In this episode we welcome Indigenous medicine woman and best selling author, Asha Frost, to speak with us about homeopathic medicine, spiritual journeys, healing, and more! Asha is a member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation and has a BA in Psychology from the University of Guelph and a degree in homeopathic medicine. Her book ‘You are the Medicine’ is full of powerful teachings and has guided thousands. Today we learn about Asha's path through Indigenous medicine, racism, creative ways to heal yourself, spirit animals, and much more! Asha is an incredible mentor and she also leads us through a moving guided journey, and gives us some great perspective into mental health.
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TRANSCRIPT
KK: We are on the brink of a mental health crisis. This is why I'm so appreciative of the folks over at BetterHelp. The largest online counseling platform worldwide to change the way people get help with facing life's challenges by providing convenient, discreet, and affordable access to licensed therapists. BetterHelp makes professional counseling available anytime, anywhere through a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Sign up today go to betterhelp.com and use a promo code ‘solvinghealthcare’ to get 10% off signup fees.
SP: COVID has affected us all and with all the negativity surrounding it, it's often hard to find the positive, but one of the blessings it has given us is the opportunity to build an avenue for creating change. Starting right here in our community discussing topics that affect us most such as racism and health care, maintaining a positive mindset, creating change the importance of advocacy, and the many lessons we have all learned from COVID. If you or your organization are interested in speaking engagements, send a message to [email protected], reach out on Facebook @kwadcast or online at drkwadwo.ca
KK: Welcome to Solving Healthcare. I'm Kwadwo Kyeremanteng. I'm an ICU and palliative care physician here in Ottawa and the founder of ‘Resource Optimization Network’. We are on a mission to transform healthcare in Canada. We're going to talk with physicians, nurses, administrators, patients and their families because inefficiencies, overwork and overcrowding affects us all. I believe it's time for a better health care system that's more cost effective, dignified, and just for everyone involved.
KK: Kwadcast nation, welcome back! We got a great episode with Asha Frost, and I tell you this, this one was extremely moving. We talked about ways of healing thyself, looking at creative ways to not only bank on conventional methods of healing, but also looking at spirituality, looking at our mental health, the mind body connection to create healing is tremendous. We go into some of the indigenous ways that could improve our overall health, we go through a guided journey, which as you'll hear was extremely moving from my perspective, I was a little verklempt after that one. Then we talked about we talked about racism, we talked about our own experiences within healthcare, she tells her story about being treated like an animal, within the emerge our own experience not that long ago, which I think a lot of people need to hear. It’s tough to hear, but it's just another reinforcing message that we got work to do. So, looking forward to you guys hearing that. Before I forget, please check out our new substack kwadcast.substack.com. We have all our jam on there. We put all our jam on there, our newsletter, previous episodes, we're all in on substack. Video, video messages, our community chat, you could chat we have a chat community on there too. So please check it out. You guys gonna love it. It's a better way of us staying connected. So, without further ado, check it – Asha Frost. Kwadcast nation, man this is a real privilege today, folks. It's a real privilege today because we got Asha Frost, who honestly, I just met in November. We were both that ‘Impact’ live, amazing event put on by Meghan Walker. Your keynote, everybody was talking about this bad boy. I got to connect with you backstage. Show me your book, all the magical things that you're doing. I was like, she's got to come on the show folks. Asha’s got to come on the show. So welcome to the kwadcast.
AF: Thank you. That's quite the introduction. Thanks for having me
KK: Oh, man! It’s the least I could do after all the magical stuff you're doing Asha. Seriously, this is an exciting show for me. So maybe, to give context to why you're doing all these workshops, the book, the essays, I think a lot of it comes from your personal experience. So maybe just tell us a little bit about how you've gotten here.
AF: Sure. So, I'd say my healing journey started when I was 17. I was diagnosed with lupus. At that time, doctors didn't really know a lot about lupus and the antibodies that were positive in my bloodwork really were like quite serious. So, they were saying ‘You're gonna have to go on medication for the rest of your life, you're might not have children, you might not live a long life’ and of course, as a 17-year-old, I was really scared. At that time, I lived in a really, I'd say, non diverse town. So, there weren't a lot of indigenous people. My grandparents had been in residential school, I had been colonized away from our medicine ways or away from our ways of healing and knowing and being. So of course, I thought, oh, we'll try the medication. So, I did, and I got so many side effects from the prednisone and the anti malarial drugs. So I knew there had to be a different way. I went to university and at that time, I got really sick because of the stress of university, and somebody said, why don't you go see naturopath. That sort of opened up everything for me, I saw naturopath at about 21. Then I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, there's a remembering of myself and my blood and my bones calling me back to these ancestral ways of knowing and the earth’ and I had to uncover that. That was like the beginning of my journey just going on this. It's always just been ‘How can I heal myself?’ and then, of course, as I heal myself, I share that with the world. So that was the beginning.
