as this visual goes on, all of us are participating in this, in the story, and it's so healing. It puts us, as massage therapists into that same vibe as our clients, and we're not talking about the weather, true true crime, which I can't imagine, or a grocery list like everybody's minds are in that same place, and with that same intention, we can go toward healing. So it was really fun. It's been fun to explore these stories as massage soundtracks even,
32:23
yeah, it's nice. There's a place for everyone. Whether you're feeling more sped up and you're active in your feeling of Ooh, campfire, sleeping, ooh, stars, all that, or you're the one who's like, oh, campfire. I just like that, half drifting away while my friends, I can hear my friends, I'm safe, and they're all around. So there's really a home in a big breadth of home there in a story of that nature.
32:49
Yeah, I feel that, and as you talk about that, I find myself joining you in that, and I'm I'm there in a campfire with you, and it's making me think about the work of Heart Math, and the the research around the electromagnetic frequencies of our hearts and how we attune to each other over even quite a distance. And when i i did a training on working with stress and anxiety with Heart Math with clients, and one of the core recommendations is that, as a practitioner, you kind of get right with yourself first, like this is a recommendation in any in any practice, but you you get your own sort of heart rhythm and electromagnetic frequency in a in a stable, balanced place before you join your nervous system with somebody else's experience. And I'm thinking about the power of doing that when you have two practitioners and two clients, and you're all entraining to kind of that same rhythm and that same healing state and people are receiving physical touch, or if somebody's taking your online course, then they're going there in their own space. But they could do that in a group. They could sit in in a group of people, or with their family, and kind of entrain to that same rhythm, and it amplifies the healing effects really significantly. That's
34:21
so cool. Yeah, I've heard that, um, visualization is even more powerful when you're in a group. Is that something that you've heard about too? Jeanell, I haven't
34:30
heard someone say it that way, but it makes sense to me that's that's my lived experience for sure. Yeah, yeah.
34:37
I remember it makes me think of growing up and thinking of spirituality and how we had priests and people to go see in church and pastors that there's always somebody charged with holding the vision in a tribe and so and that way, I like that you could use our our books and materials and be that holder of the. Vision for the group you're in or the group you're going to I think that's how I feel when I go into other places and people tell me a lot, Oh, I feel it's nice to have Erik around. He's so calming. He always brings things more meditative, whatever, and like, I think it has to do with that, that my feet are still on the ground and my head can be in the clouds, and it's all a part of existing. And what valence you can kind of tap into, would be the way I'd describe it, from very in here, at the core, right here, touching to oh, I'm also aware of the clouds going over, what moon phase it is, or those kind of wonderful macro visions that can help you feel both small and large at the same time. I think that's part of the dichotomy of our of our existing in space and time,
35:52
agreeing on a space and time. Yeah, and we've been talking about the
35:58
visualization component quite a lot, but you do have a self massage, guided self massage component to your work?
36:03
So we were in our apartment, writing, writing, writing, COVID was happening. There is it was a little bit rough in the world that people didn't know what was going to happen. We were all very anxious and had a lot of feelings and thoughts around it. So it was an interesting meditation to sit together. Writing isn't the most easy thing to do, and then writing as a couple was very interesting, like, so we were working with the words and like, making them very specific to to elicit change in specific muscle groups. And then we were finally able to get our vaccines, and Erik and I were ready to launch. So we went on a trip around the United States. We went down to the south and then up the East Coast and back over via Montana, back to the Pacific Northwest. We visited family and friends, and along the way, we filmed these guided self massage videos in some of the most beautiful settings, outdoors. And it was kind of, it was a natural second step, because thinking something is great, but how do you embody it? And so we wanted to empower people to be able to massage themselves, to be able to know, like, how do we release that, that shoulder issue you've had, like, some of us have tension that just kind of creeps up all the time. If you can massage yourself, you can work on it before it becomes a big issue. So we were, we were filming these, and Erik was our videographer. I was the on screen talent, which means that we would be doing a couple of takes of these massages. And I remember once we were in Wisconsin at Pattison Falls State Park, there's this double waterfall that so pretty, and we filmed it with me right in in front of the waterfall. So it looked like one waterfall. Oh, either each waterfall was hitting my shoulders, kind of in the background, and I was doing this massage. And it was great. I was working all the different parts the shoulders. And then finally, we were done with our take, and we went back up to go back up to the car. And I was like, I feel fantastic. So relaxed. My shoulders feel amazing. I started thinking about how we dismiss our own touch so much we think we have to go to somebody else to to fix it that it never feels as good when we do it. I'm going to tell you that's not true. It can feel really awesome to massage ourselves.
