A Healthy Curiosity

In today's episode, Brodie talks with Alexx Stuart, a woman on a mission to help people detoxify their lives. Alexx runs a website and Podcast, The Low Tox Life, and teaches classes to people seeking to identify and reduce the toxic chemicals in their homes and in their lives. Listen in to learn what you can do to eradicate harmful chemicals in your life and to protect yourself and your loved ones from carcinogens and hormone disruptors in seemingly benign household items.

In this episode, we explore:

• The ubiquity of toxins in our everyday lives
• The kinds of products most likely to contain toxins
• The effects toxins might be having on your body without you knowing
• 3 simple changes you can make to reduce toxic chemicals in your body
• The skin: your largest organ
• Why we all need to have a love/hate relationship with plastic

Resources:

Alexx's Website: Low Tox Life

Alexx's Podcast

In Episode 15, Brodie talks with Li-lan Hsiang Weiss, Licensed Acupuncturist and practitioner of the Arvigo Technique of Mayan Abdominal Therapy. Western medicine is just beginning to understand the link between the digestive system and the brain, but other cultures have been using the brain/digestion relationship for millennia to heal both mind and body. Li-lan's experience is unique: born in Taiwan and transplanted at an early age to Guatemala, she brings a very multicultural approach to her practice where she focuses on reproductive, digestive, and emotional well-being for women, men, and children.

In this episode, we explore:

• The Arvigo Technique: what is it, what can it treat?
• The link between the belly and the nervous system
• Similarities between Mayan healing practices and Chinese Medicine
• Other Mayan healing practices
• What IS vaginal steaming?
• Emotional tension manifesting physically in the body and what abdominal massage can do to release it

Resources:

Wind in the Blood: Mayan Healing and Chinese Medicine by Garcia, Sierra, Balam

Li-Lan's 2014 case study publication in Journeys in Healing: Inspiring Experiences of Arvigo Practitioners and their Clients available through the Arvigo Institute LLC, where you can also find other Arvigo practitioners, Rainforest Remedies, and Arvigo courses.

How to do a traditional Mayan vaginal steam, video by Natural Fertility Info: https://youtu.be/ilfBrNLXhLo

Is Creativity Your Missing Nutrient?

With Melissa Dinwiddie

In today's episode, Brodie talks with Melissa Dinwiddie, artist, author, speaker, performer, and creativity instigator, about helping people reclaim their innate creativity and live what Melissa likes to call, "full color, creative lives." Melissa is a former non-creative person and a recovering perfectionist, so she's intimately familiar with stifled creativity stemming from both internal and external factors. Melissa wants to change the conversation around creative expression and play, because she believes that creating helps people change the world.

In this episode, we explore:

• Creativity as an essential part of a vibrant, productive life – why is it so important?
• Creativity as more than self-indulgence or frivolous pass time
• Creativity as an innate part of every person, even if they don't feel creative
• What leads people to believe they're not creative?
• What can people who think they're not creative do to GET creative?
• What does creativity have to do with willpower and the prefrontal cortex?
• What can creativity do for your mood and relationships?
• The many forms of creativity
• Negative stereotypes of creative people
• The value of creating crap

Resources:

Melissa's Website

Melissa's Podcast: Live Creative Now

Melissa on Facebook

In today's episode, Brodie talks with Alexa Gilmore, L.Ac. and Chinese herbalist specializing in dermatology, about treating skin conditions using Chinese Medicine. From a Chinese Medicine perspective, many skin conditions result from excess heat in the body, which can cause a varying array of symptoms including redness, rash, itching, fluid buildup, and more.

Listen in for some great information to help keep your skin looking and feeling great, and if you or someone you love is struggling with a skin condition, find out what Chinese Medicine can do to help find relief.

In this episode, we explore:

• What skin conditions can be treated using acupuncture and Chinese Medicine
• What does treatment for a skin condition look like in Chinese Medicine?
• What kinds of variables would an acupuncturist be interested in knowing to treat a skin condition?
• Are there specific prescriptions for different skin conditions?
• Bio-individuality (it's back!)
• What kinds of things can cause a skin condition? What does " heat" mean in terms of Chinese Medicine?
• What can people do to keep their skin healthy?

