 My English name is Audra Maloney. I'm from the Amigama First Nation, Beaver Clan, Salmon Totem. I am Buin. I'm also a natural wellness coach as well as what you might call a shaman. Throughout my life, I have been very connected to spirits even as a child. What I do is I have lots of friends that help me out from the spirit world. I become like a vessel. I have friends that come in and they help me out depending on what I'm doing. Sometimes it might be energy extraction. Sometimes it might be cyclopomp work. I'm able to walk in the spirit world and help people out. If somebody is trapped in ghost world because they don't have enough power to move on to the world above the earth, I can go into ghost world, take them and help them journey up to where they want to be. Oftentimes their relatives will meet them there. Lots of times my helpers will come in and depending on the situation, they will help people out. Whether they need to ground down energy, sometimes we have energy trapped up in our bodies and we need to ground that down. That's something that we can do. I think that I very much have always been interested in natural wellness. How we naturally become well as human beings living in a symbiotic relationship with our environment, with food. I like to look at it through the medicine wheel. When we see the medicine wheel, we often will think about the physical, mental, spiritual and emotional aspects of our wellness. That's one level of that. We have to also look at what does the human being need in order to thrive? What do you need in order to thrive? When we look at some of the parts of the medicine wheel and we see, for instance, the waters and we say, okay, what do we need? As basically a being that has, well, what we say from my people is that we've peeled ourselves up from the face of the earth and we all walk upright. We use all the elements. It's a marriage. It's a marriage between the earth and between water. That water hasn't always been here. If you look at science from way, way back when the earth formed, it was a molten ball of fire. It was where did the water come from? When we look at the asteroids that hit the earth and bring the water in, where did the water come from? The water had to come from outside of the earth. We have become the children of that marriage of the earth and the water as come together. We have to take a look at water and what is water and how does that affect us as people, right? Even though people say, you know, we have at least three quarters of our body is made out of water. What does that mean? When we take a look at what some scientists look into the molecular structure of water and how that changes, that molecular structure of water changes based on the intention of the people that are around it, right? So when you see our wonderful grandmothers who are walking for the waters and they're praying for the waters, that's a healing in action that they're doing, putting out that love to restructure that water. So this is important. Water is our life. Water is our life, but we are made out of water too. So let's look at that for a moment. Let's look at that. How do we treat our own water? What's our self-talk look like? So if we know that we can influence the molecular structure of water based on our intention towards it, whether we're grateful and loving and kind or whether we're hateful and mean and unconsiderate, they've done experiments and you can do this at home too. So take a cup of rice, put some water in it. Take another cup of rice and put some water and make sure that it's the exact same stuff. Every day is something people can do as an experiment with their children or in their classroom. Every day, have everybody say wonderful, loving, nice things to that first cup. And every day, for the same amount of time, say horrible, mean, nasty things and see which one breaks down first, rots first. And you can see the power of that in action. So why is that important to us as water beings? We have to look at what do we put in ourselves? And yes, I'm talking about food, but there's more to it than just food. There's, there's what are we watching on television? There's this old story many people have heard about the two wolves and how the grandson comes to the grandfather. And they say, you know, the grandfather says to the grandson, there's a terrible fight going on inside of me and it's between two wolves. And one wolf is of good and kindness and compassion and love. And the other wolf is of lies and inferiority and of ego and of hatred. And the grandson asked, well, grandpa, me got you me dad, who's going to win? Who's going to win? And me dad said to him, the one that you feed. And I think that we understand that story on its first concept, but I don't think that we take it in further into looking, what does that really mean on a day to day basis? How do we implement that? These are the ways of us addressing our own waters very directly on an everyday basis, making sure our waters are full of love and kindness, because that's going to be healing for us. An area that I want to bring your attention to, which I think is really important when we're talking about how our physical body manifests our emotions and how we feel. And I want to link that for you to when we feel depressed, how many of our people out there are feeling depressed and they have no idea why. They have no idea why they feel depressed. Well, I would encourage you to take a look and see, are you and most young people, and most people are doing this, not just young people, everybody who's got the phone. Everybody's holding their phones and