Spring Detox: Eliminate Toxicity in the Body with Daniel Reid (EP#178)

"In classical Chinese medicine, what do they say? They say, Yin and Yang. The Yin and Yang have made light/dark, daytime to nighttime, male to female, any polarity, it's all polarity, life is polarity. When it comes to this specific topic of detox, or the state of toxicity in the body, Yin and Yang is another manifestation. Having oxygen or no oxygen, being in a state of acidosis- Yang, or the state of alkalinity- Yin. If you understand how yin and yang are always balancing- If one gets too big, you'll have problems. You want to keep them just right. If you get too alkaline, it's also damaging". 

- Daniel Reid~ author of The Tao of Detox: The Secrets of Yang-Sheng Dao

The season of Spring-Liver-Wood is a time of release and replenishment- it is the optimal season for cleansing (particularly the Liver Gallbladder organ system) and eliminating the accumulation of toxicities we've allowed to edge their way into our lives. 

Today Mason chats with best-selling author and renowned expert on Chinese medicine/philosophy and Taoist longevity- Daniel Reid, about Taoist protocols for the prevention and treatment of toxic buildup and why he considers stress to be the most dangerous toxin for our health.

The idea of detoxing for many feels like such a complex daunting task- that unless we outsource to be led by an expert or attend a retreat, it rarely (if ever) happens. However, as Daniel explains in today's episode, detoxing can be tailored to the needs of your lifestyle, and the ancient Taoists had many simple protocols for treating and eliminating toxins from the body daily. 

Daniel speaks to the dangers of high-stress lifestyles, the body's ability to automatically 'self cleanse' when in the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and relax mode), and why the organs of elimination can't function when in a state of 'fight or flight'-which for many people this is a constant state. Daniel explains the best breathwork practices for cleaning out the accumulation of toxicity and practices to help support emotions and toxic thoughts that need to be released when cleansing.

 

"People are under so much pressure, so they do cleanses and get a physical detox, but then they make a mess of it by staying in emotional turmoil. It doesn't do much good to clean your bowel out and flush your liver, if you continue to do what you had done before to accumulate negative thoughts, energies, personal conflicts and stress". 

- Daniel Reid 

 

Daniel and Mason:

• Colonic irrigation.
• Fasting protocols.
• Intermittent fasting.
• Herbs for detoxing.
• Environmental toxins.
• The art of Chinese Tea.
• Qi Gong for toxin elimination.
• Toxic emotions stored in the organs.
• Breathing exercises to alkalise the body.
• Taoist herbal formulas to eliminate toxins.
• How to get the body into an Alkaline state.
• Breathing- learn how to use your diaphragm.
• How to treat the buildup of toxins within the body.
• Supporting the emotions that arise when cleansing.
• Combatting 5G and wifi through the parasympathetic nervous system. 

 

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Who is Daniel Reid?

Daniel Reid is a bestselling author and a leading expert on eastern philosophy and medicine. He has written numerous books and magazine articles on various aspects of Asian self-health, self-healing practices, and has established an international reputation for the practical efficacy of his traditional approach to modern health problems.

Daniel Reid was born in 1948 in San Francisco and spent his childhood in East Africa. After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in East Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1970, and a Masters of Arts degree in Chinese Language and Civilization at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 1973, Reid moved to Taiwan, where he spent 16 years studying and writing about various aspects of traditional Chinese culture, focusing particularly on Chinese medicine and ancient Taoist longevity systems. In 1989, he relocated to Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he continued his research and writing until 1998 when he immigrated with his wife Snow to the Byron Bay region of Australia. In 2017, they moved back to Chiang Mai, where they now make their home.

 

Resource guide 

Dan Reid website

The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity - Daniel Reid

Shots From the Hip. Sex, Drugs, and The Tao - Daniel Reid

Memoir Energy, Light, and Luminous Space - Daniel Reid Memoir 

Mentioned in this episode 

Otto Warburg

Oolong Tea.org

Eden Organics Idf#1

Eden Organics Idf#2

The Art and Alchemy of Chinese Tea - Daniel Reid

The Tao of Detox: The Secrets of Yang-Sheng Dao by Daniel Reid 

Tonics for Spring / Liver Wood 

MSM

Schisandra

I AM GAIA

BEAUTY BLEND

Deer Antler Velvet  

Relevant Articles

Schisandra and Detox Go Hand in Hand

Transitioning From Winter to Spring

Detoxification Guide: A look At The Body's Detox Channels

 

 

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Check Out The Transcript Here:

 

Mason:

All right. We're on, everyone. Daniel Reid, he's back with us. How are you, man?

Daniel Reid:

I'm fine. How are you?

Mason:

I'm amazing. It's been a pandemic and a couple of natural disasters since we chatted last. It continues to be one of the favourite chats of, gosh, internally, with the team, for me, and for those in the community that go deep in the [inaudible] chart. Yeah. It was like ... I get a little starstruck. We're going into spring here.

Mason:

When I asked or we put it out to the team what would be a great topic, and despite the fact that we don't really need a topic, we can just go off in any direction and see what pops up. You've just reminded me that you've got that book of the Tao, detox, that that's what everyone suggested. They want to hear about that Taoist approach, your approach to detoxification, why it's so prominent. I remember it being so prominent from looking at your website and the retreats that you're offering and I thought it'd be a great one, because detox has taken on somewhat of an ornamental terminology around Instagram and a bunch of the retreats that are going on and I think everyone would love a little springtime, [inaudible] grounding into what your approach is.

