 Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us again this Friday afternoon. I've got such a literal treat for you today with Dr. Maya Shietri. I will introduce her in just a moment, but as you've joined us lots of times on Tuesdays and Friday afternoons for different interviews with docs, you can find all of these on my YouTube channel just under Jill Carnahan under my name and they're all recorded. You can watch, there's over 50 interviews now. So you'll find this one there as well in a couple of days, it'll be live there. If you're watching live today from Facebook, this will be recorded and you can watch back the recording here as well. If you want any of my information or to join my newsletter list, you can go to my website and that's jillcarnahan.com. And then finally, if you find any products or useful information there, you can find my retail store at drjilhealth.com. Awesome, so today I have a guest that we have run in the same circles and at least I've admired you, Dr. Shietri, and so it's been fun to just the last few minutes say hello and today I really, really look forward to getting to know you better. I'm gonna formally introduce you and then we'll dive in. So Dr. Maya Shietri, she's a medical doctor and neurologist, herbalist, urban farmer and author of The Dirt Cure. She's been featured on New York Times, The Telegraph, NPR, Sky News, The Dr. Ajjo and more. She's the founder of The Terrain Institute where she teaches terrain medicine, earth-based programs for transformational healing. She works in studies with indigenous communities and healers from around the world and is a lifelong student in ethnobotany, plant healing and the sacred. I, like I was saying just a bit before but I am so excited to have you because anyone in our realm, it's so rare, we're medical allopathic doctors trained in some of the best of Western medicine and yet both you and I, myself in a totally different way than you have taken and brought in the sacred. And for me, it's like the science and the faith and the science and the sacred. And when I saw you and saw your platform that's the one thing I saw about what you do is you brought together these dichotomous two universes and said, no, no, no, we can play together. Like it's a, we don't have to throw the baby out with a bathwater because there is a place for when you get your, you know, an injury or trauma, we need medicine but then there's a new place, there's a new medicine, there's a new healing and you are probably more than anyone I've met bringing that to the world. So let's start with your story as far as how did you get into medicine and then how did you get into terrain medicine? Tell us your journey. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me and I, you know, the feeling is entirely mutual. So yeah, you know, it's funny people always say, well, how did you make this leap from conventional medicine into, you know, this other way of looking at medicine? But really my story is actually that I went into medicine after I watched this Bill Moyer special called Healing and the Mind. I think I was probably in college at the time and it was looking at all these different ways that the mind plays a role in healing but really it was about the spirit too, right? And I remember this story of a young girl who had lupus and she couldn't, she was having renal toxicity with her meds, but every time they would take her meds away, she would have a flare of her lupus. And so what they did was they gave her meds with castor oil and then they stopped giving her the meds and Jess gave her the castor oil and her body continued to respond as if she was on her meds. And they said, this is this big field of medicine that's called psychoneuroimmunology and I, college student was like, yes, that's what I wanna do. I'm gonna do that thing. And I'm gonna, that's what I'm gonna go to medical school for. So I wrote my medical school essay. I, you know, took all my pre-med classes basically all in one year of college, my third year. And I had to take a year to like apply and, you know, I did neuro research and whatever. And then got into medical school. Somehow I wrote an essay about that and they let me in. And then I did years of training, as you know, right? And during that time I had children and, you know, the whole thing throughout my training became a pediatric neurologist. And I thought, oh, I, you know, I'm ready now to do this thing. But then I was like, wait, I didn't learn anything about psychoneuroimmunology anywhere. Nobody even talked about that my entire training. You kind of forget, right? Because you're in this whole kind of, I wanna say brainwashing state. It is a little bit, a big download of information and other things. And so then, and coinciding with that, my son, who was a year old at the time, my youngest, I have three children, got sick. And he started to have asthma and kind of a little bit of a neurological regression even. And I was in my PEEDS training at the time, my PEEDS neuro training at the time and sort of panicked, obviously, because, you know, you're thinking, oh no, what could this be? And we had 10 months of this mystery, not knowing why he was reacting, not knowing what was going on. He was sick all the time. I had to miss fellowship. You know, nobody is very fond of you when you miss days of training years. And what I discovered is he was allergic to soy and no one really helped me figure that out. I had to kind of really dive into the scientific literature, look at gut literature, which at the time no one was talking about where the gut, no one