38:44
That's right, it's different, but it's definitely no less. It's not about greater or lesser.
38:51
I guess it's that same kind of thing we were just talking about, like going to somebody else, you can just let your all your muscles go, but when you're massaging yourself, you're letting muscles go while you're activating other muscles. So it brings you to that same place where you're relaxed and alive all at the same time. Yeah, yeah. Had one video that we were doing. It was how to use stones to massage ourselves, and we didn't actually end up including it in the program. We were mass we were recording that in Michigan on Lake Superior. Yeah, and the blackflies. Well, it gives me goosebumps just looking at it, not happy goosebumps, because they were like nailing me at the same time I was trying to give myself a massage. So
39:38
keep a straight face.
39:41
Some parts I'd be filming and swatting some flies off her legs, but out of the picture, yeah.
39:48
So I can see you doing a parody video like the truth of nature, where, that's right, just emerged from a freezing cold lake and you're shivering and your lips have turned blue. Too, and you're trying to dry off, and then the blackflies surround you. That's all reality,
40:08
too. It's always so special when we can totally relax in nature. And that's another thing about imagination and videos, is that you can go there to that idyllic setting where the water isn't too cold, you can totally relax. You can really imagine the perfect setting. Yeah,
40:26
that's part of the beauty of nature, in some sense, is it's not all relaxing, and it won't let you relax for very long. And that's probably a good thing to your human body. Get up and move, yeah, and it is hard to keep it up, especially when you're first starting out, but once you've been in the woods for a few weeks, definitely past the first three days, but in within the first few weeks, you reach a whole new feeling of of your pace of day, how you wake up in the morning, how you go to sleep. And I would say, overall, it's always a positive thing for me, the body feels more sinewy, more stuck together, more, I don't know, just more with it to be in nature.
41:09
One of Erik's and my dreams was to do a long hike, and he'd hiked the Appalachian Trail before we met, and we started thinking about doing it, and in 2012 we both hiked the Appalachian Trail together. So we spent six months out on the trail going from Georgia up to Vermont, and it was really incredible. It was so neat to see how our bodies completely transformed. My relationship with my body was very different on the trail than it is here in the city. Any shoulder tension that I had didn't exist anymore. My knee a little bit, and then it was really fun to explore what that meant, as I was hiking up and down hills and feeling my knee. Finally, we got off the trail and just hung out at a at a hotel and did some self massage. And then I I looked at myself in the mirror, and my legs had these big, beefy muscles like my my quads were huge. And so for me, my knee pain was a natural part of that progression of muscular balance. So as I went along the trail, the knee pain went away as other muscles started to develop as well. Yeah,
42:29
that's part of what we learn in massage is about helping your client through understanding what's good pain and what's bad pain. So pain that changes and keeps evolving, that's that's probably in the good realm, things that are static and and not changing, or things that might need to be addressed. Yeah. And
42:49
another reason for this program was when we came back from the trail, we experienced a lot of what a lot of people experience. There's a coming down from the trail, and it can be very difficult for a lot of through hikers to come back to the city. And I get it now, not just have experienced it, but all the research that we've done and that people have done in the world about how healing nature is to live and breathe that experience of being completely outside every day and then to come back to the city, you're not getting that same input that you had on the trail. So we physically and mentally suffer a little while, while we get back into the city. And still, most through hikers, when springtime comes, their mind is back on the trail there, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah. Nature