Daniel Reid:

Well, detox, I mean, it's very much part of an ancient Taoist system. To really understand what's being done in a detox and why they do it and all of that, there's been a lot of research done, scientific research, starting in the 1920s and '30s and more and more coming out all the time, so it does have a scientific basis.

Daniel Reid:

Basically, it's your internal toxicity, state of toxaemia, which lowers your resistance, keeps your nervous system on the fight or flight response, and especially things like stress. People don't really consider stress a toxic element. I mean, toxicity is usually considered to be something like a poison or the wrong kind of food and all that, but stress and anxiety also get a whole cascade of internal reactions happening, which end up being biochemical and damaging to your system.

Daniel Reid:

What happens basically is we accumulate a lot of garbage in our bodies due to environmental toxins and how we've got 5G coming in, that also adds trouble. Stress and anxiety, like the last two or three years, always cause toxic reactions in the body.

Daniel Reid:

This also keeps you ... You've got two branches of your nervous system, your autonomic nervous system, which is the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic is the fight or flight one, which is supposed to turn on maybe three or four times a week. For most people, they're in that state all day. When you're in that state, your elimination, your organs of elimination don't function, your immune system shuts down and all of your energy goes into this fight or flight response. It's the sabre tooth tiger chasing you.

Daniel Reid:

Today, it's just a phone call can send you reeling into that state. People are not self-cleansing on the automatic mode, which has to be on the parasympathetic, R&R, rest and relaxation. How many times do people really rest and relax?

Daniel Reid:

We have to take measures to clean out the accumulation of toxicity in our body. It also has a biochemical basis in that, for instance, acid and alkaline balance. Toxic waste is acidic and it puts you in a state of acidosis. It toxifies your blood and puts it in an acidic state. We want to alkalize.

Daniel Reid:

In an alkaline state, your cells can't really assimilate oxygen. This is the guy named Otto Warburg, 1931, he got the Nobel for medicine for his very simple discovery that all forms of cancer have two common conditions, one is acidosis, your toxicity of your cells and your bloodstream and hypoxia, because the acidosis blocks oxygen, so you don't have any oxygen and then basically your cells start fomenting and that's what cancer is. It's a fomenting state.

Daniel Reid:

The other principle is that it's like if you have a pile of garbage outside and then there's flies and maggots in it and you just don't like it, you go out and spray it with some kind of chemical spray, you killed all the flies and the maggots but the garbage is still there. Then the next batch of flies that come will be even more resistant. It just keeps growing and growing but if you just go out there and clean up the garbage, and wash down the area where it was, you won't have any flies and your body is the same with germs. There's the whole Louis Pasteur germ theory of disease that the west has gotten into, to feed the pharmaceutical industry. All diseases must have one germ, a virus or a bacteria and we need to take things to kill those things. It doesn't do any good, because the cause is not the germ. The germ is only there because the tissues and toxic.

Daniel Reid:

All germs are anerobic. They don't like oxygen. If you're well-oxygenated, and alkaline, because germs also like an acid condition, you're not going to have germs. You're not going to get the related disease. The real root problem is the toxicity inside of you and the nature of that toxicity, acidic and hypoxic, no oxygen.

Daniel Reid:

Breathing exercises are one thing but you've got to go in and clean up the mess. You've got to clean the garbage out and that's where colonic irrigation comes in and fasting, stuff like that. Fasting is ancient. There's nothing more ancient than fasting and it still works.

Mason:

I'm interested to hear more from the book, The Tao of Detox, and, excuse my butchering of the pronunciation, the Yang-Sheng Dao. In the title, it's the guide to preventing and treating, and I'm interested, you've talked a bit about the treatment when we do have those build-ups of rubbish and something ... The detoxification practises, fasting, as you've just said, is ancient.

Mason:

Sometimes when Chinese medicine or Taoism is referred to, it's all based on a nourishing prevention approach, but then I think it's in the treatment of toxicity, you don't hear too much about the Taoist treatment protocols and a lot of them are now evolved into the modern way of being.

Mason:

I think that's maybe got something to do with where you see sometimes as people's stay in that treatment place for much too long, even where they have moved out a lot of the toxins and dragged themselves down and that's when you go back to a traditional Chinese medicine, kind of nourishment and build you up but then there's very clear things, obviously, that are preventing the toxic buildup. There's very specific I guess protocols or lifestyle factors. Yeah. I'm just interested to hear a little bit more about that balance.

Daniel Reid:

Okay, well, further on the Chinese tradition, they had fasting. They just went to the mountains and did fasting and all that. You put a lot of emphasis on breathing, Qi Gong. That does two things. First of all, it oxygenates your bloodstream and if you do it right, it also downloads the oxygen in your cells. You have to breathe correctly. Very few people breathe correctly.

Daniel Reid:

They also have a lot of emphasis on nourishing the organs of elimination. That's basically your bowel and your skin, your kidneys, and a lot of the herbal medicines are designed for improving the function of your organs of elimination, because if you get too toxic, like your bowel ... A lot of people are carrying around five or six kilos of half-digested meat and they eat too fast and they have wrong combinations and so their bowel gets clogged up. The skin too, a lot of people have skin problems and the skin, which is the largest organ of elimination, gets clogged up too and the kidneys and the bladder and all of that.

Daniel Reid:

The Taoist system involves breathing, exercise, and when you have a problem, they use medicine, they use herbal medicine, which they know has an affinity for various organs that are having problems.

Daniel Reid:

But they don't use toxic chemicals. It's a lifestyle and there's also the thing about keeping your nervous system in the sympathetic mode. Now this is not something the Taoists knew about, different branches in the nervous system but they saw the effects. They knew what it meant to be in a state of relaxation.