they're looking down. They're scrolling through their phone. Now look at my body structure. I'm in a state of where my emotions are taking it to feel like I don't feel good. I feel depressed. I'm in that because here I am and how often do we sit there scrolling through our phone slumped over. I would encourage you to take some time. Sit up. Sit up. You're going to scroll, scroll, but sit up and look up and see if that helps of how you feel. Use your body to your own advantage. Take control over how your emotional wellness and state is by examining how are you keeping your body? Are you slumped over all the time? Find ways that you can use devices to hold up your phone, things that keep your body up and see how much better you feel emotionally. So I want to give you a visual of what that looks like in action because we as human beings, and this is a tool that I've used for schools when I've gone in and I've talked about this story and these teachings. So think of us as these are all our thoughts and actions and things that we do. Okay, these little balls on this abacus. And on one side, we have the Good Wolf, we have love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, truth, hope, generosity, happiness, compassion. Then we have hate. We have sadness and chaos, cruelty, impatience, lies, despair, greed, anger and self pity on the other side. And we talk about how do we feed the Good Wolf? What does that look like? What does that look like? When you see somebody who needs help? Are you there in kindness? Do you help them with something? And you fed the Good Wolf? Are you watching videos or playing video games that are full of anger and hatred and cruelty? You have fed this wolf. And every single time you do that, these are energy balls. These are these. This is what feeds you. This is your internal battery. Every single time you make that choice to talk nasty about somebody to gossip about somebody to indulge in self pity, poor me instead of looking for opportunities and giving gratitudes. So you get to choose. What are you choosing? You're choosing where you focus your attention. It's as simple as choosing to focus your attention. And when you choose to focus your attention, you can bring that energy, those energy balls to the side over here within. Now this is what's feeding you. This becomes your battery. And that's how it works in hands on for that. And so what we what we have to realize that is, yes, it's food. You're going to eat something that is not meant to nourish your body and your body has to deal with the toxicity of that. Then you're going to find yourself unwell. But it's also about are you drinking clean water? Are you watching things that uplift you? Are you listening to music that makes you sad? Are you listening to music that that makes you feel good? Because those pieces are feeding the energy that you want. Ask yourself, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want in your life? When you know what you want, you can start to move towards it. If you want to feel better, start making a list of the things that make you feel good. What are the songs that make you feel uplifted? Make a song list, then you have that when you start to feel down. I think often that we don't realize just how much of a role that our body posture plays and how we feel. So if you were to describe for me, somebody who was depressed, what would you say? How would you describe that person? You'd probably say, most people will say, you know, their, their shoulders were slumped over, their head maybe was slumped down, maybe their face muscles were slack. They're, they're leaned over. Most people would associate that with depression, not feeling good, not feeling confident. Right? What if you put your shoulders back, and you sit up straight? Do depressed people do that? No? Can you feel depressed with your hands up and looking up and smiling? You cannot. It's, it's impossible. You can control your emotional state by controlling the way that you hold your body, not the other way around. So if you want to gain control over how you're feeling inside, be mindful of what you're putting into yourself and be mindful of your posture, because your posture makes you feel certain ways. For instance, wherever you are right now, stand up, stand up and walk around. Walk around like you cannot be stopped. You're the most confident person in the world. You know that whatever it is you're going to do is going to turn out right. Walk. Take a moment. Walk around and see. Now notice how your body is. Did you make a gesture with your arm? How are you holding your body? And everybody is a little different. So you have to do this work to see for yourself. Where are you? How do you hold your body? When you feel good, strut around, make it yours. Know that there's nothing that can stop you. What's your body feel like? How are you holding yourself? Now, feel, how would you feel if you were depressed? How would you feel if you were not feeling good? How would you feel? What would your body feel like? Sit down and emanate that for a moment. Find a place to sit. How would you feel? How would you be? How would you hold your body if you were feeling down? Most people would slump, but come back to strong again and feel the difference. Now walk around again, get up and walk around and feel that that strength. Now come back down and sit down again. And feel how, you know, you might be feeling down and overwhelmed and sad. Now come back up again, and feel the difference. Feel the difference in your body, feel the difference in your energy, and feel the difference between snapping back