Suuzi and I continue the discussion sparked by my last episode about culty trends in the wellness space by talking about her past with Kundalini yoga- what drew her in and, eventually, how noticing the state of nourishment of those deepest into the cult precipitated her exit. We then catch listeners up on our midlife metabolic meltdown hEaLinG jOuRnEyS and what path we’re taking forward as we continue to recover our vitality and deepen our understanding of why women’s bodies are so metabolically expensive.

Patreon bonuses for this episode include an extended conversation w/ Suuz about the reaction to the German New Medicine episode (114) & how it surprisingly kindled a discussion amongst patrons about a remarkably similar ideology, a 10% off coupon code for Suuzi’s grass fed, grass finished liver pills, and a chance to ask us questions. Also photos of Suuzi in turbans!

Dr. Suuzi on Instagram

Mother’s Best Liver Pills

Amber’s Nourishing Motherlines Substack

Amber’s website MythicMedicine.love 

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

Amber/Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Mentioned in this episode:

Kimberly Ann Johnson on Whose Body Is It

Breath of Fire Kundalini cult/Guru Jagat documentary

Kathleen Stewart's story

The Rooted in Resilience podcast and specific Minnesota Starvation Experiment episodes with Kathleen Stewart

The Energy Balance Podcast

The group coaching program Suuzi is in is Transfrom

Cronometer nutrition tracking app

How to Not Get Fat on the “Pro-Metabolic Diet”: a guide for switching to nourishing foods while avoiding fat gain by Kaya of Fundamental Nourishment

Eating a “Pro-Metabolic Diet” Will Not Heal You: an appeal for having context to understand the big picture by Kaya of Fundamental Nourishment

GNM is an alt health trend that has grown in popularity in recent years. It is attractive to so many (including me and my guest, once) because it acknowledges the role that emotions and trauma play in physical health and symptom manifestation, something that mainstream medicine still somehow refuses to do.

But just because some aspects of an ideology are true and helpful does not mean that the entire framework is valid. Critical thinking and humility are essential tools for navigating information overload and complex frameworks, especially when it comes to health.

The allure of certainty and specialized knowledge can lead people to adopt rigid belief systems that don’t hold up to critical thinking, and the the zealotry of believing that your group’s belief system will save the world only further strengthens unconscious confirmation bias (along with other logical fallacies common in GNM- loading the language, heads you lose tails I win, us v them thinking, bizarre antisemitic conspiracies, etc).

But what might be most worrisome about this growing movement is the purity mindset demanded of its more extreme adherents- the belief that nothing outside of us can affect us if only we believe strongly enough in our own omnipotence and prove our righteousness and purity by attaining a total lack of symptoms.

What is viewed as radical sovereignty and empowerment is really just outright magical thinking reinforced by an absence of humility, mystery, and the reality that ultimately we are not in control of what happens to us. The body is not a closed system; we are deeply embedded in overlapping ecologies.

This episode has been years in the making, and I have been asked time and time again for my take on GNM. When I was sent Demetra’s essay on the subject I knew that I had finally found the right person to have this conversation with. Her past cult experience, and my years of deep dives into culty thinking and behavior, provide a lens through which to view this phenomenon.

Though we do not claim that GNM is a cult in the traditional sense, cultishness is a spectrum and GNM is definitely on that spectrum.

Also its tenets are demonstrably false, and have led to death in some cases. NBD.

In our Patreon bonus conversation Demetra shares her cult story- joining what she thought was a good thing, slowly realizing it wasn’t, leaving, being attacked by the leader and other members, and the long “deprogramming” and stabilization process that all cult survivors undergo

Demetra’s essay The Culty Fraud of German New Medicine

Dr. Moss’s report German New Medicine- Hope or Hoax?

Demetra’s podcast Impolite Company on Spotify and Apple

Amber’s Nourishing Motherlines Substack

Amber’s website MythicMedicine.love 

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Mentioned in this episode:

Tension Myositis Syndrome

Cell Danger Response

A Little Bit Culty podcast (the best!)

Cult documentaries (by no means an extensive list)- The Vow (NXIVM), Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence, Breath of Fire (Kundalini yoga), The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin

Steven Hassan’s BITE model

Cult expert Robert Jay Lifton

What metabolic patterns did you inherit from your parents, and what may you have passed down to your own children? Many behavioral issues, and even what are usually considered personality traits (like that of high sensitivity), can be linked to mineral imbalances and overall health. 

Heavy metals often accumulate in individuals due to stress, compromised metabolic function, or ancestral imprints, not necessarily always due to direct exposure. Heroic detoxification protocols should be approached with caution, as forcing the removal of metals without addressing underlying nutrient deficiencies can have unintended consequences.

Let us welcome in the medicine of sitting with the right questions as we collectively navigate information overwhelm, and walk slowly together toward ever deeper levels of self attunement and inner resourcing.