Daniel Reid:

If your nervous system gets constantly burnt out on being in the fight or flight mode, you get in a state of innervation, and then the nerves aren't feeding energy to the vital organs. They also had herbal formulas, which really, I mean, powerful, which would flush out the bowel, flush out toxins from the kidney. They're really intense. You have to be prepared for that stuff and stay very relaxed to tolerate it. That's another way of doing it.

Daniel Reid:

I think fasting is the easiest way, if you can ... Most people will never even consider fasting but after the third day, you're not hungry anymore. You feel very tired but the tiredness is simply because you're pouring all of these toxins out of your cells, your tissues, and a lot of the toxins like heavy metals and things get trapped and stored in your fat. There's no blood circulation in the fat, so then the body knows ... The body is incredibly intelligent. It puts all the stuff that you accumulate into the fat tissues.

Daniel Reid:

When you fast, this stuff all comes out and is dumped into your bloodstream and you become really toxic and really tired. It's only because these things are moving out. To get your blood properly cleansed and back in a slightly alkaline state takes seven days. You can increase that effect by then doing colonic irrigation. The Taoists didn't do colonic irrigation but in India, they did.

Mason:

Yeah. Egypt I think as well. They watched the ibis get their long beaks and squirt them up their bums and [inaudible] that way.

Daniel Reid:

Yeah. The birds knew it. The birds had a very rich diet of fish and stuff and they would get acidic and I don't know. I guess it's just built into the genetics.

Mason:

Back on the herb formulas, it's something ... I just really sparked something because there was a few ... Again, the nourishment, whether it's [inaudible], whether it's Taoism, there's a deep philosophy there around lifestyle and then the other aspect that's been adopted is doctors of Chinese medicine, doctors of Ayurvedic medicine, and they're the ones that use those heavy-hitting herbs and say the herbs you're referring to that flush you out really quickly, because there's just not quite enough I guess universal maturity in the population in how to use them and, therefore, that's how the herbs are associated. They're either like a platonic herb, so gentle and just so nourishing. It's not really going to do a big push of anything, and then those middle class of herbs and the lower herbs are just used by practitioners.

Mason:

Over the last few years, you can see people trying to use the anti-parasitic herbs and a lot of these bowel-moving herbs but they didn't have the philosophical grounding. They didn't have the grounding to to the classical texts a lot of the time and I think that's probably the next step for the usage of those more aggressive middle herbs in particular seasonal protocols, in particular ways, in the household, in the lifestyle, maybe in a retreat from when you were facilitating retreats, I'm sure you were using them and had that expertise.

Mason:

It's probably the next thing, it would be nice for this community to get onto.

Daniel Reid:

Yeah. It would be. It does help to get a background in the philosophy, understanding, we say acid and alkaline. Now you look in Chinese medicine, what do they say? They say yin and yang. Yin and yang has made light dark, daytime nighttime, male to female, any polarity, it's all polarity, life is polarity.

Daniel Reid:

All movement is caused by polarity. When it comes to this specific topic of detox, or the state of toxicity in the body, yin and yang is another manifestation. Having oxygen or no oxygen, being in a state of acidosis, yang, or a state of alkalinity, yin.

Daniel Reid:

Then if you understand how yin and yang are always balancing and one gets too big, then you're going to have problems. You want to keep them just right. If you get too alkaline, it's also damaging. Oxygen can kill you, if you're just taxing pure oxygen for a long time and breathing it in your system without carbon dioxide and the other things.

Daniel Reid:

It helps to have the background. Then the next step up from yin and yang is the five elements. The fire, water, earth. There you can see where the energies of your environment are coming in. It helps to be in nature, but you might have something in your house that's irritating to a particular one of the five elements, which is then damaging various organs that are connected with those elements.

Daniel Reid:

It's helpful to understand the principles, if you're going to start using those herbs and if you're going to start taking up breathing exercises and meditation to understand how it works, in terms of the original culture, which is ... It's not so difficult. You've got a few basic principles to learn and then you suddenly see how that works, applies to all polarity, to all [inaudible], each one of the vital organs is connected either with water, obviously, the bladder and the kidneys, fire, the heart, small intestine, wood, the liver and the gallbladder. If you just learn those basic things, then a whole world opens up of you seeing the connections and how to rebalance them.

Mason:

That's the prevention being worth a pound of treatment. Of course, I guess that's learning yin and yang, learning about the vital organs, maybe some of the associations, living in harmony with, say, the seasons. You're going to be creating such a state of functionality, I guess, that you're going to see less need for such extreme treatment but then, say, springtime comes around and you can see people have somewhat of that basic understanding and the world is starting to open, which I think a lot of people ... Maybe some people listening are just starting out their journey and it's not opening up. Maybe some of them have been listening for years and it's really opening up.

Mason:

When you come to a ... Whether it's a springtime or summertime or an autumn time, the way that you map it out or the way you see if there's no extreme symptoms, do you like having a particular style of cleanse in every season or a biggie in spring? I know there's probably not right or wrong and many different approaches but, yeah, just opening up that general conversation?

Daniel Reid:

No. It's true. Winter, cold, and that's not a time to detox. When it's cold outside, your body needs to accumulate nutrition, more fat, to balance the external cold and the trees have lost their leaves and everything, the garden isn't producing vegetables, and so it's a time of accumulation and quiet.

Daniel Reid:

Springtime is the time I always like to do the cleansing, because everything is coming out, growing again, so really good time to clean out the garbage and you do accumulate stuff when you're at home in the winter, you're not moving as much, you're eating more, so you clean out the temple, the house. In springtime, to prepare for the even more activity of the summer and the autumn. The seasons are a good way to balance the energy of detox.