is so healing, and we experienced the nature inside of us when we started to explore how beautiful and how impactful touch can be without language. When you experience your body from the inside, it's so different than looking at yourself in the mirror, seeing there's a bit of a separation there. You can look at something without touching it, without experiencing it, without connecting to it, so you can look at yourself with such judgment of, why? Why can't I look like this? Why can't I do that? Is my body forsaking me, versus if we didn't have sense, a sensory input, would we have a body like my body is all about feeling and sensing and moving through the world, and it's an experience I can have that that I do have from the inside, that's a very different view than if I just look at it and judge it from afar, kind of a. Um, I've worked with clients for a long time and gotten to know them and gotten to know their bodies and seen how their bodies are. Are always seeking balance, and even if they come in and they're like, I don't have it today, I cannot relax. I don't know that my shoulders will ever go back like like, we've had that. I'm sure you've had this Jeanell, where people, you see somebody for the first time, and they say somebody told me that I'm the tightest person they've ever felt that. I'm not sure why we tell people these things, because it sticks in our heads. But then they get on the table and we just start letting them breathe and put your hands on them, and just allow them to be where they are and accept where they're at. And their bodies takes over, and their shoulders release, and they get up off the table in an hour, an hour and a half, and they're like, I had no idea that was possible for me. So that is something that I'd love to be able to share with the whole world that your body is your friend and it's trying and it's connected, and if you allow that, wow, how cool and how vibrant and how colorful and alive we can feel and What our life experience we get one life on this beautiful planet. Let's make it a really awesome one.
46:28
Yeah, I hear that piece of feeling safe and connected allows for spontaneous relaxation, and that something that really stood out to me as you're describing your through hike and being that deeply immersed in nature, and I haven't done that long of an immersion, but I've spent a good amount of time in the back country and deeply immersed for shorter periods of time that I find that my definition of discomfort changes that what I find to be too cold or too prickly or too annoying or too hot or whatever, in in the climate controlled, perfectly manicured city space, even though leaf blowers drive me wild, like I can't I can't stand that sound, or like there's other annoyances and discomforts, right? But, but my definition of what's uncomfortable my body and I even find this in gardening when I'm just gardening at home, that things are enlivening that I might define as uncomfortable or even a little bit painful in certain controlled settings when I'm immersed in a natural setting with my body that is also part of nature, it actually feels really good to have certain types of discomfort. And I don't even want to use that term. It's like it just feels alive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
47:59
remember on the trail, it was real easy to jump in cold water, and it just felt thrilling and exhilarating. And yeah, it was cold, and you might get a little numb, and then you come out, and you warm up, and it just feels so refreshing. Oh, your body just feels so complete. But in the city, it's more of a almost hypersensitivity. Throw you in cold water, you just want to scream, and it's very uncomfortable, you might throw a fit and it might not be pretty. So that is weird. The hypersensitive versus being immersed makes you less sensitive, but more plugged in. Like, cool.
48:36
But when you said that, it really stood out to me, like, oh, we are actually so overstimulated at a chronic background level in a in an urban or suburban environment that things like being immersed in cold water is very shocking, whereas we're stimu very stimulated by the sights and the sounds and the smells and everything when we're immersed in nature. But our system knows what to do with that
49:05
natural and so it's things aren't so shocking.
