#40 Nourishing Her Yin: Live Podcast Event with Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin

You're in for a real treat SuperFeast fam! Today's podcast is a live recording taken at our special women's event: Nourishing Her Yin, earlier this year. Today we bare witness to the epic conversation that unfolded between our SuperFeast founder, Mason Taylor and the exquisite Tahnee McCrossin (GM of SuperFeast), covering all things women's health, with a deep emphasis on what that means from a Taoist perspective. Mason and Tahnee host a Q & A with the audience at the end of their chat, so stay tuned until the end, this is an episode not to be missed!

 

   Mason and Tahnee explore:

Health sovereignty.  Discerning collective ideology from innate individual insight. Honouring the seasonal elements of life and human nature. The Yin and Yang of nutrition. The role of the organ systems in regards to women's health. Chi Ne Tsang abdominal massage. The spleen as the mother of blood. Self massage. Honouring your needs as a woman. The herbs, foods and practices that can support feminine health. Anatomy and female reproductive health. The new SuperFeast blend. Audience Q & A.

Who are Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin?

Mason Taylor: Mason’s energy and intent for a long and happy life is infectious. A health educator at heart, he continues to pioneer the way for potent health and a robust personal practice. An avid sharer, connector, inspirer and philosophiser, Mason wakes up with a smile on his face, knowing that tonic herbs are changing lives. Mason is also the SuperFeast founder, daddy to Aiya and partner to Tahnee (General Manager at SuperFeast).

Tahnee McCrossin: Tahnee is a self proclaimed nerd, with a love of the human body, it’s language and its stories. A cup of tonic tea and a human interaction with Tahnee is a gift! A beautiful Yin teacher and Chi Ne Tsang healer, Tahnee loves going head first into the realms of tradition, yogic philosophy, the organ systems, herbalism and hard-hitting research. Tahnee is also General Manager at SuperFeast, mumma to reishi-baby Aiya and partner to Mason (founder of SuperFeast).

 

Resources:

Pregnancy Preparation Podcast with Tahnee Pregnancy Health Podcast with Tahnee The Golden Month Book

  

Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?

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Check Out The Transcript Here:

 

Mason Taylor:  Thank you, you nerds for coming on a beautiful Saturday to learn about women's health and hear us ramble about tonic herbalism. Basically you are here to be a part of the Super Feast podcast. Some of you might not even know that we have a podcast, but we do and it's pretty rad and we've been going for quite a few months now. In this podcast, we've been able to dive deep into tonic herbalism, other aspects of herbalism. We're basically trying to bridge a lot of these, whether it's an ancient tradition or whether it's a system, we're trying to figure out how we're going to adapt it into everyday life. And a big part of that is Tahnee, Tahnee McCrossin everybody.

 

Tahnee:  Hello.

 

Mason Taylor:  Tahnee's been doing what we've called the women's series. Tahnee's been talking to a lot of beautiful women and diving down the rabbit hole of women's health, whether it's been talking to sexologists and women's hormone specialists, naturopaths, doctors, herbalists. It's been really beautiful. I mean, I've been learning a lot. Has anyone been listening to the women's series on the Super Feast podcast? Yeah. Okay, we got a few hands up.

 

Mason Taylor:  But what hasn't happened yet is Tahnee's going to continue with that because I'm basically co-hosting with Tahnee now on the podcast. However, I didn't have a chance, because we're running the business and have a toddler and then just having a relationship when we're not talking about work and all those kinds of things, Tahnee and I didn't actually have a an opportunity to sit down and tune in because Tahnee in her own right is an absolute force for diving down into women's health just by your own curiosity. Tahnee has got a really beautiful, curious nature. A couple of our friends, they've learned how to kind of take everything with a little grain of salt and not swallow official stories and actually go down and do some investigation to find what's true for you and standing in your own sovereignty, to kind of put it a little bit more poetically.

 

Mason Taylor:  But practically going down the rabbit hole of a particular issue, whether it's herbalism or whether it's looking at hormone health and making sure that you find some real good, decent, valid information that you can run through your own filter and find an outcome that's going to be actually really relevant to your health.

 

Mason Taylor:  We have several friends that whenever something comes up and they're like, "Oh, I just want to see how this fits in for me." Or whether that's actually true or what the best way that I can relate to that information, they call going down that rabbit hole, [inaudible 00:02:20] of Tahnee, she's really good at it. And it's great because it's not about Tahnee's bullshit radar really being on. And it's like one thing I've learned about Tahns, it's not being skeptical or anything like that. It's just a natural curiosity that bubbles up. And so that natural curiosity has led to Tahns having what I find a very impressive amount of insight into women's health and her own health in general. And after all those conversations you've had with these women, I thought it'd be really amazing for us to touch base. So I know it's kind of awkward because we work together and live together and do everything together, but welcome Tahns. Hey.

 

Tahnee:  Hi babe. Yeah. And also, I'm super nervous because I'm not used to crowds so please bear with me. I'll warm up a little bit. But yeah, Mase and I, we've been planning to do something like this for so long where we'd get together and just mutually kind of jam out about all the stuff we've both learned over the last, for me it's been probably since I was about 16 starting to really work out what the hell is going on with this body and how it all works. And yeah and Mase as well, having worked one on one with lots of women over the years, he's got a really incredible amount of information and wisdom to share. So when we sort of together conceived of this idea of a blend for women that is nourishing and kind of helps to just support and kind of care for the kind of internal space of the woman and also the spiritual mental space.

 

Tahnee:  This kind of seemed like a really natural fit and evolution to get together and and kind of, we'll talk more broad strokes today than specifics of the herbs. We will talk a little bit about the blend and why it is what it is. But we wanted to give you guys kind of some context, I suppose, for how we view women's health and how SuperFeast sees nurturing that feminine aspect. And I do want to just be really politically correct and say we're going to talk about women and women's bodies and I know some people don't identify with their bodies and I really appreciate that, but the perspective I'm coming from is that you've got boobs and a uterus and all this stuff and it's really important to know how that stuff works. So irrespective of how you identify, I think it's pretty cool to start to connect with that power and the kind of incredible stuff that goes on in the body and let the rest of that stuff go how it will.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, thanks for bringing up the blend. I mean, it's interesting having a herbal company and just when you're putting out something like we would loosely call, I'm not going to release the name to you guys yet. It's just called Women's Blend. But I was in California and my naming my blend block kind of cracked one night and I was like, "Tahns, Tahns." She said, "What are you doing?" She's like, "I'm in the middle of making dinner and the toddler's a bit of a mess." I was like, "Yeah, cool. Now do you want to know what just happened to me?" And it was the same with all the blends. I've woken her up at three in the morning when we had a three month old, I'd be like, "Hey, Tahns, I've got the name for for the brain blend."