Mason:

Do you have an example of whether there's practises or things that you reintroduce when you get to springtime? Maybe an example of what you would love to see, everyone listening, if they are walking, they are in that world that opens up, some suggestions of how they can start putting feeling into their springtime calendar, non-Gregorian, nature-based calendar, how many days? Maybe a suggestion of perhaps a fast, perhaps it includes this, what they would include.

Mason:

We don't have to go into the full shebang. I'm hoping that you're eventually going to start doing retreats again, so I can come along and learn from you directly and I'm sure the book maps it out a lot, but just maybe a taste of the way that that would form into a long-term protocol or practise.

Daniel Reid:

Well, it depends on how long you've been doing it. At some point, someone who is coming out of a really bad diet and a lot of emotional stress and toxicity and everything, a seven day fast with some colonic irrigation is a really good way to start but it's more intense.

Daniel Reid:

There's other ways of making it easier. You can do just a fresh juice fast, more focusing on the green leafy vegetables and maybe a bit of beets and carrots and whatever, and have nothing but that. Even without colonic irrigation, which completely freaks some people out, the whole idea of putting 20 litres of warm water with coffee in it up your colon, it's better to have someone professional do it unless you are really accustomed to doing it yourself.

Daniel Reid:

You can still take the cleansing, the psyllium seed is fantastic. Psyllium husk, the seed from India/Pakistan area, it's been used for centuries, thousands of years and you take that every day. You can't be eating a lot of food then, so you just take juice. You can take juices that are cleansing. Now there's a juice that cleanses the kidneys and the liver and so the juice takes care of that and dumps all the toxins into the bloodstream and the bloodstream gets into the bowel and then you take the psyllium seed three, four times a day and [inaudible] clay and all it is is a drink. You just eliminate food, cooked food, solid food, and you have to give up some of your favourite things, no ice cream, no steak, but in that case, it's more gentle. You don't go through such an intense detox. When you just stop eating and do a real fast, so much stuff comes out so fast. Like a third or fourth day, you're feeling totally exhausted.

Daniel Reid:

There's other ways of fasting too. There's what's called intermittent fasting whereby you have your last ... You pick your own hour but you take anywhere from a six to eight hour window where you do all of your eating and then the rest of the time you don't eat. That's why we call breakfast breakfast, break fast. You're fasting at night.

Daniel Reid:

12 hours without food just starts the detox process going on a cellular level, so if you go 18 hours, and do all your eating in a six hour window, then your body has not only hit the detox button but it's at six hours to start processing and do cellular detox and to eliminate garbage from your system, and so you are in a detox mode. If you do this every day, that's just the way you eat, which means not taking breakfast. Or you can have breakfast and lunch and then stop eating at four o'clock in the afternoon. It doesn't matter what the hours are but you need to do at least 12 hours plus a few.

Daniel Reid:

16 to 18 hours without eating. It's not hard. People just have habits but to adjust to that is not difficult. In fact, it makes the food you do eat, even more tasty. You don't need to eat three to five meals a day. In primitive societies, people sometimes didn't have any food and they couldn't find any. Hunting and gathering sort of cultures would go for days without food. Certainly, they only ate once or twice a day.

Daniel Reid:

It's really a mindset to understand how the body works and basically you're trying to clean up the garbage, the accumulated garbage, so that you don't become an attraction to bacteria and viruses and fungus. All of those are anerobic, they need like an acid environment, so what's really causing the problem is the garbage, it's not the germs.

Daniel Reid:

Look, for example, if you have 10 people go into a hospital room and someone's got a serious bacterial infection, I'm not going to talk about viruses because some people think viruses don't even exist, they're actually what they call exorcisms, something your body produces to cleanse the cells.

Daniel Reid:

Let's say a bacterial infection and 10 people go and visit this guy in the hospital, three of them come out and they get infected or five or whatever and the others don't. Well, what's the difference? If the germ is causing the disease, they're all exposed to it, they'd all get sick but it's their resistance and it's the state if they've got plenty of oxygen, slightly alkaline bloodstream, those germs cannot exist inside their body. They can't be transferred because they can't exist [inaudible] oxygen and alkaline environment.

Mason:

Do you focus a lot on supporting the particular emotions that are especially going to be coming up when you're doing a cleanse like this? I know the liver is a natural one in spring and supporting the liver gallbladder and the processing of that chi and then the dispersion of that chi. What's your approach there?

Daniel Reid:

First of all, you've got to remain present. You get caught up in the emotions, the negative emotions and the negative thinking and we call it toxic emotion, toxic thoughts but it's toxic literally in the biochemical sense too because it starts reaction of toxic hormones and negative thoughts, negative hormones coming from the adrenal glands, stress hormones and they all cause biochemical toxicity, so when you're in the process of cleansing, a lot of things which you hide away ... My wife Snow, who actually runs the programme, she calls it everybody has a little black box, and in that black box, you put all the unpleasant things that have been bothering you. Occasionally, you go and you root around in there and something comes up, "Oh my God. I hate that." You know? You get back into a state of emotional turmoil.

Daniel Reid:

It's really like with anything else, letting it come out and just processing it, so meditation helps. Just sit still for 20 minutes and breathing helps a lot. It's mainly keeping your system in that parasympathetic mode of the autonomic nervous system whereby self-cleansing is automatic. It just happens automatically, including emotional and thought ... Toxic thoughts in the emotions come up and need to be released.