was talking about the microbiome. This was like, you know, more than 15 years ago. So it was like, no one was talking about any of these things and I couldn't even get the allergist to test him for soy. I finally found someone who would test him for soy and we took him off soy and he stopped having asthma. Then I had to recover him. So that was sort of the beginning of my book, The Dirt Cure, was that story. And I always say that my son is my muse. I mean, all, you know, children are often our muse, they are totally, but, you know, he was a very high level spiritual teacher to me. So then many years later, we had mold in our apartment, which could have probably been why his amnesia system Yes, exactly. was prior and moved out of the apartment, had it gutted. I mean, the whole thing we, that apartment was totally free of anything came back in and he had within two weeks of moving back in, in the room where the mold was the epicenter, okay? But it had been gutted. Really gutted, yeah. Okay, he had a seizure. His first ever and thankfully last, you know, not good, he had a seizure, which was just terrifying. Obviously, you know, my middle son found him and you know, it was like, he came, you know, the bathroom was locked and he was gonna take a shower. I mean, it was a whole thing. And he came out and I was holding him in my arms. And I just knew with my whole being that everything that I knew, everything I'd been doing to support him and support his health and the whole thing, none of that was what he needed right now, that it was something that was going on with his energy body, that it was his spirit in some way, like a soul sickness or something. And it didn't have to do with anything I knew it. At the time, I was probably one of the only, if not the only pediatric neurologist doing the kind of clinical integrative, you know, herbalists, food supplement, you know, the whole thing at the time, there was really no one else doing that. And yet I was like, I don't know, I don't have the tools to help them. I have to learn them. And that started a whole journey into what ended up being a big healing for myself, actually, as it often is. And into really understanding this whole idea of terrain that really our health is very dependent, not just, it's on our relations, right? It's being in good relations with yourself, being in good relations with those around you, the people and the living beings around you and being in good relations with the land, with the earth. And that became really this whole mission that I then grew. That is not only an amazing story, but it just shows what an amazing human being you are. Because, you know, we go into medicine. I have a journey so similar to you, like I knew I wanted to be a healer. And yet I thought medicine was the best route. But when I got in there, I almost had to unlearn over the last several years, decades, actually, what I was taught. Like again, I don't wanna ever diminish Western medicine has brought a lot of great cures and things. And so there's a value for that in some realms. And yet there's so, so, so much more that we don't have. And again, as you and I and a lot of other seekers of truth try to find those pieces that we're missing, it becomes on a quantum level of healing. It comes on an energetic level of healing. It comes on a spiritual level of healing. And these things really blow away our Western model, right? Like it almost is like piddly compared to this bigger level. But what I love hearing from you is before you ever went into medicine, your heart was a healer. And like you're coming back around to that true, a true healer is looking for anything in the realm of possibly that could help our patients and our children and our families and our self. And like you, so many of these things, I've been through a lot of diagnoses and suffering myself. And every one of those is the greatest gift ever because each one I have a level of understanding that sometimes is almost wordless. Have you ever felt like that? Like when you sat with your son, I heard you say, you know, I felt this thing and I didn't really even understand it or know what it was. And I've been there before where I feel either in a patient or myself a healing. I'm like, I don't know if I even have words yet for this, but I will, I'm gonna figure it out. So how did, so the terrain, let's start there because maybe people listening don't know what that means. Try to define for people, what do you mean by terrain medicine? I think this is so profound and so important. And then we'll dive into kind of where that goes. Absolutely. Yeah, and I just want to say about the idea of unlearning. It's so funny that you said that because that's, you know, for me and the terrain Institute where I teach a lot of these principles, I talk about being in beginner's mind and being in a place of unlearning that we have to unlearn before we can really, you know, start to know ourselves, know even the right questions to ask. But also I always joke that my certification is really a decertification. Because, you know, it's sort of like actually, you know, the opposite of having more letters and other things after your name. But yeah, absolutely. So everything you just said really resonates. So what is terrain medicine? It's really, so I said it's about connection, it's relationship and it's really acknowledging that, you know, it's not, we are not just me, but we are a we. And so terrain medicine is based in the paradigm that everything's connected, right? That we are part of the natural world and the natural world is part of us and our bodies