 

Mason Taylor:  Anyway, it always happens like that. But it's an interesting thing because we're going to be offering a women's blend and we're going to be continuing to offer real nice juicy information about how to relate to tonic herbalism rather than just having this ambiguous women's blend that ambiguously helps women sort out women's issues, that's a really irresponsible way to go about herbalism. But tonic herbalism fits into this personal culture and this personal practice about ensuring that our organs, our endocrine system stays really nice and healthy and so in order to feel responsible in offering blends which have nice general intents, we feel we need to continue to have events like this where we talk about the broader nature on where herbalism sits in. You dig? Cool.

 

Mason Taylor:  So I'm Mason Taylor for those of you that don't know, so I founded SuperFeast back in 2011. Got really into tonic herbs, got really into medicinal mushrooms, detox practices, all that kind of stuff. We moved up about four years ago, four and a half years ago to the Shire. I brought the business up here and everyone was like, "Oh, it's such a genius move Mason, SuperFeast, the brand, having Byron Bay behind it, is so smart." And I was like, "Yes, branding. That's why I did it."

 

Tahnee:  You guys have no idea. He literally drove his car up with a bunch of shit in it and went to live out the back of Cooper's Creek, 45 minutes from Byron with no WiFi and no phone reception. And I was like, "How are you going to run a business from there babe?" And he was like, "I don't know. Don't ask me those kinds of questions." I was like, "Okay, cool." Anyway, it didn't go very well.

 

Mason Taylor:  No it didn't. And then since then Tahnee came into the business and I kind of wised up a little bit. I'm getting there. I'm the CEO and Tahnee is, well let me introduce Tahnee is the boss and the GM of the company. But Tahnee, you've studied a shit tonne of yoga, basically. So I know you've really ... part of what's, not what defines you, but I guess, what's one of the areas that's really paved the path I see you going in your life, these are studies of yoga. You've had two yoga studios in Newcastle that were donation yoga studios, like pay what you can. And Yoga For All is still going. I really enjoyed going to that, that was your little baby and that was really nice. I really loved going there. And you left that to come up to Byron Bay, I'm always very grateful for that.

 

Mason Taylor:  But you've studied heavily with a number of yoga teachers, but especially [inaudible 00:07:46] studying Yin yoga and going into the throws of anatomy. Then moving on to start studying Taoist arts and Taoist abdominal massage, which we're going to make sure that we ... were going to do a nice chunk here. I'm going to be interviewing Tahns and then we'll have a break and then we're going to go into some Q and A. So at some point during that chunk we'll get every question answered but also Tahnee is going to go through and show you how to give your organs in your belly a little bit of a rub because it's a really beautiful, important aspect of all of this.

 

Mason Taylor:  Now you were practicing for some time, then you kind of like checked out a little bit from that when you fell pregnant with [Aiya 00:08:26]. But look, all of these things, now you're, running SuperFeast and then preparing next year to get back into your yoga training and your yoga teaching in May. I think you're going to start having a retreat going or something like that. Now, besides the obvious, what has been this, in the last couple of years, something's really projected you into the area of women's health. And I know there's the obvious thing, you've always had an interest in your own body and keeping it really healthy, but what's projected you that's just taken it up to that next level, made you dive down that rabbit hole?

 

Tahnee:  That was a long intro. Yeah. I guess as a young woman I started seeing naturopaths really early when I was about 15 or 16. And it was really funny because I was just talking to my acupuncturist yesterday about this. So I was having a lot of dizzy spells and I'd find when I menstruated, I would pass out at work. I was working as a waitress doing split shifts from 7:00 AM to midnight and crazy stuff. And I would obviously faint because I was flogging myself. But the naturopath said, "Oh you should drink more juice and you should eat lots more fruit and have lots of sugar in your system so that you can kind of keep going." And so I totally swallowed all that, hook, line and sinker. And anyway I was laughing with my acupuncturist because he's working to kind of reverse that.

 

Tahnee:  The last probably five years of my life have been all around to trying to undo the damage that I did at those very early ages of my life. And so what I've sort of come to as I've been on this kind of adventure, from when I first came off the pill in my late 20s to the three years of amenorrhea I had after that, which means I didn't bleed and my doctor, my GP telling me that was totally fine while my gut and my instincts were like, no way, that's not fine. All the way through to conceiving my daughter and now having a girl child in my care, I've become quite passionate about just making sure that we understand our bodies and that we're able to educate our daughters and our children and our men folk about what-

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. Can I just say thanks to all the guys that came along today. It's an obvious place for guys to be. I think that's ... I think so. I don't really see there being any logical reason why a guy wouldn't want to come along and understand the woman's body and understand issues that women are going through. Whether it's just so that they can understand the women in their life. But just in general, I think that's just something very natural.

 

Tahnee:  Well, even if you don't date women, you've got a mom or you've got a sister or you've got a cousin or a niece or whatever. And I think what we're starting to really see happen culturally as well is that women are starting to reclaim their power and I won't get too political on all of this, but I do think one of the big opportunities now is for us to get very clear in what we need and how we communicate that in a way that isn't pushing away the opposite sex. And also that allows us to really feel like we're being heard and nourished and looked after. And all of those things by our culture. So for me, this is partly a philosophical exploration as well as a kind of practical one. Because I think, what I've really seen is that we can kind of talk the talk and push back and rage against the machine.

 

Tahnee:  But the best thing we can do is just fucking live like how we want to live. And I think what we have the power to do in this area, especially with such a supportive community, is start to really be a place where change is actually enacted and lived. And we don't even have to necessarily talk about it, we can just be the example, you don't want to be too gone, do you? But that's kind of what I really tend to sit in is like, there's no point complaining. I just have to do the things. So when the doctor didn't give me the care that I needed, I went to a naturopath. And when she couldn't give me the care I needed, I went to an acupuncturist and as I learned more about Chinese medicine, I started to see a Chinese doctor who did herbs.

