Category: Podcast

Medical Monopoly Musings #60
Scientific Gatekeeper – Dr. Maurizio Fava

In understanding how Western medicine is able to get away with bad science time and time again, or at least science that takes us further down the same broken path, we need to explore a concept I’m calling the “scientific gatekeeper”.

This would be a scientist that oversees others, controlling access and distribution of information, allowing some to pass through a gate (promotion, publication, revolving door positions, etc.) and not others (non-promotion, firing, blocking publication, smears, etc.).

Because science comes with an ideal of being objective, few people are looking at scientists for being specifically attached to certain outcomes. This lack of a spotlight would then allow scientific gatekeepers to thrive.

In the previous issue, we looked at the FDA regulator Thomas Laughren, spinning through the revolving door into a consultant for the drug companies he used to oversee, helping them pass regulation. He holds a leadership position at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Clinical Trials Network and Institute which sets up drug trials for success.

Looking at the about page which includes other employees I just had to dig into the top guy there. The executive director is Maurizio Fava, MD. In addition to this spot, he is currently:

• Director, Division of Clinical Research of the MGH Research Institute
• Chief, Department of Psychiatry, MGH
• Associate Dean for Clinical & Translational Research, Harvard Medical School
• Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

He’s authored or co-authored more than 800 medical articles. He sits on the editorial board of five medical journals. He is a “world leader in the field of depression.”

His bio states, “Dr. Fava has been successful in obtaining funding as principal or co-principal investigator from both the National Institutes of Health and other sources for a total of more than $95,000,000.” That’s taxpayer money, and Fava is pointing where it goes to, as scientific gatekeepers do.

Based on my knowledge about how medical science works, I assumed he had extensive conflicts of interest. Was I right?

Even more so than I expected! The following comes from a 2018 list.

I had to zoom out just to take a screenshot! Even then it didn’t fit in one screen! If you can’t squint well enough this includes money from a slew of companies, all the familiar names and many more, via:

• Research Support
• Advisory Board Fees
• Consultancy Fees
• Speaking Fees
• Publishing Fees
• Equity Holdings
• Royalties and Patents
• And Copyrights

I guess I can say at least he is disclosing his conflicts unlike others!

…but not always. A paper on Antidepressant Treatment History Questionnaire discloses no such interests. Even though it is directly about antidepressants, produced by many of the companies he’s been paid by.

This man is a psychiatrist. As I’ve only briefly covered, psychiatry is worse off than other areas of pharmaceutical medicine because of how it’s easier to play games there. “The fact that few psychiatric disorders have objective criteria for diagnosis makes these disorders easier to expand than most physical illnesses,” says Marcia Angell, former editor of the medical journal NEJM.

In other words, disorders can be altered or changed usually based on symptoms. Then drug trials can similarly be fudged. Hmmm…Dr. Fava holds copyrights for symptom questionnaires…the things by which people are diagnosed and then given treatment!

This man has been at Massachusetts General Hospital for over 30 years. He is the Psychiatrist-in-Chief since Oct 2019.

And he works at Harvard too. Remember in #53 when we looked at the board of directors of Big Pharma who also held positions at non-profits, notably hospitals and universities.

Is there any chance that this man, given his experience and conflicts, is interested in any methods of healthy psychology or treating depression that don’t have to do with Big Pharma?

The evidence points to no. My read of all this is that Maurizio Fava is a scientific gatekeeper that keeps the system in place to the benefit of himself and his cronies. Even more details next time…

References:
https://mgh-ctni.org/leadership/maurizio-fava-m-d/
https://web.archive. org/web/20180517181848/https://mghcme.org/faculty/faculty-detail/maurizio_fava
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6493891/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurizio-fava-9684507/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170428/

Logan (00:19):

Welcome to today. We're talking about an herb. I often get asked a lot about, and really honestly, haven't used all that much. I'm talking about kratom, not only are we talking about this earth who is good for what to be on the lookout for all that stuff, but really why? This is what I call a gray zone herb regarding the legalities and the regulatory agencies and all the shenanigans going on there. So today I have joining me, John Bush, who is it, radical activist, entrepreneur and father of two based in Austin, Texas. He owns and operates brave botanicals, which offers high quality kratom and CBD. In 2014, he founded the freedom cell network, which currently has over 5,000 people working together through small groups to secure their sovereignty. He is the host of the live free now show let's jump in. Welcome John Bush to the health sovereign podcast. Great to have you here today. Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah, this is should be a fun call. I get asked about this topic a whole lot, not about freedom and you know, despite all my herbalism experience, it's not an area I've gone deeply into myself, so glad to have you here so we can dive into it. My first question for you is how did you arrive in this field?

John (01:33):

Well, I was I've been an activist for quite some time and really into natural health in my own personal life and just sharing with those around me. And as a Liberty activist, I was really into help freedom. In fact, it, it was like, especially upsetting that the government would work to limit access to what people put in their body or even put people in jail. And in cages for consuming plant medicines is that it was especially egregious. I thought on the behalf of the government for that stuff. And for a time I ran a underground bookstore. It was literally underground in a basement and we sold like conspiracy books, libertarian literature, and we also sold health products. And of course the health products were the main revenue. And so a friend of mine started packaging and selling, kratom. And so we had it there at the shop and it didn't sell a whole lot and I hadn't even tried it myself.

John (02:22):

But when the DEA tried to ban kratom in 2016, I was like, well, what's up with this? Maybe there's something to it. And also at that time, because we stayed open, a lot of other vendors closed their doors. We stayed open and leaned into it because they never ended up making it illegal. I started to really learn a whole lot about how it impacts people and gives them their life back and their health back and control over their bodies back. So that was pretty profound for me. Also at this time I started taking in and experimenting with it and found that it added value to my life as well. This was around 20 2016, 2015.

Logan (03:00):

Yeah. Yeah. That was the first time. It was like when there was all that hubbub about it and talk abandon and whatnot, and sounded like many people found out about it in the first place. It's kind of that interesting effect that we see happen with censorship.

John (03:12):

The trends show a spot, huge spike in searches for kratom at that time. So that means sometimes

Logan (03:18):

Because they don't ban uninteresting stuff, right. To get rid of the stuff that isn't at least worth taking a look at the good stuff. I'd say a lot of the confusion that occurs with kratom is because there's the different variety of, so I'd like you to speak to that. Like some are good for going to sleep, whereas other ones are energizing. So can you mention the different varieties and why they may have these pretty different effects?

John (03:42):

Sure. Yeah. Well first just what it is real quick, if there's folks that aren't familiar kratom as a member of

the coffee family, although it has no caffeine it's made from the powderized leaves of the kratom evergreen tree, which has grown primarily in Southeast Asia, we import ours from Indonesia and there's a few different varieties. There are green, white, and red. There's also gold and yellow, but those are the main three ones. And the color comes from the color of the veins the drying process, and also just the nature of the trees. It's not as specific as a cannabis strain for example, which is like cultivated and coveted and protected. But there's a tendency for the same effects when it comes to a lighter vein and similar effects when it comes to red. So I actually have some here to demonstrate this is a green variety, and this is a red variety, and this is a white variety.

John (04:39):

You can kind of see the red is a little bit darker. The whites a little bit lighter. The green is kind of in the middle. So the red varieties help a lot of people with pain and relaxation and they help with sleep as well. Many people take the red varieties instead of opioids, and a lot of people take it and, you know, find that it doesn't have the crazy side effects and it still helps with the pain. On the opposite side would be the white varieties. They tend to be a little more uplifting, energetic, good for stress and anxiety. Good. As a social lubricant, I've heard so many stories of people that have quit drinking whether it was socially or folks that struggled with alcoholism, they were able to quit drinking by drinking, kratom instead. And then the green varieties, they tend to be the most popular.

John (05:22):

They're good for stress and anxiety, especially they're more similar to the white than the red, although they tend to have a little bit more euphoria. Right. And so the cool thing about kratom is, if you take a very small amount, like half a teaspoon or so, or a couple capsules, the effects are really subtle. And just kind of like a little background effect. If you take a larger amount, there can be a little bit of euphoria, but it's nothing like a state change or disassociative or necessarily even psychoactive. So it's something that people can incorporate in their lives and not really get high or really change their state so much so they can go about their day.

Logan (05:59):

Right? Yeah. I think that background cause working with herbs, I like in the psychoactive substances, like silicide mushrooms or whatever, that's getting hit over the head with a sledgehammer, then we have other, like you have came at me, all right. Most people aren't going to notice anything. So kratom. It may be more in that mid range of there. And I think yeah, being able to kind of run that gamut can be a useful way for people to understand herbs in the first place because you know, it's not well understood in our world. Sure. Can you talk about the quality, the sourcing and sustainability of freedom?

John (06:34):

Yeah. So most of the cranium that we have in the States comes in from Indonesia and it's grown in like Creighton farms, but it's almost wild grown essentially because it grows so well. So they're just big trees that have the leaves and the leaves are what are taken and powderized and dried up. So we've been using the same farmer in Indonesia for three years now, the same guy, really high quality stuff that a lot of my clients comment that they've never had any, like, it's definitely not like the stuff in the smoke shops, for example. But I asked early on, you know, is there any chemicals on this? Is it organic? What's the story with that? There's no chemicals or pesticides on most kratom, right? Because it just grows so easily in that region that there's no need for it. It's just forest and forest. So it's all natural. It is sustainable. It's, it's naturally grown there and in that region, so I it's, it's great. And it's sustainable for the community. Especially there there's a lot of farms and villages that have had a great increase in their quality of life, standard of living and their financial circumstances because the American market for kratom has really exploded. So it's cool to help those, those folks to gain more independence and wealth.

Logan (07:48):

Absolutely. So what is the kind of the differentiator you're talking about a kratom and people may find in other places, what makes a low quality create versus a high quality one?

John (07:58):

Well, one thing, all of our stuff is tested by the way, too, from our supplier. So it's tested for heavy metals, it's tested for impurities, salmonella and stuff. The FDA ran all these stories about [inaudible] salmonella outbreaks. Really. It was like one or two vendors, but they try to blow it up out of proportion. I think it's the farm that we use. They just keep putting out consistent high quality stuff. Maybe it's the region that they're in or the cultivation process. Another thing whenever you buy kratom from big companies or buy it at the head shop, like some of the leading, probably leading folks, when it comes to volume, they're buying in like huge, huge, huge bulk amounts importing it, it sits in a warehouse, they package it up and then it sits at the shelves because they buy a whole lot more. Right. my particular source or my business, it is growing and scaling, but we're still constantly bringing in pretty routinely the fresh stuff from Indonesia. So I think that has something to do with it also, I will say however that it does keep for quite some time. So yeah. I, I just think that there's something about bringing it in fresh, consistently from Indonesia, from the source that makes it makes a big difference also. Yeah.

Logan (09:06):

Do you think any of them, other suppliers may be cutting their material, right. If it's just a leaf, they can throw in some other leaves and it's gonna water it down.

John (09:14):

I don't know that that's happening. I mean, it could be it'd be difficult to know if that was happening. I think again, it's just so abundant that I don't think that there's, that happens often and there's stories like cut with fentanyl and stuff like that. I don't why that, why the vendor even bothered to do that? Yeah. Like that'd be, wow, that's some crazy kratom you got there. But I think that maybe those are things that happen once in a blue moon and folks that want to discredit, kratom, take it and run with it. For the most part. I think most people are selling pretty, pretty pure plant matter.

Logan (09:49):

Excellent. Okay. What are the best ways to take kratom? And I guess I'm matching it to the different varieties would be useful.

John (09:57):

Sure. So me personally, I like to drink it with water. So I will take about 12 to 16 ounces. I like to put it in my Yeti here. I'm drinking water right now ever. And put in, I usually do like two good sized teaspoons, although I wouldn't encourage anyone to start with that amount. It's a maybe moderate amount, maybe moderate on a little bit on the high end, not too crazy. And so I'll put it in my 12 to 16 ounces of water, mix it up and then I'll drink it slowly over the course of about two hours or so by then, it'll be maybe two thirds of it has gone. There's a third left. I'll add more water and continue to kind of milk it slowly. That's what I like to do because it kind of prolongs the effects. If it's someone's first time, I also encouraged to drink it with water as well, but maybe start with a smaller amount, like half a teaspoon.

John (10:47):

And the reason for that, I also encourage them to do it on a full stomach. If you look on the internet, most people will say to do it on an empty stomach, but being in this space for quite some time, there has been a small handful of people that have experienced some nausea or said that it made them feel antsy or just kind of weird while it is rare. I like to encourage people to drink it slowly, that way, instead of taking a full dose, you know, or even taking the whole half teaspoon at once, they're able to slowly drink it and then listen to their body, experience the effects. If they feel weird, then maybe back off of it. If

they feel like, Oh, this is, I kind of feel something, then it feels kind of nice and you can continue to drink it.

John (11:23):

So that's one way, a lot of people like capsules. So it tastes kind of like bitter green tea or maybe a little bit like macho. It's an acquired taste. I like the taste of it now. And it's like, it's like a fine wine. Oh, this must've been, he's been in Indonesia. But some people like capsules super convenient. You're like taking it at college or you're studying or you're you're at your workplace. That might be nice. The difference between drinking and in the capsules that drinking, it tends to be more potent. As far as the effect, capitals tend to be more, they slowly come into effect. Maybe they last a little bit longer. It's more of a subtle approach. And then some people do, what's called a toss and wash, which I would encourage you not to do. If it's your first time, they'll take their dose on a spoon, throw it in their mouth and then chug some water. But if you do this it's so finally powderized it like coats, the inside of your mouth. It's it's crazy.

Logan (12:15):

Can be a choking hazard. Yeah. We can do that with some of our herbs and sometimes it doesn't go down.

John (12:21):

That's the hardcore way. And then there's something called parachuting where people, people use toilet paper. There's other things that are like dissolvable. That would be better that people use after you put your dose in, you wrap the toilet paper and a little dissolvable paper, put it in your mouth and you, and then you drink it from there. How those are heard of that one. That's interesting. Yeah. Parachuting that's, that's pretty much the way some, there has been people that talk about smoking it. I think that's crazy. I don't think people actually really do that, but that's about, that's about it. That's how to take.

Logan (12:51):

Hmm, excellent. So let's talk about the tolerance with this. I know it'd been used and we're going to talk more about opioids for sure. But it being used to help people with addiction is kratom, have addictive qualities itself, should people cycle it, take breaks. That sort of thing.

John (13:10):

Great question. And as a creator, I'm a vendor. I like to be open and honest about this because it can be habit forming to put it lightly. People can become physically dependent. I like to differentiate between the word addiction and dependency. There's this guy, Dr. Gabor Montay. Who's a medical doctor, but he does a lot of work when it comes to addiction, especially with homeless people and folks that are really struggling with trauma. And he says that the definition of addiction is you're physically dependent on something. And even though you know, that it's causing harm to yourself or you're causing harm to others, like stealing from someone or taking from your mom's purse or whatever, you keep doing it, knowing that it's not good for you, that's an addiction. Then you have a physical dependency. So people know there's many people that are physically dependent on caffeine, for example, right?