are made of obviously, you know, organ systems and, you know, skin, gut, immune, you know, blood, brain, everything. And then, and microbes, right? We now know where microbes, we know that our mitochondria are actually evolutionarily, you know, evolved from microbes and that the way that microbes influence our body and our brain are actually largely through communication that is called quorum sensing that is actually how bacteria and organisms communicate with one another. So that is a way that bacteria, these bacteria in our body are communicating with our mitochondria, which then communicate with our nuclei and this is all like a big conversation. Yes. What's happening? It's not like there's some rigid thing and actually even understanding that even mitochondria, every mitochondria is a different, is in a different configuration, they're unique, they have like their own, you know, I would say personality if we wanted to kind of put it that way. In other words, we're, you know, we're filled with these very unique beings that probably are just as unique as we feel, right? And so, and they're all in conversation with one another and then that's only within us, right? And then if we think about what's around us, so we're also, we're made of microbes, plants, wind, water, soil, sunshine, seeds, right? That this is like the world around us and it's what we consume through our skin, through our pores, through our mouth, through, you know, the cuts in our fingers, you know, whatever, these are all the things that are coming into us that make up who we are. So really, we're in this constant relationship, we're in this constant conversation and when we're in alignment, you know, our inner terrain is in alignment with our outer terrain, with this eco terrain, we're in health, we're in well-being, we're in balance and that's really what makes health. That's what makes our health is to be in this really beautiful conversation that we're always, we're always in every moment, you know? So that's the idea of what is terrain and it is a way to practice medicine, of course, but to me, medicine is so much larger than just what, you know, doctors or healers are doing. I think we can all embody this if you're a teacher, if you're a, you know, like you don't have to be, have an MD or a DO or an NPE or whatever, things after your name in order to be a medicine person. I love that. Oh gosh, there's so many pieces that resonate. First of all, when you went back to the unlearning, I remember, I love the term like childlike faith or belief or this idea of like going back to, as a child, you didn't come with a preconceived notion about when you went to the dirt and made it, you know, in the sandbox or when you made a treehouse, there's just this wonder and this like, wow, look at that bird. I wonder how it flies. And then if you think about a child, most of the time they're asking these questions or the parents are like, okay, enough, but it's that same idea if we can go back to that space of unlearning and actually come to medicine and healing almost in a childlike way, that's what opens the door for healing and opens the door for understanding because we're not having this slate that has a written protocol on it. We're open. And I find for me, one thing I always find, every time I sit with a patient, I learn something. And if I can just hold that space and make it a safe space for them to really reveal and share whatever that's on their heart and I'm just really present and listening, they always know the answer of what direction to go or what next things. And so even if I feel fallible in my humanity and I'm not sure, first of all, I ask the divine. And then second, I often just listen and because the patients so often bring that if we're there and present with them. The other thing I love that you said is this space, what I've seen in the next, so I treat a lot of mold environmental toxicity and two things resonated. First of all, 15 years ago, I'd have someone come in with low thyroid hormone or menopause symptoms and you maybe replace the hormone or treat them with herbs and they get better. Nowadays, I never see that ever. I shouldn't say ever, but rarely. And part of that I think is this terrain idea because the toxic burden and load in our environment, whether it's emotional, which we can talk about, physical, chemical, it's so great that our bodies are actually resilient, they're created to overcome, they're created to detox. In a perfect utopian world, we shouldn't need to take a bunch of supplements. However, what's happened is this load has become greater and greater and greater and more and more percentage of people are just dying under that load or getting sick under that load because it overwhelms the natural systems. So that is so resonant because we are all part of this environment, but sadly our environment just becomes more and more toxic. And I think that's why you and I are seeing people that are much more complex and they don't turn around as quickly. And even with COVID and viruses and all these things, they're part of that because if the train isn't healthy, and maybe you can talk about that a little bit, I love the idea of train because germ theories, we live in fear of this external thing happening to us, we're victims. That is not truth. The truth is we are in this environment and we have capacity to create a sanctuary that is resistant to viruses. Do you wanna talk, does that resonate in your train? I'm sure you talk about that. Let's talk a little bit about that. Like how can people feel more empowered about that because of