 

Tahnee:  And then as I was taking those herbs, I was feeling that there was still something missing. And I met Mace. And so there's this kind of responsibility I suppose, which is really one of the foundational, I guess, kind of concepts that we built Super Feast upon, is this idea of sovereignty. That you are responsible for your own health and your own wellbeing and that you can take advice from lots of different people and take lots of ideas and you have to weave them together into the fabric of your kind of daily culture, as Mace likes to call it, your health culture, your family culture. So that's something that, that's a big thing to start with I suppose. But to me it's foundational. You have to start there. And my journey through that, it was through being put on the pill by my mom when I was 16 because I left home to live in a Combi with a boy and she didn't want me to get pregnant, and I didn't know any better.

 

Tahnee:  I was young and the doctor told me I wouldn't ever get another pimple. And I was like, "Well, this is amazing." And so I just took it and I took it and took it and took it and I had vaginal dryness and I lost my libido at 17 and all this stuff. I was depressed. I was miserable. And I had no idea that it was this medication I was taking until actually my boyfriend at the time, about eight years down the track was like, "Maybe you should get off the pill. That might fix all of this shit that you're constantly trying to solve." And what I learned in studying Chinese medicine now is what had happened is that it had caused all the blood in my body to sort of move into stasis. It no longer flowed because the bleeds that we have on the pill aren't real.

 

Tahnee:  They're just created by a chemical kind of obstruction, so you take the chemical out, the body releases some blood, but it's not this natural kind of process of bleeding that happens. So I'm actually about to bleed and my body, my acupuncturist could feel it yesterday, my blood was starting to move down and move into stasis in my womb as it prepares to shed. So this is this natural downward flow of energy that occurs at this time in my cycle. And every woman has that and we don't get taught it and we don't talk about it. We don't talk to our men people about it. We don't talk to our girlfriends about it so much, it's getting better. So these are things. So I had three years of amenorrhea because my body had to relearn.

 

Tahnee:  Because I went on the pill so young. I only got my period at 14 so I'd only been bleeding for two years. And you have to learn how to bleed. So lots of young girls have really shitty periods at the beginning. Most people maybe remember that they were sort of a bit abnormal. They might've had some period pain or whatever. And from a Chinese medicine perspective, you would want to look at nourishing that young girl through that process because that's an opportunity, these changes in our lives. When we first get menarche, when we have babies, when we go through menopause, you can either take them as these curses, which is a very biblical interpretation. Or you could look at it as an opportunity to actually improve your health. Because if you start shedding blood, that's an opportunity to shed and let go. So you could work on some gentle cleansing, you could work on taking some herbs and that would help to move any toxicity that had built up out with this new blood, start to train the body, teach the chi to move.

 

Tahnee:  This is all beautiful stuff that our culture just doesn't even ... who's doctor ever talked to them about that? Nobody's. So unless you're really lucky to have a mom or a alternative kind of care provider who can sort of give you this insight, I think so much of this wisdom isn't being brought forward. And even if you look culturally sort of all around the world, even if this was ancient wisdom, it got lost as we kind of industrialized because a lot of people started to see menstruation as dirty and bad and as kind of these women needed to be locked away, all that kind of stuff. And there's definitely a place for coming away to retreat and to kind of internalize and to process emotion and all of these things, for sure.

 

Tahnee:  But that needs to be the choice the woman makes not a cultural thing, in my opinion. So anyway, back to the question. I think once I had my daughter, I just really, I saw that my health ... I had an amazing birth, Mace was there, I had this beautiful child and I had all of these amazing gifts that I'd sort of been given through my research. And I just thought, it sort of seems unfair that other people don't get this information. And yes, I had to go find it, but it was from lots of different places and so I thought, if we can start to bring that stuff into one place, I think that's a really powerful kind of offering I suppose.

 

Mason Taylor:  There's a couple of things you kind of hit on there. One of that, be the change. There's something there that you, I know that's a real broad statement, but as someone, I'm kind of someone, I don't know if you've got anyone out there that's like real low hanging fruit and I drink the Koolaid really quickly and going like, "That's the way." In the beginning, I've kind of built up a little bit of a resilience to it nowadays, but it's something that I like about your approach and it's something that you aren't, I think that's why I'm enjoying learning from you and a lot of people, in talking to a lot of women and commenting why they love talking to you so much, when I sift through it, you're not seeking some resolution or complete ultimate understanding.

 

Mason Taylor:  It fair to say you've just got like a, not an insatiable curiosity because it's not curiosity for the sake of curiosity, but you've got like, is a curiosity something that drives you to just continue to learn, stay humble, embody the information. And therefore, I don't know if this happens to many women, but in my instance I would get exasperated about just the magnitude of things that there are to learn and just how much information there is. And so it would stop me being patient to just slowly embody what I'm learning, embody it and embody it, work with it, play with it at a nice sustainable rate, get your own personal culture going and then approach sovereignty that way without a need to actually find the official story of women's health or find the exact system of women's health. Is that fair?

 

Tahnee:  I'm kind of the opposite when there's like quantum physics and the cosmos, that shit excites me because I'm like, "We don't know anything. The more we know, the less we know." MIT has all their quantum physics lectures online for free, I understand about this much of it. But it's just like, "Whoa." And I think my experience is the moment I've thought I've known anything, I've been completely wrong. And I get slapped in the face with humble pie and I have to swallow my words and start again. And so I've learned not to know anything really. And I think what I've really, I guess emphasized is if someone's telling me something, I want to know where they learned it from and I want to know the source.

 

Tahnee:  So I always try and find the origin of the information. So if a doctor tells me something or I got told that I was, I'm nearly 34 and I got told by a GP when I went to get some blood work done after Aiyah was born that I was getting a bit old and I should probably have another baby. I was like, "Where did you get that information from?" And she was like, "Oh, it's just your eggs are aging." And I'm like, "But I don't think that's the way I feel in my body and whatever." And so her and I kind of had this back and forth and didn't really go anywhere, but I didn't take that information on. It's not something that I'm concerned about because I just feel like what I've done in my life and where I'm at, 35 does not feel like a milestone. I need to concern myself with.