Alexa has been working in a clinical setting for 12 years. She is nationally board certified, a Diplomate of Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM), and licensed to practice acupuncture as well as to formulate and prescribe custom-made Chinese herbal medicine. A love of learning and commitment to excellence drive Alexa, and she's pursued extensive post-graduate training in acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, and soft tissue manipulation, alike.

She graduated in the top of her class from Mazin Al-Khafaji's prestigious Chinese Medicine Dermatology Diploma Course in London, England, and now holds the highest certification in the field--the only practitioner in New England with this distinction.

Alexa takes a no-nonsense approach to the healing arts and expects positive outcomes. She works in partnership with her patients, providing high quality care as well as empowering them to make lasting changes in their life and health by incorporating simple, effective principles of Chinese medicine into their daily lives.

Resources:

Alexa's Website: www.atxacu.com

If you're wanting a deep-dive into the fundamentals of Chinese Medicine, my Basics of Chinese Medicine course starting this October was designed just for you. When we can act with greater self-awareness, we open ourselves up to new possibilities. Recognizing that we don't have to be bound by our go-to tendencies and habits, we are free to stretch into the fullness of our potential on all levels. You may even discover new latent superpowers —inner strengths we have yet to tap. If that's strikes you as interesting, please head over to brodiewelch.com and you can read more about it under the Learn from Home tab. We start Oct. 10th.

Episode 13: Emotional Healing & Acupuncture, Part III

In Part 3 of the Emotional Healing & Acupuncture Series, Brodie shares a series of journal entries written by a patient (who we're calling Shawna to preserve her anonymity) as she underwent a series of acupuncture treatments to help her let go of guilt and to break a parenting pattern that had been in her family for generations. Unprocessed trauma, guilt, and insecurity can hang out in the body, affecting our psychology as well as our physiology. In this episode, we explore:

• The importance of setting a particular intention for a treatment
• What happened on the table and how it felt
• The Extraordinary Vessels and how they affect our deep "programming"
• How working on these deeper levels catalyzed healing for not only herself but her relationship with her daughter

Resources: If you're wanting a deep-dive into the body-mind according to Chinese Medicine, my Basics of Chinese Medicine course starting October 10 was designed just for you.

Cori's story is a powerful one of habit change, self-healing, and accepting one's boundaries in pursuit of a healthier, happier life. When injury and illness literally knocked her off her feet, Cori found the strength to seek solutions, acknowledge unhealthy patterns, and listen to what her body was telling her.

Special thanks go out to Cori for the great idea to create this 3-part series on emotional healing.

In this episode, we explore:

• How overworking our minds and bodies can negatively affect our health
• How sucking it up is probably not the best coping mechanism
• How ignoring the messages our bodies are sending can lead to worse outcomes
• Giving up or scaling back certain treats can be well worth the positive health outcomes
• You don't know what a drastic change something can make until you try it
• How emotional and mental strife can produce adverse physical effects
• Slowing down and staying present, and how these things provide relief for chronic pain

Resources

The Basics of Chinese Medicine: Your Inner Ecosystem

In Part 1 of a 3-Part series on Emotional Healing & Chinese Medicine Brodie talks with a long-time patient, "Marcia" - not her real name, per her request. Brodie and Marcia talk about how acupuncture helped her let go of emotions related to post-traumatic stress that she developed after a camping trip with her husband that led to an ER visit and emergency quadruple-bypass surgery. Marcia's story is a powerful example of how acupuncture can help us let go of stuck energy in the form of emotions.

Marcia also describes how understanding herself from a Chinese Medicine perspective helped her to develop self-compassion, self-love, and appreciation. In particular, we get into the notion of Constitutional Type. Kind of like the Myers-Briggs Personality test, your astrological sign, your Enneagram number, or your Ayurvedic Dosha, Chinese Medicine likens different aspects of our physiology, psychology, and mental tendencies to the elements of nature: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Knowing your constitutional type can help you maintain balance in your life by illuminating natural strengths and identifying challenges.