the train, the stuff that you're teaching? Yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up. And I think it's such a big topic. There's so many ways in, but I think first of all, it's funny when this whole pandemic thing exploded, someone reached out to me and said, well, do you take back your theory in the dirt cure that you wrote, which was the book that I wrote, which basically said being healthy is based in being exposed to germs and microbes, eating fresh food from healthy soil, which goes to your idea of the nutrient density, that when we're not in our soil, we're not gonna have the nutrient dense food and then we need supplements from who knows where in order to kind of replace what should have just been in our soil and our food, and then getting out into nature. So those are the three pillars of the dirt cure. And they said, well, would you take that back now that you see this pandemic? And I was like, huh, why would you ask me that? Yeah. Because actually to me, let's say you're encountering a novel organism, that your body's never seen before. And I could say a lot about microbes in general, that actually, as we discussed the very beginning, we're kind of in a relationship with them. So this isn't about us versus them. This is about actually diversity of organisms and the more diverse organisms that you have in your body, the more likely it is that there'll be a checks and balances system so that no organism can grow out of control. And so it really comes to diversity, bio-diversity more than it comes to avoid, avoid, avoid. That's first of all, but you know, it's really, so it's really about getting out, getting dirty, getting into the forest, growing your food or going to the farmer's market and like eating a lot of diverse foods that really build up your terrain because diverse foods lead to diverse organisms. You're feeding lots of different kinds of organisms, and being exposed to organisms in many ways by having pets, like I keep chickens. I live in New York City, but I have a dog. I keep chickens, I have a dog. I'm outside as much as I can. I grow whatever I can. I run in the forest when I go running rather than just on the road or on a track. This is because I wanna constantly be feeding diversity into my system. So that's, I think, just like from a physical standpoint we're talking about terrain, and you brought up the idea of how do we have a healthy terrain? Well, so that goes to that being in good relations. Well, how are we in good relations with ourself? Because in this society, that's very much about being in like this masculine, achievement oriented, go, go, go. What letters do you have after name? What were your scores? How much money do you make? All this kind of stuff. Well, so it's depleting physically, obviously, right? And when we see everything as a commodity, including soil, including food, including even microbes, right? Right, that we sell them. Then that's a whole, that makes the whole physical, taking care of our physical body is very challenging, but a lot of what I think people don't think about is like our mental terrain, our emotional terrain, which we don't have a whole lot of language for, our spiritual terrain, our creative terrain, and of course our ecological terrain. So what we're doing is we're really focusing sometimes, and there's a lot of ways in, right? I mean, healing, you don't have, you know, some people, something happens physically and everything changes. Something could happen spiritually and everything changes. So it's not that there's only one way in, but if we're thinking of caring for our terrain, it has to be not as having a long to-do list, but as a prioritizing of caring for ourselves. I mean, I have to tell, I'll tell a little story of my own, because of course, you know, I suspect that you are like me and probably grew up pretty type A and for all the reasons, you know, I mean, if you, certainly if you went to med school, you know, you had to at least at some point have been that way, right? And, you know, and it's like a, it's like an old skin you have to shed sometimes again and again. And I was really working hard this week, well, you know, ongoing, working hard. And I just was like chaining myself to my desk, kind of like, I have to get this thing done and I was just not getting it done. So I recently found out that watercolors come in tubes and I got so excited about this paint thing because I was doing a meditation that I had to buy paints for. And I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna paint. It was the middle of a work day and I just started painting and I painted this whole thing for about like three hours. Luckily, I was, I had to paint and I should have been whatever, writing a lecture, I thought, but it wasn't happening. And so I was doing this thing, which was incredible because it was like, I wasn't making this art for somebody or like because I had to be posted on Instagram or it was just like I went into this space. And that's part of what I teach in the Terrain Institute is how to step outside of time so that you get this different perspective because then you're not always the actor in the play, you're sometimes seeing from the outside. And I think like, what if we offered that to ourselves? Like, you know what, like you're having a hard day. Why don't you go paint for a while or why don't you go sing for a while or why don't you dance or just go sit out in the sun or, you know, play in the snow, whatever. And so this is the idea of like, it's so much even beyond the diversity and all of those physical things which are