and forth between the two. If you want to gain control over how you feel, you can. We need to be able to be in touch. We need to be able to be in touch with our environment. As indigenous people, we've often known that it becomes a symbiotic relationship that we have. That means that we're in harmony with our environment. And that's why our ancestors were so successful. They were able to be in harmony with their environment. There's been so much technology, our lives run so fast, that sometimes it's it's hard to feel what does that feel like? What does that feel like to be in harmony? What does that feel like to be in sync with there is energies flowing through us. There's earth energies around us all the time. This science knows this. This is just something that mainstream sometimes doesn't take the time to recognize how that can affect the human being. And how you can tap in. How you can tap into that energy. How do you do that? How do you navigate your good red road as you're walking it? How do you figure that out? Just like how does the salmon know where it's got to go and when it's got to go upstream? How do the leaves know from the trees? How do the trees know it's time to shed the leaves? How do the elk know it's time to grow felt on the antlers? They are in touch. How do the butterflies know how to navigate to where they're going? And this is time and time again through through all aspects of life, the plant life, the insect life, the birds, the all the the animals and including us too. How do you stand in your truth to know how to navigate through life? Well, stand up again. Stand up. Feel how your body is going to move. Start. Start just just standing with your your feet underneath your shoulders. So you're standing just solid on the ground and breathe deep into your stomach. Sometimes too many people breathe too shallow. So when we're looking at the medicine wheel, we're looking at the different areas that you need to look at for wellness and we talked a little bit about water, right? And how important it is for us to talk well about ourselves, to surround our waters with good stuff. You know, things that make us feel good, right? And that includes, you know, not just the food and not just what we're watching, but how we talk about ourselves. Start refusing to talk about yourself negatively because you're only hurting yourself and see just how much your energy increases. But when we're looking at another part of the medicine wheel, we're looking at air. Well, we need air in order to live. We need air to breathe. That's an important part of being a human being. But we don't pay enough attention in school at home with our friends, unless you're an athlete about breathing or a musician about breathing. So too many people are breathing just up here. And then there's not enough breath that goes down into the lower belly. So this is something you can try to increase that. Take four breaths in, hold it for a count of four, and then release it for four and start feeling all areas of your lungs filling up. So you go. So you feel down here, you feel up here, you feel right up into your throat filled up, you're holding for four and breathe out until you cannot breathe out anymore. So you're you're at the end of that breath, because then you're recycling all that air that gets stagnant underneath, right? So when I say to stand in your truth, then to breathe, try breathing like that where you're breathing nice and deep into your stomach. Stand in your truth and ask yourself something that you know is correct for you. And what your name is your hair color or what you like that you already know. And see which way your body sways. You'll find that if it's something that's true for you, or right for you, your body will sway slightly forward. If you find it's something that's not good for you, not true for you, a bad decision for you, you'll find that your body will sway backward. This is a natural way that we have as human beings to navigate through life. This is a natural way for us to tap into our subconscious and our spirit guides and our higher self that physically manifests. It's the merge piece. And we can use that technique for anything that concerns us because our subconscious, our higher selves, they know what we need, even if we consciously don't know what we need. You can ask yourself, is it healthy for me to eat that? Is it a good idea for me to be in a relationship with this person? Should I be walking down this road right now? Should I be choosing this course for myself? Should I be looking in this direction? You can ask yourself an unending amount of questions to see where that you should be moving towards. And when you feel that pull towards, you can confidently move towards that and confidently know that that's a good thing for you. It's a way of just being still. It doesn't take long to tap into your own truth. So that's another piece I think that is important for people to to understand. I'm going to move on to another piece of the medicine wheel when we talk about earth and we talk about our food and we talk about what we what we eat. So what we consume and how that affects our well being because that's really important. Now I want to make an analogy because I want to talk about a little bit about diabetes and the amount of diabetes. I think this is important. That's in our community. For me, I don't see diabetes as a disease. I see diabetes as a condition and I want to share this with you. Diabetes doesn't have to be diabetes to type two diabetes does not have to be. You can change that does not have to be part of your reality and all