49:09
Yeah, cool point. For sure, there
49:12
is somebody who talks about how nature is both relaxing and stimulating to the brain, and there's a word for it, but I'm, I'm forgetting it. I love what you said. Yes, we're, we're made for nature. And isn't it interesting how cold water they're founding finding actually has a relaxing effect on our nervous systems. Fasting, seasonal fasting, is really good for us. Sweating is really good for us. And I'm trying to think if there's other examples these things that we find uncomfortable our bodies adapted to like really do well with it. So in 10,000 years. We might find that social media is really good for our nervous systems, but we our bodies just need some time to adapt. And life is society is changing so fast right now that it just doesn't have time to catch up. So even if you're in the middle of the city and you've maybe never really been out in nature. You may go to a city park and look at a tree. You may hear a bird song. Your body knows what to do with that. It it our they've our bodies relaxed when we hear the sounds of nature. Our blood pressure goes up when we hear traffic sound. So you may not even be aware of what's happening, but you hear those birds and you just take some time to listen. Your body knows your your body knows what to do. It knows how to relax. That's lovely.
50:53
Reminds me of a story that you can buy alarm clocks that are supposed to mimic that, those, those that natural setting. And so I used to have this alarm clock that would spend half an hour slowly increasing the light in the room, and then it would start to emit essential oils, and then it would start to make bird sound that would get lighter and lighter and like louder and louder. But it was all synthetic, right? Synthetic light. It was it at that time? This was a long time ago. It didn't, didn't have natural essential oils. It was like a synthetic scent, and it was a synthetic sort of canned bird sound. And I would have these nightmares that there were birds trapped in my house, and I was searching everywhere in my house, and I would tear apart my whole house trying to find these birds and and and now I think of that as my my nervous system recognized that those weren't real birds,
51:50
digital birds somewhere in my psyche, and that
51:53
was not right, so interesting.
51:57
I hope they've done better with with that, because I've I think that a lot of people do, like, just use the canned sounds, and it's actually helpful now, and yeah, they're better now, yeah, but there's nothing like waking up outside. I love it. Whenever we get a chance to go camping, I sleep Awesome. Yeah, yeah, me
52:19
too. Yeah.
52:21
So, so I ask every guest about their favorite herb or spice or or medicinal plant, and this seems like a good moment to touch upon things that we've evolved alongside, because you picked garlic, and we know that humans have been working actively with garlic for over 5000 years. So what led you to pick garlic?
52:51
I picked garlic because it's the most foundational of all the herbs, and I wouldn't want to I hate to have to turn my back on any of them at this point, but for now, we will highlight garlic. And I do very much believe in it. I love that I got into it. I thought it was a blood cleaner, blood thinner, just healthy kind of thing to do. And I knew other foresters who were into healthy eating and who were doing exorbitant amounts of garlic, and it was funny to have them smelling like garlic the next day. And I was fascinated with with how you could smell what they ate the day before. It's like, oh, this is powerful. There's good medicine in this is the kind of feeling it gave me. So I love to cook. Came from New Orleans. I love flavor, and so garlic is very much a highlight, if I can, in almost every meal, but I get tired of peeling it, so not every meal.
53:46
I like garlic too. I love garlic that it's warming and so especially in the winter, when my hands get cold, I just try to, like eat a lot of garlic and cinnamon and all those warming herbs. Yeah,
53:59
that's funny when you when you mentioned that, I did think of, oh, it's part of it was actually part of my training in massage school of being careful with garlic. Because if you cook with garlic, and you get it on your hands, and then you're massaging somebody's face the garlic, or they smell the garlic on your breath, and one of my teachers said she just doesn't eat garlic anymore. And I was like, that's no way to live.
54:21
But yeah, yeah, yeah, we used to that used to be our kind of our Friday night meal, too, and raw garlic, yeah,
54:33
yeah, right. So get get your garlic fixed over the weekend when you're
54:37
right exactly, yeah, that's
54:40
right, you got to time it a little bit, and I'm hesitant to try and pull things out of your life again for career. I really I stopped playing guitar because of calluses on the fingertips because of massage, and I miss it. I'd probably mix it up a little more. So I. Food wise, essential oils were even good for the breath. So a little bit of peppermint or fennel is a really tasty one. Is a nice way to counteract some of those food hazards.