 

Tahnee:  But whereas, if I go back and read the [inaudible 00:20:15] or some of these like the Vedas, these really ancient texts. If you start to look at all this stuff that your yoga teacher spouts, where did they get that from? Is it from Tony Robbins or is it from the Vedas? Because I'd prefer the Vedas version then the Tony Robins version. And I just kind of constantly try and look for where the root of that came from. Because a lot of it's ideology, a lot of it's belief. It's not actually information. And I think one thing that's really easy to fall into is to get stuck in a belief system, which kind traps you, it doesn't really allow you to be free for new information to come in and change your course.

 

Tahnee:  So maybe one day I won't think any of this stuff, I don't know. But for now, this to me is replicable. When I apply it to my life, my life improves. So that's like a scientific inquiry. If you keep doing it and it gets better, that's good. And if you keep doing it and you're not getting the results you're looking for, try something else. And that's something I get a lot with women, where they're like, especially with diet stuff, "I've been doing keto, I've been doing the vegan thing, and I felt really good for a period of time and now I don't feel great." It's like, well that to me is a sign that it's time to change because it's not working for you anymore. And they kind of can't. It takes a little while for people to get that, to get that something can work for a little while, but not necessarily forever. And that's okay.

 

Tahnee:  And so I think we have to remember that at different phases of our lives, we're different. We've all got cycles. If you start to pay attention to how you feel at different stages of your cycle, you'll feel different. It's a kind of a running joke at Super Feast, whenever the full moon kicks or mercury kicks into retrograde, we all go nuts. But these are acknowledged kind of things. You watch animals, there's always more energy around ... like the cockies the other day when the rain was coming, all the black cockies, around all around our house. It's like, it's going to rain, let's clear the deck because everything's going to get wet. And sure enough that afternoon it rains.

 

Tahnee:  So when we start to tune in, like our friend Tanya, she sits on her deck and she goes, "Oh, feel that? The rains coming." And she literally will start-

 

Mason Taylor:  Or, "Hear that? Sun just breathed out. Sun's gone." And it's all cloudy.

 

Tahnee:  And we'd be like, "No, can't hear that." But I think because I was raised on a 10 acre property with no, oh my parents built a house. We lived in a caravan for four years and blah blah blah. Didn't have a TV. I didn't really have much to do. So we really spent a lot of time in the bush getting weird fungal things and leeches and ticks and you name it. I was in hospital for a tick when I was 10 for five days. Stuff like that. So I think for me that's definitely been some kind of training and being comfortable with nature's rhythms because of that. But I don't know, I just think we need to as a culture sort of start to be a bit more respectful that, again, we could talk patriarchy, we could talk all sorts of things. But this linear idea of things always being the same to me, especially for women, needs to shift pretty drastically.

 

Mason Taylor:  I mean that's something, I love one of your teachers, you're not giving me the middle finger on purpose are you? No, I'm joking. One thing I absolutely love about one of your teachers, Paul Greeley, Tahnee is like, one of the things you don't realize is the core things of what Tahnee is. She's an anatomy nerd and one of the, I think Paul Greeley's your major teacher, would you say, he is so against ambiguity in any way. I think that's like something-

 

Tahnee:  No opposite.

 

Mason Taylor:  He wants ambiguity?

 

Tahnee:  His line is, every philosophy is incomplete and every idea is wrong in some context. So you can disprove ... yeah, it's kind of like now with science. "This is a law." And it's like, it's only a law until it's not a law. And a lot of the time ... gravity, so far we haven't disproven. But there's lots of ... gravity's still a theory. A lot of these things are kind of accepted ideas, ontological ideas that we've had to accept to kind of stay alive day to day. It's like, "Okay, yep. If I take a step, the floor is going to be there." And if you go to Mars, that's a different experience, gravity's not the same there. So Paul's whole thing is like, if I tell you how to do something, you can't then go and tell someone else how to do that thing because that won't be the same for that person.

 

Tahnee:  So as a yoga teacher, I don't want to get to much into yoga because not all of you are interested in that. But when I work with a student, what I would tell Mason to do, would be completely different to what I would tell Sophia to do or someone else that I know because they're just completely different organisms and it makes no sense to give them the same thing. So you see a lot of systems of yoga promote that, "Oh you have to do this every day or that every day or the same, dah, dah, dah everyday." And my personal opinion is that's detrimental over time because that's not what bodies are designed to do. Bodies are designed to do different things everyday. And similarly with breathing practices, with meditation practices, we all need different things at different times.

 

Tahnee:  So if your mind is very busy, a mantra or something can help you to kind of focus and then maybe you can let go of that and you can just sit or whatever. There's lots of different paths obviously. But yeah, so Paul's thing is very much around, ambiguity is great. We need to embrace ambiguity. We need to accept that we don't know anything. It's one of the reasons I was so attracted to him, I think, was because I came into that first training I did with him probably like, what are we, seven years ago I think it would have been. And I just was like, "Oh finally, someone who isn't trying to sell me their belief system." Which was kind of very common in yoga. And someone who's interested in training me to think because that's what he does. He trains you to see the body and he trains you to think.

 

Mason Taylor:  Well I feel like that's what I mean, someone tells you to do something and you go, "Right because you told me to do it. I'm going to do it for ambiguous reasons rather than doing that, just cutting through it." But we're looking at hearing about the skeletal variation work that you do, which we'll get into a couple of podcasts about like exactly what that means and when you start realizing just how differently we're put together, you can see it's ridiculous to have a certain set of us and our physical movement for you to do. And you can actually start getting a little bit more in contact and connected to yourself because you get to understand actually how you're built anatomically. But then bridging on from that you realize there's going to be a differentiation in the way that women are bleeding or the way our endocrine system or our immune system is put together.

 

Mason Taylor:  And so bursting the bubble. Especially a lot of you guys have a high IQ in the health world because you've been in it for quite some time and you've kind of like your bullshit radar is going to be on, right? True. But I'm still kind of, if you get me in like a business sense, I always try and go into a business world and try and learn, I'm like a low hanging fruit. And a lot of people come into the health world and we've all been there, we've been low hanging fruit and we're susceptible because we don't have the understanding of the terrain quite yet. And that's one of the primary things I like to see taught in the health world is this variation. Variation in diet variation in times of life and what's going to work in terms of times when you're doing a cleansing or a blood cleanse and then moving onto a deep nourishing and we see that happening increasingly. We're going to get to talk about diet and get a real example.