John (14:05):

So if you take something consistently regularly daily for an extended period of time, multiple weeks, multiple months, especially then your body starts to develop a tolerance in that your receptors need more of the substance in order to bring about the same desired effect. And so what happens when that tolerance starts to come in is people find themselves taking more and more and more, same story with all sorts of drug weather, whether it's alcohol or cocaine or opioids for that matter. And so the thing to do to mitigate that is to take breaks. If you, if you can, as often as you can. Now, there's some people that are taking it for severe chronic pain. And if they take a break, then they can't function in life, right? So if you can take breaks maybe once every two weeks or a month, you take three to four days off.

John (14:52):

This gives your body a time to reset and gives your liver a little bit of a break, right? And you know, a lot of people would say that it's bad for your liver. And then there was a lot of FDA propaganda saying that I've found very few instances of scientific studies or anecdotal evidence saying that it actually did harm the liver, but I can see if somebody has really taken a whole, whole, whole lot. Another thing is you can cycle through different strains. So if you've been using the green manga, for example, consistently for awhile, and it starts to subtly lose its potency, then you could switch over to something else. But really the best thing is to do is to use it responsibly because there are a good number of people. It was a big eye-opener when I discovered this, read this sub Reddit thread about addiction to kratom and or dependency to kratom.

John (15:35):

And there's a lot of people that really do experience some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms. Some people try to sugar coat it and say, it's like a kin to not having your caffeine where you get a headache or whatever. But if you are taking a whole, whole lot of kratom, like there's some people that take a whole ounce in one day or more than a whole ounce, this normally would last two weeks, one to three weeks, even longer. If you take a smaller amount, then you can develop some pretty severe withdrawal symptoms like headaches, restless, leg, vomiting, flu like symptoms. And so it's really important to use it responsibly. Now that being said, I always make it a point to share that for someone that was formerly addicted to heroin or someone that was formally addicted to Percocet or Oxycontin or fentanyl, and then they use kratom to overcome the withdrawal symptoms from that, then they find themselves dependent on kratom.

John (16:28):

Medical Monopoly Musings #59
Another FDA Whistleblower, a Predatory CEO and Regulator Revolving Door Spin

Got one more FDA whistleblower to share with you. For this one, I want to go into a bit more detail to show how this fits in with other critical aspects. This gives you a bigger picture of how the FDA and Big Pharma operate in all their shady glory.

The majority of this comes from Robert Whitaker over at MadInAmerica.com. For even more details go and read his lengthy piece.

It is centered around the antipsychotic drug, asenapine, made by Schering-Plough (SP) with the trade name Saphris.

SP later merged with Merck in 2009. This merger made CEO of SP, Fred Hassan, and other executives over $100 million. Earlier, Hassan had great success at Pharmacia, which got bought out by Pfizer, largely based on Celebrex and Bextra, drugs that would come under lawsuits and criminal charges for false marketing later.

Hassan, named by Financial Times CEO of the Year in 1999, would take that position at SP in 2003. At SP he also led the false marketing of Vytorin and Zetia which Merck later paid $688 million for. He was in charge during the approval of asenapine as well.

He’s held various positions and board seats of other pharmaceutical companies since then up through the present day. Hassan was a chairman at PhRMA, the industry trade group, including working on the Affordable Care Act in 2009.

Our drug in question centers around Ron Kavanagh, an expert in clinical pharmacology at the FDA turned whistleblower. His case is still not resolved despite him turning whistleblower 12 years ago.

Kavanagh had worked at the FDA since 1998 and led to several drugs not being approved, and others such as Lotronex, being recalled.

The pharma companies started hating him because of this. So did others at the FDA. In 2005, he started talking to the Senate Finance Committee about “corruption in the psychiatry division and in the Office of Clinical Pharmacology and other FDA offices.”

He mentioned the off-label marketing of psychiatric drugs, particularly in children. (See #40 for examples.) For this he was suspended and told to stop blowing the whistle if he wanted to keep his job.

In 2007, Kavanaugh looked at the data behind asenapine. He warned that asenapine and related drugs would be responsible for 5000 or more deaths per year. And his research showed they weren’t even effective for mild to moderate bipolar symptoms they were approved for.

Some alarming details stood out. Whitaker wrote that Kavanaugh found safety concerns about neonatal deaths “where a possible toxic risk had been deliberately obscured” by SP and “a cardiac arrest in a healthy volunteer had morphed into a fainting episode.” Unfortunately, this is often how drug science is conducted and modified by drug companies. In May 2008, Kavanaugh recommended non-approval.

By June, receiving pushback from his superiors, he wrote to the Office of the Inspector General and senator Charles Grassley. He said his colleagues at the FDA were “complicit” with SP in criminal activity.

Superior to Kavanaugh was the director of the psychiatry division at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Thomas Laughren. Laughren started at the FDA in 1985. His first review as a team leader was Prozac (see #10, #40 and #58).

During his FDA tenure, Laughren recommended off-label use of psychiatric drugs in children. He co-authored a book with chief medical officer of Eli Lilly (maker of Prozac), Leigh Thompson. He served on panels at conferences paid for by drug companies. In other words he had conflicted interests.

FBI agents looked into the whistleblower complaint but labeled it a difference of opinions in the agency.

In August, Laughren wrote a report approving of asenapine. That month Kavanaugh was fired.

Despite approval, asenapine didn’t do particularly well in the marketplace (perhaps because it didn’t work). In 2013, it was only making sales of $150 million.

In 2012, Laughren left the FDA to form Laughren Psychopharm Consulting. One of his first clients was AstraZeneca, working to get Seroquel approved for more uses including in adolescents. Laughren was successful in navigating these new uses through the FDA’s approval process, despite data of sudden cardiac death. (This was also the drug that AstraZeneca paid Wikipedia editors to write positively about covered in #47.)

Within two years, the FDA received reports of 220 deaths due to cardiac events for Seroquel. A warning label was added.

A PDF of a presentation of Laughren found online lists clients including AbbVie, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Roche and many others.

Meanwhile he is also consultant to National Institute of Mental Health, under the NIH.

Laughren is also a part time employee at Massachusetts General Hospital Clinical Trials Network and Institute which states on their home page, “Making Your Clinical Trial Programs SUCCESSFUL – Smaller and Faster.” He holds a leadership position there.

In this document he summarizes, “Regulatory agencies are not fundamentally opposed to
considering alternative approaches to carving up the psychiatric illness space” by showing studies that show clinical benefits which “have a way of overcoming initial regulatory reluctance.”

In other words, hire me! I have the network to help get your drug studied in a way it will get approved because of my insider knowledge and connections.

In summation, Hassan and Laughren are laughing all the way to the bank. Meanwhile, Kavanaugh has still not made any traction on his whistleblower case. Welcome to our FDA.

References:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/08/fda-whistleblowers-documents-commerce-corruption-death/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hassan
https://isctm.org/public_access/Feb2014/Presentations/140219_Laughren.pdf
https://mgh-ctni.org/

Logan (00:20):
Into the show. We've got an exciting one for you. Well, I think they're all exciting, but I'm especially excited about this one because it got the first shaman joining the health sovereign podcast, and we'll be exploring exactly what that means, but showman in this show. So joining me today, [inaudible] the Royal Sharman is an extreme pioneer in the domain of personal development and energetic alignment through her groundbreaking modality. The energetics of euphoria Makhosi teachers are clients and guides to ground themselves in the feeling of bliss calling in the state of euphoria on a whim, regardless of external circumstances. So I recently had a chance to meet my cozy in person and event in Utah. We talked a little bit about that. Really found her quite an amazing individual. So invited her on the show. And we're talking about shifting and changing paradigms, which is a very important topic to health because well, the health we have is a direct result of the paradigm we're living in.

Logan (01:20):
I'll be covering more in this show in 2021 as well as other places on really trying to get a better grasp on what this new health paradigm, a humankind, what is possible for us, and really getting that down to the specifics. We've been exploring the current paradigm or the corruption and systematic problems within that, but can we step outside of it? And I think this shamanic perspective is something helpful and important piece of moving forward. We're not moving backwards, we're moving forwards. So let's dive into the interview with Makhosi. Welcome Makhosi to the health sovereign podcast. It's so great to be speaking to you today.

Makhosi (02:08):
Thank you for having me. I'm ready to dive right in.

Logan (02:12):
All right. How does someone become a showman in today's day and age? So how did you arrive here? And I know, I think it's shamanism being something that is not part of our dominant worldview and that worldview is a big thing. I want to talk about spending more time on your story than I normally have. Other people spend time on their story, I think is instructive and helpful to really understand like how do you get yeah,

Makhosi (02:38):
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because shamanism is such a, such a literal world view spanning the globe, but yet we tend to be so disconnected from it and what that actually means. So when people ask me like what shamanism in general, most of the time they are associating shamanism with the shaman, right? And shamanism is not necessarily dependent on the shaman, the person who is the gentleman, it's not the sharpening shamanism is really just a paradigm in which a paradigm of perceiving the world in which one is concerned with the relationship to all things, the spirit of all things, including yourself or friends and family, but also nature and the universe at large. So the shaman then in a shamanic culture the Shamana, the shaman would be the bridge between those two, those two realms. So even us using the term shaman and shamanism isn't totally accurate because it's really us just perceiving. We, you know, we had anthropologists who saw shamans in Siberia and that is just the title of their medicine people. Right. And across the world, there's different titles for it. There's different names, but really what we're talking about is animistic culture, animistic animism in general, across the world. So all of that kind of preface

Logan (04:49):
For people that may not be familiar with.

Makhosi (04:52):
Yeah, yeah. Animism is like honoring the, the consciousness that animates an aspect of nature. Right. And animates doesn't mean like moving, breathing, et cetera. But it is the consciousness that is within any expression of the universe that we see with our naked eye that has a non-physical component to it. So then how I became a Shawmut. Well first I have to be very clear. I only call myself the Royal shaman because we're here in the West and people know the term shaman, but in, in the lineage that I was initiated into, we're not called Shellmans, we're called sangomas and technically the way in which I operate would be more in alignment with a [inaudible], which is essentially a, a role that has to do with societal direction, teaching concerning myself with the patterns that have been displayed and then bringing us as a collective back into harmony with nature. So my role, although I can work with people individually, that's not really my calling, my calling really is more about bridging paradigms from the West into, into the shamanic paradigm. So where did I,

Logan (06:36):
You were a little girl and was like, I want to be a showman when I grew up. Right.

Makhosi (06:40):
That never happened. Even when I was on the journey and like being told, this is the process and you're going to go through initiation. That was never like, yeah, I want to do that. It was like, well, you don't really have any other choice. All my other options were kind of stripped away until I really took care of this. I would say that really my entire life, I grew up very

Makhosi (07:16):
Spiritually sensitive, feeling energy, being able to read things about people, know things about the, about people. These are not uncommon things. We call them supernatural. They're really not. They're just natural. But I really kind of put those on the back burner to focus on being a high achiever because I grew up the oldest of a teen single mom, and I felt a lot of responsibility and like, okay, well, somebody has to, has to get us out of this situation. And so I was always like top of my class and Oh, you know, I'm going to go off and get my degree. And my plan originally was med school. But once I had a child that kind of derailed everything for me, because not only was I really struggling health wise, my health had gone completely. It, it had just completely disintegrated over some years.

Makhosi (08:26):
And I also began to shift my purse, my perception of what value was like. It wasn't so much about how much money I was earning or how, whatever status that people might think that I could have it then became. I just surrendered to motherhood really, and allowed myself to take one step at a time rather than planning everything out. And that opened the way for me to enter my first, my first initiation process. So I spent my first three years, my son was still very young. He was a toddler while I was an initiation. And I went through initiation through the Dogon tribe of West Africa really connected with the ancient Egyptian ways of being the, the comedic spiritual system. And that process, of course, during that, where like having divination and all of that and things were coming up about who I was here to be. And then that led into me following really crazy synchronicities, following dreams and visions that were happening. And that ultimately led me to meeting my, my spiritual mother, my spiritual teacher, and going to South Africa to I went through a total of seven initiations in that process. And graduated in, graduated from that in 2018 cliff notes.

Logan (10:12):
Yeah, yeah. So much there, the Dogon tribe I've, I've heard of them, mentioned this to a couple other people. Not a lot of people have heard of them. It very fascinating. I know very briefly one of the very cool things, and now I'll post a video too, that has just some of the basic facts behind them to the show notes for this page helps sovereign. It'll be up there. I'm not sure which number we're on right now. What's very interesting that they have a connection to the Sirius star system and they knew facts about that, which they couldn't possibly know air quoting here that modern, astronomical science has verified. Right. Can, can you give a little more background about the Dogan people? Because I think that's very fascinating to understand this, I guess, a quilted history and stuff that is not recognized in Western civilization. Yeah.

Makhosi (11:05):
So what's interesting about the Dogon is this is why the paradigm shift is so important for people to understand, because even what we talk about when we're talking about the doggone it's, it's coming from anthropologists who had one paradigm or one way of viewing things who then come, you know, try to observe and try to learn, but they're doing it all through a, a lens that isn't in alignment with what they're actually learning. So it's almost like standing outside of a house and like trying to guess what's actually in there. And so maybe you get some hints of like you peek through the window and you like, see the couch. Right. And so you're Oh, okay, well, the living room must be here and you start guessing the arrangement inside the house, but you really don't know because you're not in there.

Makhosi (12:02):
One of the things that really stands out to me about the doggone specifically is that people tend to think that it's a very small tribe located only in Mali and that's not actually accurate. It spans a much larger area. And we have to also consider that the lines that make up the countries are pretty recent inventions coming from the West. Those are not, those are not African delineations of, of where one area begins and where it ends. So the Dogon actually is much larger. I'm also making sure I'm not claiming to be a Dogon, so that is not at all what

Makhosi (12:54):
Happened. So there have been a few spiritual teachers that have come out of there only a few and have come here and taught. So that was how I ended up having that opportunity was interacting with, with organizations who were connected with these few individuals who had come out of, out of these tribes to teach their teach the cultural worldview. The other thing that I think is really important to note is that the doggone are not completely unique in, in that knowledge as well, really this paradigm or worldview, which we have seen in ancient Egypt, but, and we call it comedic, but this was actually existing in various areas all over the world. That's why we see pyramids on every continent and ancestors as the foundation of these systems. And there were these foundational pillars that were common amongst all of them. It's just that different tribes had a focus on certain aspects of nature, maybe more than others. So I feel like the gift that I got through that was being initiated into this paradigm, this way of perceiving things, which was brutal because you have to break down everything that you think you believe about what the world is and rebuild it with something else. But those foundational pillars I've really been able to see in all of our ancient spiritual systems and indigenous spiritual systems, because they're, we call them ancient, but they do still exist.