55:13
Yeah, parsley too. Parsley is a good one. Oh, that's a great Yeah, yeah. And you did mention onion and celery and parsley and a long list of spices that you really love. So I hear like it's it's impossible to pick just one we're highlighting, as you said, not we're not leaving the other ones out. We're just
55:31
celebrating leading the way with Yes, yes.
55:37
So I'll tell folks a little bit more about garlic, because it really is such a fascinating history. The scientific name, or the Latin name, is Allium sativum, which just means cultivated garlic. And we, we've been as humans, growing and using garlic for so long that we actually don't have a clear record of where we started using it, where it really where it comes from. It's just part of our human experience. At this point, we're often familiar with the bulb. That's what we cook with a lot. But gardeners also are aware, and chefs, I think, are starting to bring this in a lot hard neck garlic, so there's soft neck and hard neck garlic, which just means the flower stalk that comes up is is soft or or harder, and the hard neck garlic stock is edible as well. And it's so delicious, just a mild flavor,
56:33
the hard and the soft, the
56:35
you can eat the soft too. But the hard neck is like this. This nice, long stalk. That's you, you actually pull it off to stop the plant from putting its energy into flowering, because you're not after the garlic flowers. You're after the bulb, and so you pull it off to redirect the energy of the plant. But then you have this long, beautiful green garlic stalk, basically. And it's a little less spicy than the bulb itself, but it's so delicious and similar medicinal properties.
57:09
Nice is that the scape, yes, that's it from a hard garlic.
57:14
Yeah, yeah, from the hard neck garlic. And so the So, so the, if people sometimes have seen garlic braid, like a where a whole bunch of bulbs of garlic are braided together. That's the soft neck garlic, where the stalk is very pliable. And so it's very easy to to create that braid and then let it dry that way. And you can't do that with the with the hard neck garlic. But people also, I'm going to experiment with this this year, um, grow the hard nut garlic as a perennial crop, as a as a crop that they don't harvest, they never harvest the bulb. And so I'm actually going to try that this year, and just keep harvesting the scape, because then you have perpetual garlic flavor. And garlic medicine that's just a little bit more mild. It's like having scallions or something.
58:03
So neat.
58:06
Yeah, it was, it was my first it was my first focus. When I moved into the house that I'm in now, and I had some garden space, and I was like, we will be garlic, we will be garlic sovereign. We will have all the garlic we ever need. We will never have to buy garlic again. And the pandemic hit and our local grocery store ran out of garlic, everybody was buying up all the garlic and ginger and making their immunity potions. And I thought that that's never gonna happen to me again. We're gonna have garlic. And had about three years of a good run. And then there's some things that I need to do in my soil.
58:38
I was wondering about that skape that was great. Were there more tidbits about garlic too that you had?
58:44
Yeah, yeah, quite a bit. So one of the things that's really interesting, actually, with modern garlic, and why I wanted to grow it as well, is that non organic or conventional garlic is often irradiated, like the they irradiate the crop, and that keeps it from sprouting in the store, so it makes it last longer in the store, but it also inhibits a lot of the beneficial effects. And we thought you talked about this a little bit, but it's this hot and spicy and pungent herb. It has a long list of uses. It's famous for being antibacterial and antifungal and helping to lower cholesterol, and there's research on anti cancer properties, and it's anti parasite, and it helps reduce insulin resistance, and it warms the body and help can help support moving a fever through for someone who has chills, and it can help resolve respiratory infections. And the garlic oil can be used to treat ear infections, and it can be used to treat mucus and it can be used to induce vomiting, which I discovered in my early herbal days, I made myself a cup of garlic tea, which
59:53
will make you throw up.
59:55
It can get that strong and you'll have to purge. It's
59:58
so yeah. It's yeah. Yeah, it's
1:00:00
powerful and raw garlic infused in honey is a really powerful topical and internal anti microbial combination. And of course, it's also very useful for scaring away vampires, keeping away vampires. So it's so broad, so I love that you picked it because it's just this Pharmacopeia in in a single plant. It's really
1:00:27
miraculous. No doubt, that's right.