like critical, so critical, but then beyond that, it's like, what if like feeling good, actually feeling good and caring for ourselves in this radical, you know, this kind of radical self-love of like giving ourselves permission to have fun and be joyful, I feel like that could, that's so foundational in this whole idea of caring for Terrain. I love that so much and I so resonate with, I mean, I joke with a couple of the other docs that in speaking I used to wear this men's black, I mean it was women's, but it's black suit, pants suit even worse. Like this is decades ago. And then slowly, surely I started wearing flowing dresses and like feminine and, but this whole shift because sometimes the things that we can offer to the world as women especially are often in that creative divine space of love, space of creativity and it takes, you cannot get that when you're in the grind doing the shoulds, doing the checklist, answering the emails. I have my colored pencils right beside me here as well. And I found in the last year or so, I have coloring books in my car and I'll often like meet friends at coffee shops and I'll bring them out and say, hey, you wanna color with me? And they get lit up like kids and it's the most beautiful thing because not only do we have coffee in conversation but every single time if we have those coloring books, it goes to a deeper level and it's magical because all of a sudden we're in that creative space and we're maybe not thinking so much about how we appear, what we say. And again, with close friends, it's not like you necessarily have that anyway, you have it much. But it's been magical to be painting, coloring, dancing. Those things are actually valuable. And like you, I grew up in a kind of a family system and a Midwestern values where unless you're productive, it's not valuable. So I learned to make sure that all my time was productive. And so what we're saying is those times of dancing, coloring, singing, playing in the snow, going on a hike, those are maybe your most productive for your health. And maybe we just get rid of that term productivity because it's captivated us into a place where we lose touch with our soul and with what's beautiful and what. And honestly, sometimes just like your time with the art, those times bring ideas and things that actually help my patients probably more than any checklist or anything. Cause all of a sudden I'm like, oh, this is amazing. I wonder about, right? Right. And it's sort of, I would even add to that list, doing nothing like daydreaming is I think a really valuable activity that sounds very unproductive. But again, it's just like, you know, putting your, yes, just thinking about nothing. What happens when you do that, that stepping outside of time is a really powerful concept. And in other cultures, there are more than one word for time. So there's the time that's a chronological time where you're talking about schedules and day and night and deadlines and you know, what's gonna come next and it's very linear. And then there's like Kato's time, which is this different kind of time, this time outside of time or those moments, those moments that either feel like they're lasting forever, but it's just a second or the moments that are like really long periods of time that feel like it went by in a moment or you know, all these different ways that time can kind of bend and shift. There are like auspicious moments and there are ways to invite those in, but like, you know, you can't command them. They're not like, I'm gonna schedule in Kato's. It's like, I'm going to become an invitation for that and make myself and my life and my terrain an invitation to have these auspicious moments where I'm gonna have what you said, like these epiphanies. You can't schedule an epiphany. No, I love. And again, as you've been a writer, I'm working on my book now. What I found is I shifted from medicine clinic, you know, the very, very masculine scheduled to this creative pursuit. It was like, oh, I have to do things differently because when I sit down to write, I can't force it to come. It's the same way as like you said, creativity or ideas or even these things. When you're, I often will have, you know, right before I fall asleep or when I wake up or when I'm walking the dogs, I will, a patient will come to mind with a difficult problem and like, oh, I wonder if we try that. That never comes when I'm doing my, you know, checklist or emails that comes in those spaces that we create. And I love the word flow states, even though I think that's even very masculinized because what we're talking about is these timeless, effortless, beautiful spaces where the creativity flows and whatever we call them, they are really, really important and they're valuable for the sake of themselves even if they don't have any productivity quotient at the end of the game. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's just that is a real process of unlearning to be, you know, willing to give ourselves that kind of spaciousness where all these, you know, it's not the only, it's only in your best interest to do that, but like, you know, for thinking about like the system, the system doesn't want us to sit and have those like moments of epiphany and reflection. They want us to like show up on time, pay your tax, you know, I mean, it's, it is a very like, it's not useful. And in fact, way back when, when, you know, around the time the European witch hunts actually was when, you know, it was also the birth of the scientific method at that time, the modern scientific method and bacon and Descartes and actually the beginning of like slavery and colonization. I mean, it was a whole very like, you know, it was like a vortex time, right? And what happened at that time was the beginning of sort of the beginning of capitalism in the way that like we think of capitalism now and they didn't want people like the wise women and they don't want the idea of magic or mystery or mysticism or those are things that like, you know, having an auspicious moment means people aren't going to show up in a regular way. Like, right? They wanted like, you know, to have this work, you had to kind of be in a very linear mindset and a very like, you know, kind of the idea of like being a good factory worker, good worker. So, so this is like a reclaiming of this, you know, relationship with mystery. This is a, and it's a, and it's a very beautiful and joyful thing. And we're so, you know, I think we're seeing right now a lot of people who are in a place of real fear. And I don't think, you know, and I understand it completely. And also, I think that being in this place of fear is partly because we have, we don't have, we've not been encouraged to cultivate a relationship with mystery and the unknown. And that's actually, you know, what I talk about in the train Institute and actually what I'm writing my next book about is how do we make friends and cultivate that relationship? So it doesn't feel so scary and uncomfortable to be in that space so that, you know, we have to be in these very extreme like rigid mindsets. Like we can flow. We can have some more flow with that. Oh, this is so important. So a couple of things I hear you saying, first of all, the uncertainty principle of like, and this truth is we may think we have control. In fact, many people buy insurance policies and all these kinds of things to think that they have more control and I have nothing against insurance. I have it myself. However, those are all ways that we humans try to control our outcomes in environment. And the truth is we don't have control. We don't know what tomorrow holds, right? And I find that so refreshing and freeing and especially medicine where you, especially where you and I are at, we're taught in medical school that you have control of the outcome because you do XYZ and then this should happen. Well, it doesn't always do that. In fact, usually it doesn't do what you think it should do. And there's a lot of fear and also if your ego gets in the way where you think it's all on you and you're responsible for another person's health, which the truth is we're not, then we feel like we have failed. There's all kinds of other programs that go along with that. So the most freeing thing, and I think anyone in the realm of the kind of medicine we practice more holistically, functional minded, all of these things, Prince Herbal, we have to be very comfortable with uncertainty because every single day we're faced with the uncertainty of a human being's life who's maybe talking to us about their health, how can we navigate and support but all we can really do is hold space, give ideas and help them, encourage them, love them, but we don't have control over their health and neither do they. And of course we have things we can do but this idea that we really have control is what drives us crazy. But as we release that and we surrender and we say, you know what? I don't know what the outcome is but I'm okay with unknowing because a lot of what you said is this last year, I think the most difficult, harmful things to our health have been isolation for sure. And again, I'm not against any of the things that have been put into place but what we haven't been talking about is how does isolating in your house indoors actually affect your immune system? And that's a big deal. There's evidence, this is science-based and then the second thing is lack of connection with human beings. Once again, how does this affect our immune systems? How does it affect our minds? And then the last thing, and there's probably more than this, fear and anger and frustration, these emotions, let's talk a little about that because I'm sure you have things to say in terrain. They are so critical to health and the opposite of that is gratitude and love. And so how do we cultivate? How do we, when someone's in a fear state or an angry state, how would you talk to them or give them advice about how to deal with these emotions that are really detrimental to health versus the other emotions like on a higher plane? Well, you know, I'll say about emotions and I really welcome all emotions. I think every single emotion is a really healthy emotion. So what I think is the worst kind of practice is to suppress emotions or to feel like they're not good. So to be wise, I love that you say that. You know, I think, because there's a lot of like, sort of this idea of like, you know, it's very normal to feel virtually everything, you know, at certain points in time. And so the idea is how do we, how do we let ourselves feel emotions? And then how do we discharge that energy? In other words, you know, it's not so much, it's sort of the way trauma is. The big damage of trauma is not always or often isn't in the moment. It's actually how it affects us afterwards, how we compensate and how we're trying to cope and all that. So it's like, well, can we let out our anger and our rage? Can we let out our grief? Can we let out our fear? Like I felt actually there was a huge outpouring of fear in a way that actually I thought, maybe this is healthy. Maybe we're all walking around so scared all the time. And maybe what's happening