Logan (15:01):
Right. So let's talk about initiations and breaking down like initiations. Aren't fun things like I know there's a, like the crying, like we don't have initiations and that's part of the problem of Western society for the most part, but it's not like a good thing. And you were saying you don't have a choice. And I think that's, it's interesting, no one chooses to be a showman. It's kind of foisted upon you and there's that whole like, hero's journey, the refusal of the call. Like if you refuse things, get worse until you like, okay, I gotta do it. Right. can you, I guess, maybe explain like one of your initiations and tied into this idea of the breaking down of the paradigm that worldview to shift into this other paradigm or worldview.

Makhosi (15:49):
Yeah. initiation, the word by itself really is just speaking to an education. But in these instances it also is a very, it's a very real, tangible experience. It's not just sitting in a classroom learning some stuff like even in the, you know, I'm, I'm part of so many spiritual communities and we have this idea that, Oh like, yes, we're all in initiations all the time, but when we're talking about initiation, that's a different thing. It's a very different thing. So the, let me, let me be very specific. The first initiation that I went through that was really an UN a re-introduction to this paradigm. That was not, it was very difficult, but not nearly as difficult as really becoming a showman. The first one, it was so difficult just because it conf so much conflict of the mind and having to shatter how you see things.

Makhosi (17:01):
I was the only one left out of my class. There were like nine of us when we started, I was the only one to finish in our group. When I entered into my initiation to become a sangoma or a shaman, I was also the only one. And that's just kind of been my path is that I'm really the only one. And that journey was so hard, especially from a Western paradigm where we've, we have this belief that's kind of ingrained in us of superiority. And I know nobody wants to honestly say, Oh, I have this perception of being superior, but we do, we that hopefully somebody is getting triggered and that's okay. But the process, there's so many, just like little aspects that are built into it to break down any illusion that you have, that you're in control, that you are the superior that, you know, what the heck you're doing. And then your own spirit will put you into situations where it's just becoming glaringly obvious. And so what I mean by that, one of the very simple, most basic rules is like, we have to sleep on the floor in initiation. I slept on the floor for four years during that, during that process. And what it does psychologically is keep you close to the ground, very grounded, right. But there's also some like mental stuff happening there as well, where I'm sleeping on the floor. Other people are sleeping on beds.

Makhosi (19:02):
Having to walk on my knees, you know, that part very, very challenging. Those are like the, those are just like simple things, certain taboos things we can't eat, which are really meant to empower us to know, like we have mastery over what we're putting in our body, but also these things aren't conducive in that process to help your spiritual abilities to develop. So you're right in that we kind of are missing some of those aspects here. Like we don't have rites of passage at all. And I think what we're really missing is some of those lessons that come through a very tangible experience, not just a mental education.

Logan (20:04):
Yeah. The Western classroom is very different than any sort of initiation by which we're, we're talking about here and the education, the Latin root of that means that to draw out which is very different than like memorization by wrote the whole system that we have going there.

Makhosi (20:25):
So very interesting too, like where we're really taught to just ask a bunch of a bunch of questions. And we were just constantly asking questions, right? Where the initiation process yeah, you're not really asking questions. You actually are completely in surrender to the, to the cultural norms that you're being trained in and nature itself to unveil or reveal knowledge to you when the timing is right. When you are ready for it, when, when it will make the most sense to you, et cetera, et cetera, and getting comfortable and feeling safe and secure in that I have no control over anything that's happening right now, except for how, how I'm showing up. Right. And who, who I'm being despite, you know, having to wake up at three o'clock in the morning every day and, you know, having debate in cold water outside and, and not sleeping and still somehow showing up and like not ripping everyone's head off because we use some of that.

Logan (21:53):
Yeah. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I feel like me personally, being like, I am a Western person, as you know, probably most of the listeners are, and they're just kind of like default ideas. We don't really, unless we go through things or try to, we often are never challenging our worldview, challenging our paradigm, just so many beliefs come in just because they're there without any possible, other perspective. And I know for me, like kind of default position of like a materialist thing, and I feel it's, it's been a long journey in breaking that down and certainly more so than that, the past couple of years, even before it was interesting, but right before the Corona virus pandemic hit I was, I wrote this article about like reality fluidity, just like practicing, stretching your paradigms, specifically looking at other ways and trying to do that.

Logan (22:50):
But I guess, and I, I feel so many people get stuck because they're, they're like so stuck in their paradigm because it's, it's, it can be like earth shattering stepping out of it. Right. It's, it's literally worldview shattering to get like, initiated, to get broke down to that. So I know that's why people, you know, don't move outside of it, but can you speak to like, I guess kind of two ways to go, is there a specific instance where your paradigm shifted that you could speak to in some part of your initiation? We'll start there, like, where do you is like a breakdown moment or whatnot, but really you went from one paradigm shifted to another one.

Makhosi (23:29):
Oh my which ones start with it was just like, every time I thought I had got, gotten comfortable in a new paradigm, it was like, everything was just, was just shattered. I would say the that's like really leaping out to me and I know that this is going to get it just really jars people, especially because of course the listeners can't see, but I am a woman of color. I am mixed, I'm both black and white. And really having this idea because in the us, there's been such a fight for equality, right? And so from the view of race, but also from the view of gender, I really was coming from this world view, that equality was the goal. And I had a moment where all of that shifted. I was experiencing things and seeing things. And I came to realize that equality really does not exist and actually is not desirable by nature, but it is equity that, that everything is valued for what it is innately.

Makhosi (24:51):
So equality AKA to be equal, right. To be the same right. One equals one. Right. So if I'm a woman and I'm trying to be equal to a man, then I am now trying to fit myself into a man box. I'm trying to fit into this box that says that actually the Manliness or what the Western view of masculinity is. Cause that's really what we're talking about. That that is what we should aspire to. Right. And when I came to this shift of like, wait, no Manliness is valuable. Yes. And it's valuable in relation to the complimenter the complimentary, right? Like I came to be the compliment to that, which means the opposite of equal opposite of equal, still valuable, still valuable everything, having its value, mosquito, having its value, Brown grass, having its value. But that the idea that, Oh, we all should be aspiring to equality our ancient systems.

Makhosi (26:24):
Weren't set up that way. So when I actually learned about the ancient hierarchy or really the hierarchy that still does exist in in these systems that have been going back tens of thousands of years, the hierarchy is there really as a responsibility, not so much as power, but the power is really about responsibility. And so the person that's at the top is in the greatest service to everyone at the bottom, but everyone that's in, in the hierarchy has access to what is the goal. And the goal is mastery of the self. The goal is to become like the divine to elevate ourselves, whether you are a street sweeper, whether you are a honey bee or a, or a King, right. And so it's not fighting and like being envious of one another and, and all of that to try and be equal. But it's really about honoring the value of each individual expression of the universe as is because the universe, the nature shows us it prioritizes diversity difference, innate connection, right. We all are connected, but difference. And that's, what's valuable

Logan (28:00):
Have, remember, as we met was that back in October, a couple months ago now at an event that was amazing. So many things that could share from that, but I remember you talking about, as part of your training, you'd have to like go into a home and be psychic. Like you had to be able to bring up your skills, use them and actually like read the room, read people. Could you tell a little bit about that and what that's like it, I don't know the coming from like a materialist paradigm, it's like, Oh, I'm just imagining things. It's kind of the default position. Or, you know, what, if I get it right, you can have so many emotions get stirred up in that, but to really develop your skills to that point, it takes a lot of training. It takes many initiations. But could you speak a little bit to that?

Makhosi (28:45):
Yeah. I mean, one of the aspects of our training process is there's tests. So this is not like, Oh, I'm going to go into college for four years and then I'm going to come out. I'm going to graduate and I just need to

Logan (28:58):
Rote memorize these answers. Right?

Makhosi (29:01):
No, none of that being in the, in this initiation process is like really surrendering to being tested at any moment and having to be ready because that's how spirit works. It, there's not a time you can't really plan spirit doesn't work that way. So I would always have to be like on call for spirit. So my spiritual mother would take me to places and, and interacting with people. And then we have a very specific way of doing divination. And I didn't have all I had was my own site. And so she would be testing my, my site. And by the way, I was wrong a lot a lot, it was like surrendering to being wrong and being, having the pressure and all of that. So I would, she would take me into a house and we would cleanse the whole house.

Makhosi (30:05):
There'd be a bunch of people there. And then she would be like, all right read, read these people, tell me, you know, I don't even speak the language mind you, I've only picked up some Zulu words in the process. And so I'd go in there and I would have to read what it was that I saw, which also showed me as well, that the influence of our, of our cultural paradigm, because I would be reading something, but I would be filtering it through this lens of how we see things in the West. And it would also grant an opportunity for like some re re-education, but we would have like, it's like a pillar of our initiation process that your spiritual mother, or really any anyone that's assisting in that. Cause it's not just one person. Like my spiritual grandmother was there. Her partner was there, my spiritual mom's brother was there. There were, there were people that were involved. This is like a community situation. This is not like just a one-on-one thing. And they can, at any time I could be outside washing clothes and then they would yell for me. And they would say essentially in Zulu, like I've hidden something.

Makhosi (31:26):
And so now once they say I've hidden something, that means you go down right then into divining and using your site to see, okay, what is it? What is it that that they've hidden, you have to tell them where, where it is specifically without getting up from your spot. You have to tell them what you, what you see where it's hidden. And then once you've gotten it, it's like a big celebration and you get, you get to go grab it and then you get to dance with it. And yeah, it's it, it's a lot of fun looking back on it. It was a lot of pressure.

Logan (32:11):
Looks good in hindsight, for sure. I can understand that guess as I say, I'm still shifting and it's a constantly shifting paradigm and worldview, as I'm moving more into the understanding, working with speaking about spirit one of the things that has held me up, like, yeah, I'm definitely, you know, high achiever when I control things as an entrepreneur business owner, that sort of thing, everything like plan all that. And I've, I've had great success in doing that, which means I've just built that paradigm stronger and stronger. So as I move into this, it's, it's such a traumatic shift. It's like spirit a interview. I had recently with a man Thomas insert. He kind of was talking about that. That's above my pay grade and I kind of like that praise, but I am trying to kind of understand and be able to interact one of the things that was like a stop for me. He's like, okay, you know, I'm hearing this physical or how do I tell the difference between quote unquote, good spirits, bad spirits. And I know like there's a whole trickster type of entity in there. Like how do you possibly navigate this thing? Which I like have no tools with which to navigate should I even be stepping into this? And of course I'm like initiated into this. So it's like, okay, I have to now. So where, yeah. How do you learn to navigate these realms?

Makhosi (33:30):
I would say going back to really like hum humbling yourself. So the initiation process is so humbling just in itself. It is humbling. You can't and really being open to I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to fail at this quite a bit. Oftentimes, and that's, that's really the way that it's even set up is like, I'm not going to tell you anything, you're going to do it. And then I'm going to tell you, right? So you have to mess up first before you get any help here. But interacting with the non-physical realm, this is a question that I get a lot. And what people don't realize is that everything is non-physical before it's physical, right? Like we're entrepreneurs, right? So we create a business in our head. We create a product in our head. We create a service in our head before it ever manifests in the physical. So people are often like, Oh, I'm afraid. Like what if I interact with dark entities, you've already been interacting with dogs,

Logan (34:51):
Right.

Makhosi (34:52):
That you've been doing that. Right. Like when you're watching horror films back to back to back, right. You're interacting with darkness. So it's not to say don't worry about it, cause you should definitely worry about it. But also letting go of expectations. So we think that darkness means we're powerless in the situation. Like if a dark entity comes to me, then I am at the mercy of the dark entity, right. When really that dark entity is coming because you have the power to assist in this. Right. And you have the power to transform energy from one form into another because it's just energy. Right. Can it influence sure. It sure can. It can manifest very tangibly, but at its core, it is also energy. So first looking in your life at where you can become a master in just energy in your life. Right. So how can you master feeling your emotions, right? How can you master your interactions with your family that you don't like and so on and so forth. And what's beautiful is that mastery in those areas then grants you this capacity to be able to read and know and, and Intuit energy in a much more powerful way when you're dealing with, you know, dark or light entities.

Logan (36:51):
Yeah. You mentioned the emotions there and those, one of the things you were teaching us at that event back there, just the, being able to fully feel, being able to expand your range of emotions. That is, I think you said something along the lines of intuition is developed through capacity and range of emotions. A lot of people want to be more intuitive, but not if it means like I have to be able to deal with sadness or anything. So I found that very interesting. Could you speak to, I guess a little bit more why that's important then how people can work with that?

Makhosi (37:25):
Yeah. Spirit really is connecting through emotion. So spirit can, can communicate with us through, through that medium. Right. And so it is this non-physical aspect. That's bringing us information about how we're perceiving the world what's happening in the world. How do we feel about it? What are we making it mean and so on and so forth. So what I was really speaking to in that, in that training is that we have such a resistance to feeling anything other than happy or, or like good, right. We get very addicted to that. But our ability to experience the non-physical is really in our willingness to surrender, to experiencing the full capacity, which means if, if I'm, if, if we can view it like on a scale, right? The more that someone has been able to go through the entire range of emotions and still be solid and, and still be light despite having experienced trauma and you know, really awful experiences or really been in the depths, they can then tap into that because it's just it's energy.

Makhosi (39:03):
So in that exercise, I was taking you all through generating emotions within yourself because it's just energy. And what I find is that when you become aware of how much energy you have access to, that's in what we don't want to experience, right? The, the sadness, the grief, the despair, the anger, et cetera. But you can transmute that and use that as fuel. So even me sitting here with you today, right now, what I am tapping into is something that was so dark. I nearly died. That was what provided the fuel because I was like F this I'm not, I'm not giving up. You're not, I'm not, I'm not going to just give up or, or be the victim of this. And so I tapped into that experience and that provided me with the fuel to continue on with my training and in my initiation when I wanted to quit, I wanted to quit almost every day because it sucks.

Makhosi (40:31):
Like I'm by myself, I'm in South Africa, I'm going through this, these challenges, my husband and my kid are in the U S like, it was hard. I wanted to quit every day, but I kept tapping into the energy of that experience that I had and used it as fuel. So when you allow yourself to experience that wide range, you have a whole lot of fuel, a whole lot of power that you can put behind whatever it is that you are creating in the world or where you're going, or, or what you want to influence and impact.

Logan (41:07):
Right? Yeah. I think the, although we label them the bad emotions, they tend to be stronger motivating forces than the good ones. The trick is to not get like stuck there. That's where we see the negative health effects and whatnot. And to bring this back to like the being psychic, the using your intuition, if you always suppress your sadness, for instance, right. That's like shutting off that perspective, that lens to able to read that in another person. Right? So that's, that's this idea of being able to expand the scope and the range of emotions to fully feel things. Right.