Daniel Reid:

Now in our programme, as people do sometimes have all kinds of incredible things come up, we've had some amazing experiences and Snow has developed a way to help people deal with it. She uses her hands to give energy to certain ... It's usually in the abdominal region, because these things are all stored in your organs, the liver and the kidneys and [inaudible] in the kidneys and anger and depression and stuff like that. It's usually in the liver.

Daniel Reid:

The idea is with some people during a fast, they'll just quit after two days, or the third day, they just run off and they never come back, because these things are coming up and then they're in your conscious mind for a short while and then but as soon as they come up, some people get so freaked out by it, that they just disappear, they leave.

Daniel Reid:

Sometimes it's childhood trauma and things and there's also past life stuff. You got to deal with your, as I say, deal with your shit.

Mason:

It helps to ... I think that's where it helps to release the pressure and not just always be walking into a fast after not having a consistent meditation or chi gong practise or talking to a therapist or doing some yoga or whatever it is, they're dealing with the shit.

Mason:

Do you want to talk ... I'm always interested. You've been doing this so long, you've worked with so many tens of thousands, if you include your books and the work that you've done with people that way, it's hundreds of thousands, because dealing with your shit, it's a huge part of cleansing and why a lot of people go towards fasting. You can never not cleanse your psyche or your heart or whatever want to say, cleanse the spleen and the way that we're able to digest life and think a little bit clearly, more clearly that way, whatever it is.

Mason:

I'm interested in just that world of deal with your shit and just anything that comes to your head.

Daniel Reid:

Yeah. Well, you know, it's the body/mind polarity. Some people consider ... They're willing to do anything that has to do with the body, okay, I can clean out my bowel, I can flush out my liver, we do a liver flush during all our programmes and they consider it a physical thing but the old negative thoughts and negative emotions, which it's a kind of a garbage and where is the borderline between the physical and the emotional/mental?

Daniel Reid:

What it really is is all our energy. You know, the Hindu and Buddhist and Taoist teachings tell us that everything solid around us is not really solid. We have such crude sensory organs that it's dense energy spinning around and looking like it's a form but it's still just energy and thought and emotion is also energy, so really what you're doing is dealing with energy and try to bring in positive sunlight, water, the ocean, mist, of going to the beach. Gosh, anyone who goes on a beach and takes an hour walk up and down the beach is going to feel different. It's all energy.

Daniel Reid:

When you do something that works to cleanse your physical body, your organs and all that, you're bound to also be pushing out toxic thoughts and emotions, which have been suppressed. You haven't processed them because they really bother you, they make you angry or they make you depressed and all that, so you just push them down. They'll come out too in the process but, again, if you can get the concept down behind you, that we're all just dealing with energy, yin and yang and the five elements, they're all basically energy and the essential thing you're trying to do is get rid of negative energy and bring in positive energy and change the balance inside your system, because it doesn't do much good just to clean your bowel out, flush your liver, and then go out and do what you had done before to accumulate negative thoughts and energies, conflicts, personal conflicts or work ... It could be people that are just under so much pressure, so they do this cleanse and they get a physical cleanse and then they make a mess of it by staying in emotional turmoil.

Daniel Reid:

It helps to get away from home. You can do all this stuff at home but once you get used to it and you have a way of doing it without any annoyances and all that but going to a retreat place that's located in nature somewhere and away from all your connections with work, family, wherever the negative thoughts and emotions get generated, then you're able to just release them much more easily.

Mason:

I was just thinking if we're really trying to impact ... Let's say we go macro political perspective, I think what you just spoke about then, what comes to my mind, maybe hearing the echoing of maybe what I'm saying or projecting onto the community of people going, "Well, gosh, that would be nice if I could go away and do that cleansing", it's such a nice ... I was just thinking about all the excuses I might make about it but then just how magic it is, even just to hold ... Maybe it's going to be the next two years or three years or four years, but I start adding it into my budget and I start communicating it with other people in the workplace or with my wife, that this is something that would be really great to put out there, that we both do four days or let's go pick a retreat to go to, we can go facilitate ourselves as well, but I also got to remember it's not the same time of life. I used to facilitate fasts.

Mason:

It's not the same time of life. Maybe you don't want to facilitate your own. It's nice to sit back and be cuddled, if life is busy and you're doing that, but I was thinking in terms of macro political, imagine we got to the point where here in Australia, if you really want to impact the long-term health of the population, that that's something that started becoming subsidised, that the entire population got into a cultural habit of going away for a five day/seven day fast during the springtime, long-term, I think that's an economic winner.

Daniel Reid:

It's not necessary.

Mason:

[inaudible] do it themselves.

Daniel Reid:

I think for a person who has never done any cleansing or even had any idea that what they're eating is killing them and that they're ... Okay, they only go to the toilet twice a week to clean their bowels out and they take that as normal, because it is normal for them. They need a new normal.

Mason:

Yeah.

Daniel Reid:

I think the idea of going to a retreat with someone who is experienced in conducting this kind of programme, once you've done it once or twice and gone through the whole process, the whole cycle of toxins coming out big time and emotional things come up and you release those and by the seventh day, you feel so good, you don't want to eat at all.

Daniel Reid:

Once you've done that a few times, you don't need to do that, you can do it at home and it doesn't have to be a seven day fast. You've got to work, you've got to do things. You can do one day a week. You can do three days a month, or you can just do the simplest one, intermittent, intermittent fasting, which is you go more than 12 hours without eating. I do 16 hours, so I have eight hours a day where I can eat the food I'm going to eat that day and then I don't eat again and it's very easy.

