Know Thy Healing

In this episode of Know Thy Healing, I sit down with terrain-based naturopath and researcher Jacob Diaz, known online as @undercovervirologist, for a wide-ranging conversation challenging many of the assumptions underlying conventional ideas about health, disease, microbes, and healing.

Jacob shares his journey into the terrain perspective and how it fundamentally changed the way he understands both acute and chronic illness. Rather than stopping at a diagnosis, we explore the importance of looking at the entire history and story of the individual — physical stagnation, emotional patterns, environmental exposures, structural changes, previous medications and surgeries, oral health, and the many influences that shape a person’s internal terrain.

We discuss the history of allopathic medicine, homeopathy and the historical homeopathic hospitals, antibiotics and the microbiome, scar tissue and structural restriction. Jacob also walks us through the kinds of questions he asks clients and why the story behind the diagnosis reveals far more than the diagnostic label itself.

From there, we move into the pseudoscientific nature of virology, the silliness of contagion experiments, germ theory, genetics, and the conventional interpretation of bacteria, fungi, and parasites. We discuss his critiques of the experimental methods and assumptions used to support conventional models of infectious disease, as well as the true nature of microbes, fungus, and parasites, not as pathogenic entities to be feared, but as helpful participants restoring balance to the inner ecology of our body.

We also explore homeopathy, isopathy, homotoxicology, cranial osteopathy, chiropractic and bodywork, along with the profound connection between oral health and the rest of the body.

But underneath all of these subjects is a much deeper theme: agency.

The terrain perspective asks us to move beyond seeing the body as defective or helpless and instead begin listening to symptoms as messages. It asks us to examine the conditions in which those symptoms arose, take responsibility for the terrain we are creating, and restore faith in the body’s inherent capacity to regulate, adapt, repair, and heal.

At its core, this episode is about looking beyond the diagnosis and learning to read the deeper story the body is trying to tell.

Explore Jacob's website and naturopathic practice at: https://www.terrainuv.com/

Find Jacob and his incredible educational content on Instagram: instagram.com/undercovervirologist

Explore Know Thy Healing: https://knowthyhealing.com/

Terrain-based consultations, mentorship, digital guides, and resources for understanding your health and becoming an active participant in your own healing.

Connect with me: 

instagram.com/itsnickyleach

tiktok.com/@itsnickyleach

youtube.com/@knowthyhealing

If this episode inspired you in any way, please consider sharing it with friends, family, or anyone you feel may benefit from the conversation.

Your support truly means the world to me.

Disclaimer: This podcast is shared for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individualized medical care. Nothing discussed here should be interpreted as medical diagnosis or treatment. Guests speak from their own experience, training, and perspective. Use your own discernment and seek appropriate professional support when needed.

In this episode of Know Thy Healing, I sit down with Liev Dalton — researcher, educator, former therapist, and longtime student of health, philosophy, natural law, and the terrain perspective — for a wide-ranging conversation about science, healing, Nature, consciousness, and the art of unlearning.

Liev originally studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Dalhousie University with plans of becoming a dental surgeon before eventually changing course and completing a Master’s in Counselling Psychology. He went on to build a therapy practice incorporating wilderness therapy, EMDR, mindfulness, somatics, and related approaches. But through both his formal education and his own independent inquiry, he began asking increasingly uncomfortable questions about the foundations of what he had been taught.

We explore what happened when Liev began going back to the original experiments, studies, and assumptions underlying many of the scientific claims he had once accepted as settled. Rather than just questioning conclusions, he began questioning the logic, controls, methodology, and premises beneath them. That inquiry eventually led him toward the terrain perspective — a framework he initially set out to challenge and falsify, only to find himself moving increasingly toward it.

We talk about the difference between accumulating information and actually knowing — the possibility that genuine knowledge is less something we acquire from outside ourselves and more something we remember when enough conditioning, complexity, and intellectual noise have been stripped away. We explore the return to simplicity, Nature, God, and the innate intelligence of life.