 

Mason Taylor:  The amount of people who are getting onto a ketogenic diet and they're looking at their friend absolutely rocking it and going, "Why aren't I rocking it?" Or into the medical medium kind of thing. That's how we've had a lot of people come to us and going, "My gosh, why am I getting" ... some people absolutely rocking it for a short amount of time with medical medium and then a huge amount of people going, "Why am I deteriorating and getting so much worse?" Whatever it is, getting that kind of like that wit about you. I mean it seems to be one of the absolute pillars.

 

Tahnee:  Could I talk to that, because I think this is why for me, Taoism in particular is so powerful because it's yin and yang. If you take away all the other stuff, that's the basic kind of idea. And so if you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables and things, you get very yin, which is really good for cleansing, it's that kind of the anabolic, catabolic breaking down phase. So everything starts to dissolve and all of the kind of toxic buildup and whatever, this is awesome. This is great for a while. But if you do that for too long, it's not good because there's nothing there for your body to rebuild with. So the anabolic phase, which if you ever hear gym guys talk, they're really into anabolic. So bulking and I don't even know the words, loading, what do they say?

 

Tahnee:  Proteins and stuff. Obviously not my scene, but that idea of mass, mass, mass, mass, mass, that's not great either. And you can use just even if you imagine a yogic vegan guy, he's all skinny and fun and a beefcake muscle man. And if you look at again how they're eating ones eating a very young diet, a very building, heating kind of putting stuff on diet and one's eating a kind of catabolic breakdown, dissolve kind of. Pardon?

 

Mason Taylor:  Cold.

 

Tahnee:  Cold. Yeah. And so this is this dance and we can dance between these states. Before Aiyah I wanted to prepare my body, I'd had years on the birth control pill. I had done a lot of party drugs when I was younger, all that kind of stuff. And so I was really conscious that I wanted to go through a bit of a catabolic phase in order to prepare my body to have a baby.

 

Tahnee:  But the yang to that was to then before I conceived was to rebuild as much as I could so that that tissue that I built after breaking down the stuff that I didn't want in my body anymore was really kind of good quality. So I was probably, I conceived a little bit before I was really content with that process. I probably would've liked to have gone another six months or so. But to me, that ideal situation preconception, is a period, I would say two years if you really want to have a conscious conception, a year of cleansing, very slowly and not stressing your body out too much and then a year of rebuilding and putting on a really good amount of meat, getting really healthy and fit so that you're prepared for what is basically a marathon of carrying.

 

Tahnee:  I had a massive belly and birth which is huge. Anyone who's given birth knows it's a huge process and you need a lot of resources for that. So that's my personal take on that as well is that you need both sides of it and I don't necessarily mean that you need to eat meat if you don't want to, any of those things. But I do see a lot of people who are kind of really committed to that vegan path getting really unwell over time. Certainly not straightaway. A lot of people do really well at the beginning, and I think it's a great cleansing diet. But after 10 years, it's like mineral deficiencies, they start to put on a lot of weight, which is the spleen just packing up because the spleen can't handle a lot of sugar. And so when we ate a lot of fruit, a lot of grains, all of these things, we start to destroy our main digestive organ.

 

Tahnee:  And in Chinese medicine, the spleen is responsible for taking what's called nutritive chi which is basically the goodness from the food that you eat and putting it into the blood. And so what will happen is the liver will start to get stressed as well, because the liver is not receiving the nutritive chi that it needs.

 

Tahnee:  To get stressed as well, because the liver is not receiving the nutritive Chi that it needs and it will start to rebel. And so, you'll get sometimes menstrual disorders, you'll get headaches, or tension, or that kind of thing. And it's effectively a blood deficiency. It's just, it's one side of it. The other side of it is if we don't have enough fluids, which would be more to do with kidneys and stress. So, and these are really common patterns that I get asked about all the time. And again, it would be, this is where someone might go on a paleo diet and they'd be like, "Oh my God, I feel amazing." It's like, "Yeah, it's because you've cut out all the sweet stuff and it's actually really nourishing your spleen." And so, but if you do that for too long, it's not going to work.

 

Tahnee:  So again, and this is why this is middle path. You study any ancient tradition and it always comes back to the middle road. And we don't like to hear that because it's not sexy, you can't gram that you can't kind of build a ideology around it. It's like, "Ah, sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not." Nobody wants to hear that. But that's a really, as I've gotten older, kind of wiser, I've really learnt that that's the truth. It's got to be a bit of both. It's got to be the yin and the yang, it's got to be those rest periods and those go periods. But if you don't have both, you're going to end up in trouble health wise at some point.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah, I think it's one of the reasons we can get along is because, I mean, I, again, I went pretty far down the raw food route. I mean, I was not a vegan, I never identified with being a vegan necessarily, but I was vego for many years. You were vego since you were 14? Up until just before we conceived. And one of the things I'm not, never will be, yet can still have this discussion, is that person. Especially when I went vegetarian and looking at that person that was like... There were particular people that veganism wasn't working for and then they added meat and then all of a sudden, they've got the answer. And, "You know what? You just need meat and meat is the new super food."

 

Mason Taylor:  It's as much as sometimes that might be an appropriate conversation to have, it's an annoying and boring official story. And it's one of those things that just because if you're someone who has been super over identified with eating a traditional Western diet, or a ketogenic diet and you want to slip into a little bit of a vegan flow for some time. Or if you've been in a down that vegan thread and you all of a sudden you realize and notice that you were over identifying. Anyone had this one when you were over identifying with that label? And then you're in the shower and you're having a discussion with yourself. And you're arguing with yourself about why it's still appropriate for you to have whatever diet it is that you're sitting on, or whatever particular philosophy it is.

 

Mason Taylor:  And then you go and your research your books to make sure that you can counter argument next time, that place that you actually got yourself. That's for me, that's not an alarm that maybe I'm moving towards being unhealthy. That's an alarm that I'm getting boring. That's so boring. You're getting over identified that way. And I think it's one of the things that... The reason I bring up that, we're not, and I know [Tarnie 00:35:08] as well isn't, just one of these people that's just like, "I used to be vego and I've seen the light." And it's dripping red.