Daniel Reid:

There's many other things too, looking around your house and seeing you've got some kind of paint or glue or some kind of household product that's extremely toxic and you're getting it on your skin and all that, things like that make a big difference too, electromagnetic now has become a big problem.

Daniel Reid:

When wifi first came out, I did a lot of research on it, because it seemed to me this was crazy. The more I researched it, the more I said this is impossible. Then now every single café, every restaurant, every place you go, it's all wifi. You know? These high frequency microwaves are just invading everybody.

Daniel Reid:

Now there are ways to reduce it, but, basically, the exposure ... I thought this can never happen but now it's everywhere and now you know with the 5G towers and all that, we are just blanketed. It's all the more important to try and keep your nervous system in the rest and relaxed state, so that your body can deal with the downside of this radiation, because it all has effects on the biochemical level too. The body will rebalance itself, given the opportunity.

Mason:

That comes up a lot in terms of 5G, wifi, and for everyone listening, whether or not you think it's harmful, regardless it's a concern. It's having an effect, electromagnetic beams and beyond and there's electromagnetic forces and beyond and I don't care really ... We don't have to go into the conversation about whether it's sinister or intentional or not, it's just evolution and we've just got to evolve with it. It's here. We're dealing with it.

Mason:

You came back to the parasympathetic, staying in that parasympathetic, which I know people refer to, especially ... Or think about especially when we're just resting and when we're doing some yin yoga.

Mason:

I guess I think a connection I made is it's almost like cultivating one's capacity and strength to stay in parasympathetic, because these things are so good at pulling us out and that's why when you talk about a consistent Chi gong practise, that's something that is giving you that strength and the power to not get dragged out of parasympathetic, so you can process even those things that are disturbing you on an electromagnetic level. Would that be fair to say?

Daniel Reid:

That's very well put and that's exactly how it is. I always do my Chi gong practise ... I used to do it twice a day but lately I haven't been. In the morning, you get up and you do your Chi gong practise. It doesn't have to be too long but it's just stretching and loosening and then doing some breathing and you get yourself in that rest and relaxed mode of the nervous system.

Daniel Reid:

Then you just try to consciously remain calm. I mean, some people then immediately, they get a phone call and they just get so angry or they turn on their news and they get angry because the government did this or did that or someone ... The vaccine issue.

Daniel Reid:

All these things immediately switch you into a fight or a flight response and then that snowballs into the next thing, because someone else comes up and you're in fight or flight, so you have a conflict with it, whereas if you were in parasympathetic mode, it would be very easy to deal with any issues that came up.

Daniel Reid:

It's like tuning up. Look, I've told people when you're in a state of emotional turmoil, anger, you're in your office, there's electromagnetic anywhere ... If you're present in what you're doing and you catch yourself, you're like, "I'm in a state of anger", close the door, sit there on your chair, you have to stand up with your back straight, do five minutes of abdominal breathing, five minutes where you're going to focus your attention not on the issue that made you mad, you focus it on your diaphragm, on your gut, in and out. You can only focus on so much, five minutes. You won't even remember what was pissing you off.

Daniel Reid:

Then you can do that any time. You can do it while you're driving in a car. Reading is so important and especially with the diaphragm because shallow breathing and upper chest breathing, which is basically useless and there's breathing into the lower lungs and using the diaphragm like sort of a pump. That has such powerful effects on your whole system, that you can use that as a switch, just like a toggle switch into your parasympathetic mode, any time of day or night.

Daniel Reid:

But how many people do that? They get angry and then it snowballs. Or they're in a state of depression and it just snowballs and gets deeper and deeper. If you pause ... You'll find when you get angry or overexcited, if you just pay attention to your breath, you'll find that you're not breathing. You're virtually [inaudible] there's a little bit of breath coming in the upper lung to keep you alive but the lower one is frozen.

Mason:

I guess I'm going reflective on my own journey. I guess in the twenties for me and for a lot of people, you get into this and the breath practises and the chi gong and whether it's the journaling in another area I'd like to go on and talk to you about, which is tea ceremony in terms of the cultivation of focus, which I'm actually just dropping in and really feeling the value of.

Mason:

When I'm at this time of my life, when you go into your thirties or the forties, and perhaps things get a little bit more complicated and a bit more responsibility comes on your shoulders, I've watched in a lot of people, whether it's a client or people in the community or myself, quite often reaching for something a little bit more complex or reaching a little bit too far into that part of I guess the ancient Dao, which is the treatment of things that are going wrong, and the level of when it starts getting way complicated in life and you maybe don't have the time to do all of the hour and a half, two hours in the morning Chi gong practise or that that's the time ... As you said, that five minutes of breath, can I do my best to bring that into our rhythm here, in our day, in the business?

Mason:

It's consistently lost on me, the power of as things get more complex in life, the need to get so simple and grassroots with the practise. It's such a ... I don't know, the mentality of, no, that's too simple now, doesn't work anymore because life is too complex. It's such a backwards way, as I have caught myself looking at. Yeah.

Daniel Reid:

You got to realise that when you're doing ... Okay, the five minute re-tune of your system by doing ... I mean, but do it. Pay attention, you don't have to be meditating on a deity or anything. Just pay attention to your gut when you're both coming up and down, up and down, in and out, and it has a whole cascade of effects in your system. It affects your blood circulation. It affects the alkaline balance. When you breathe properly, you get your blood alkalizes, no matter how acidic it is. It affects your hormone system, your adrenal glands, the way your brain works.

