Working amongst wellness and yoga circles, and living in a permaculture eco village that draws many alternative lifestyle-seeking fringe dwellers, I'm embedded within multiple vaccine hesitant communities. Navigating both my personal stance and my role as a holistic health practitioner within this intersection has been a growth-inducing and revelatory process.

Access the FULL episode by becoming a Patreon for as little as $2 US a month at https://www.patreon.com/nondietyogi

SHOW NOTES for the full episode:

• Fear and loathing: the reasons why people are vaccine hesitant
• My original vaccine hesitancy and how I came to my current stance on COVID 
• What “doing your research” means to me
• Love, light, and care for community: figments of the hippy imaginarium?
• On dealing with the social anxiety of being attacked for my viewpoints
• Science denial or poor accessibility? Other reasons why people don't get vaccinated
• The perception of holistic health practitioners as anti-vaxx

LINKS:
Support the pod! BONUS episodes and exclusive goodies for subscribers:
https://www.patreon.com/nondietyogi

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing - online non-diet nutrition consulting services and in-person yoga classes
https://www.funkyforest.com.au

Grab your copy of my free e-book The Modern Yogi's BS-Free Guide to Wellbeing!
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/a-modern-yogis-bs-free-guide-to-wellbeing.html

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/funkyforesthealth

Instagram:
@nondietyogi    https://www.instagram.com/nondietyogi/
@funky.forest.health    https://www.instagram.com/funky.forest.health/

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In this episode I share why this podcast went quiet in the past year. I discuss divorce, compassion & critical thinking, and working as a holistic health practitioner in communities burdened by COVID misinformation. It contains a lot of personal details and reflections. If that's not your thing, no worries - scroll on.

SHOW NOTES:

02:30     On being a "muscles and bones" yoga teacher instead of a philosophising one
05:40     Prajna and critical analysis as ways of inner knowing
11:33   The place of compassion in reducing COVID transmission
16:13    Moving through separation and divorce
18:40    Career changes to make ends meet
21:20    Working as a holistic health practitioner in communities burdened by COVID conspiracy theory and medical misinformation
26:14    Vaccines and naturopathic medicine principles
31:32    The value of combining compassion with analytical reasoning 
42:37    How this podcast will evolve

LINKS:
Support the pod! BONUS episodes and exclusive goodies for subscribers:
https://www.patreon.com/nondietyogi

Funky Forest Health & Wellbeing - online non-diet nutrition consulting services and in-person yoga classes
https://www.funkyforest.com.au

Grab your copy of my free e-book The Modern Yogi's BS-Free Guide to Wellbeing!
https://www.funkyforest.com.au/a-modern-yogis-bs-free-guide-to-wellbeing.html

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/funkyforesthealth

Instagram:
@nondietyogi    https://www.instagram.com/nondietyogi/
@funky.forest.health    https://www.instagram.com/funky.forest.health/

RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Dr. Dan Wilson, PhD: A compassionate case for COVID vaccination:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-KdEgh4Ps8

Max Cohen, ND: Are vaccines consistent with naturopathic medicine?
https://ndsforvaccines.com/reconciling-the-irreconcilable-are-vaccines-consistent-with-naturopathic-medicine/

Pennycook, Gordon. (2019). Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking. Journal of Personality. 88. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jopy.12476

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Restrictive eating is a major pain, especially when it causes you to lose your period. Hypothalamic Amenorrhoea (HA) leads to infertility but also a bunch of other lesser known issues. Anti-diet naturopath Phoebe Jobson and I talk all things HA - a condition close to both our hearts as we each have experienced and recovered from this condition.

In this episode:

• What is HA? Plus some signs, symptoms, and accompanying issues (short and long term)
• All about the food piece – how much, how often, and whether calorie counting to ensure minimum intakes helps or hinders (hint: it depends!)
• Why potatoes are not the devil (and carbs may actually be your secret weapon)
• Guidelines on exercise in HA recovery
• Why rest rocks
• The importance of seeing a psychologist / psychotherapist / counsellor as part of your team 
• Tips on dealing with diet mentality and diet culture 
• Busting some common HA myths
• Partial vs full recovery
• The problem with skipping the nutritional rehabilitation part of healing from HA and jumping straight to herbs, fertility medications and/or injectables
• Body appreciation

Links:
Phoebe's Website, Instagram & Facebook

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For our collective liberation, it is crucial that our wellness practices go beyond the mainstream representation of individualised, material self-care. Laura Jean, APD talks about community care as a form of self-care that creates space for everyone, including marginalised and oppressed people.