In this episode, we explore:

• Issues that Marcia has used Acupuncture to help treat
• What part of the acupuncture process is most helpful in treating these issues?
• How the pre-treatment interview process helps patients tune in to deeper issues
• Emotional release during treatment and emotions as qi
• How slowing down our lives can help us feel more in control
• Having compassion for yourself
• How identifying your constitutional type can help you keep yourself and your life in balance
• Similarities and differences between emotional healing in acupuncture and talk therapy

Resources:

• If you are interested in discovering your particular constitutional type, you can take a little quiz at http://brodiewelch.com/chinese-element-quiz/
• If you're wanting a deep-dive into this stuff, my Basics of Chinese Medicine course starting this October was designed just for you. When we can act with greater self-awareness, we open ourselves up to new possibilities. Recognizing that we don't have to be bound by our go-to tendencies and habits, we are free to stretch into the fullness of our potential on all levels. We may even discover new latent superpowers — inner strengths we have yet to tap. If that's strikes you as interesting, please head over to brodiewelch.com and you can read more about it under the "Learn from Home" tab. We start Oct. 3rd.

Your period doesn't have to suck. Just because symptoms like cramping and PMS are common doesn't mean that they're something all people who menstruate have to expect and resign themselves to. This episode with Bridgit Danner, L.Ac. and Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist demystifyies the menstrual cycle and how the cycle clues us into the overall health of our bodies.

Bridgit manages a community called the Women's Wellness Collaborative, which is centered around helping women increase wellness and balance in their lives, especially in relation to hormones, the menstrual cycle, and fertility. She and Brodie talk about ways in which women can learn to tune into their menstrual cycle at any age to relieve pain and irritability associated with menstruation, balance hormones, and manage fertility.

In this episode, we explore:

• What functional medicine is
• Lack of education around the menstrual cycle
• What a standard menstrual cycle looks and feels like
• Why menstrual pain may occur
• What you can do to regulate and embrace your menstrual cycle
• Seed cycling: what is it and how does it help?

I hope you listen whether you menstruate or not.

Resources:

The Flow Period Tracker App

Bridgit's Youtube Channel

Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler, MPH

Marijuana has now been legalized for medical use in 25 U.S. states (plus D.C.) and legalized recreationally in four. In light of these policy developments, marijuana has become the subject of much public debate within the political and medical arenas throughout the last several years. Like acupuncture, definitive medical research on medical marijuana is still relatively scarce, which leaves a lot of people both curious about and wary of its use. In this episode, Brodie talks with Dr. Rachna Patel, a medical marijuana expert, about how she uses medical marijuana in her treatment protocols and what people should know about using medical marijuana.

In this episode, we explore:

• How marijuana works in the body
• Separating fact from fiction regarding marijuana use
• What conditions medical marijuana may help treat
• Where marijuana use isn't backed up by medical research

Dr. Rachna Patel has been practicing in the field of Medical Marijuana since 2012. She step-by-step walks patients through how to use medical marijuana for their particular medical conditions. She completed her medical studies at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Vallejo, CA and her undergraduate studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. You can learn more about the work she does at www.DrRachnaPatel.com

Resources:

www.DrRachnaPatel.com

Youtube Channel: The Medical Marijuana (Cannabis) Expert: Dr. Rachna Patel

If you've been keeping up with our Olympians down in Rio, you may have noticed what appear to be perfectly round bruises spotting the shoulders of some swimmers and gymnasts. You may even have read an article about this "new fad". These marks are the result of a procedure called cupping, a practice that is actually rooted in ancient Chinese Medicine. Acupuncturists employ cupping for many reasons, but its main use is to relieve conditions featuring stagnating blood or fluids in the body.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why blood or fluids commonly stagnate in the body
• Circulation and how it affects the way our muscles feel
• Fascia – what is it and how does it affect our muscles?
• The relationship between cupping and acupuncture
• Those spots - do they hurt…?
• Conditions that can be treated with cupping
• Tools used in cupping