KK: Wow, wow. So really, unfortunately, having a relatively serious diagnosis at a very tender age of 17. Going through the conventional treatments, were you finding you were getting better when you were taking the conventional meds?
AF: Not really, I'd say, no, it made me so much sicker. I just I've had new symptoms that I wasn't experiencing with the lupus symptoms. So, it wasn't making me better. I thought, well, this doesn't feel like it and maybe if I tried it longer it would have, but it just didn't feel like a really good exchange of I'm taking these and I'm feeling worse in my body. So, it wasn't helpful at the time, I have subsequently taken little small doses at times that have been helpful, definitely. But at that time, it wasn't helpful.
KK: So you walk through this, this journey and will really having an incentive to heal thyself, like really looking at ways to heal thyself, and going through natural paths and so forth. What came of it? what was it mostly, nonconventional medications, was it meditation was a nutrition what changed for you? And was it effective?
AF: Yes, so I saw a naturopath who was amazing at homeopathy. She prescribed a remedy. It was all so new to me and I thought, this is kind of neat and she told me ‘this is going to match your physical symptoms, but also your sort of personality, your essence, your emotional body’ it really looked at the whole being, and it made sense to a part of me. I remember taking that that remedy, and my hair was falling and at the time really bad, and that got better. I remember my joints were really achy and not got better. So, I got really interested in lit up by homeopathy. It actually inspired me to go to school for homeopathic medicine, because it helped me so much in my own journey that I thought ‘I want to offer this to others’
KK: Wow. So basically, you wanted to help create that magic for other people. You saw how the homeopathy improved your quality of life, and improved your symptoms, and wanted to create that. That loveliness for the greater for the greater masses. How has that journey been? when it came to getting people healthier - how's that been for you?
AF: I loved having a private practice. I loved sitting with people, I loved holding space for their highest vision of who they were. Everybody I feel like we are sort of conditioned to feel like there's always something wrong with us, you know that everything over the messages are always coming at us that there's something wrong with us. I believe that my private practice held space for the truth that you have this vital force, you are divine, how can we just remind your body? how can we remind your spirit? so my practice ended up turning into like a homeopathic practice. But then of course, I started to weave in indigenous ways of being and knowing and indigenous healing because that's who I am at the core. That's what I was discovering about myself. So, it was a combination of spiritual healing and then the homeopathic medicine.
KK: I think that's what really attracted me to what you were what you were throwing down, was this the ‘spiritual’ component adding that indigenous side. Who you are to a healing practice and delivering it to patients. I must say, as ignorant as possible. I have no idea what that would look like. I have no idea not only what it would look like, and just the impact it can have. So, walk us through the potential and what treatment would look like, what the outcomes could be. I mean, I don't know if you need to give a specific case, but just give us a sense of what the potential is from your practice?
KK: Well, I tend to attract a lot of people who had anxiety or depression. That was like a lot of mental health that tended to come through my practice. So, people would want to get off meds, like anxiety meds, or depression meds, and we would just do that with their doctor, they would be tapering, and then this homeopathy would support sort of their tapering off and bring them back to sort of that truth that they do have something within the MEK and help them balance themselves and come back to that healing. So, I saw a lot of a lot of folks with that. I saw a lot of folks with autoimmune conditions because that's what I lived. So, I tended to know a lot about that. I'd say that people's arthritis got better. Their fatigue got better. They their movement was better; they just had more ease and grace in their lives. I think, on the spirit level, they felt more connected to who they were, and for some reason, that just trickled down to their physical body. So, they would feel more connected to themselves through guided journeys, or meditations, or I would do hands on healing. They would come home to that truth, but they have power, they have presence, they have medicine, and for some reason that like switching on that light bulb really helped people.
KK: That's amazing. We talk a little bit about on the show, that whole mind body connection, how it's all tied, how you feel, how you're doing upstairs affects your body and your ability to heal and to get better. I'm just really interested to hear what its like to walk through the term, how did you phrase it again, you're walking journey? Your guided meditation? what does that look like?
AF: Yeah, so from an indigenous perspective we really believe in the power of dreaming and visioning and quiet because that's when you can hear spirit. So, getting somebody in that state of quietness, when they're listening to their own connection to spirit was so powerful. So, what maybe animal spirits might come in to help with medicine that they want to offer, or it might be their ancestors, or their grandmothers or their guides. So, there was a lot of spirits support, helping people and then some of the sorts of techniques that were used were of a shamanic. I've taken a lot of training around like shamanic enters, there's a lot of energy healing energy work, that would shift some of the blockages maybe for a vital force to flow through more effectively. It always came back to that person, again, like sort of seeing and remembering, oh, my goodness, I can do this, like, I have sovereignty in my own being and body. I have I have power, because I think sometimes in the medical system, we can sometimes feel like we don't. Our power, we kind of give it over to say, ‘well, you have all the answers’ and that might be true. They might have answers, but we have answers to.