the stuff that goes with it. If you're being told that it has to be take control. This is where I would love to if there was one message that I could get across to people is take control of your health. Take control of your body. Understand how your body works so that you can take control of it and not being told well we're going to give you all these medications that really isn't going to help you because you're still going to develop all the neuropathy. You're still going to develop all the same issues and you'll be in the same risk category for cardiac issues as anything else. But there's ways you can fix it naturally. So think of your body as a car. Now a car needs gasoline in order to run. Right? So you put the gas in the gas tank. You drive your car around. When you need more gas you go back to the gas station you fill it up again. Well if you already have a full tank would you go to the gas station? No. You wouldn't go to the gas station if you had a full tank already. What would you do? You roll down your window and start putting it in the back seat of your car. That's going to make a terrible mess and it's going to destroy your back seat of your car. Well think of your body and think of glucose. The same way gasoline is a fuel for the car. So if you have too much glucose in your body drive your car around. Drive your body around. Use up that glucose and when you stop putting in the glucose and you continue to use up what you already have and you can do that in a couple of ways. So stop putting in the glucose to begin with and have a real low glucose diet. And of course these are just my speculations on what is working with my family and people that I know and myself. So stop putting in the glucose and then allow your body that time to heal. I don't think people realize just how much energy it takes for the human body to digest food. It takes an enormous amount of energy and when you have food in your body and you're constantly digesting that food your body doesn't have time to do the repairs it needs. Take out the cells that are damaged and destroyed to clean up the area. Your workers so to speak inside your body don't have the time because it's constantly in okay we have to do the production. We're constantly in digestion mode and it takes a huge amount of energy. When you do intermittent fasting and intermittent fasting means that you know you decide from what hours to what hours you're going to eat and then you fast for the rest of the hours. So you might say to yourself okay I will um intermittent fast between six o'clock at night and maybe 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning and then for the from 11 till 6 I'll eat and I'll eat a low carb diet and the high fats and good healthy fats right like the walnuts and the avocados and those things that we need to help our our body burn up what is happening the glucose is happening in us. But having that intermittent fasting people have also had an enormous amount of success with fasting just you know a 24 hour fast or a 36 hour fast. We've been fasting for thousands and thousands of years and and our society has gotten away from fasting. We won't starve. I think that's the biggest concern there's a there's a and you you realize that the food addiction that happens once you step outside of it you take a few days of fasting and then you're breaking your sugar addiction you feel so much better but it's hard to understand how you're going to feel when you're in that but trusting that you're going to feel better when you get rid of some of that and making sure that you're supporting your liver right because that's where things are getting stopped up right when you have fatty livers so supporting liver. So I would encourage everybody to look into that a little bit more on your own do your own research you know do your research and and take control of your own health food-wise because we don't have to suffer the way that our communities have been suffering. It's not a death sentence it's a choice so I think for me the other piece of medicine will I look at the spirit and I look at that passion that fire and that personal energy that we need as people that's the that completes that whole piece I think of what we need as as human beings right that connections to other people and also that spiritual connection you do need your spiritual connection and that can't be told to you nobody can go in and say your spiritual connection is going to be this and on the other hand nobody can come in and say that your spiritual connection isn't valid it's your relationship with spirit with kizu actinisk and agamsatnogamal it's yours with the creator of the great spirit with all our relations. You have a direct relationship with that to fulfill that piece of you don't rely on anyone else to tell you what it is go find out yourself. So historically for my people to make them up people we have an understanding for us of what the worlds look like. We see reality as there are six worlds there is the world that we're in right now that we're communicating on right now this is um earth world of course there is ghost world which is a mirror image of this world but it is um not materialistic it's not solid world sometimes people can get stuck in ghost world if perhaps they have overdosed on drugs or they've committed suicide or they don't have enough personal power to break through to get to the other worlds or this is an important one um I was just at the world edition's business forum in New Zealand a few months ago as I was invited trauma in there I did some work with some some people there and one of