Links for Niecia:

Niecia’s HTMA packages

Eat To Go Deep course membership

Niecia on Instagram

Links for Amber:

Medicine Stories Patreon (extended convo w/ Niecia + more)

Nourishing Motherlines Substack

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Mentioned in this episode:

Lead Safe Mama

Fertility is not just the ability to conceive, but is an indicator of overall health and the capacity to nurture life; it is how we extend genetic strength across time and space into generations we will never know. Pregnancy and menopause are transformative states that reveal underlying metabolic and hormonal imbalances, emphasizing the complex interplay between biochemistry, psychology, and lifestyle. In an age of rampant metabolic dysfunction, let us together find our way to renewed vitality, for ourselves and for those yet to come.

Eat To Go Deep course membership

HTMA packages

Medicine Stories Patreon (extended convo w/ Niecia)

Nourishing Motherlines Substack

Niecia on Instagram

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Get the transcript here

Mentioned in this episode:

Wise Women Diaries podcast interview w/ Niecia telling the story of her first birth, instagram of podcast host is Trusting Life

Casey Means

Niecia has learned about biomechanics in pregnancy and birth from Adelaide Meadow

Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage by Rachel Reed

Mary Lou Singleton on early motherhood

St. John’s Wort has evolved over millennia to capture sunlight and turn it into the molecule hypericin, which has numerous profound effects on our human bodies.

Our St. John’s Wort Oil is HALF OFF until sold out (as of June 2024)!

From deep nerve healing, relaxation, and pain relief when applied externally to its antidepressant, antiviral, and liver supportive properties when taken internally, SJW has always occupied an exalted place in the medicine cabinet of the ancestral humans who were lucky enough to live where it grew, and is one of the most used and loved herbal medicines in the world today.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• St. John’s Wort acts as an extension of sunlight

• The endless external uses include the healing of wounds, bruises, burns, blisters, cuts, eczema, growing pains, inflamed skin, muscle pain, nerve pain, neck tension, spasms, back pain, neuralgia, sciatica, insomnia, anxiety, and stress

• The oil is indispensable for menstrual pain, pregnancy, postpartum, babies, children, elders, empaths, and highly sensitive people

• Photosensitivity, precancerous skin cells, and using SJW as sunscreen

• Internal uses: notes on the antidepressant, antiviral, and liver supportive effects (including my shingles story)

• Hypericum feeds our inner radiance and summons forth our purpose and power

• This ancient herb has always been associated with fairies and other magical beings

• How empire co-opted pagan rituals and herbal practices

• The widespread ritual use of St. John’s Wort as a protective herb

• A word on wildcrafting and non-natives v invasives

• Making your own high potency, shelf stable herbal oils

• Herbal medicine is so simple, yet also endlessly complex

• Kami McBride speaks about St. John’s Wort

RESOURCES:

• Mythic Medicinals St. John’s Wort Oil (half off!)

• Medicine Stories Patreon (patrons can download Rosalee’s ebook here)

• Cute, short video showcasing our St. John’s Wort garden

Learn to Make Your Own Herbal Oils:

• Kami McBride’s Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils online course

• My video Sneak Peak at the Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils online course from Kami McBride

Podcast Episodes & Books Mentioned:

• Episode 23 The Profound Medicine of Herbal Body Oils

• Episode 53 with Kami McBride Healing Herbal Oils: How to Make and Use Them

• Episode 55 with Lola Pickett Highly Sensitive People are the Psychedelic Plants of the Human Realm

• Episode 67 with Nadine Artemis Harvesting Light: the Alchemy of Sun & Human

• Episode 65 with Rosalee de la Foret Wild Remedies: Tending Relationships with the Land Around Us

• Episode 17 with Sajah Popham True Holistic Healing: Bridging Plant & Human Consciousness

• Episode 62 with Sajah Popham Called to the Plant Path: Herbal Myths, Healing Forward, and Human Ecology

• The article Feeding Your Inner Sun with St. John’s Wort from The School for Evolutionary Herbalism

• Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine by Rosalee de la Foret and Emily Han

• The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present by Wolf D. Storl

• The Herbal Lore of Wise Women and Wortcunners: The Healing Power of Medicinal Plants by Wolf D. Storl

• A Modern Herbal II by Maude Grieve

• The New Healing Herbs: The Essential Guide to More Than 130 of Nature's Most Potent Herbal Remedies by Michael Castleman 

More Good Stuff:

• Kathi Keville’s website 

• My website MythicMedicine.love 

• Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? Quiz

• Medicine Stories Facebook group

• Mythic Medicine on Instagram

• Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

In which I read a few pieces from my new Substack. Bone, blood, milk, and marrow... Nourishing Motherlines is a collection of memoir-adjacent personal writings exploring my evolving understanding of nourishment (not nutrients), how my mitochondria and minerals were inherited from my motherline (and yours from yours), my hEaLiNg JoUrNeY as I navigate hypothyroid and hypoadrenal exhaustion and a host of related symptoms, what I am focusing on as I prepare to help my daughters with seemingly inevitable future health issues as women alive in the 21st century, and your garden variety midlife self-concept implosion.