Daniel Reid:

If you just focus on that five minutes and nothing esoteric here. Just focus on your gut. Just focus on your gut and you've got to learn how to use your diaphragm. That's another problem. Most people don't even know where the diaphragm is or what it is. They got a frozen diaphragm. You've got to do a bit of practise. There are special breathing things to release the diaphragm but basically you've just got to tone it until it's automatic that when you breathe in, you go to the bottom of the lungs and the diaphragm sinks and when you breathe out, the diaphragm raises. It works.

Daniel Reid:

The other thing you've got to realise is we've talked about the complexities of modern life, is what you just said and emotional stresses and bad news and politics and all that, you've got to realise there is no such thing as a stressful situation. There's only a stressful response. It's all in the way you look at it, the way you respond to it. Those things can happen that some people it just drives them wild with anger or depression or sadness.

Daniel Reid:

Other people stand around and they look and it's nothing. It means nothing to them, because they have an internal balance, they're calm people, they have a practise, maybe they haven't been exposed to as many problems but the whole point is stress and anxiety are the most dangerous to your health. More so than toxins in your food and the air and anything, because they shut down everything. You are prepared to fight a sabre tooth tiger or to run for your life and it takes every single shred of energy but you stay in that state and your energy is just going into this spiral, this black hole, and nothing else is functioning.

Daniel Reid:

This five minute breathing re-tune switches you back to parasympathetic, to the point where everyone who has tried this, if they just do it, we'll find that after the five minutes, whatever was bothering them doesn't bother them anymore. They don't even know why they were upset.

Daniel Reid:

It's very important to ... You've got to learn the basic techniques of proper breathing and keeping your spine straight and not slumping your shoulders because today we're all hunched over a computer and so the spine gets a bend in it and the neck is hanging down.

Daniel Reid:

It's helpful to do that, when you get up in the morning, do some stretching and realignment of your spinal column and all that, and so that the nerves function properly.

Mason:

Does that ... It's, again, such a good reminder around the stress. Has that been I guess like a lighthouse for why we're doing these practises? So nothing becomes ambiguous or forgotten or can actually take on the simplicity where it actually works to be like I've got a constant reminder, I've got a five year old who is in that developmental stage where they neurologically cannot listen or follow instructions, and so that's a really great practise for me to focus on this ... This isn't a stressful situation. That's just what happens if I go to bed too late, if I'm working or if I'm thinking at night and then I don't have capacity the next day, then I'm allowing that situation to trigger a stressful response. It's a beautiful reminder.

Mason:

Just bringing it ... I think that's a really great message to leave people with and feeling the impact of. Just to tie us off, in terms of ... I just want to go with that feeling I had when I got struck with ... I only got the weight of tea ceremony when I was reading Shots From The Hip, your book. Just how much you were already immersed so much in Taoist practise and into so many forms and such a huge time of life, just how much that sucked you in and you got immersed into that herb and into that ceremony.

Mason:

I'm just curious. I think perhaps we could have a whole podcast, maybe we can leave a little window open and have an entire podcast on tea ceremony but in the context here of the stress response, the general capacity to detoxify by staying in a parasympathetic state and, therefore, not having to go into states of extreme treatment, the tea ceremony ... Is your book still available, the Alchemy of Chinese Tea? Is that still ...

Daniel Reid:

It's out of print but it can still be found on the internet. Used copies. But it's still out there. You know, when I tell people it's not ... In Chinese culture, it's not a ceremony. It can be very ceremonial. They call it the art of tea, the art of preparing it properly, of appreciating it, of being in a calm state and knowing your tea, your teapots and all this kind of thing. A ceremony is associated with the Japanese way, the Japanese tea ceremony and you can't talk and you have to hold the cup in a certain way and you have to be kneeling down on your knees and your knees get sore and you ... It's very ceremonial whereas in the Chinese way, it's more relaxed.

Daniel Reid:

When you do it with all the old traditional tools, like the tray and the right kind of pot and the cups, its part of the art of it but it's very relaxed and open. You can talk. In fact, it's great. You can sit there for hours doing that with your friends.

Daniel Reid:

The tea, by the way, if it's good tea, like from Taiwan, this is one of the most profound health drinks in the world. They haven't even begun to find everything that the tea does. All of the Taoists and Buddhists in China all drink tea. In fact, the whole thing about tea was developed in temples. The whole art was developed in temples. Originally, tea was something that was eaten.

Daniel Reid:

Yeah. They steamed it in bamboo and fomented it and stuff like that but the Chinese came in, this is the hill tribes in the southwest China but the Chinese discovered, no, you can steep it in hot water and, of course, they got interested in the effects it had and the tea masters and the herbalists started studying its effects. It's quite amazing.

Mason:

To leave everyone today in the context of being able to not react stressfully, and everything you've said about staying focused, by starting to ... I don't know why. Maybe I'm just making up a connection and going in and having a little bit of a look or a reevaluation of the art of tea and anything ... What would be the most relevant thing that you'd say that the tea and that art and moving into it would support everything we've been talking about today? What's cultivated uniquely there?

Daniel Reid:

Okay. A calm state of mind, attention, paying attention to what you're doing because if you really do it right with the little pots, the clay pots, which are also ... You've got to be careful where you get your pot. You don't want toxic clay with cadmium in it and stuff like that. Any of the pots made in China now, they got lead in them. It's just ground toxicity, industrial waste.

Daniel Reid:

You get a good pot and you have the right cups and all that, then you have the right tea and there's a steeping time. If you leave it too long, it gets sour and bitter and if you don't leave it long enough, it's too weak and you know just how you like it and then you pay attention to the taste, so it develops attention and a calm state and you start noticing that it really makes you feel good.