 

Tahnee:  There are some people that it's an excellent diet for if you run really hot, for example, if you have a lot of heat in your body naturally, a cooling diet. This is the thing, I'm a naturally cold person, so for me, it's not great. And again this is different constitutions. I, for example, my spleen gets cold straight away, so raw food has never worked for me. So, I've never really even been interested in that because literally the first thing that happens is I get bloated, and I feel shit, and I just walk around with this pregnant belly and I'm like, "Ugh."

 

Tahnee:  So for me, it just doesn't work. Juicing, I kind of went down the rabbit hole of, and I still believe in juicing, I guess if you want to say that. But in terms of using it a lot, for my body, it doesn't work particularly well unless it's the middle of summer and and it's naturally hot outside, then it's fine. So, that's for me, my journey with it. But it had to come through me understanding my own constitution, and my own kind of weaknesses, and my own strengths.

 

Tahnee:  So, I have a lot of jing, a lot of resilience in that regard. I'm really lucky. I know people that don't. So, I think these are things we need to be really aware of is that if someone's trying to tell you that there's one way, I'd probably run away because they're lying. And if someone's trying to tell you that they channeled something and it's right for you, again, that to me is the ultimate in giving your power away to somebody else or something else. And I personally find that really repulsive. I think it's a really dangerous kind of way to go because it starts to get into... You see it a lot in the spiritual communities.

 

Tahnee:  People go and give their power, and their money, and their worldly possessions away to some guru. And if you've got Netflix, you know how that turns out. So, it's not great. And this isn't to say that we don't share and we don't have a collective consciousness, or a collective sharing. I really believe in that. And it's not to say that we don't learn off people, but we reserve the right to kind of hold our own kind of compass inside that's able to say, "Yeah, that's really great. I want to try that." Or, "No, that's not for me today." And there's nothing against that person. I just don't want to do that. So, it might be that today, you guys might hear me say stuff and be like, "Ugh. Bitch, please." and that's cool. And you might also be like, "Oh yeah, that's really resonating. I'm going to go and dive down that rabbit hole."

 

Tahnee:  And I think one of the things that, I guess I'm grateful for that we have this kind of a platform is that we can expose people to ideas that they might not have heard before and then they're able to explore. And it kind of just widens the lens because I had to work really hard to find things. Like Chi Nei Tsang, abdominal massage. I was like, "I had an eating disorder, my belly bloats really easily. I'm always feeling really sensitive in my tummy, I hate people touching my tummy. I'm going to go study Taoist belly massage." Which I'd never received one, I didn't know what it was. I just knew that there was something that I had to do there.

 

Tahnee:  And I went to Guatemala actually on the way to Thailand, which is not on the way, if you ever think that's on the way, bad idea. But anyway, fuck, it's expensive and long flight home. But anyway, I went to Guatemala and I had a Chi Nei Tsang there and I hated it probably because it moved a lot of emotions. But anyway, I really just was like, "Ugh, what am I doing?" And I think I remember standing in a paddock or no, a fountain in Chiang Mai. Anyway, I was in Chiang Mai freaking out saying, "I've spent all this money on this course. I'm going to come home." And Mase is like, "No." I think you might've been like, "Come home." And he was like, "No."

 

Tahnee:  But yeah, I just, I think there was this calling for me to do that. And honestly, those weeks were just the most healing experience for me, having my stomach massaged everyday, I ended up having the vaginal massage as well, which is Karsai. And I think one of the reasons I had such an easy birth was probably because of that. When someone's therapeutically messaging you, in places that really not many people get to touch and that you just have no idea how much emotion, and kind of tension. Even if it's not emotion, but every time something happens to us, we have a physical reaction even if we don't realize.

 

Tahnee:  And so, we clench our butt, or we... And you guys might even if you just pay attention right now to your bodys, you might be like, "Oh, why do I always lift a little to the side though? Why can't I relax into that shoulder? Or why do I cross my legs? what am I trying to protect? Because I'm terrified." But these are all things that we do and they have this memory in our body and our body holds it. And until we bring some conscious awareness to it and we release it, it's there.

 

Tahnee:  And massage for me is such a beautiful way of transmission. It's the transmission of the practitioner's Chi, or energy, and it's the transmission of our own awareness into those places. And once we've been touched there, it's a lot easier to come back to it. So, this is a massive part of when I teach, I'm very touchy, but I don't assist so much as I touch people, and I breathe with them, and I try and encourage them to start to move their awareness into the parts of themselves that are not receiving the breath. You'll see it if you ever watch someone, parts of them won't breathe.

 

Tahnee:  And if you imagine we're like a balloon we should really like, when we breathe. And a lot of people don't and so you can start to feel that. And same with the body, when you touch someone's organs and they're rigid, it's like, "Okay, there's something there that they're not processing." And again, it's not about you being like, "Oh, you've got a blocked emotion there you just better work on that." It's just about this ability to be present for someone and hold space for them, and use your touch to kind of move that.

 

Tahnee:  So, we can do that for ourselves. And that's a really big part of Chi Nei Tsang, so we'll talk about that at the end, how to do that. It's a bit hard to understand on a podcast, but I'll show you guys. And this daily connection with our physiology is so important. And again, these aren't things we're encouraged to do, right?We're not really encouraged to touch ourselves, we're not encouraged to explore our bodys. And a lot of people get shamed around even, obviously around touching their genitals and stuff. But just a lot of the time we're just not encouraged to be physical, we get pushed away if we try and hug too much. It's something I really am trying to be really aware of with my daughter is not discouraging touch because I just think it's such an important way for us to learn to self regulate and to become self aware.

 

Mason Taylor:  Well, since we're on Chi Nei Tsang , let's-

 

Tahnee:  Stay here?

 

Mason Taylor:  ... Let's just stay here. So...

 

Mason Taylor:  (silence).

 

Tahnee:  I've worked with lots of different women. I mostly had women come. I did have a few guys when I was practicing a lot, so I used to practice four or five days a week, with four or five people a day. It was pretty intense. And yeah, I had a lot of women come especially because they were really craving therapeutic touch that wasn't sexual. And I think that's a really big thing for women sometimes is just explored in a way that isn't someone's trying to take something from you, or wants an outcome out of this.