the pieces that um really came out was just how we as relatives we as friends and family can hold people down in ghost world with our grief and this is another important piece that we can trap people in ghost world when we grieve for them so much that they cannot move on that they're trapped in there so I wanted to bring your awareness and attention to that so it's important to to be grateful and thankful and loving for our people but to allow them their journey of where they need to go so that's another piece of what I I can do as a woman I can walk through their worlds and I can help and that's called psychopomp I can help people move from ghost world to the other levels so as Miigama people we have the earth world we have the ghost world we have the world beneath the earth and this is a lovely place this is not based in any religious mythology it's not a scary thing the world beneath the earth has got all our power animals and and medicine plants and our spirit helpers that are there and we can travel to that and we can get their information and we can get their help when we need and this is a piece that too often as nations that we've lost we've lost the path to travel and this is where so much information is through did we ever think about so how did our ancestors know this stuff how did our ancestors know how this plant did this and that plant did that and we need to be able to do this in order to get that when it seems absolutely impossible that's because if we have people who are able to travel we're able to travel through these worlds and get that information we have power animals so sometimes people feel it sometimes people have an affinity to various animals we ask various power animals to help us throughout this life before we even get here so i'm able to go into that world and find those power animals and bring them out and merge them with people who need that or want that for their knowledge for their protection for their guidance and it differs for each person each person is different what that looks like but we must remember that they're there whether you acknowledge them or not they walk with you they're there with you and they're waiting for you whether you acknowledge them or not they're there then we have the world beneath the water and that too is a beautiful place for very incredible things we have the world above the earth and journeying there a lot of our ancestors choose this place to be after they've passed on a lot of spiritual teachers are up there that you can access you can actually make the journey when you learn how to do that to go there and talk to whoever it is you need to talk to and that too we have people we have spirit guides we have helpers that are waiting with us to ask them for help so don't be afraid to ask your your helpers to come and help you then for the sixth world we have the world and there's many layers in that by the way and all of that and then we have the world above the sky and we talk about the world above the sky and a lot of different stories and a lot of different nations and we talk about some star clans and star people and there's a lot of storms about the the stars what we call what some people might say the seven sisters we call it the very stem constellations that are in the sky and there are there's a whole world that goes along with that as well so as many of our people historically we understood that there's six worlds because shamanically we journeyed there and we learned how to walk these worlds to help the people so i wanted people to know and to remember that that is there that is there to help us it's there to help our our families our nations our communities in so many different ways so i hope that young people returning to um traditional medicine and traditional ways of interacting with the spirits um the the spirits of the plants too so i i do some medicine making i do some self-making and i work with the certain medicine plants um developing a relationship and how to develop a relationship with those spirits because each plant carries its own spirit each plant has knowledge to share and there's ways of connecting to that and opening up yourself to listening and understanding what what is the message that that can be for me so thinking about our medicines and thinking about our relationship with those medicines there are many many medicines that can help us on a day-to-day basis you have many different medicines that can help us ground our energy especially in this very fast paced environment that we live in in the past paced society and everything is causing us to feel you know we're not fast enough there's anxieties and deadlines and things that make us feel not balanced not grounded so i think taking a moment to talk about grounding yourself what is that what's that look like how can you ground yourself um many times we talk about medicines like uh sage sage is a a wonderful way of grounding yourself lining a little bit of sage and taking the the smoke all over your body and allowing that energy just to ground down so think of your think about a an old-fashioned TV set you know how it has a static that would come out of it a little bit and if you you know smooth that down it would feel so much better it's like your body your body it emanates out energy and sometimes it gets fuzzy vibration and not grounded so taking various things that can help ground that sage is a wonderful one sweet grass is another wonderful medicine to help not only just ground down but to protect so sweet grass is also a wonderful protection medicine so i usually do my sweet grass at the very end of my