Makhosi (41:41):
Absolutely. And really when we're talking about connecting with other humans, right. Whether it's just reading their energy or being able to be empathetic or hold space for them, et cetera, the capacity that we can do that too. Like if you've never experienced anything close to what this person has experienced, it can be difficult to hold the space for them without getting sucked into their emotion. Right. It's so much easier for that to weigh on you and for it, for it to become you. Right. You, you end up taking it on, but if you've also experienced, maybe not the exact same thing, but similar frequency right. Of an experience, then you can sit there with someone as their witness, allow them the space to feel all of that without taking it on. Right. And so then it becomes almost like a super power because holding spaces not about, Oh, you can cry on my shoulder. Like just make you feel good. Right. It's sitting in a place where this person is allowed to fully experience what they are experiencing without somebody trying to fix it without somebody judging them for it without somebody now getting sucked into their, their stuff, it's being a rock and holding the space so that they can experience all of that and then have something to grab onto, to come out of it.

Logan (43:20):
Yeah. That's resonating deeply with me right now for an experience that I'm sure I'll, I'll share on this podcast. Another, yeah. So back at this event in Utah, amazing experience, like through and through, and for me, it was the first time I felt my ancestors. That's how I've described it to other people in that. And this is like babbling, you know, working with other shamans and whatnot. And that's always, you know, through all the cultures around the world, as you were saying, the ancestors are such a huge part. And I like, it was one of those things. Like I cognitively knew it should be good, but this was the first time I felt it. And that feels embodied. And I can like tap into that connection at any time. Could you speak to the importance of the ancestors and how this fits into some of the different ideas we've been exploring so far?

Makhosi (44:15):
Oh my gosh. And hers is like the, I almost look at it as like for the West. It's like the missing link that then, or the, or the missing key that unlocks the paradigm to everything else. So the ancestors are such a pivotal piece and an ancestor reverence because we see them as the bridge between the physical and the non-physical for each of us. Right. Like we're born through the portal. That is our, our mother. Right. And she was born through the portal that was her mother and so on and so on and so on. So our ancestors knew and had systems built around this because they knew that there was no part of them. No one can see I'm rubbing my arms right now. But they could see that there was, there was no aspect of them that they could point their finger on. That was not an ancestor that was not coming from ancestors. Right. They are in our DNA, we are them and they are us. So even when we're talking about ancestor reverence and the spirit, that is the ancestors, we're talking about ourselves, an aspect of ourselves that was in the past, and now we are them in the present. Right. And so the ancestor for each human being is first and foremost, the guide or the guides I call them spirit squad,

Makhosi (46:15):
Your spirit squad. And they are literally in the bones, in, in, in Zulu, they would say, it's like, they're in your bones. Which we know like this is where blood's created. Like

Logan (46:30):
Science is catching up to this. How often does

Makhosi (46:36):
Hello? Our ancestors have been known this for a long time. Now science is finally catching up. And from them, what, when you are in connection with, and communion with your ancestors, this is also an aspect of being able to tap into your intuition, develop your intuitive capabilities. It's also really pivotal to your health, right? So spiritual issues that have not been resolved can manifest as very physical, real health issues, some mental, but also some in the physical body. During that event, I had an experience of resolving the pain in my shoulder that was directly connected to my father's line that I had been experiencing for a couple years. And it still hasn't come back, which is absolutely amazing. I don't even know where to, I could do like so much on just ancestors because it's that important. And I think that's why so many people are feeling this call right now to dig, dig into ancestry.com and DNA tests and all of that, because there's this soul yearning for that connection right now.

Logan (48:04):
I also feel like if we had that ancestor reverence, you know, looking back to the past, but recognizing you'll be an ancestor at some point. So it would dramatically cut down the very short term thinking the Western society tends to have as well.

Makhosi (48:19):
Yeah. I mean, there's so many, so many things that just that little piece results for us. Like if you understand that you are an ancestor like to yourself also to our children, right. And then that, and then actually you're going to come back through them and experience what you left. It resolves so much also the way that we see our children and that we see our elders is influenced in that way. Right now we kind of throw elders away because they're no longer productive air quotes. It's the Western way. It's the way, you know, like we just going to use you up until you're 65 and then throw you into a nursing home and never see you again. Where indigenous systems, anxious systems, that's not a thing like the elders, their value is just different. They're not supposed to be equal. They're not supposed to be equal to the 30 year old man. They've now transformed into some, someone with a different kind of value to bring. And so it was beautiful, just a sidebar to see firsthand cultures where the elders are, the ones that raised the Little's babies. Right. And they're still very active and granting their wisdom to everyone in the community, still participating. They're not just like shoved off in a room somewhere. And I just imagine, like, what if we didn't think that we were smarter than our parents all the time, right.

Logan (50:13):
That go through and teenager, but maybe after that, like I said,

Makhosi (50:16):
Yeah, I mean, as a whole, we are right. We are like the rebel

Logan (50:23):
That's other people me personally,

Logan (50:27):
Can I ask Just to give people listening, something, take it home. What would be like a simple thing they can do to establish or cultivate that connection to the ancestors if they've never had it, or if they've done some things, what would be like one fairly simple thing you'd recommend

Makhosi (50:43):

Simplest thing. Cause I'm all about simple and practical. When you drink water, when you drink water, allow yourself to just get present to the journey and the life. And how many of your ancestors have had this water, allow yourself to sit in that for a second, right. And then speak over the water. So literally science is finally figuring this out. You can program water with your vibration, with your words. So getting into that vibration and that reverence first, and then allowing yourself to speak into the water, what it is that you are grateful for, what is abundant in your life, what you want to see in your life. You know, good health stability, lots of love, clarity, all of those things, and then drink the water simple 30 seconds.

Logan (51:52):
So one of the things I'm exploring kind of a, a mission Nicole in that has been thrust upon me is like shifting us towards a new health paradigm. I liked that you said that the ancestors was the missing key that unlocks so many things. And I see it playing a role in there. And we've been talking about paradigm and worldview. Is there any other missing keys, like big major points that would be, I guess, easy enough for someone to start thinking in those terms?

Makhosi (52:28):
The other one that I'm going to say is that often time it's hard for us to see another paradigm because we are just so, so in ours. And so if you don't have someone who just has another paradigm, it can be difficult to access that, but getting into the practice because we are so indoctrinated in a very dualistic way where everything is this or that for, or against light or dark black, white, right. Allowing yourself to explore, well, what would be outside of these constraints?

Makhosi (53:14):
Just entertaining that question of what would be outside of these constraints rather than putting your energy so focused on one or the other, looking at what is completely out of this dual system. What is a way that I can go about that, about this that's indirect. I, this is really like the more in the more feminine aspect, but it is where I teach from is this very indirect way of going about things rather than fighting against fighting and having to put so much energy towards something, looking at what is completely out of this. And you can do that in your everyday life, in your approach to your spouse, in how you're dealing with your kids, in how you're going about your business, in how you are making choices with how you spend your money and so on and so forth, doesn't have to be just organic or not organic, right? There's options outside of that completely. And a lot of the answers that we seek and really where we're going with this paradigm, I bring up the ancient ways because there's really strong foundations, but it's not for us to return to that. PS. We're not returning to that. That's done. That's not happening, but we can look at okay, what were the foundational pillars that our ancestors held on to? What have we learned that isn't really serving us from the Western paradigm and okay. How, how do we now move forward?

Logan (55:18):
Moving forward? Yep. We need a new normal, just not the one they're pitching us in my I'm going to go see, this has been absolute blast. So much fun to talk to you. Thank you for coming here. Where can people go to follow you find more of your work, contact you if they're interested. Yeah.

Makhosi (55:40):
I'm at the Royal Shaman pretty much everywhere. So TheRoyalShaman.com on YouTube on Instagram and Facebook.

Logan (55:52):
Excellent. And the show notes for this episode, links to all that will be available. Excellent. yeah. Any final words for the people listening

Makhosi (56:03):
Final words

Logan (56:06):
For now

Makhosi (56:10):
Allow yourself to explore the possibility of what your life might look like. If you put just a little focus on healing, your relationships. Hmm.

Logan (56:30):
Excellent advice. And this has been fun. I really enjoy exploring the shamanic realms. The spiritual realms, this this side of life to me is more fun. So come and join us. Thank you.

Medical Monopoly Musings #58
Blowing the Whistle on the FDA

How many FDA whistleblowers would you require before you realize it is safer to assume the FDA is not fulfilling it’s intended role than to assume they are?

Here’s five of them!

Renee Dufault showed that lye used in the production of high fructose corn syrup left trace amounts of mercury. Mother Jones reported that based on average consumption, “individuals could be ingesting as much as 200 micrograms of the neurotoxin per week—three times more than the amount the FDA deems safe for children, pregnant women, women who plan to become pregnant, and nursing mothers.”

When Dufault showed her superiors at the FDA these findings she was told not to investigate. The FDA claimed it was safe without actually investigating further.

So she left in 2008 to make her research public. While I knew corn syrup was bad for you, I had never heard about this fact until I sought out FDA whistleblowers.

Rosemary Johann-Liang was an FDA deputy director. She recommended a strong warning on the product label for the drug Avandia (by GSK) causing congestive heart failure. She was reprimanded, and the review transferred to her supervisor and out of her hands.

Later, the NEJM published similar results vindicating her. She resigned from the FDA.

"I really advocate for drug safety, and a lot of times the agency doesn't want to hear that there are problems,” she said. “I think, in general, there is a culture of 'The drug is always innocent.'"

She also points out the level of proof required by the FDA for drug effectiveness is far lower than that of drug safety, when it should be the opposite if health is actually what is important (rather than money).

What do you expect when the agency is paid for, in part, by the industry they regulate? In 1992, Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act. This made it so pharma companies would fund the FDA’s New Drug Applications reviews.

This law gave Big Pharma even more leverage over the FDA.

Dr. David Graham, associate director in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety turned whistleblower, testified to the U.S. Senate regarding Merck’s Vioxx risks. He was reprimanded…and later smeared and discredited.

(Smearing anyone who says what you don’t like is the standard industry strategy. For example, Victoria Hampshire was an FDA veterinarian. She found a popular heartworm medication for dogs was often deadly. Her analysis got the drug pulled off the market. In return, the drug’s maker Wyeth Pharmaceuticals conducted a smear campaign against her. They even used their influence with the FDA to have her criminally investigated! That’s what you get for truly following the science. Wyeth was later acquired by Pfizer. After all, company culture is important!)

In Dr. Graham’s testimony he said, “I would argue that the FDA, as currently configured, is incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx. We are virtually defenseless...Vioxx is really a symptom of something far more dangerous to the safety of the American people. Simply put, FDA and its Center for Drug Evaluation and Research are broken.”

(If you remember our pharma-friends at the American Council on Science and Health, they named Dr. Graham the “Whiny Whistleblower of the Year” the year before Pfizer whistleblower Peter Rost. Also going back to Eli Lilly’s Prozac as covered in #40, Dr. Graham pointed out deadly side effects of that one too. Of course, it still made it to the market. Profits overs safety!)

Right around this time Kaiser Health News reported, “Former FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford is under criminal investigation by a federal grand jury over allegations of financial improprieties and false statements to Congress…Crawford left FDA in September 2005, two months after his Senate confirmation.”

That’s the head of the FDA because the corruption is top down.

The FDA is in charge of making sure the upcoming COVID vaccines are safe. Bill Gates called the FDA the “gold standard” and said they would do their job properly as long as political pressure didn’t get in the way.

… Such as politics pressuring the FDA back in 2005 with the Bush Administration. Dr. Susan Wood was FDA Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Health back then. Here the administration tied up approval for Plan-B, the “morning-after pill,” regardless of the safety or efficacy. She resigned in disgust.

Oh and the FDA has been caught spying!

The New York Times reported in 2012, “A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.”

Senator Grassley said "Secret monitoring programs, spying on Congress and retaliating against whistleblowers -- this is a sad commentary on the state of affairs at the FDA.”

When the FDA has been always been involved in politics, is criminally complicit at worse, or just bureaucratically inept at best, so many times…do you really want to trust anything they touch?

References:
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/08/corn-syrups-mercury-surprise/
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-06-10-fda-insider_N.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC534432/
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/politics/10-voters-on-panel-backing-pain-pills-had-industry-ties.html
https://whistleblower.org/timeline-us-whistleblowers/
https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/111804dgtest.pdf
https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/08/fda-whistleblowers-documents-commerce-corruption-death/
https://khn.org/morning-breakout/dr00036941/
https://www.acsh.org/news/2005/12/30/whiny-whistleblower-of-the-year-award
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvqsYRhQ-DY
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/fda-surveillance-of-scientists-spread-to-outside-critics.html?pagewanted=all
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/fda-insists-spied-scientists/story?id=16808223

Medical Monopoly Musings #57
Do FDA Scientists Trust the FDA?

Dr. Sheldon Krimsky, a science policy expert at Tufts University said, “[C]onflicts are common on F.D.A. advisory panels. The agency often conceals these conflicts, and studies have shown that, taken as a whole, money does influence scientific judgment.”

Conflicts are common. Money does influence science. I would say this is obvious, but still too many people think that science is beyond human greed. Let’s look at what these scientists have to say for themselves.

A 2002 internal survey of the FDA scientists themselves found:

● 66% lacked confidence in the “ability of the agency to adequately monitor the safety of prescription drugs on the market.”
● 36% were only somewhat confident or not confident at all in the FDA’s decisions regarding drug safety
● 22% were only somewhat confident or not confident at all in the FDA’s decisions regarding drug effectiveness
● 18% had been “pressured to approve or recommend approval for a [new drug application] despite reservations about the safety, efficacy, or quality of the drug.”

396 FDA scientists participated in this survey. Most fascinating of all was that it was NOT anonymous.

What were the true numbers if people weren’t frightened for their position?

And what are the numbers today?

While I haven’t seen a recent report, it is important to find that these results were replicated, more than once.

In 2006, a survey was conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in which 997 FDA scientists responded.

● 61% knew of cases where "Department of Health and Human Services or FDA political appointees have inappropriately injected themselves into FDA determinations or actions." (A big hubbub is being made about political pressure here regarding Trump…as if it is a new phenomenon!)
● Only 47% thought the "FDA routinely provides complete and accurate information to the public."
● 81% agreed that the "public would be better served if the independence and authority of FDA post-market safety systems were strengthened."

"Science must be the driving force for decisions made at the FDA. These disturbing survey results make it clear that inappropriate interference is putting people in harm's way," said Dr. Francesca Grifo, Senior Scientist and Director of UCS’ Scientific Integrity Program. "FDA leadership must understand and support independent science and it is up to Congress to hold them accountable."

Congress to hold the FDA responsible? As if Big Pharma doesn’t have the largest lobbying group in the world specifically to influence Congress. (See #41 for how scary deep this goes!) If anything, we can probably trust Congress LESS than the FDA.

It’s the fox guarding the hen house.

Sadly, it’s much the same at the CDC, EPA, FTC, NIH and beyond.

If this many FDA scientists themselves do not trust the FDA, why should anyone else?