In this episode:

• The "epiphany moment" book that turned both of us onto the non-diet path
• Self-care is an act of liberation, especially for oppressed and marginalised groups of people
• Unshackling ourselves from patriarchal ideas of what it is to be a "good mother"
• Differentiating commodified wellness from community care as accessible, equitable self-care
• "Who benefits?" and "What feels nourishing?" as ways of questioning self-care practices 
• Why emotional and comfort eating are not “bad”
• Food is much more than medicine
• The radical, feminist roots of self-care
• How white supremacy shows up for health practitioners
• Investigating needs, values based living, and self-compassion

Links:
Laura's Website, Instagram & Facebook

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Did you know that many far-flung ‘superfoods’ carry a heavy environmental and social footprint?

In this episode:

• WTF is a superfood? (and some brief thoughts on Juice Plus+)
• Rarity breeds desire
• Issues around the sustainable harvesting of quinoa
• Yogis, food and karma
• Cost-effective alternatives to exotic $$$ superfoods

Links:
​Ep 15: Wellness Capitalism: Essential Oil MLMs, Whitewashed Herbalism, and "Naturopreneurs" with Katya Weiss-Andersson
Ep 11. Wildly Accessible Food & Medicine: Foraging Edible Weeds & Bush Foods with Pat Collins
Original article this episode is based on

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It's time we explored capitalism in it’s indiscriminately elderberry syrup guzzling, MLM essential oil dowsed, $400 supplement protocol pushing form: Wellness Capitalism. 

In this episode:

• The value of healthy skepticism, and where Katya's comes from
• How capitalism takes holistic healthcare - which was traditionally accessible, deeply contextual and collectively empowering - and warps this to make it inaccessible, commodified and whitewashed
• The trouble with smudging
• Cultivating a relationship with the plants you use in your healing
• Essential oils: would a simple tea do? Plus oral ingestion, COVID "cures", and MLMs
• One-size-fits-all herbalism versus constitutional herbal traditions such as Ayurveda and TCM
• Over harvesting of medicinal herbs and "superfoods"
• "Naturopreneurs", supplement-heavy protocols, and Tony Robbins
• Disease mongering in holistic wellness
• Finding a practitioner who will help, not harm
• Katya's recovery from anorexia nervosa and PTSD, and how lived experiences with disordered eating can make us better practitioners
• Astrology, tarot and the truth about cusps!

Links:
Katya's website, Instagram, and her podcasts: Kumbaya Confessional and Queer Wellness
The Dream: a podcast exposing the dangers of multi-level marketing
Food Empowerment Project: a resource to help others recognise the power of their food choices

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There has been a phenomenal uptick of rising yoga and wellness influencers posting anti-racism sentiments on social media. Yet in stark contrast to the important message of bringing light to police brutality against BIPOC, or tackling underrepresentation of coloured folks in wellness spaces, these feeds are filled with white, thin, able-bodied, cis-het women striking yoga poses on beaches. Are these influencers for real?

In this episode:

• The current phenomenon of performative activism in yoga social media, and why it comes across as disingenuous
• How white yoga and wellness influencers can leverage their privilege to do better
• My personal experiences of racism growing up, how these pale in comparison to those of BIPOC, and how I'm responding to racial injustice
• The damage done by sentiments like, “No One Is Superior”, "We Are All One", or "I Don't See Colour"
• Spiritual capitalism and the ways white supremacy manifests in real-life white yoga studio culture
• 3 tactics of defence and dismissal used by white wellness influencers to deflect accountability around racism
• People who are doing excellent work in allyship, de-centering themselves, raising the voices of BIPOC, and/or speaking out as BIPOC wellness and yoga influencers themselves

Resources mentioned:

• Dianne Bondy on challenging racism and spiritual bypassing, on the triyoga podcast
• Acknowledgment of Country by Georgia Mae Capocchi-Hunter
• Casey's article on The Spiritual, Sexy, Successful Woman Ideal
• Transcript of this episode with links to posts mentioned
• Yoga is Dead podcast

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There is a lack of representation of women aged 40+ in fitness. Rachelle Ballard-Clayton is shifting that pattern by basing her approach to training womxn on their shifting internal landscape and cyclical patterns.