1:00:30
I once did a liver cleanse, and it had waking up every morning with raw garlic, some olive oil and grapefruit juice. A half ago, it was hardcore for a few weeks. But
1:00:41
Whoo, you felt alive after I tell you what
1:00:45
you're like, hot flash, kind of alive. You know, it really does make a physical difference, yeah.
1:00:50
How can people get in touch with you? How can people have this meditative, transformative experience?
1:00:59
Well, our website's www.naturebodyconnection.com, and in there, there's self massage videos, and you can try out, try out, the program with meditations. And then when we say meditations, these are these stories with a lot of visualization and imagery that are also very relaxing. So we're not asking anybody to do something superhuman and be able to clear their thoughts out of their mind in as opposed to that, we want people to let their mind come alive with these visuals and the story and so just to allow the story to to happen. So if you're interested in in taking a listen, that's what I would encourage. Find some time where you can just be with the story and just let it happen and and enjoy. Yeah,
1:01:51
yep. And the massage videos are meant to be accessible for anyone. So if you have your own physical limitations, pressure, you can adjust for yourself. The physicalness of it. You may find other ways to to achieve the the feeling of of stroking yourself. It may be pushing into a wall, or something else outside of yourself. So again, it's, it's meant to be a positive idea toward getting the flow in that sense of peace in your body, and it probably it's good to have that willingness to not see limitation. Oh, I can't do it exactly like I saw it on the video, so I'm not going to do it at all. Like, No, it'd be best to try and see what you do feel. Just like giving it a listen is try to see what you do feel. And I think I've had people say, Okay, I've listened to it once. Now, what I'd say, it's a it's about, did you hear the whole thing? It's an embodiment. It's try it again and see what you experience the second time around. What popped up to you. It's it's kind of using your, your own spiritual self, to say what's important to you in the moment, if you ask the question and then take the time to listen, maybe the universe will give you an answer. So the time to listen, it's one of those moments. It's a period of listening.
1:03:12
I think back to when I was a little girl again, listening or reading those chapter books for the first time, and being transported to those worlds. Children will read the same book over and over again, and each time they're cementing that, the the story, the visuals, the characters, they're becoming more and more a part of that, that land, that that's in the story. We would encourage people to do that as well with this. Yeah, it's about transforming your connection with yourself and nature and understanding like really, truly embodying the the knowledge that you're part of something so much bigger than we tend to think. Where we have you know our lives, where we commute to work and we do, we do our things, but we're just beyond that. There's the beautiful, vast, starry sky there. There's the magma under the earth. There's this flow of water that goes through the entire planet. It was up in the clouds, and it was down in underground aquifers, and now it's in your glass, and you can drink it, knowing that as it passes through your body, it gets released back to this, this flow, this eternal flow through the planet. So you're a part of that, and it's beautiful, it's relaxing, it's enlivening, just to know that and your body is such a big part of it too, that as you think about your own relationship with your body and what it can and can't do, and how it's worked for you and served you, and how it may not be able to serve you, that it is also part of that, and it's always resonating. With this beautiful world, yep,
1:05:05
to affirm those feelings, and I really think that a world coming from those feelings will change the world that we see. I think that that's the essence of what a paradigm shift is is. It's just a quick it's a change of mind. It's everything is as it was just a second before, and yet, because of this new idea, everything now has a new glow about it. Everything has a new feeling about it. I think that's that's where we're shooting for. We're hoping that people have their own experiences, their own memories that are eliciting, eliciting these feelings of relax, and they're also making them continuously connected to that feeling
1:05:47
that it's available for them in any given moment.