Daniel Reid:

One reason it does that is it alkalizes your blood stream. Many people, especially when they get up in the morning, they've been in bed all night, they're in an acidic state, a lot of waste has come out into the blood, it hasn't been processed yet through the kidneys. The tea accelerates that process, so you end up being in a state of an alkaline state, which supports parasympathetic. It's a [inaudible] medicinal form but it's enjoyable, the teapots ... I know people who have wept and grieved for months because they broke their favourite teapot. It's happened to me a few times.

Daniel Reid:

The tea itself is really good. You've got to get good tea.

Mason:

Maybe we can ... Look, I'm feeling it more than ever. If you're up for it, we can maybe jump on in a couple of months and dive into that world, if you'd be happy to do that.

Daniel Reid:

Sure. Sure. The best tea is grown in Taiwan, high mountain Oolong. It has to be ... You can't drink tea that's been sprayed with pesticides and insecticides and all that kind of stuff. You just can't. In Taiwan, the stuff we get on our website is very carefully grown, hand-harvested, properly processed with the wood firing, not electric ovens.

Daniel Reid:

I would suggest that. My brother-in-law in [inaudible], India, he usually has stock that people can go over and buy.

Mason:

Oh, that's right. Where is he based?

Daniel Reid:

In Byron. [inaudible].

Mason:

Where in ... How do we get in touch with him?

Daniel Reid:

Let me see if I got his phone number.

Mason:

I'll put it in the show notes. We'll pop in the show notes, the way to go and find him and see him.

Daniel Reid:

Hang on one second, I might have it here.

Mason:

That would be great. Never had a number drop on the podcast. That's perfect. It'll be a nice way to not leave everyone hanging, though.

Daniel Reid:

I'll get the number and the contacts for you.

Mason:

Let's do that. Beautiful. I'm feeling pretty inspired. Around detox, I think the Tao of Detox by our mate here, Daniel Reid is probably the next best way for you to go deep into this, recommend everyone go and grab that book. Anything else going on or coming up or places you'd like to send people to?

Daniel Reid:

I would say learn to breathe properly, using your gut. Find some way or the other to keep your gut clean and balanced. If it's not colonic irrigation or anything radical like that, there are certain things you can take.

Daniel Reid:

There is a company called Eden Health Food. E-D-E-N. In New South Wales.

Mason:

I used to buy their bee pollen.

Daniel Reid:

They have an intestinal detox formula. IDF. IDF One and IDF Two. One is a pill and the other is a powder and that's a two week programme. You don't have to fast but it's not better to not eat vegetarian or drink juice. That's a way to clean your bowel out, to get all that ... It gets to be sticky, dried mucus. It just attaches itself, a glue, to your bowel wall. That stuff has to come out, because that holds all the toxins.

Daniel Reid:

You can get those products and do it like that.

Mason:

Great.

Daniel Reid:

I say your gut, you've got to get the gut clean, [inaudible].

Mason:

Yeah. I think that's ... I'm just on their website now. Yeah. I like these guys. I used to buy their bee pollen and a couple of things, chatted to them a couple of times.

Daniel Reid:

IDF One and Two. It's a very, very good system they've got in there. I would say just ... The diaphragm. Okay, your gut has to be properly balanced and cleaned out. Learn to use your diaphragm to breathe, because, I mean, it does so many things. One diaphragmatic breath saves four heartbeats in terms of moving the blood, so it's a force pump. It goes up and down. It's a muscle, biggest muscle in the body. You learn to use your diaphragm to propel the air in and out of your lungs.

Daniel Reid:

Then to be present to the situation you're in, focused, instead of always having your mind in the past, which doesn't exist anymore but you've got all these things you haven't resolved, and the future, which often is in the state of fear, or causes anxiety and all, but if you focus on the present, you usually see that there's nothing wrong. Everything is okay, because all your responses are what count. There is nothing particularly stressful about life. If you don't deal with things, as they come up, then they accumulate and you get emotional toxicity and mental toxicity and that has to be cleared later.

Mason:

Perfect. Final thing, how are you going on your mushrooms. [inaudible] as well. Is that gone down okay?

Daniel Reid:

Yeah. Yeah. I still have a bag but anything you want to send is welcome.

Mason:

Yeah. Definitely. I've got a little plan of a few I thought might be fun, might be nice. Yeah.

Daniel Reid:

How long is their shelf life? It's quite warm here.

Mason:

Two years. As long as you ...

Daniel Reid:

[inaudible].

Mason:

I bet two years. If you just give it a little crunch or a little shake-up every now and then because it's got no fillers in it. You've just got to make sure the moisture doesn't get in there or you can keep it in the fridge or the freezer if it's sitting in there, waiting to come into your mind's eye. Yeah. It's got a while.

Mason:

Yeah. I'm happy to have got a little plan. Mostly, thank you for coming on. I love these chats. If you're up for it, it would be great to get in touch every now and then and hopefully that's one way to keep you especially connected to the shire.

Daniel Reid:

Yeah. It looks nice.

Mason:

Always have people saying that they miss you.

Daniel Reid:

Yeah. Well, I miss the shire too. I don't know. We might get back there if we can figure out a way of finding some viable place to stay. Things have got very expensive now.

Mason:

Let's work on perhaps getting the Oolong tea moving. Let's see if we can support a little bit, get some book sales going, and get you back. All right, everyone. Go and get The Tao of Detox. You can go get more information at DanReid.org. There's lots of all the abouts, lots of writings, lots of books and lots of general recommended health tips. Dan, thank you so much. Chat to you next time.

Daniel Reid:

Okay. Thanks a lot. I'll see you next time.