Why would we expect this situation to get any better if Big Pharma is influencing all of those who could fix it (politicians) and bring it to light (journalists)?

Indeed, the success of such influence allows Big Pharma more power to increasingly grab even more power for themselves.

In the next issue, we look at specific FDA whistleblowers. There are quite a few of them!

References:
Rost, P. (2006). The whistleblower: Confessions of a healthcare hitman. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060831111605/http:/www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/fda-scientists-pressured.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060913200946/http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/IG-Comparison-Fact-Sheet.pdf

Logan:
Welcome dr. Lulu to the health sovereign podcast. Good to have you here.Hi

Dr. Lulu:
Thanks Logan. Thanks so much for having me.

Logan:
Yeah. I'm really excited about this call because I've been diving through the first couple of chapters of your book and going through your website. And I feel there's definitely alignment between what we're do. Some of the things you're saying there really stand out to me. So I guess I want to start just the title of your book, detox, nourish, activate plant, and vibrational medicine for energy mood and love. I like the idea that it's a three-step process, right? There's the detox than the nourish. And could you expand on that and why you decided to go with these three things?

Dr. Lulu:
Sure. Yeah. Well, first of all, the the D the N and the a is your DNA. So we by a coauthor, a Dora one question I really wanted to have something that was about the DNA, about the cellular process. And for us it's re it was just like, so key, so important to really have those three systems address, because when those aspects of the cells detoxifying, the cells activating the cells, nourishing the cells, when those three components are completely in alignment, then your body like sores to a whole new level.

Logan:
So I'm just thinking for people detox and nourish, that kinda makes sense stuff coming in, stuff going out. What do you mean by activate specifically?

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah, that's a great question. So when you're activating the system, you could think of, maybe let's give an example with energy in the book, which is all about the adrenal glands. So sometimes the system will be turned off either because it is a super fatigued or because maybe even the, the actual DNA's not activated. So when you activate it, it's basically like a turning on switch.

Logan:
That's good. So is this related to epigenetics or transposons the, I guess some of those fields that, you know I know you're not like a genetic determinist and so many people still have that kind of the hangover of that kind of scientific paradigm through the word, but really kind of understanding where DNA is right now, scientifically what we kind of more understand about, including how like it shoots off photons and that sort of thing. How does this all play into what you're talking about there with the activation aspect? Yeah.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. So in regards to activating the DNA, of course, you know, our, I would say limited study scientifically of DNAs, where we kind of are now. I mean, it hasn't been studied very much. But when we think about it from the energetic perspective, just how you were mentioning the word photon, which is we discuss in the book you know, your DNA or cells are a form of light. They are, you know, and so our whole body is a form of energy, a form of light. So when we activate that light source or that light within the body, that light within the cell, the body's unable to turn on and activate. So the DNA activation process is one part of activating with ourselves within ourselves, the cells. And then also it's about activating DNA through our past planetary life and through our past history that is genetically within all of us, because we have, you know, we had this amazing brain that's massive, huge brain, and also this energetic brain, the mind, so to speak. And, you know, we've forgotten a lot of things as as humans because we've either been asked to, I don't know, forget them on one level or another. And now, so the book is really a revolutionary aspect to activate that past healing energy within all of us on the planet.

Logan:
Yeah. One of the things you mentioned in there that caught my mind and wanted to dive deeper into that science has shown that DNA links back over six generations. You expound on that.

Dr. Lulu:
Sure. Yeah. So, so far they've the, from the scientific standpoint, they're able to link back, let's say an example would be, you know, so you have your parents then your great grandparents, so they can link back specific health problems, right. Whether that's a physical ailment or let's celiac disease might be a good example. Something that's had been in your DNA and passed down, or you have a genetic dysfunction or malfunction. So, but really when we think about it, the DNA is been passed down since the very beginning of time as humans. So I really think it's much, much, much broader than six generations, but, you know, that's what they've been able to link back from a scientific standpoint as of now. But if you think about it, like we're all, we all come from the same cell from one point in time. And so that has linked us through that DNA. And a lot of our DNA is either turned on or turned off because it hasn't been activated or it hasn't been ready to be activated. Does that make sense?

Logan:
Yeah, absolutely. One a case of that, that I'm familiar with there's studies looking at smokers, the grandmothers, and maybe even great grandmothers that the grandchildren or great-grandchildren are more likely to have asthma based on that past activity. And I think as we start to look more at this, obviously it goes wider and wider, but I think that also really speaks to how little we actually understand DNA and yet we're modifying it and doing all kinds of crazy stuff with it now.

Dr. Lulu:
Right? Yeah, exactly. That's a great example. And, you know, you could also think about the Irish famine, you know, back in, does that have nutritional deficiency? That's still connected to the offspring during that time. So there's many ways we connect it back to specific times of history and are we as humans in our family, DNA, our mother and father bloodline then connected back to those specific times in history.

Logan:
So one of the other things that I feel important and I saw it right on your website, I'm like, yeah, you're you get it right. You talk about the root cause of problems. This is so important because most of healing and health care is addressing the symptoms, right? What led you to, I guess, kind of really focusing and identify, cause it seems obvious yet common sense is not so common all the time, but what led you to really like, Oh, we have to get to the root causes,

Dr. Lulu:
Right? Yeah. That's a great question. You know, I think that I began to see when I I've been in the healing arts for a long time, over 20 years, and I began to see that, I guess you would call it like surface medicine, you know, things are being treated on the surface. And when we think of our body, our body goes way deeper than the surface. Right. And when we have something that showing up on the surface, whether that could be maybe a skin is a great example. Right. Okay. So you have a rash. And so where does that rash come from? It's not, it's not, it's from an, an immediate imbalance, right. But what's the root cause of the imbalance. Where does that come from? It probably most likely it comes from the gut because the gut is always that the function of the skin, it's a mirror of that. So I really started to think about and dive deeper into, you know, there's gotta be more than a surface layer. It's got to go way down. And then I, as I went, when I went into medical school, I really started learning a lot more about the root cause of dysfunction.

Logan:
And in your book, you, you focus on three areas, primarily the, the heart, the adrenals and the brain. So you just mentioned the gut and obviously there's a lot of focus on the gut and it's very important. But do you feel the, these three areas are like the most foundational, the most kind of root areas that we need to be addressing?

Dr. Lulu:
Yes. we really wanted to those, if you think about that from the energetic point of view, so in the brain, we have the, you know, it's the, that's the mood aspect of the book, the nervous system. And so from the physical standpoint, that's at the top of our body, that's our communication system. And then from an energetic standpoint, that's our connect connection to our soul level, or, you know, our communication with our inner source or whatever you want to call it. That's our communication on that level. Then we have our heart and our heart of course is our physical aspect of our body. That is our center of controlling circulation. How are things moving, how everything's functioning. And then on the emotional level, our heart is how we open up to everyone around us and ourselves. And then we think of the adrenal glands, that's our energy source. It's also our grounding source where we're connected to the earth. So we have the earth, the heart and the, and the, like the sky or the upper level. So it's those create three places physically are super important for the body, but they're also really important on that emotional and energetic level for having that connection. Does that make sense?

Logan:
Absolutely. Yeah. The way I always look at health is most people focus on the physical, but there's the energetic, the mental, emotional, and the spiritual. And I really tried to think of all those different levels and how they fit together. And even if you have a problem on one the root cause of that may not be on that same level, that that symptom is showing up on

Dr. Lulu:
It. Totally. Yeah. And that's what we were just talking about earlier with the, you know, the root cause of the problem. And when I work with patients, it's not just about looking at the physical aspect. I always look at the, all the other levels. You know, I look at the genetic level, I look at the energetic level. I look at the mental level, the emotional level, cause we all have these different aspects of our bodies that are showing up on another level or the same level.

Logan:
So the gene, Sarah, I'm curious how much of a with your clients and people you work with, are you, are you doing the genetic testing and realizing, okay, you have this gene that says like maybe the, the methylation you're, you're able to process muscle methylation, do that much easier than other people. Do you map that like more physical, genetic level, right. Then we have the up to genetics, which might be a layer on top of that. So are you looking across those, I guess you would say different levels of perspectives, what the genetic testing itself? Yeah,

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah, totally. So I do a genetic testing for, and the epigenetic levels and looking at it from, you know, of course it gives us a lot of preventative information. Just, it's more for an awareness about what's going happen, what's happening inside from that genetic level. And then I also do I work with a system called gene keys. I don't know if you've heard of that before, but it's a more of the kind of emotional level of the genetics. And so I work with those two systems combining together using that physical form, looking at the actual different snips that are going on system and then looking at the emotional and DNA aspect from a chromosomal level and combining those two together.

Logan:
Hmm. Interesting. I've I've heard of the gene keys haven't dove super deep into it. I was curious, especially how it's related to the teaching, which is something that I use quite regularly. So could you please go into a little bit more detail on that and how, how that, I guess why that's working specifically on the emotional level? I'm curious.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah, sure. Yeah. So the gene keys were developed there, it's such an like an amazing process. I recommend diving into it a little bit deeper on your own listeners and yourself. You can find out some information Richard what's his last name, right? I think Brad, I can't, I lost track of it, but I'll email it to you. You can put it in the notes. So how it works is that the gene keys are divided like, so we have a specific amount of chromosomes and then those chromosomes are then divided into a gene key. And then, so those, so the other 64 of those keys, and then from there, you have the aspects of the body that are related to the emotional level. So you could think about like, what is my purpose? Like, that's kind of like an emotional aspect of the gene, the gene keys.

Dr. Lulu:
And so it looks out of that from that, like you were saying that I Ching perspective, but it's also almost like from a, it's a good way to describe it. Like almost like a horoscope perspective, but it's weight way deeper than that. But it looks about things from the emotional level about why you do things based on your genetic code. So, but that is related to the actual time that you were born the timestamp. So if you look at that timestamp, that's your like energetic times, timestamp your blueprint, right? That's your emotional blueprint. So it takes the genetic code of the emotional blueprint. And then I combine that with a genetic code of your physical form and overlap the two and using my scientific brain and my emotional brain and seeing how I can best help my patients to move out of their place of dysfunction to an optimal place of health.

Logan:
Hmm. Fascinating. Can you give an example either personally or with a client, you know, of course not using specific details, but how the gene keys helped them to heal or have a breakthrough in some sort of way.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah, sure. You know what I, I like I'll use myself cause that's really easy and I don't know how to specifically use it. But what I really love about working with a gene keys from my own perspective is that, you know, it allows me to look deeper at my emotional body with a different lens because you know, when we're looking at ourselves or thinking about ourselves, we have a, a clouded perspective, right? It's almost, it's like, I guess I do have an, a judgment perspective. Like, Oh, I don't do this because I don't do that. But with the gene keys, it like opens the door up and allows you to see yourself without the judgment, if that makes sense. So you can see, cause it gives things that you're alignment with an, a positive and negative way. So if you're doing like X, X, X, like an act quote, unquote negative aspect that allows you to see why you're doing that, why you have that pattern, once you break through that pattern of negativity, so to speak, then you move into the pattern of that positive realm. Does that make sense?

Logan:
Yeah. Everything has a positive and negative to it, for example, like, yeah, yeah. Addictive personality, which can obviously be quite bad in certain sort of addictions, but also how it kind of fuels me, you know, the obsessive drive, which can be useful though. It needs to be tempered at times. Right?

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. That's a great example. And for myself, like I love to be doing, like, I would say a bazillion different things at one time, which can have its positive and negative aspects. Right? Like it can be like maybe not so focused or it can be Uber focused. So it talks about those types of things. So that emotional perspective, and it's really, I found it really eyeopening because you're like, Oh, that's why I'm doing this. It's because, you know, it's related to my genetic code. It's part of me, it's part of my blueprint. Oh, that totally makes sense.

Logan:
Yeah. I noticed that on your, I believe it was your bio, you talked about yourself as a Renaissance woman and I certainly am to be a Renaissance man. And it's, it's both a blessing and a curse, you know, it's like, Oh, if I could just focus on one thing, I could go so far with that, but I feel the need to go so wide and diverse in everything. So I resonate with you there.

Dr. Lulu:
Right? Totally. Yeah. I work at I always like to think of myself as working, like at the speed of light, you know, like so fast doing many different things. And so I can, I feel like I can get things done in one day, which I would like take most people much like a longer period of time. I don't know. I feel like I function in a different time, time continuum or something like that.

Logan:
Yeah. Oh yeah. So it's interesting. And this is part of what we're talking about there, but, and I see a lot more of this in other people I know in the healing arts, it's, it's a bridge of the scientific, the, you know, like rational mind with the more energetic, emotional everything. And I, I, I hope we are moving toward a future. Things are more integrated in a way that can support us on all those different levels and perspectives versus this, you know, just straight up materialist reductionist paradigm that we've been going through in the past century or so.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. We're definitely moving in that direction. I think one, people are becoming a lot more open-minded they're being activated. Right. as I was talking about before they're being activated to open up specific areas that have been, you know, we, in our history, we have had a lot of times of being persecuted for specific beliefs and we're still going on today. It's not like it's not right. You know? And so with the

Logan:
Whole pandemic and everything,

Dr. Lulu:
No. So we're seeing people being able to have new perspectives with an open mind and not feeling persecuted, which I think is part of the development or the what's the, like what a better word would be the openness and availability for people to have more awareness of the shifts in our, in their, in our medical system, because it's a failing it's, you know, of course like we need to have some kind of emergent medical system in place. That is totally great. You know, if you need, if you have an emergency, you need to be able to have something, someone there to help you. I worked in the ER, I know all about that. But then also when we're talking about from the chronic disease standpoint, we've got to have a different model. I mean, it just it's. Yeah. And that's what I mean when I'm saying that it's shifting more people are being more open-minded the medicine itself is shifting and being more open-minded.

Dr. Lulu:
So when we can have those two avenues be like, you know, coming onto the same path, we're going to see this huge shift in our medicine and we're on the cusp of it. I it's like, you know, it's already happening with all the healers around the world being like, okay, look what you can do if you do this. And there's so many different ways we can heal the body. It's not just like one, like as, from the medical perspective, the MD where I was like, take this pill and you'll feel a hundred percent better. I'm like, that doesn't work that way. Right.

Logan:
Yeah. Just did an article of like, there's a hundred healing modalities and really are our places to find the proper place of those. So, you know, I, I'm not, I don't want to see a crystal healer. If my arm gets ripped off there, I want to go to a real medical doctor, you know, use drugs to help with the pain, reattach the arm, that sort of thing. But yeah Western empty is not going to help you figure out your purpose in life, which we can think of this other level of healing. Right.

Dr. Lulu:
Right. Yeah. And you know, just to say, just as a comment of what you just said, I actually think that you do, when you have an acute thing, like you, where you broke your arm, or you have a really big industry, you actually want to have all those other healers on your team too. You want to see the acute person like okay. Right. Yeah. And then from there you bring on all the other healers, wherever that those modalities are, there's so many to help you have a different level of healing, so you can help deal with the trauma, the physical, the emotional, the mental trauma and help your body heal quickly. Okay.