My new Nourishing Motherlines Substack

Energy booklet from the 80s

Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Chinese Medicine holds that women’s bodies are 10x harder to heal than men’s, as our reproductive system is biologically much more precious and metabolically more intensive to maintain. In this conversation my good friend, third time guest, and Doctor of Chinese Medicine Suuzi and I catch up one year after we both underwent severe energy loss to share how we’ve rebuilt and healed.

We talk about shifting away from the mindset of achieving “optimum human health” (an illusion that contributed to our health crises), working and mothering in a state of total burnout, how our childrens’ metabolic patterns can mirror our own & how we’ve helped our own kids heal, the link between high sensitivity and mineral depletion, why we’ve chosen a metabolically appropriate approach to weight loss even though it takes much longer, and so much more.

RESOURCES:

Join Amber & Suuzi for the Medicine Stories Retreat in Croatia, August ‘24!

Register for our Croatia Curious Zoom Call on April 10th (replay available for those registered)

Suuzi’s website Mother’s Best Liver Pills and her Instagram

Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine?

The Science of Human Energy newsletter book from the 80s

Suuzi’s previous interviews- episode 103 Midlife Burnout for Women & Why Healing Work Can Make Us Worse and episode 18 Land Based Living, Mothering, & Eating

Women whose work has helped us-

Niecia Nelson- Eat To Go Deep course and Instagram (my guest on episode 100 Returning the Mother to Herself: Our Nourishment Shapes How We Receive Life)

Sena Maria- Offerings and Instagram

Jenna Hamm- Offerings and Instagram

Sarah Kleiner- Offerings and Instagram (my guest on episode 104 Your Body is Not a Closed System: The Sun, Cell Signaling, and Metabolic Wellness)

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

The times are unprecedented and there is no template for the future. We all feel this, and we feel the overwhelm of information, influence, and opinions.

Herbalism, as it always has, offers us sanctuary from everything vying to take hold of our attention and life force.

Not so that we can check out in an endless fog of self care, but so that we can be truly present and embodied as we navigate this time of rapid and radical change. 

The plants call us home to ourselves.

Kami’s Free Workshop The Art of Arnica: 7 Steps to High Potency Oil & Healing Benefits and Safe Application (week of 3/3/24 only)

Kami’s Free Webinar How to Use Kami’s Top Herbal Oil Blends to Soothe Anxiety and Support Daily Nervous System Reset (week of 3/3/24 only)

Kami’s revered Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils course

Video Sneak Peak at the Handcrafted Healing Herbal Oils Course from Kami McBride (what it looks like when you log in)

Medicine Stories Retreat: Croatia w/ Amber Magnolia Hill (August ‘24)

Mastery by Robert Green

Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

My website MythicMedicine.love 

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by  Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)

Nothing exemplifies the magic of nature more than honeybees. They are insects yet their colonies are akin to a mammalian being, they produce numerous healing substances from their bodies and within their hives, and they have been revered and mythologized since time immemorial by countless cultures. Beekeepers live longer than folks in any other profession, and being in relationship with bees is deep medicine for the spirit in these frazzled times. Let us relearn ancestral ways of tending and listening to bees so that we may maximize our chances of reclaiming a vibrant and thriving Earth.

RESOURCES:

Ariella’s website Honey Bee Wild

Medicine Stories Patreon (3 bonuses for this episode- our extended conversation, 100% off coupon code for Ari’s 14 Kindred Bees classes, and a list of my & Ari’s favorite beetending resources)

Take our quiz Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine?

Song of Increase: Listening to the Wisdom of Honeybees for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World by Jacqueline Freeman

The Buzz About Bees: Biology of a Superorganism by Jürgen Tautz

Medicine Stories episode 9 w/ Ariella Know Thyself: Weaving Myth & Magic Into Everyday Life

Check out our Mythic Medicinals herbal & mushroom remedies

Mythic Medicine (me) on Instagram

The Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her song Wild Eyes)

“I pray to the dead to help me remember who I am while I’m still alive.”

To be in relationship with those who’ve gone before us is a deeply human way of being. Our ancestors knew that the “departed” never left, and that they answer when called. The way modern Western people conceive of the dead is a deviation that discards millennia of human knowing. Let us pray to the ancestors to help us sober up from civilization, remember what we’ve always known, and reclaim the long story of the soul.

RESOURCES:

Perdita’s website Take Back the Magic

Medicine Stories Patreon (book giveaway & course coupon code)

Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death by Bernd Heinrich

Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds by Thomas Halliday

Waking Up to the Dark by Clark Strand

My podcast about my mother’s passing What I’d Be Without You: My Mother’s Life, Death, and Legacy of Love

The Madonna Secret, a novel by Sophie Strand

Perdita and her husband Clark Strand’s website The Way of the Rose

Take our fun Which Healing Herb is Your Spirit Medicine? quiz

Our website & herbal medicines MythicMedicine.love

Mythic Medicine on Instagram

Medicine Stories Facebook group

Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)