 

Tahnee:  So, I would work a lot with women that had had abortions, miscarriages, sexual trauma as well was a pretty common theme. As well as just general kind of health stuff, digestive issues. And yeah, so the we can have different things happen in our body that are energetic as opposed to... And I personally believe that we're multidimensional beings, physical, energetic and idea based, and this is from the yogic teachings.

 

Tahnee:  But if you consider what we can perceive on the physical plane is great. That's there, that's our kind of tangible 3D reality. But then there's this idea of energy kind of and this experience of us being in the astral plane, right? So, this is kind of where a lot of the healing work that I do and where the tonics work on as well. They work a lot on our energy and yoga does as well. And then the ideas is what we were talking about earlier about who we think we are. And this is a really fundamental one because this idea of who we think we are really informs how we show up in our lives. And day to day, this kind of subconscious will drive us and it's something that I see a lot with people I work with, that they have an idea of, "I had a miscarriage, I can't carry a healthy baby."

 

Tahnee:  This is an idea or a belief that they've chosen to internalize. And so, what my job is, is to on a physical level obviously move blood, and Chi into the uterus center, and to cleanse out anything that's not working well. And all those kinds of things. But on an emotional level is to provide some nourishment and support, and to maybe offer a different perspective that for example, miscarriage can be a preparation if the uterus has kind of not felt like it's been utilized much.

 

Tahnee:  So, a lot of women that come off the pill will miscarry sometimes and I often think well there is so much blood stasis in there. Why wouldn't the body prepare a couple of times by bleeding heavily and really pushing out anything? Because if you push out all that blood, you have to make new blood. And the fetus is especially... Oh sorry, the embryo.

 

Tahnee:  So, at the very earliest stages of conception, it's a completely oxygen free environment. There's no blood going there. The embryo is actually fed by serum through the uterine walls and this kind of blood thing comes in later. And if the blood isn't good quality, it doesn't nourish the developing baby. And that to me, makes a lot of sense because that kicks in around 11 or 12 weeks, and a lot of people miscarry around that time. So obviously, a lot of people also miscarry later and I haven't quite understood the mechanisms of that. But I think that that early stage miscarriage to me, makes a lot of sense from what I understand from the actual physiology of conception.

 

Tahnee:  So it's like, "Okay, well this is an opportunity now to get really well and to really nourish your body and prepare." And it's that idea of the anabolic stage again. So Chi Nei Tsang, we work a lot on the emotions and the psychological kind of aspect of being, because it's integral, you can't take it away. And in Chinese medicine, every organ has an emotion, has a kind of correlation to a particular kind of type of thinking or behavior. And so, when we were talking a lot about the spleen before and digestion, and things, it's this ability to assimilate and transport nutrients. But that's also a lot to do with the mothering energy and people that give too much, and people that care too much. So, you'll tend to see a lot of vegetarians are people that are also really passionate about social justice, and the environment, and politics, and all these things because they care.

 

Tahnee:  And so that's really awesome. But the flip side of that is they tend to have a really bad boundaries and a really bad sense of self. I am one of these people, so I do understand. And then a liver person is like a go, go, go, go, go, go, go doesn't give a shit about anybody else kind of a thing. They're really intense high power, full energy. But the flip side of that is they'll be very ragey and a little bit difficult to be around sometimes, and very opinionated. And so, a very good friend of ours is like that. And when I'm around her, sometimes I have to be really strong because I have poor boundaries and she's very pushy. So I have to remember to center myself.

 

Tahnee:  So, there's lots of different ways in which this organ kind of pathology can show up. So, it can show up as a physical problem in the organ. But it can also show up in our behavior and how we relate to life. And blood is such a fundamental part, obviously, of the uterus and this. So that's really a lot to do with the kidneys, the liver and the spleen. So, that's why digestion and food is so important to having a healthy menstrual period. And so, if you've ever go and work with a naturopath, they'll look at your gut health and stuff, and it's obviously hugely important. But then, it's also understanding for me, the energetics of that.

 

Tahnee:  So, the whole point of the spleen is that it cooks everything. Susan Wade is really adamant about this. When I was talking to her outside of the interview and she was like, "Oh, raw food." Because the body actually cooks everything, even if you eat it raw. So, the Chinese way is that you should eat it cooked because then your body doesn't have to work as hard. And they're very much around, "Yeah. Once upon a time we would have all eaten raw bamboo shoots or whatever." But we've been so far removed from that time, that we haven't evolved to do that anymore. We've evolved to eat cooked food. And there's some really interesting books on how we've evolved with fire and what that's meant for our brains and all of these things.

 

Tahnee:  And so, I don't know for sure, but I've definitely experienced in my body, with my daughter, with Mase, when we eat more cooked food, we all do tend to do better. Which is not to say you don't have any raw food, but it's just being really mindful that if you dump cold constantly on a fire, it's going to go out. And this is a Ayurvedic idea as well, of agni. So if anyone's studied Ayurveda, they'd know that that's a really important one.

 

Tahnee:  So, a lot of the time if you're having digestive issues, it's heating things up. So using ginger, using spices. And so, that's why a lot of the the Indian cuisine has so many spices because they're eating so much yin food, they're eating beans and rice and stuff. And that's very cooling on the body. Like mung beans are one of the most cooling foods you can have. So, you'll warm that up.

 

Tahnee:  So, this is the real wisdom of these cultures. It's kind of, we don't necessarily think about it, we just enjoy Curry, but that's what's happening on the background. when you do Chi Nei Tsang, you can feel that people's spleens will be really painful to touch. They'll have a lot of pain along here, which can also be related to the liver and the liver's obviously over here. We'll do a little organ adventure soon. But yeah-

 

Mason Taylor:  Well, let's just do that now. And you can you explain it and I'll hold-

 

Tahnee:  I can try. I'm just not sure the people at home will get it.

 

Mason Taylor:  That's okay. We'll describe it as we go along for the people at home. And I can hold your microphone for you if you want to stand up. Yeah. You massage and describe at the same time and then I'll point out for anyone listening at home where they need to be looking.

 

Tahnee:  Orientated?

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah.