1:05:50
Well, I found that to be really accessible in your free starter kit that you have on your website, like exactly what you just said. I think it's designed in a way that someone can start from zero familiarity with this kind of work or this kind of mindset, or they could start from a lot of familiarity, and either way, it's really approachable and meaningful and meets people right where they're at. So
1:06:23
thank you, glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, so most of our stuff is digital, then online. Our main program, our meat and potatoes program, is an online program that has all eight stories together, and you can go through the stories. They have reflections that will tell you how, like some of the science behind what the story is saying, and can
1:06:43
I interrupt and we're reading them, so you can choose Eric's reading or my reading with background sounds and songs and music, yep,
1:06:52
and it's meant to help carry along with these reflections, so that you have an understanding and then maybe some journaling at the end, so that you cement your own guide posts in your life for where you're headed, and you'll have those forever after. We have some people that have been unplugged from the digital world, and thus we create, we put our stories into a book form. So have a either singles or an eight book series that I'm showing you here online that people can get another way to access all the different storylines that we have. Oh, nice,
1:07:27
beautiful. Well, thank you both so much for being here. It's been really meditative and delightful to talk with you. Is there anything else that you want to make sure people take home with them? There
1:07:40
are a lot of us seeking balance and seeking a deeper connection, and sometimes in the world, it can feel like everybody is has different opinions, and it can be hard in this, especially in our time right now, to allow for all those different opinions, and not to have it affect ourselves, but so many of us, in our own ways, are seeking that, that deeper sense and that deeper way of being. And I just wanted to, I guess, remind us all that that's that that's part of our world too. I
1:08:17
want to say out loud that matter is neither created nor destroyed, and that we are the perfect beings for being an antenna of energy from the universe through to whatever you're expressing in your life. You are the perfect antenna for that. It is up to you to express your antenna, your translation of what energy you're receiving from the universe. It's your responsibility, not just to yourself, but to all the rest of us, because we're all charged with that same charge of taking that energy and putting it out into the world. So what's your choice? What you do with it, and how connected or not you feel with that? So hopefully, our tools will help you feel a little more connected to the whole universe and your place in it. Yeah, yeah,
1:09:04
beautiful. Thank you. And I love closing with that idea that it's truly each of our responsibility to take care of our own energy in a way that
1:09:20
connects us to the world in a good way.
1:09:23
Thank you for being conduits of that.
1:09:26
Thank you for your beautiful podcast. Jeanell, we're really excited about the lettuce loves you and yeah, and glad that you're putting your message out into the world. Yeah,
1:09:36
thanks for being able to talk to us and be a friend. Not everybody can talk on this level and stick with it or pick it up. Pick up what you're throwing down. So it's it's great to commune on this level. Really like it. Thank You.
1:09:50
[Music.] Thanks for listening to the lettuce loves you. Don't forget to like, review and share this podcast so more people can benefit your one small action helps us get these reflections on belonging and nourishment to the people who need to hear them. And I appreciate it more than you know. I have more free offerings at Eco -- That's eco spiritual education -- www.EcoSpiritualEducation.com/freestuff. This podcast provides educational information about traditional edible and medicinal uses of plants. This should never be construed as medical or dietary advice. Always consult with a medical provider before making dietary changes. The music you've been listening to is tu bishvat by Batya Levine, used with permission and a lot of gratitude. Until next time, remember: the lettuce loves you, You belong to the earth, and Life really does Want to nourish You
1:11:00
In all honestly, I listened to your trailer six or seven times. I freaking loved it. Oh my gosh, the music, and then what you had to say. On top of that was poetic. It was stirring. It spoke to me on such a deep level, I am like, I'm getting goosebumps talking about it now. It's totally like On Being and I think that this might be a hugely successful and meaningful podcast for people so well done, well done with all the hard work to begin this. And really, Erik's so right, like having a conversation with you brings us to this, like, deep, I felt it when we were talking at coffee that you're just so present, and it's, it's fun to talk with you, because it like enlightens things in a new way. So, yeah, we get deeper than just surface. So thank you. Yeah, thank you far and all that, all the work you've done to your training and stuff, it's it's evident. Yeah.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