spudging that i spent some time in down south with other shamans and ceremonies and i come across beautiful beautiful medicine augur de florida so you can cross that model looks like augur de florida is another incredible way of grounding down your energy i do all of them so oftentimes i will do both sage the sweet grass the augur de florida after ceremonies or if you're really feeling like you need a good grounding making yourself some seeder tea taking the face bath and washing your face your hands your body with that seeder tea is incredibly grounding so these are some of the ways that we can have the self-care and self-love we're able to feel grounded then we're not as edgy with our family our partner our workmates we're able to be a little bit more we breathe a little deeper which also helps to breathe deep so take that time use those those very basic hands since they help ground down your energy so you can feel balanced and there's a relationship to be developed with the roots traditionally as we know we don't go to gather collect our plants until after we see the plants and the thoughts that come out then after that in a year and we go and gather and there's peak times like that of people too and i always say this to my children that that these are just different nations they have different ways of communicating they have different cultural mediums but being still and being open to that we have to understand more about that culture and there's a lot of power plants that are able to communicate very directly to you no matter what language that you speak so opening yourself up to the knowledge of that something that can happen that you can directly connect to this one medicine plant that i knew something about it really gave me a just first call that he came to my home and i went i was with my children in the market we got up and i walked around and then and there's some child that was walking by had plucked up that medicine plant and then just left it on the ground which means we're exposed but like it was a very direct communication so i picked up that medicine plant and then tried to go to the garden and she cried so understanding that those connections are real and that we can have those those connections in those relationships with plants with the world around us with the water and animals with our guides being open to that and making charge of our own well-being we're in charge we're in charge of how well we are as people it's not up to anybody else it's not up to the position it's not up to anyone else it's up to us so start being mindful of what you're putting into your body physically mentally spiritually emotionally what are you feeding yourself and you can work towards wellness you can work towards feeling good and work towards vibrating at a higher frequency so you can do the path that is that you've signed up for you can complete your journey in this lifetime and you have a tool now that you can utilize how do i know what i'm supposed to do tap in tap in to that subconscious that brings you versus no it's not for you right now and remember we all have helpers we joke to our helpers out there they're waiting for us very patiently and so i wish everyone wellness and i will say my vision is for personal wellness and for people to take charge of their own well-being by being in relationship with yourself and your environment right you need to be in relationship with yourself be in relationship with your environment and taking that time and taking that's a few minutes a day even to sit in your own being just sit in your own being and just be the observer five minutes of sitting of meditating you cannot fail at meditation that should make you feel better you can't fail you're the observer so you're seeing where am i at right now where am i at right now and when you start to become aware where of thoughts that are coming through your mind aware of where you physically are at right now then you have a lot more control you can start to catch those negative thoughts as they're coming into your mind before they take over because you're mindful of it if you start to become mindful becomes like a spider in a spider web the spider sits in the the center of it and anything that touches the web shakes that spider that spider instantly knows that there's something there well the same thing with your mind when you can be still in the center of your own web you can see what thoughts are coming in and you can decide is that feeding the good wolf or is that feeding the bad wolf is that feeding my my waters my personal well being love and kindness and compassion and respect am i feeding myself that and if you're not you can let it go like a wave crashing on a beach and pulling back let it go just observe it don't judge it don't create a scenario that goes with it to build a story on it just watch and you'll see that these thoughts will come in and they'll wait to see if you catch them and then they'll go out again and then another thought will come in and it'll wait to see do you catch it catching it means that you're you're examining it you're pulling it apart you're creating a story around it you're speculating on it what somebody might have been thinking or when they said that to you or what was the motivation then what is it of your business what other people think and whatever the people do has got nothing to do with you it's their own reality that they're that's what's inside of them so you can let that go you don't have to stress about that follow your own truth follow your good red road and that'll take you to the path that you're meant to be on