In this episode:

• A little pre-interview solo ramble on systemic racism and unrecognised privilege in yoga/wellness/spirituality worlds
• Training womxn and running a fitness business, without body transformations or weight loss challenges (!)
• The importance of strength training – as opposed to just cardio and yoga - for womxn, especially those over 30 years of age
• Movement and the menstrual cycle: adapting your training to the hormonal fluctuations of one’s menstrual cycle - or mood cycle for peri-menopausal womxn
• What movement might look like for a midlife womxn 
• Why we might find ourselves at this stage of life feeling less likely to move, more burnt out than ever and what we can do about that
• Throwing all expectations of what we should be doing out the window
• Understanding what our bodies are doing by tracking cycles
• How to work with and not against your body 
• Why some weight gain around menopause is normal and protective
• “Focus on what you can do, and understand YOU better”

PLUS, some post interview-thoughts on:

• Rites of Passage in womxn’s lives, also known as the blood mysteries – menarche, childbirth, menopause
• The phenomenal benefits womxn get from strength training
• Better indicators of fitness than six pack or how lean you are
• “Does weight training make you bulky?” 
• #YogaEveryDamnDay – with no other form of movement - is non-sensical
• What yoga is missing that strength training can provide
• What my own personal movement practice looks like

Rachelle’s Bio: Rachelle Ballard-Clayton owns MEE Active a Womxn’s health and movement coaching practice on the Gold Coast, Australia and delivers her programs worldwide. She creates a safe space for midlife womxn to step off the sidelines & connect deeply with their mind & body.

Resources mentioned:
Wild Power by Alexandra Pope
The Optimised Woman by Miranda Grey
The work of Jane Hardwicke-Collings

Casey's articles on why strength training is especially helpful for breastfeeding women: https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/breastfeeding-and-barbells

https://www.funkyforest.com.au/blog/youre-a-yogi-why-the-eff-are-you-powerlifting

Will Lifting Weights Make Me Bulky?
https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/blog/articles/heavy-bulky/

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There are many parallels between our bodies as feeling, sensuous beings worthy of care and attention, and the kind of bodily care and movement encouraged in non-diet and weight neutral approaches like HAES.

In this episode:

• Travel, yoga, energy healing, working with women’s health and indigenous populations: Shae’s path to becoming the multi-faceted non-diet practitioner she is today
• The experience Shae had that turned her path towards reiki
• Reiki as an intuitive approach and avenue into body connection
• The connections between reiki, yoga and HAES, and what Shae’s reiki sessions look like
• The need to create more inclusivity in the non-diet, Health at Every Size and eating disorder worlds in terms of complementary and alternative healthcare
• Embodied surfing as a form of intuitive movement
• Eating disorders and the sexualisation of women in the surfing space
• Our bodies as oceans

Links:

• Shae's Website, Instagram & Facebook

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​Foraging for edible weeds is an accessible and inclusive healthcare skill. Pat Collins is a highly experienced herbalist, natural health practitioner and bush craftswoman with a passion for sharing her foraging know-how and instilling in people a deep appreciation of edible and medicinal weeds: nature's gifts.
​
In this episode:

• How being able to support her children’s health by making at home remedies motivated Pat into studying herbal medicine formally
• Why familiarity with the abundance of edible foods around us - and how to harvest and use them - is so valuable, especially at this time in history
• Why Pat published her book The Wondrous World of Weeds (it wasn’t because writing books pays well!)
• “Once upon a time we were all wise women” – the need to take back our power by reclaiming our knowledge of foraging
• The many uses of Chickweed (Stellaria media) and Paddy’s Lucerne (Sida rhombifolia)
• Weeds grow where the soil is right for them, and will tell you what is wrong with your soil
• Herbs in the time of COVID-19: Some of Pat’s favourite weed allies and ways to use them, to support immune and respiratory health, and to calm our nerves when “it all gets too much”
• Which native Australian bush foods are in season right now, how can to use it – think, lemon myrtle cheesecake and bunya nut curry (!)
• Pat’s views on MLM essential oil companies doTerra and Young Living, concerns about the safety of ingesting essential oils, and more affordable, practitioner grade alternatives to these brands
• The beauty of using whole herbs
• Menopause: How Pat views this powerful life stage, helpful plant allies, organ systems to take extra special care of, and how St John’s Wort helped Pat through her surprisingly tumultuous peri-menopausal years 
• “If we as a culture respected our elders, we’d have far fewer problems with menopause”
• The call for wise, old women

Links:

• Pat's Website & Facebook
• High quality, affordable alternatives to MLM essential oil companies:​ New Directions, Sydney Essential Oil Company, Essential Therapeutics
• Funky Forest Apothecary
• Casey's blogs:
  • Chickweed: Medicine & Magic
  • Rock Your Menopause
  • The Call for Wise, Old Women

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