Logan:
That's right. Cause yeah, I think that's an important point that with any sort of physical trauma that it's not just physical, right. You're going to have this other related stuff. The, although the Dr. May, you know, address the bleeding or whatever at that time, which is of course very important. You have to work with those layers to really get the full and complete healing. And there are other better modalities for that.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah, totally. A great example. I had a patient who had recently had a car accident and, you know, the actual, like mental aspects and the emotional trauma we're way, way, way bigger than any of the physical aspects. You know, and because a car accident can be very traumatizing emotionally, right? It's like, you can be hit out of the blue. You have no, you're not aware of what's happening. You can go into complete shock, you know? And so dealing with the emotional level of illness is just as important as the physical level.

Logan:
Absolutely. So speaking of being open-minded, you know, I don't know where all my listeners are at a feel. If they're listening to me, they're definitely somewhere on this journey, but I call myself a recovering materialist cause I certainly came from that frame long time ago. But with something like crystals healing it's funny, cause I, I didn't want it to be like useful or true. Like I, I fought mentally. I just, from wherever I pick this up, I didn't want it to be true, but I could feel things like I can feel energies reasonably well, how know how to really qualify that. But so then when someone was actually like working with crystals on me, I'm like, it, I can feel something like it's working. So it was a weird,ukind of mental, emotional battle going on in, in me.

Logan:
But something you said in your book, that was a really interesting triggered. I remembered when I was a kid, I used to collect rocks and stones. Like I would go to rock shows and I'd never actually thought of that. And it's like, Oh, you know what? There was something back then that drew me to them. And you know, I got inculturated in this way that, Oh, that's all stupid stuff. And now I'm thinking, Oh, I need to like revisit that. So can you speak to crystal healing fits in, in that I guess that whole framework of detox, nourish and activate.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. That's a great question. Yeah. So within the book there are 11 interventions that are given for each of the systems. So the brain, the adrenals and the heart, and then detox, nourish and activate. So there's nine photon wheels. We call them within the book and the crystals or, and stones are one aspect of the interventions there.

Logan:
And

Dr. Lulu:
A great way to think about stones. Like you said, I love how, what you said about collecting them as it, when you're a kid, you know, when I go out hiking which I do a lot, always pick up a stone and put it into my pocket. It's like, there's a, it's like a little star on your path. You know what it's like? So, you know, who knows what it's going to be? You know? Cause when you're out in the woods, there's all kinds of different stones, right. But even those stones have some kind of energy and it can be hard when you're first working with stones and crystals. Like you said, to be able to one maybe to like believe that they work or to, to resonate with them. So what I recommend when, you know, our book is a great way to work because we give the energy around the stone, what the, the basics Stone's good for.

Dr. Lulu:
And then we also give a placement of the stone. So one thing that's really easy to do is just to place stones on specific areas of the body for healing. Like the heart is a great example using you know, like Rose quartz, because when you feed, you can play stones on specific areas of your body, which then helps the body to detox. So letting go of like emotions or physical disturbances or nourishing the body, bringing in energy that the body has been depleted in or activating the system, turning on the system or energizing the system and crystals do that through vibration, through energy, through photon. Does that make sense?

Logan:
It does. So. Yeah. And that's a very interesting w I guess my question where, what is the best I was talking about the proper place of all these healing modalities. So how would you, I guess, categorize crystal healing, where is that most useful? Is it like for the, the mental or the emotional blocks, the energetic body what would you say it's most useful for?

Dr. Lulu:
Hmm, well, you know, that's interesting because I actually think they're good for all levels, but I think it really depends on kind of what you're looking for, what your like game plan is like, you know, what's your end result. So let's say for instance, I was talking about the heart. Maybe you were having some aspects of the heart on a physical level. Maybe you're even actually having some issues of high blood pressure. So using stones and crystals on the heart can help to regulate blood pressure. If we're looking at it from the emotional standpoint, it can really help to open up the heart help to bring awareness to areas that you've had maybe heartbreak or loss, or maybe you have problems when it comes to self-love. So there's a lot of things about the emotional level and mental level I think crystals can help with, but I would think more on that, on the vibrational level with the physical being and the emotional being is where you can really feel him and really feel the difference.

Logan:
Yeah. It's a, the Rose course you mentioned, is that what that would be useful for blood pressure or is there another stone there?

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah, I do actually like to use Rose courts a lot with blood pressure. One reason with that is because the Rose quartz is it's a very powerful stone. It's also an stone I'd like to use patient ones with patients where they can, they're easily accessible. And like, you know, you can find them easily because stones are more rare, right? So yeah, sports is great, but it also is really powerful but subtle. And when it comes to blood pressure, we want to use kind of stones that are making easily easy adjustments in the system, because you don't want to have like this massive change in blood pressure from low to high, you want to have it be like slowly regulating. So I love to use Rose courts for that. And you can really easy ways you can do it. You can wear it around your neck as an ambulant.

Dr. Lulu:
You could put it you know, where, when I w I'll have patients put, like, have a little pocket, you know, like a sh t-shirt with a pocket and you can, so it close when you're sleeping, it's a great to help balance your blood pressure and circulation while sleeping. You're not a large stone, but something small. And so, you know, smooth. But that's another really great one too. Or you can have take a bath Rose quartz is great to put in the bathtub. You can take an Epsom salt belt bath to help the muscles relax, and you can lay the Rose quartz in the bottom of the tub, and that really helps the circulation and helps your body to relax.

Logan:
Hmm. Fascinating. And I'm going to have to experiment some more.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. That's what it's all about. Yeah. Totally having fun. And exterior name was stones. That's how I first started using them and theirs. And I'm definitely, I have a ton more, I don't want to learn about stones cause there were so many. Yeah. You know, we have like most people know, maybe a common, I don't know, 12, but there's like a bazillion stones on this planet and crystal. So you know, there's, we have resources in the back of our book that really give great books that people can buy and purchase for more information, if you're looking to go down that route for sure.

Logan:
Hmm. And one of the thing you, you mentioned, and we should definitely talk about this subject as well, but having the relationship with the plants, but I'm recognizing it's the same sort of thing with the stones and you were saying hiking and picking up a stone, but also then working with these, you can really kind of establish that relationship to a rock, which, you know, to some people that's going to sound like a pet rock thing, but I I'm after results. Right. So as I said, when I had like, I didn't want to believe in crystals, but then I felt things happening with them. So it's like, okay, I got to go there. Right. Cause I'm interested in results. And yeah. And I think another thing with the hundreds of different modalities is find the ones that work for you. You know, crystals, they may resonate with us in rocks and everything, but it might not be right for another person. But the, I think the important lesson for people as a take health back into their own hands, something that's very important with you know a board of advisory sort of is to find those modalities that work for you that resonate with you. I think that's important. Yeah. Is very

Dr. Lulu:
Individualized right in, which is, I think when we were talking about earlier about the place of medicine on our plant, not working very well it's cause it's not individualized. You know, we are individual people. We each have our own set of DNA. We each have our own cells and how our body works. And you know, that also differs from day to day. When I work with patients, I see them really frequently because you're, they're shifting. I want to help them to shift quickly. Like, you know, if you're, if your food is a great thing, you know, a lot of times people need to have some things taken out of their maybe nutritional plan that aren't working. So great. You know, maybe you have a gluten allergy or something, but also, you know, you might need specific foods from a day to day basis or week to week basis, month to month basis, year to year basis that are completely different.

Dr. Lulu:
You know, rotate it up, have fun with it, you know, like eat something, listen to your body. So when it comes to individualized healing, listen to your body, explore what's out there. Talk to your friends. I mean, there are so many different things like, you know, and try it out, see what works if it works, you know? And then you're like, Oh, remember when I like, you know, a great example would be when I was going to medical school I had read something about last year university. Like I don't know, a long time, even before I went to school. And you know, that's how I think that healing is. That's my point is that you have a spark within a year. Right. It's like something. And then when that spark is needed, it gets reactivated. Right. It's like, Oh yeah. Remember that person, that acupuncture is that, you know, Susie told me about, you know, that's the kind of thing it's like when we need it, it's going to be there for us is my point and not to ramble.

Logan:
Right? Yeah. Yeah. I think a synchronicity and following that golden thread is a important part of healing. And it's just more fun. Right. You know, to have like a magical worldview in that sort of way, that luck from the universe and your healing path is unfolding rather than once again, like a reductionist materialist frame mindset, like that's boring. I want to have fun. Right.

Dr. Lulu:
Have fun. And that's a big part of our book is we have their discovery dives throughout the book where you, as the reader are given the tools to discover the healing deep within yourself. And that is the, like the revolutionary part of the book that we really wanted. We wanted it to be a discovery within where people are just like, you know, there's so many books about like self-help out there, right. But people need to be given the tools to look deeper, to have the things around them herbs, crystals, essential oils, food meditations, all these things that are accessible that you can experiment with. Right? Like, Oh, what is this stone? Or what is this herb? I don't know anything about it. I'm going to try it out. And that's kind of a lot about what the book is like, you know, you have this, this trauma within you, what tools can you use to help explore it deeper?

Logan:
Let's talk about herbs and plants a little bit and relationships with I don't really, I guess, a good place to start with this. I know you have a lot of training best dear university is a well-known herbal school. My, my primary teacher in, urbalism say Depop him. He, he trained there. So I'm familiar with it though. I did not personally. What I guess really drew you into the plant path.

Dr. Lulu:
That's a great question. What drew me to the plant path? Hmm. Well, I think that, that would be when I was a girl young child, we had a big garden in our backyard and I was just able to be with the plants and love and explore being a gardener, you know, and plants, not just herbal medicine, like a button, like a medicine, but food is medicine. Right. So I think I really started to have a love of being in nature. Like nature is how I discovered plants, food herbs, like, and I, from a very young age. And then as I grew older I started working more with food specifically, not in the beginning. And then from there I started working with healing with people on the physical level doing a lot of bodywork. And then I went back and I was like, Oh, I started learning more about herbs and learning about how they can be, they are healing. They are medicinal and how using those can affect the body. So I guess it was kind of, it's kind of like a roundabout kind of way, but just learning different ways. But really when I was a child, just that love of nature. Cause my parents were really into the outdoors

Logan:
Slowly. Yeah. I noticed you have the Paracelsus quote on your website. The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start from nature with an open mind. It's beautiful.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. It's so true. You know, nature is the mirror of healing when we, you know, if you, I was walking, hiking outside this weekend. And I just, I love being outside by myself and because it really allows me to have a different view of the trees around and I was just walking and I like to, this is really silly, but like, I love you tree. And then I'm like, Oh, I love you tree. I love you leave a hug. Like, and I, I really liked it cause it, it, I don't know. It's like this connection with nature helps me to feel a connection deeper within myself.

Logan:
Right? Yeah. I, some ne of our health problems are especially the chronic ones are a result of disconnection from nature, which we humans. I mean, this is what I talk about in my book powered by nature, but we, we sought to control nature and there's obviously some legitimate reasons for why we did that. Not to say everything in nature is great, but the, the more we've driven ourselves from nature the more we are suffering, the consequences of doing that and that I feel health is our birthright, right. That it should be natural and pretty easy. And if we do things in alignment with nature, then I feel that it's relatively easy to thrive.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. That's so great. That's so brilliant. Yeah. And you know, we didn't come to this world to suffer that. Wasn't why we chose to be here. We, I mean, I don't think that any of us chose for that purpose, you know, we chose to come here to enjoy life, to have fun. Then something happens along the way, like the bump in the road. And our belief system changes. Or we forget, like you said, we forget about nature and nature has so many different similarities to how it helps the body. Like you can think about the Walnut, right? Like the Walnut is is, it looks like the brain, like, of course it's going to help our brain. And there's different herbs too. Like we have like Gingko, how it also looks like the brain. So there's different things in nature that when we take the moment of actual, I dunno, a moment, not a moment of silence, but a moment of like clarity, a moment to just be with nature, we can see the light bulbs go off.

Logan:
Right. The doctrine of signatures. Could you speak to, I guess, what are some of your, your best friends in the plant world we're talking about relationship? Like not, not what are the best ones, but yeah. What are, and whether this is something you use as a medicine for yourself or whatnot, or just hanging out with that plant in nature. Yeah. What are some of your best friends that you think more people would be? It is full for them to establish their own relationship with these.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. You know, that's a great question. A lot of people ask me sometimes like, what's your favorite herbs? I'm like, Oh my God, how am I supposed to choose a favorite? But yeah, I do have my little friends, my allies, and I think that's always changing. So let's just be in the moment. Like what I was using today, I think is a great example. I've been using cinnamon a lot, you know, we're in the fall and winter season time, and I really love cinnamon for its its sweetness. And it has also, that's like from the the herbal perspective, it has, you know, when you taste it, it has the sweetness, it has the spice, it has the energy. It's also really a great metabolism booster. It helps the body to detox. And we think about from the aroma therapy from that essential oil perspective, it's so great for the immune system.

Dr. Lulu:
It helps clear the air it's revitalizing it's spicy. So it, you know, cinnamon for me just today, I've been, I was put it in this little detox drink that I made. And it helps me connect with the time that, that that of now. And so I think when it comes to herbs and allies, I like to be in the moment. So cinnamon was a great one. And then I've been using tumeric a lot. I love the yellow quality. I think, you know, yellow, when we're talking about the energetic system is all about empowerment. That third chakra is really, really coming into your power. And I've been working with that with myself, a lot, really stepping into that place. And it also really increases this like beauty of connecting to India and dually, which is happening right now. And so for me, it's like this combination of what's happening in the moment, like within myself, what's happening with that plant what's happening in the time this season what's happening with what my body needs what's happening with around the world. So there's lots of different components there for me to choose from. That's very nice.

Logan:
I want to, I guess, jumping a little more, but open-minded thing we, we talked about how the genetics are related to obviously going back in time, your parents, grandparents, ancestrally, but then there's also this past live component. How is, I guess, first of all what led you to believe he knowing that past lives are a real thing?

Dr. Lulu:
Mm [inaudible] that's it, that's a big, powerful question. Isn't it? Well, okay, so this is a, this is a great answer. I think that I can give for about myself. So I was having all of these like pretty powerful nightmares where I was waking up and I like abruptly out of sleep feeling like the house or where my, like, everything was on fire around me. Like I could wake up and like smell, smoke intensely. Like I would be like, you know, and so I started seeing different healers to kind of like figure out what that was, what that was about. Like, I'm like, there's gotta be something going on if I'm having this smell of fire, waking up all the time. And so I had some different readings done specifically and one of them was, well, actually most of them came back to the point that I've been a librarian in many times in my lifetime, which totally resonates with me about having the the knowledge and the power of books and the history of books and like being, having to be being the protector.