in this period of fear is that we're releasing a lot of fear that we've been holding in our bodies this whole time. And maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe it's a good thing to move, but then you need to move it, right? That's the idea is you don't wanna get stuck. And like that's kind of a point where we've, you know, the word flow has come up a lot of times already, but that idea of like, you know, a lot of what health is, is about movement. The movement of things and being in that flow, being in alignment, being in balance. Balance isn't rigid. Balance isn't stuck. Balance is like always, you know, it's resilience. It's like, you know, homeostasis. Flexibility, like you said, yeah, I can even see it in your movement is flexibility, right? Yeah. So the idea is how can we let those emotions come out in healthy ways and non-destructive ways? You know, so if you're angry, you don't wanna go like punch a person or, you know, but maybe you can like scream into a pillow or you can go outside and, you know, do certain kinds of practices. And like I always, I teach a lot of earth-based practices because the earth is a really beautiful transmuter of energy. So you can kind of bring things that are not, might not feel great to us into the earth. And the earth can alchemize that and make it into, right? It's sort of that idea of like fertilizer, right? You bring your, you bring your shit. And like, you know, it has fertilizer for other things. So that's my thought about emotions is feel them, but don't let yourself get stuck in them. And then to that idea of gratitude, you know, so this is part of that whole relational thing. What do we bring to our relationship with the earth? For example, right? You know, being in good relations with ourselves, okay. So we've talked a little bit about that with each other. So it can be, you know, there's a lot of ways to be in good relations with each other and show up for each other. How are we in good relations with the earth? Well, you know, so it could be giving, right? Giving things like compost to the soil. It can be, you know, taking good care of land. It can be rewilding certain areas of property. It can be a lot of these things, but it can also be what you said earlier, which is coming with wonder and awe and gratitude, right? We, and we know when we look at like heart math, the science of heart math, we know that when we're in a state of gratitude and appreciation that our physiology in so many ways actually normalizes and proves. And at the same time, we are sharing that electromagnetic field with all the living beings around us that also have electromagnetic fields, including the earth. And so like that's an offering, right? It's an offering to the earth to be in that place of wonder. We're offering our gratitude, our wonder, our appreciation. And so for me, that is like, when we can remember to go back to that, after we felt those other emotions and let them come through to then go back to that place and really like, it's a muscle memory. It's just like anything you wouldn't, you know, you can't go like run a marathon without doing some kind of training in advance. We have to practice that. So first of all, I love that you refrained that because I found myself as I'm hearing you, I went, when I was speaking, I actually was going back to my, I have been known in my life to repress anger and negative emotions, right? And I've worked through a lot of that, but I really love that you just reframed that because even in how I said that, I was kind of going back to this is bad, these are good. That's not true. So thank you for kind of reframing that because that's actually really important. And even for my own healing has been to feel these emotions that I formerly, formerly known as negative emotions, you know, so. Now you've mentioned earth-based practices and it sounds like some of those are what you just mentioned, is there anything else specifically, like what would you consider earth-based practices? I would love to know more about that. Sure. You know, and the first thing I'll just say is I think for all of us, you know, as whoever you are, as a healer and, you know, as a teacher and all of these different things, like we can teach it, we can embody it, we can practice it, but it's so important for us to be having conversations like this, you know, where we're talking to our professional friends or our personal friends or, you know, always being in that place of like, oh, like I needed that reminder, you know. Totally. I think that's so important and I just like encourage everybody to be in that place of like receiving of that gift all the time because like, so many of us think we have to do it all by ourselves, but like I know for me, I mean, it's easy for me to like sometimes just, you know, especially when I'm stressed out or whatever who knows, I could just like go into some old way of thinking or operating and, you know, I'll have a friend or somebody in my life, you know, that cares about me or a professional friend in some way, call me out and be like, hey, that's like, don't you think? Yeah, oh, so true. And that's why even on these interviews so often, I learn, I grow, like it's a, I get to share with the world, but I actually get so much beautiful gifts myself, like even in our conversation. So earth-based, how would we do the earth-based? How did you say that, earth-based therapies? Yeah, absolutely, earth-based practices really. And it's sort of about like for me, this is about the kind of toolbox that you cultivate so that you can, you have practices to go