 

Tahnee:  Okay. If you're sitting on your chair, come forward a little bit just so that you can kind of roll your pelvis around.

 

Mason Taylor:  Do you want me to hold your mic? Or are you fine?

 

Tahnee:  I think I need two hands.

 

Mason Taylor:  Yeah. Yeah.

 

Tahnee:  My mic stand. So, we'll start with our spleens seeing as we've been talking about it. So the spleen is actually kind of behind your back ribs. It's pretty hard to get to from the front, but if you make-

 

Mason Taylor:  The left rib?

 

Tahnee:  The left rubs. Yep. If you make a little scoop with your fingers, stick your fingers as far under your bottom ribs as you can, you might not be able to get very far, and then try and push back. Some of you might be able to feel it. It takes a little while to learn to feel the spleen, but that's the spleen.

 

Mason Taylor:  This is quite often where I joke sometimes for those of you that haven't touched your spleen in awhile, your spleen will be like, "Be gentle with me." And you really should be.

 

Tahnee:  Be gentle with your spleen. So, spleen in Western medicine as well as the part of the immune system and in Chinese medicine too. But it used to be that if you got rid of your spleen, everyone was like, "You'll be fine." But now they're a bit more like, "Oh, maybe you need that." So in Chinese medicine it's like the mother of blood, it's where the idea of blood comes from and the nutrition for blood. And then that goes down to the kidneys, which again you can't really feel without going through you gut switch. We won't be able to do, because none of you will be relaxed enough. But your kidneys are kind of back here ish underneath your ribs. They're outside of the main fascial sack.

 

Tahnee:  So, this is really cool because in Chinese medicine there's this thing called the triple burner and they were always like, "There's no such thing as the triple burner. Those crazy Chinese people." And then in the '90s everyone started being like, "Oh, fascia's really cool. Look at fascia. Wow, wow, wow." And they discovered that there was actually these three bags in the abdominal cavity that actually directly correlate to the triple burner. Aren't the Chinese people amazing? They're so clever. They discovered this thousands of years ago before we had anatomy.

 

Tahnee:  So, they've got in the upper part of it, the pleural cavity, they got the heart, the lungs, then they've got the digestive one, then they've got the kidneys. And the kidneys are actually outside of the digestive one, they are hanging out with the bladder, and the uterus, and everything. And so, in Chinese medicine, jing, this idea of kidney essence, is integral to our ability to conceive, to have healthy menstruation, to have healthy sperm, all of this stuff. So, this was all mapped out by the Chinese, at least 2000 years ago, possibly 5,000 years ago, possibly before that, if you believe some of the anthropologists and stuff.

 

Tahnee:  So, that's a pretty cool thing. So, the kidneys are actually surrounded by fat and they're kept quite cool, you're not really meant to get hot kidneys, that's not great. And so, they're kind of hanging outside of the digestive system. Over on this side, on the right side, so if you could be my mic stand. Again, make a scoop, maybe two handed scoop and the liver is always a bit tough for people. But try and go right onto there and push up. You should feel something really firm and kind of meaty. Can you feel that? Yeah. That's your liver. Your liver is actually really up here, underneath your breasts. So, the top of the liver's around your nipple line-ish.

 

Mason Taylor:  On the right side?

 

Tahnee:  On your right side. Yep. And then kind of all the way down here, massive organ, really cool. Go have a Google if you've never seen a liver. And then the gallbladder is kind of, if you find your sternal notch and go down a little bit, your gallbladder is kind of in there. Again, pretty hard to feel because it's a sack. And if you don't know what your gallbladder does, the liver produces bile, the gallbladder holds the bile, the bile gets released to digest.

 

Tahnee:  So, you'll often see people say, "Oh, I had to get my gallbladder out." And this is again, in Chinese medicine, would be a lot to do with emotional stuff with energy blockages to this part of the body. We all sit like this all day. So again, in Chinese medicine this is not great because we're compressing our transverse colon, we're compressing our liver and our digestive system. So, as much as you can just obviously remember to move. We will go back this way and do the stomach.

 

Tahnee:  So, the stomach is again, if you kind of start at the sternal notch and come down and push right in on the left side, you'll feel the stomach under there. Again, depending on how recently you ate will be, how comfortable that is. And if you could hold that. The colon. So this is also, what else do people call it? The bowel. The bowel. So, it starts if you find your hip bone, sorry this dress isn't very helpful, on your left and walk in a little bit and push down. That's about where your appendix is-

 

Mason Taylor:  On your right?

 

Tahnee:  On your right. Yes. Sorry. And then if you come up all the way along that right side there and then underneath. So, the liver rests on the colon, this is really important for detoxification. If your bowel is not functioning well, you'll not be pushing bloodborne toxins out. They're going to go back in because the liver just cleans and moves blood around. So, the toxins ideally seep down and get pushed out. Otherwise, back into the bloodstream. So coming across here, so if that's really tender and tight it means again, peridialysis, which is this idea of pushing the poo along. Talk about poo. That's got to happen.

 

Tahnee:  And my Taoist teacher always says evolutionarily standing upright was kind of a bad idea because now we've got to go up against gravity, and then across, and then down, which has a bit of a hassle. And then the colon kind of comes in here and in a lot of people it goes up kind of behind the stomach. So, you can always feel that bit. But then down here and down into, if you sort of go really deep there, you'll start to feel the rectum and everything. So, these two gates here, are really important in Chinese medicine, so we'll work a lot on...

 

Mason Taylor:  So, where are they?

 

Tahnee:  So, Basically if you just think inside each of your hip creases just to be... So, your hip bones.

 

Mason Taylor:  Two valves, doorways?

 

Tahnee:  Two valves. Yeah, spirit gates they're called. So, we'll work a lot on those in Chi Nei Tsang. And then I guess while I'm upright, if you're a guy your bladder is kind of... If you find your pubic bone and just hook up your bladders there. Girls, your bladder's there, but then your uterus is a little bit on top of that. So, that's why if you've ever been pregnant your bladder is getting smooshed the whole time. So, depending on where you're at in your cycle, your uterus will either be very large and you can feel it when you're about to bleed, or bleeding. After that, it can be quite small and difficult to find.

 

Tahnee:  And if you want to find your ovaries and stuff, again, I'll usually