We also move deeply into the philosophy of science itself: reductionism versus holism, the limitations of studying isolated parts outside the living whole, the difference between chemistry and alchemy, the tendency of modern science to become so focused on the test tube that it misses the organism, and the question of whether a science built largely upon dissecting and analyzing dead matter can actually explain life.

Liev shares his perspective on vitamins as laboratory-created abstractions, scientific controls, logical fallacies, and what he sees as the danger of allowing scientific models to become unquestionable dogma rather than hypotheses continually subjected to scrutiny and falsification.

And then the conversation shifts again — this time inward.

We talk about trauma, thought, identity, and the limitations of endlessly psychoanalyzing the past. Rather than spending our lives continually excavating old wounds, we explore the possibility of acknowledging what happened without allowing it to define the present. Every thought, as Liev puts it, can be seen as an offer rather than a command.

The mind continually constructs stories about a past that is no longer here and a future that has not yet arrived.

But peace is only ever found now.

Healing is only ever happening now.

And beneath the layers of conditioning, identity, fear, and thought, there may already exist something whole — the True Self that was never actually broken in the first place.

Often the path to knowledge begins not by learning more — but by becoming willing to unlearn.

Explore the Beyond Terrain Academy and Website: https://beyondterrain.com/

Follow Liev on Instagram: instagram.com/beyond.terrain

Follow Liev's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTerrain

Explore Know Thy Healing: https://knowthyhealing.com/

Terrain-based consultations, mentorship, digital guides, and resources for understanding your health and becoming an active participant in your own healing.

Connect with me: 

instagram.com/itsnickyleach

tiktok.com/@itsnickyleach

youtube.com/@knowthyhealing

If this episode inspired you in any way, please consider sharing it with friends, family, or anyone you feel may benefit from the conversation.

Your support truly means the world to me.

Disclaimer: This podcast is shared for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individualized medical care. Nothing discussed here should be interpreted as medical diagnosis or treatment. Guests speak from their own experience, training, and perspective. Use your own discernment and seek appropriate professional support when needed.

In this episode of Know Thy Healing, I sit down with Ste Lane — holistic health coach, former rugby player and MMA fighter, father of two, musician, homesteader, and host of Heart & Soil’s Radical Health Radio — for a wide-ranging conversation on health, culture, Nature, purpose, and the deeper art of living.

Born and raised in England, Ste’s life has taken him through sport, travel, Southeast Asia, profound experiences with plant medicine, fatherhood, raising his own animals, and an increasingly intimate relationship with the land. His path has been anything but linear, and that becomes one of the central threads of our conversation.

We explore the idea that culture and society function almost like an operating system — a set of assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and behaviors we absorb long before we are conscious enough to question them. From there, we talk about what it means to step outside of that programming, encounter life directly, and embark on something resembling the archetypal hero’s journey.

We move into the importance of allowing energy to find its proper expression, the deeper spiritual and philosophical dimensions of health, and the ways the mind can create unnecessary friction by constantly imposing expectations onto reality. We talk about wu wei, surrender, presence, and what becomes possible when we stop trying to force life into the shape we think it should take.

At the heart of the conversation are Ste’s Four Directions of Health: nourishment, elimination, movement, and creation — a beautifully simple framework for understanding the fundamental ways in which life takes in, lets go, moves, and expresses.

At its core, this episode is about living in deeper relationship with Nature, with ourselves, and with life as it actually is — rather than endlessly fighting against it.

Explore Ste Lane and his incredible content: instagram.com/stelane

Explore Know Thy Healing: https://knowthyhealing.com/

Terrain-based consultations, mentorship, digital guides, and resources for understanding your health and becoming an active participant in your own healing.

Connect with me: 

instagram.com/itsnickyleach

tiktok.com/@itsnickyleach

youtube.com/@knowthyhealing

If this episode inspired you in any way, please consider sharing it with friends, family, or anyone you feel may benefit from the conversation.

Your support truly means the world to me.