through challenging times or unknown times or, you know, whatever. It's just like, you know, we wanna have a good box of tools and that doesn't mean that the things we have are always bad, it just means like expand it, you know, like we can have a lot more things available to us. And so, and I have a lot of actually a lot of free things on my website. So if people go there, they'll see all different kinds of earth-based practices. But like for one example that I don't have there is, you know, so I like for people when we feel really anxious is like you wanna have the energy of like a stone around. So I don't mean a crystal. Like, I mean, crystals are wonderful in their way. And, you know, but we want something very grounding. And crystals are not necessarily always grounding. So I go outside, you know, I recommend people go outside. And for me, a big part of what I teach in the Terrain Institute is about asking permission. So you wanna ask if you find a nice size rock and it should be not so heavy that you can't pick it up, but it can be so light that we could just do it easily. Like it should take a little effort. You find this rock and you ask because in my teaching and my, you know, lineage, I learned that just like we have family, so rocks have families too. So you ask the rock, would you come and do healing work with me? And, you know, you wait for that, yes. And then if you get that, yes, then you take the rock home with you. And I have one in my office where, you know, I washed it off. And when someone or myself or someone in my family or a patient, whoever is kind of getting into this like, you know, which we all do, getting into that like above our heads kind of. You say, oh, can I just give you this rock to hold in your lap? And sometimes people have said, I need the rock, I need the rock. You know, they bring, you put it on their lap and I've done it with kids, I've done it with adults and you see them just moving into their body. What you're doing is, you know, again, looking at that heart mass science is like your electromagnetic field is combining, is combining with the electromagnetic field of the rock. And so you're becoming part of the rock in some way, right? You're sharing that field and it's very grounding. So that's like a just really simple, basic, anyone can do this practice. And it's so wonderful for anxiety. So wonderful for the busy mind just to embody a little bit. And it's just like a great reminder. So I love that so simple. So it's free, it's easy, it's not difficult. I love that. It reminds me too of a very amazing mentor in my life, Boeson, who was a speaking coach and he taught us his ritual in the morning before speaking. And one of the things was, we all have a rock I still have mine from, and we would put our foot on that rock and do some other meditative practices, but it was very, very, I could feel that. And I tend to be like, I'm a Gemini and I can be floating up into the Aethers often. So I'll air. So I like, for me, those things have been like so important or if I'm just in nature and it's not below 30, taking off my shoes and just standing barefoot on the earth, those things, it's funny because I've realized, wow, we're energetic beings and this is so powerful. And again, it's kind of that unlearning because clearly we're energetic beings. We do EKGs, we do EEGs. This is not, this is science, but for some reason the medicine we were taught originally, kind of there's not a lot of validity given to these things and yet they're so important, powerful and true. So thank you for sharing that. Gosh, this has been such, I knew it would be fun to talk to you but I just have so enjoyed every bit of this conversation. I love your heart. I love what you're doing. Tell us a little bit about where people can find you, more about the train institute too. And is that for practitioners or patients or both? So tell us a little bit about what you're doing, what the work you're doing, how people can find you and I'll be sure and include links too if you're listening so you can find her. Dr. Magna. Yeah, awesome. This has been a total pleasure. So yeah, I have the best place to find information about what I'm doing is on my website which is just drmaia.com, d-r-m-a-y-a.com and the train institute is really, so the big program that I teach there is a certification and it is for really anybody. We have a lot of doctors, a lot of professionals. We've had entrepreneurs, we've had media moguls, and we've had people who have retired and are like, what's my next act? I wanna do something new and so it's been, I'm a big believer in having, just like biodiversity in our bodies and our diets to have diverse conversations so that we ask good questions. So that's one of the programs and then I have an herbalism intro to herbalism and herbs for calm and some different other programs there for people. I teach a class on psychedelics. I'm teaching a class now on micro dosing so I have those kinds of classes as well. And that's really the best place I think to find out about everything I'm up to. I have a lot of resources on my website so I encourage people to go and download all the free stuff that's there because there's just hopefully lots of things, meditations and practices and plant bathing and all different kinds of things that I have that you can just learn about there. Oh, amazing. I will be sure to include link here and on YouTube and it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking your time today to share with us and I look forward to having more conversations with you. Thank you so much for having me.