Dr. Lulu:
But then as you know, through our history, the burn, the books have been burned. Like the libraries have been burned, you know, and so who I just got goosebumps. So part me, I would have been, have experienced that in my past life of being that protector, being that fire element. But, and I it's like being has been reignited within me, which is why I like have that connection that I'm like that, that like moment in time where something is going through my system, where that I need to remember. And that's what I feel that's where I get that connection of that past life is like from that smell of smoke, from that feeling of being like in a fire, I actually am downloading information from my past lives that I need to express out into the world, through the power of books, through writing, through getting my voice out there

Logan:
Right today we're facing, I like the term bit burning more than book burning, but the censorship going on, it's very fascinating to watch that unfold and how quickly it's moving.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. We just have to be, you know, be who you are, be free, be tried, you know, express yourself and try not to feel the limit limited the limited list. No, the, the limit of who you are and helping to shift, because we that's, our only thing we can do is just help to be in this space to help move the planet forward. Cause other people will just take the wayside hopefully.

Logan:
Right. So my wanted to start with that, to ask this question so DNA being the blueprint. Obviously we have the science of how that comes from the previous generations, but I guess how our past lives tied into that blueprint, how does that work from your knowledge base?

Dr. Lulu:
So you're talking about from where just to, I want to clarify, so I can give you an answer. So you're asking where the past live blueprint of the D goes into our DNA. Is that what you're saying?

Logan:
If that, if indeed it does. Yeah.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah, sure. Okay. So yes it does. And the answer to that is too. So our DNA let's talk about it from the light perspective. As I was mentioning a little bit earlier, our DNA is a form of light. Okay. and in our body, our bodies are just physical forms of light that we have in a shell of a physical body. So we have millions of light forms within us or cell light cells, light photons, DNA, moving within us that are activated in our physical form as we are in this moment in time. But this, the DNA from our past lives is still within us because it on the energetic and emotional form, it has always been within us. It is always there as we move forward, it is what is our purpose. It's what allows us to be who we are. And we've chosen that DNA to be who we are in this moment.

Logan:
Hmm. Could you explain more on DNA is like, I'm just trying to better wrap my mind around this.

Dr. Lulu:
Right. I know. Yeah. you told me to go way out there. I'm going out there.

Logan:
Yeah. I'm enjoying it.

Dr. Lulu:
Oh, I'm sorry. What was the question?

Logan:
DNA is like, can you explain more how that works? I guess

Dr. Lulu:
I know. Yes. Okay. So let me see if I can explain this in an easy way for, okay. So let's, let's think about a Ray of sunshine, right? So when we look out into the yard, right, we can see, we can see a Ray of sunshine coming down through the clouds, for instance. So that is a form of light, right? And it has energy. It has, it has a photon, it has a movement. So our DNA is that vibratory aspect of light. So within that, like when you think, okay, let's look at the leaf of a tree. This is so on that leaf. If you look through, you can see the veins of the tree, right. You can see the, all the aspects of the tree. You can see the little, little I don't know. It depends on the leaf, but you can see the areas where water might be sucked in, or you could see a thorn for protection.

Dr. Lulu:
So within that leaf, there are rays of sunshine, right? Photosynthesis. There's a rays of light moving through that. So that light is the cellular DNA of that plant. Right? And so it's, it's, it's how the plant works is how the plant communicates, how the plant does everything. It's the same within us. It's the same cell. It's the same DNA. When we use a plant, when we eat a plant, our ourselves know that energy form, we're able, that's part of the healing. We are able to connect back to that plant back within us, back to that knowledge, back to that past life and use it. We just have to be open to it. So the cells are, I know it's a hard process, like thought process, but the cells, the DNA is like a, it's an energetic form of light within the cell because the cell of course has many physical components, right? It has the nucleus, the golgi apparatus. It there's the mitochondria, all of the aspects that make the physical cell work. But we also have a light cell. That's, that's a better way to describe it. I think so within the nucleus of the cell, we have the DNA, right. We ever, did we ever RNA or DNA, it's how the cell functions, but we have our light DNA. We have our energetic DNA. We have, that is the light part of the cell. That is the vibration of the cell.

Logan:
Okay. Yeah. That's just, yeah. Percolating in my mind there. So thank you for that. Yeah. Well, yeah, it makes sense. Right. I mean, all the plants with, through photosynthesis, they're, they're capturing the sun and that's transforming and allowing growth and everything. And then, I mean, everything that eats everything else, right. It's just a biotransformation of that. I've also heard DNA described as a antenna, right. Which it can both receive and be emitting the photon. So it is that kind of, I guess, energetic architecture. That is and so that makes sense. I mean, especially when we see just how much, like our DNA can fix itself and transform itself, it's not just random mutation generation after generation. There's all these other things going on, which, you know, it's, it's explained, it's just not well-known or I guess elements of it are known like, yeah, we're still in the infant.

Dr. Lulu:
Not it's been studied necessarily, but it has in other forms. Right. Because it's like, what I'm saying is I'm taking all the, like the forms that have been scientifically study, but I'm asking people like, look at it kind of like in a different way, so to speak, right. The scientific aspect and the energetic component, because we can put, we've studied energy. We've, you know, one aspect we've studied energy and we can, but now I think it's like the science, the energy, the components are all coming together and clicking like the linking of the DNA.

Logan:
Yeah. The, the analogy that's coming to mind is like, we have a physical body and we have energetic body. Like, let's say the, the aura, the different energy system bodies, but you can have that physical structure of the DNA, but also that the energy DNA that is around that. So it's, it's operating on multiple dimensions. Right.

Dr. Lulu:
Right. Yeah. I mean, we're not a one dimensional being, it's just not, it's not possible. Right. We there's two there's this, we, you know, I think some people are still functioning in that one D world or the 2d world, or, you know, but we are definitely not that. I mean, w there's just, there's so much out there to show us that we're not that. And so I think that's what, when people are start, will start to open their minds, you know, listeners out there open your mind to the possibility that our DNA is not one D it's not, you know, it's way more dimensional. And we, when we access that DNA through the interventions, like we discussed in our book through meditation, when we access that DNA, there are, we're able to like shift so many things in our body that we've never been. It's like the key, right. Unlocking the key to the door that has been locked for a long time.

Logan:
Right. So we're coming to the end here. I have to ask this question as I've gone along in my own healing journey and by no means, am I done, but I feel it is becoming less personal and more transpersonal. Like some of the healing processes are not just involving me. So I saw on your website that you facilitate ceremonies to activate plant and mineral connecting points around the world to elevate planetary consciousness and community. Can you speak to that idea and also this idea of like trans personal healing?

Dr. Lulu:
Oh yeah. That's a great question. Okay. So one aspect of it is I like to think about, you know, we have the worldwide web, right? Well, our plant city is that, so when, so my purpose and intention is to go around to different places on the globe to help the plants and the communities to reconnect that healing around our planet, because that's part of it as we, you know, that's the healing that our planet needs to. So that's kind of like the, the interconnection. So offering ceremony at different places around the world helps the plants to be reactivated. It helps the people to be reactivated. It helps them to find the community that they so need for healing. And then the other part of your question was

Logan:
Transpersonal healing. So I guess, yeah. Moving beyond ourselves in, I guess these practices and healing modalities.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. I think moving into group healing is really our next wave, especially because we're moving into this, you know, since the pandemic we have seen that we can work in a much more you know nonphysical place. We've seen it happen. I moved my practice to a hundred percent telemedicine where I'm working with patients virtually. And so when we think about that interplanetary connection, that interpersonal connection, it's all about community. And we can, when we have a group of healing, a group of people come together for healing. It's so much easier to heal within, as on a personal level, it expands immensely throughout our group, our community and throughout the globe. And so I think that moving into this new place of healing within groups, we're going to see that is going to be much, much more accessible one. And also two, we're going to see people feeling healing on a much more profound level, you know, because when we heal ourselves, you know, we, we just have that we feel within, right. It's just, it's more personal. But when we, when we're in a group of healing, like I was working with a group of women as a group of eight of us doing a healing over six months. And when you are working with others, it allows you actually to see way much deeper into yourself because they, you know, it's like you open up in this different level, they see you, they ask you questions, you, but then you also see them heal and then you heal.

Logan:
Yeah. Yeah. The I'm just reflecting. I recently was out at a event in Utah. It's good to actually get physical with people. And it was a group healing event and it was like, yeah, personal healing, but I'm also supporting other people in their healing. And it was, it was just a magical and truly transformative event. So yeah, I, I think that, that, that makes, makes a lot of sense that there there's more of a shift needs to move in that direction.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. I think that that's one of the main ways. It also helps people to, to heal at an accelerated level you know,

Logan:
Right. Amplification, amplification, totally. Yeah.

Dr. Lulu:
Amplified healing. And, you know, I think that's one thing that I'm so many things I'm grateful for the pandemic. I try to have gratitude for it on some level. And that's one aspect that I re am grateful as people are seeing other ways that they can work with healing, you know, how can I help heal my friend that is, you know, having so much sorrow so far away from me, you know? And so it has really opened up the door for the amplification of the planetary healing.

Logan:
Excellent. Well, dr. Lily, this has been a wide ranging and very fun conversation. Of course we'll include all this in the show notes, but where would you like people to go? When can they pick up your book? And also if you want to mention your own podcast as well.

Dr. Lulu:
Yeah. Great. Thanks Logan. You, people can go to my website. W has all my information there. It's doc, doc, L U L u.com super easy. And there there's a, there's a link for my book, which is going to be available in March, 2021. So they can pre-order also a great way to, is to follow me on Instagram. I have lots of posting there and that's just dr. Lulu Shimek. And that's super easy. Also I have my podcast, the genetic genius, where I'm exploring everything about genetics and health. It's super fun and follow and listen there.

Logan:
All right. Well, thank you so much. And thanks everyone for listening as always head on over to healthsovereign.com. You can find the show notes there. Leave a question. Anything you have. Thank you everyone. Thank you, dr. Lulu.

Dr. Lulu:
Thank you.

Medical Monopoly Musings #56
Pfizer’s Dirty Tricks in Nigeria

“Back in 2001, thirty Nigerian families had sued Pfizer in federal court, saying the company conducted an unethical clinical trial of an antibiotic on their children. The suit referred to a letter from the hospital saying the study had been approved by the ethics committee, and the suit claimed that Pfizer had backdated the letter. Moreover, a Pfizer infectious disease specialist had repeatedly told Pfizer management that the company was violating international law and medical ethics standards. He was subsequently dismissed and later settled with the company, according to other newspaper reports,” writes Peter Rost (Pfizer whistleblower).

I went to verify Rost’s reference here…and what an interesting rabbit hole this went down!

Keep in mind, Pfizer is our leading criminal organization in Big Pharma according to fines paid. (See #32.) This includes paying almost $100 million for breaking the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and bribery. Past behavior is best indicator of future behavior…

The case in question has to do with Trovan, an antibiotic that was used to treat meningitis. Eleven children died in the Nigerian trial.

The PR firms went to work. "Trovan unquestionably saved lives, and Pfizer strongly disagrees with any suggestion that the company conducted its study in an unethical manner," Pfizer said in a statement. The strategy is always blanket denial.

This despite Pfizer even admitting later that the backdated ethics committee letter was “incorrect.” Yet, forging letters was far from the extent of their crimes.

According to the Washington Post, a Nigerian panel found that Pfizer's experiment was "an illegal trial of an unregistered drug," and a "clear case of exploitation of the ignorant."

The head of this panel, Abudulsalami Nasidi, said that he had been the target of unspecified death threats.

Trovan would later be approved in the USA in 1998, selling $160 million in the first year. But in 1999, it was associated with liver damage and at least six deaths. The FDA severely restricted its use. European regulators banned it altogether. It clearly was not a safe drug for adults, let alone for children.

The case dragged on for over a decade. WikiLeaks published documents showing that in 2009 Pfizer representatives agreed to settle with Kano state in Nigeria for $75 million, brought down from the asked for $150 million. How they pressured the Nigerian government is the most interesting part:

“According to [Pfizer country manager Enrico] Liggeri, Pfizer had hired investigators to uncover corruption links to Federal Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa to expose him and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases. He said Pfizer's investigators were passing this information to local media...A series of damaging articles detailing Aondoakaa's 'alleged' corruption ties were published in February and March. Liggeri contended that Pfizer had much more damaging information on Aondoakaa and that Aondoakaa's cronies were pressuring him to drop the suit for fear of further negative articles.”

Yep, Pfizer hired investigators to find evidence of corruption on the attorney general in order to convince him to drop legal action.

In addition, the Guardian wrote, “Pfizer and the Nigerian authorities had signed a confidentiality agreement. ‘The withdrawal of the [$6 billion federal] case, as well as the terms of settlement, is a highly guarded secret by the parties involved in the negotiation.”

Bad science, check. Forgery, check. Death threats, check. Bribery, check. Finding and using leverage, check. Spinning everything in the media to be the good guy, check.

Justice…not really. In 2011, four families received $175,000 each from a $35 million fund created from the settlement. Yet, this was just a small fraction of what Pfizer made off this drug.

Did this make them change their ways at all? It’s just the cost of doing business as usual.

Do #blacklivesmatter when it comes to the medical cartel?

Should Pfizer be defunded? (They’ve received over half a billion dollars in Federal, state and local subsidies. In 2000 to 2015 they also received almost $9 billion in federal contracts.)

Pfizer…now working hard to bring you a COVID vaccine!

But don’t worry, while Pfizer is a criminal organization multiple times over, the “vaccine halo” protects this area from possibly being defiled, because everyone knows vaccines are safe and effective.

References:
Rost, P. (2006). The whistleblower: Confessions of a healthcare hitman. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/06/AR2006050601338.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/world/africa/12nigeria.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/30/business/families-sue-pfizer-on-test-of-antibiotic.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/did-pfizer-bribe-its-way-out-of-criminal-charges-in-nigeria/68495/
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-cables-pfizer-nigeria
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=pfizer
https://www.fedspending.org/fpds/fpds.php?combDuns=001326495&sortp=r&detail=-1&datype=T&reptype=r&database=fpds&fiscal_year=&submit=GO
https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine

1
Emissary of Nature

“In the Western world visionaries and mystics are a good deal less common than they used to be…In the currently fashionable picture of the universe there is no place for valid transcendental experience. Consequently, those who have had what they regard as valid transcendental experiences are looked upon with suspicion, as being either lunatics or swindlers. To be a mystic or a visionary is no longer credible.”
– Aldous Huxley

I did not set out to write this book; I was called to write it. To properly understand what you have begun to read, you must understand where it came from. The story is only partially my own.

Back around the early 1990’s, an indigenous people, the Achuar, had initiated contact with the outside world because they saw the destruction that was happening to their neighbors from the rubber and oil companies.

They feared the ‘West’ but did what they feared most because they knew having to interact with the West was inevitable. Their elders saw that by initiating contact with the right people, they could exert some control over the situation.

Their elders convened with a group of Westerners and spoke at length about what to do. An Achuar elder said this:

“If you’re coming to help us you’re wasting your time. If you’re coming because you realize your salvation is tied into our own, then let us work together.”