Disclaimer: This podcast is shared for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individualized medical care. Nothing discussed here should be interpreted as medical diagnosis or treatment. Guests speak from their own experience, training, and perspective. Use your own discernment and seek appropriate professional support when needed.

In this episode of Know Thy Healing, I sit down with one of my oldest friends, brothers, and fellow travelers in sobriety for a deeply personal conversation about addiction, recovery, spirituality, and the search for God.

We share stories from some of the darkest chapters of our lives — drug addiction, destructive habits, self-sabotage, and the strange ways we tried to escape ourselves — while also reflecting on what those experiences eventually forced us to confront.

From there, the conversation moves beyond sobriety itself and into the deeper questions underneath addiction: What are we really searching for when we reach outside ourselves for relief, stimulation, numbness, or escape? Is addiction only about substances, or can it be understood as a distorted attempt to find connection, meaning, wholeness, or even God?

We talk openly about our own shifts from atheistic skepticism into spirituality, and the ways science, philosophy, personal experience, and the esoteric gradually began to overlap. We explore consciousness, faith, purpose, the nature of reality, the importance of an open mind, and the willingness to question one's own belief systems.

This episode is raw, vulnerable, and at times deeply personal. It is less about presenting answers and more about tracing the path that led both of us to ask better questions — about addiction, identity, God, truth, and what it means to live without constantly reaching for something outside ourselves.

Explore Know Thy Healing: https://knowthyhealing.com/

Terrain-based consultations, mentorship, digital guides, and resources for understanding your health and becoming an active participant in your own healing.

Connect with me: 

instagram.com/itsnickyleach

tiktok.com/@itsnickyleach

youtube.com/@knowthyhealing

If this episode inspired you in any way, please consider sharing it with friends, family, or anyone you feel may benefit from the conversation.

Your support truly means the world to me.

Disclaimer: This podcast is shared for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individualized medical care. Nothing discussed here should be interpreted as medical diagnosis or treatment. Guests speak from their own experience, training, and perspective. Use your own discernment and seek appropriate professional support when needed.

In the first episode of Know Thy Healing, I sit down with my good friend and Doctor of Chinese Medicine, Tommy Hughes, for a conversation that moves far beyond surface-level health.

We explore Chinese medicine not as a collection of techniques, but as a living philosophy rooted in rhythm, resonance, harmony, and relationship. Tommy helps illuminate where Chinese medicine is often misunderstood, why symptoms are not the deepest layer of disease, and why true healing begins by understanding the causal imbalance beneath the outer expression.

We talk about qi, chronic illness, constitutional medicine, and the forgotten art of the physician — not merely as someone who manages disease, but as someone who understands the individual, reads patterns, and helps restore alignment between the person and the greater order of life.

From there, we move into one of the most beautiful threads of the conversation: the relationship between medicine and music. In Chinese thought, healing and music are deeply connected through rhythm, tone, resonance, harmony, and the ability to restore order where there has been disharmony.

We also explore wu wei, yin and yang, ancient longevity, cyclical patterns, cosmology, and the deeper intelligence woven into Nature itself.

At its core, this episode is about remembering that medicine is not meant to be a war against the body.

It is the art of helping life return to harmony.

Learn more about our guest, Tommy Hughes: https://www.youtube.com/@naturally_tom

Dive into the Chinese Medicine Text Project: https://ctext.org/

Explore Know Thy Healing: https://knowthyhealing.com/

Terrain-based consultations, mentorship, digital guides, and resources for understanding your health and becoming an active participant in your own healing.

Connect with me:

instagram.com/itsnickyleach

tiktok.com/@itsnickyleach

youtube.com/@knowthyhealing

If this episode inspired you in any way, please consider sharing it with friends, family, or anyone you feel may benefit from the conversation.

Your support truly means the world to me.

Disclaimer: This podcast is shared for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individualized medical care. Nothing discussed here should be interpreted as medical diagnosis or treatment. Guests speak from their own experience, training, and perspective. Use your own discernment and seek appropriate professional support when needed.