KK: Yeah, we have an ability to call on to contribute to our own healing. Right. I mean, like I said, this is not the typical approach to medicine, I've been practicing almost for 20 years. We don't often add a spiritual component and, and, and so forth. Do you like how the results been in your practice? Asha, when you add these elements, on top of everything else that they're receiving? How do you feel the response has been?
AF: Well, I no longer practice privately anymore, but I had a practice for 15 years, and it was really busy. So, the word of mouth was always really, really strong. I was booked solid with a waiting list. I would say the results were really, really amazing. People tend to leave my space, just feeling uplifted and feeling better. So, I wish I could quantify that with like, you know, we had this many cures or whatever that is, but I think that's the difference between being healed and being cured. I think we look for a cure, but we kind of forget about, what kind of healing leaps have we made? how much more satisfaction do we have in life? how much more peace do we have in our heart? how much more gratitude and joy is emanating from our system and ourselves? I think those things are maybe not measurable, but they are really important.
KK: Oh, man. Absolutely. I think especially now, I feel like this is so valuable coming up, post pandemic where people were from a spirituality perspective, from a mental health perspective, just beat down. We're seeing the resurgence, unfortunately, of so many ailments, which is obviously very complicated because of lack of access to care, people weren't getting screenings, and so forth. This is something that I feel like could be so valuable to so many. I think one of the magical things that you're doing ashes is, is creating that at scale now, you're really trying to make this accessible to not just a patient in front of you, to everyone. So how are you doing that right now?
AF: So, I closed my private practice maybe four years ago now. At that time, I wanted to bring all these teachings online. I created like a global membership with indigenous teachings and healing. I loved doing that. So that really like scaled up the folks I was able to touch. At that same time, I got a book deal by through Hay House, and that has just expanded my reach, I think, to all the people that I can touch with my words. Writing that book is just it's so interesting, because you write this book, and this little cocoon was in the pandemic, my littlest was two, and they were home. It was kind of a disaster, but I put myself in this little cave. I wrote this book. I didn't realize I didn't really think ‘Oh, these words might actually touch people, oh, these words might actually be shared by people’ I just kind of thought I'm gonna write this, put this out there. Now it's rippling out way bigger than I could have ever imagined. It's just rippling out in so many ways. That's the most important thing for me is that people remember who they are. They're touched by my words and it kind of ignites something within them. That was my intention for the book was that they could see that that presence that they are, it's called ‘You are the medicine’ that they are the medicine, they carry medicine. And they can share that with other people too because we need that message shared, I think.
KK: Absolutely. Absolutely. Obviously, the book is out you do public speaking engagements. I saw also you're doing workshops amongst folks, walk us through that, is it small workshops? Is it organizations? who are you seeing?
AF: Yeah. So, for the longest time, when I was in my private practice, I did healing circles. That was a way that my medicine was shared. I was doing a lot of those probably hundreds and hundreds of healing circles. Then when my book came out, actually last year, it came out last March. Folks begin to ask me to come and speak to bigger audiences. So, it's lit me up. So huge, so yeah, it's some like health conferences. People really need healing right now, so people are asking me to come and do like opening ceremonies as an indigenous person to offer some messages around like cyclical living. It's really the vibe of healing. Everybody just seems to need it. So, I've been invited to do that and it's something that I've always wanted to do in like a bigger scale. So, it feels so in alignment, I hope it continues, because it's really something that lights me up. But yeah, those workshops, you know, I do smaller workshops, during the pandemic online as such, that's how we connected so I was invited to a lot of people's programs to share, and to offer that healing component to their work too. So, I love being asked into spaces.
KK: What are the principles that happen there? When we're doing a healing practice or speaking to the masses is it is it a matter of ‘Hey, folks take more time to be with yourself and, and or listen to this guided meditation’ what's some of the take homes people leave with when they when they hear Asha throw down?
KK: So many times I speak of the medicine meal because our traditional medicine meal speaks about the importance of the whole system. So, I'll take us through the way of living seasonally and cyclically and listening because we are Earth. All of us have been colonized away from that that truth that we are we do live seasonally, and we go through our highs and our lows, and the world wants to tell us ‘no, you have to be hustling all the time’ and then we end up in burnout. So many of my messages are around because I've had to do it myself. How do I come home to the medicine of rest? How do I come home to the medicine of listening? all the things that the world pulls us out of my message tends to be around that and I love working with animal spirit medicines. The animal teachings those are brought a lot into my teachings and then we always do a guided journey. I have done this with thousands of people. I can say that almost everyone that I've ever worked with has seen an animal spirit or they're able to see sensor I do believe that I can hold a space somehow that can get people visioning and get people into that space where they're connecting to something greater than themselves.
KK: Wow. Wow. So how do how do people get in more in tune with resting and listening? How do we get more in tune with our seasonal aspects of life?
KK: Such a good question, I think it's really...