This message was the spark to create the charity organization Pachamama Alliance. When I heard what was said, shivers rippled through my body. The goal of the Pachamama Alliance isn’t to merely preserve the rainforest and its peoples, although that is an important part of its role. Instead its aim is to change the “dream of the modern world” so that destruction of the natural world isn’t sought out in the first place.

I had never heard of the Pachamana Alliance until I met them by being a member in Maverick 1000. This is a private, invitation-only global network of top entrepreneurs and industry leaders created by Yanik Silver. Maverick 1000 has a purpose that is three-fold: personal and business growth, making an impact, and having fun and epic experiences.

I was in Seattle attending a Maverick event. We were working with the Pachamama Alliance, using our collective entrepreneurial skills to show how the charity could not just raise money through donations but could also expand through certain business-like operations. Perhaps most importantly, we discussed how to get their message of a sustainable and ecologically-sound future, into the heart of businesses.

Prior to this I had never heard of the Pachamama Alliance. What I did not know is that my introduction to the organization would end up becoming a pivotal point in my life.

I was invited to come along on the Founder’s Journey to the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador with John Perkins and Lynne Twist, best-selling authors of Confessions of an Economic Hitman and The Soul of Money, respectively. I already had other events planned during the time of the trip, but the pull was strong. I knew that this was something that I simply had to do, so I canceled the other events and made it happen.

In the time before I left for the Amazon, I studied more about Pachamama and pored over their recommended reading materials. I was far from an activist. In growing my businesses, I was focused on what my team and I could accomplish to be profitable. We were doing good things and helping people, but I wasn’t looking at the bigger collective picture, nor at the ripple of impacts that what we did would cause. Getting involved here began to open my eyes to a wider perspective.

For years, after watching my mother succumb to breast cancer, I was motivated to teach people how to be healthier naturally. And now, what became abundantly clear was that so much of human health is tied to environmental health. The plastics, pollution, and pesticides that disrupt our hormones, causing cancer, cause similar destruction in nature.

Finally, it was time for my Amazon journey. I flew into Quito, Ecuador. From there it was a couple more days of journeying by bus, truck, canoe, and more planes until we arrive deep in the heart of the rainforest. Spending time with the Achuar, those previously uncontacted people, showed me just how different cultures could be. At one point, standing in the rainforest, with the cacophony of chirping and buzzing from birds, frogs, and insects, I was almost moved to tears in gratitude for the experience. And I’m not normally a crier.

Elements of that journey are spread throughout this book. For now, I want to zero in on a particular part of it.

For years, I had heard about ayuhuasca, a psychoactive drink made from vines and bark used by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. From the very beginning I knew I wanted to experience it, but, if I was going to do it, I wanted to do it right.

Ayuhuasca is highly revered by the cultures in which it originates. Because of its capacity for transformation, its popularity spread far and wide—a fact both beneficial and detrimental. On the one hand, many Westerners seeking transformation, enlightenment, or healing sought out the medicine with various impacts. On the other hand, ayuhuasca is misused by others. The worst I’ve heard is that at the Peruvian airport you can see people holding signs offering ayuhuasca ceremonies. And some unscrupulous so-called shamans have then robbed and raped those seekers.

Anyone can claim to be a shaman. It’s not a licensed profession. And how would anyone from the West know the legitimate from the not? (Many in the West would even doubt that a shaman could be legit.)

So, as I said, if I was going to experience ayuhuasca, I wanted to do it right—to work with a legitimate shaman who had been practicing for years and to do it in the place where ayuhuasca comes from. This isn’t to say that a ceremony taking place in downtown San Francisco can’t be good; I just wanted my experience to be as authentic as possible the first time. In my journey into the rainforest with the Pachamama Alliance, this opportunity was available.

I heard many amazing stories from different people. Ayuhuasca effects everyone differently. And these stories ranged from the harsh (purging from both ends all night) to amazing visions and talking with the spirit of ayuhuasca. Whatever was to happen, I thought I was ready for it. I was ready for my life to be changed in some way. In fact, life-changing visions are exactly what I desired and expected.

The day the ceremony was to take place we spent fasting. When you first meet your shaman and he’s wearing an IBM shirt you have to laugh. These people live in their cultures fully, yet small things like this act as reminders of how our cultures interact and have intertwined. One way or another, the culture of globalization is growing strongly.

I was excited to learn that our shaman was the one who had originally spoken those words about our salvation being tied together, over 20 years ago, that had sent shivers across my body.

When we arrived at the shaman’s village we set out on a long hike. During this journey, we took the time to sit individually in the forest and be with nature. Our destination was a sacred waterfall where we snuffed a liquid tobacco infusion and set our intentions for the night to come.

Returning to the village we waited until night fell. Ayuhuasca increases your photo sensitivity, even helping you to see in the dark, so it is not done during the day.

Finally, it was time. We sat in a circle around the shaman. The ayuhuasca had already been brewed and awaited us in a plastic soda bottle—another oddity in my mind, but I suppose they do make good carrying vessels able to be reused. One at a time we sat in front of the shaman as he chanted and whistled into each cup. When he was done he handed it to us and down the hatch the liquid went.

I had heard stories of how awful ayuhuasca tastes. Yet being used to some powerfully bitter and bad tasting herbs, like reishi and tongkat ali, I have to say it wasn’t that bad. It was not an enjoyable taste, but not the worst thing ever.

After the whole group had drank, we were invited to go lie down on our palm leaves under the stars. These were laid out in a large semi-circle around the hut, with plenty of space between people. Ayuhuasca is not a social drug; instead, with it you’re meant to engage in a personal journey.

I sat there and wondered. Was it starting to come on? My body felt…something. My eyes saw figures appearing in the clouds above. But that happens normally when we stare at clouds, right?

A short time later, each person was invited to drink a second cup if they chose. I did so, not sure if I’m really feeling it yet, and certainly not feeling the strong effects I desired.

Our group had about ten people taking the journey. We also had helpers that were not taking the ayuhuasca there to lend a hand to those who were. Off in the distance I could hear the others beginning to purge.

I wait. It seems everyone else is purging. I notice some nearby can’t even walk and need to be almost carried to the shaman for his cleansing.

And I wait. Time is hard to tell waiting under the stars. My body still felt that strange something but I’m not seeing anything spectacular. No psychedelic trip of fractal imagery or anything like that. I can feel frustration begin to build up inside my body. Why isn’t it working?

I am let down. I had come all this way, waiting years to do this, and it doesn’t affect me. Anger rises, and I try to let it go. It’s an odd thing to be jealous of people who are throwing up, but I was.

I get up and walk around. Most everyone else is partially paralyzed it seems. Finally, a little nausea comes on. I try to make myself throw up, but this is unsuccessful.

Maybe two hours has passed. Or three or four. I talk to one of the helpers and say let’s do a third cup. Mind you, no one else had drunk a third cup. Everyone else just had one. And one other guy, twice my size, had stopped at two.

I sit down with the shaman once again. He begins his whistling. Suddenly I am overcome with incredible nausea. I pause for a moment, thinking can I hold this in? No. I turn to the helper, Daniel, and say I need to vomit. He points to a spot a few paces away and I stumble over and let it all out.

Well, at least that finally happened.

After I am finished there, I notice the shaman is still whistling into that cup. I wonder, what is the protocol at this point? I sit down in front of the shaman and soon enough he hands me the third cup. Down the hatch once again. It is much worse on the way out then the way in. That being said, purging and drinking back to back only amplifies ayahuasca’s bitter taste.

I go back to my palm leaf. Part of me is filled with nervousness. A third cup? I have heard the visions come on strong after purging. Maybe I’m in for something very intense.

I wait for maybe another hour. During this time, I’m fascinated by the jaguar sounds the shaman is making. He’s working on healing someone. The growl emanates from deep inside his throat, and always ends the same, with him spitting onto the ground. Over and over again.

Eventually, I figure the visionary experience is just not going to happen for me. My thinking is that, for whatever reason, my ayuhuasca journey was meant to be entirely somatic. I’ve certainly been feeling things throughout my body, and I purged. Perhaps the visions only would have gotten in the way of the medicine. My conscious mind wasn’t to be entertained, and everything would take place in the unconscious.

Waiting, while full of anticipation, can be exhausting, so I head indoors. Indoors was the shaman’s hut. Unlike most of the Achuar people, he did have walls on his house. This was a defensive measure, as at one point he was the target of an assassination attempt because someone had accused him of using his shamanic powers for evil.

Our “beds” are simply palm leaves on the ground, though here we have mosquito netting around. I drift off into uncomfortable sleep, waking up once to head outside and dry heave heavily, and waking a second time to finish the deed more fully.
I don’t recall any dreams that night or morning though I’m sure they occurred. At daybreak, we begin to arise. We weren’t supposed to talk about our journeys until later, but after that surreal night, what else are you going to talk about?

After breakfast, we reconvene in the shaman’s hut for him to interpret our visions. The process is lengthy as we first speak in English, have it translated to Spanish, and finally to Achuar. And then the reverse. This process is a good teacher of patience.

One after another my group shares their visions and receives insights into them. When my turn comes, I share something much like you just read.

Although my story was quite short in comparison to the others, the shaman spends more time speaking than in the others. In a nutshell, he says that my expectations were too high and that I had somehow messed up the instructions at the waterfall the day earlier.

He also said that I had visions, powerful visions, that I just don’t remember.

What he saw was the whole forest talking to me.

Plus, at some point (spiritually not physically) I came up to him, shook his hand and said I wanted to be friends.

Quite naturally, this changed my viewpoint on my journey, and I would continue to contemplate it for some time. Having grown up in the West, to be able to enter the mystical realm I have fought to shift some of the viewpoints I had simply culturally absorbed. Considering that ayuhuasca and visions are the shaman’s realm, I believe it’s suitable to take his viewpoint with at least equal weight to my own, if not more so.

The rest of the day was spent heading back to our home base in the Amazon at the Kapawi Lodge, then relaxing there. As we rejoin with the whole group we pass our experiences back and forth. The larger group has been broken up into three different smaller groups, each one working with a different shaman. And very much in need of it, we all go to bed early.

The next morning John Perkins leads us on a ceremony to help us integrate the journey. They say that taking ayuhuasca lasts a lifetime. Its effects can spread far and wide. Sometimes people even have delayed reactions. The shaman’s interpretation was a helpful stepping stone, and it would require even more work to integrate the teaching.

John begins to rhythmically beat the drum. I close my eyes, relax, and enter what the shaman saw the previous night…

Bom, bom, bom. The forest is talking to me and I begin shapeshifting from tree to tree. The great Kapok tree. Massive palms of many varieties. The “walking trees” of the jungle.

Bom, bom, bom. The same words from the Achuar now spoken from the rainforest to me: “If you’re coming to help us you’re wasting your time. If you’re coming because you realize your salvation is tied into our own, then let us work together.”

Bom, bom, bom. Shaking the shaman’s hands. A conversation ensues. Secret whispers I can’t quite make out, but the weight of importance is there…

Bom, bom, bom. A mission. A calling. An initiation. The journey occurred exactly as it was meant to.

Bom, bom, bom. The words flash across my mind, as the trees say that I am to be an…

“Emissary of Nature.”

The drum journey comes to an end. Those of us that wish to are invited to share, and I do so. Several people later tell me that my story gave them goosebumps. I’m reminded of the suggestion I’ve often heard to “follow the goosebumps.”

This short drum journey proved to be more amazing than my ayuhuasca experience, though, of course, one could not have happened without the other.

Message received. But then the question over the next few days became, “What the hell do I do with that?”

Shortly after returning home I was back out to another Maverick 1000 event. This one was Camp Maverick, in the Connecticut mountains. The tagline is “Summer Camp for Entrepreneurs,” and that’s exactly what it is.

A group of more than one hundred entrepreneurs from all fields get together to share knowledge and party. This looks like several business sessions during the day, then activities like archery dodgeball and slip-and-slide kickball in the afternoon and dressing up for “prom” at night. The fact that I won as prom queen, because I was dressed up as the Stephen King character Carrie sums it up pretty well. Great times!

One of the optional activities was water skiing—only my second time trying the sport. In my first attempt, I wasn’t able to stand up successfully. This time I was determined to do so. And I was successful. Although none of my runs were very long, I was able to stand a few times.

“Just one more,” I yelled to the driver of the boat. And once again I was up and going…until I wasn’t. When I hit the water, one of the skis came off my foot and cracked me right in the forehead.

I was dazed. Still conscious, I wasn’t sure of the damage. I thought my skull could be split open. I put my hand to my head but didn’t find the blood I expected. The boat came around, I got on, and was taken ashore to medical. It was bleeding slightly but not too bad. I certainly felt the impact, but wouldn’t say I was concussed, having experienced that misery before.

I like to think I have a thick skull as well as a strong neck, which is useful for absorbing impacts. I counted myself as lucky that the ski hit there and not my eyes or nose instead. A large lump did come up though.

The next day I was making a joke to a group of people about my third eye being activated because it was exactly in that spot. One of the people in that group was another shaman named Sheryl Netzky. Although I was joking, she replied, “Actually…” and offered to do some energy work on it.

I gladly accepted. I could feel something going on as she explained that sometimes a physical whack on the head like that is part of something spiritual. An awakening of sorts. I couldn’t help but think back to the Amazon, not even a week prior, as she spoke.

When I returned home from camp I decided I would continue to work with Sheryl. It felt like the appropriate next step, the leading of this golden thread, the continuation of this story, and so I went with that feeling.

We set up a call to discuss what that would look like and, importantly, what I sought from it. Still on my mind in a big way was the idea of being an emissary of nature.

What was that to look like in my everyday life?

And so, as the sessions began, that path further unfolded. I began spending much more time in nature. I got back to communicating directly with plants. And after a bit of time I started to write this story and this book.

This calling wasn’t completely new to me. I’d been preaching the benefits of nature to health for years. My herbal supplement company, Lost Empire Herbs, is all about this. I had communicated directly with plants many times, and not just the so-called psychedelic ones. Details on that to come later.

Yet here it wasn’t about what “I” wanted or was doing. Nature itself was calling me to have us work together. We needed to be mutually beneficial allies.

Humans can’t “save” nature. Nature can’t “save” humans. Neither of these ideas work as they’re created via the wrong perception. The fact is that humans are part of nature, however much we try to deny it and remove ourselves from ecology. But we can get back in alignment. We can work together in a true ecology that supports all.

It became clear that my mission was expanding. Nature was calling me to take the mantle, to be an emissary–a person on a special mission, usually as a diplomatic representative.

As an emissary, I needed to communicate how to live more in alignment with nature to the masses.

What you are reading now is the unfolding of this mission and the message of nature, using me as an emissary to deliver it. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but as William Shakespeare wrote, “In nature’s infinite book of secrecy a little I can read.” On that note, let me share with you some of the secrets I have discovered…