Plant-Based Medicine for Optimal Health with William Siff

Learn about plant-based medicine for nervous system regulation, coffee alternatives & more! In this episode, Lunden dives deep with licensed acupuncturist, clinical herbalist and author, William Siff, all about using plant based medicine for optimal health (some you most likely already have on your spice rack!)

WHO IS WILLIAM SIFF?

William Siff is a licensed acupuncturist, clinical herbalist, author and ethnobotanist who practices Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine. He has worked with thousands of individuals and groups to successfully incorporate plant-based medicine into their lives for more than two decades. Along with running a busy clinical practice, his work with plants and people includes founding the popular Goldthread Apothecary and Herb Farm, the Farm to Pharmacy educational program, and Goldthread Tonics, a line of functional wellness drinks sold nationwide. His work takes him around the world, sourcing medicinal plants and creating long-term partnerships with the people who grow and gather them. He recently wrote and released The Plant Medicine Protocol, a comprehensive and easy-to-follow guide to integrating healing plants into daily life.

Connect with William:
@‌williamsiff
@‌drinkgoldthread
https://drinkgoldthread.com/

Timestamps to help you navigate this episode:
0:00 Intro
2:45 FREE Self Love & Sweat MONTHLY Calendar
15:01 Healing Benefits of Culinary Spices
21:34 Natural Remedies for Unwinding the Nervous System
34:06 Incorporating Plant Medicine Into Navigating the Shifts in Daily Rhythms
49:24 Sponsor: Snap Supplements 25% OFF using code LUNDEN25
51:23 Unlocking the Healing Power of Mushrooms

Transcript

Lunden Souza: 2:26

Welcome to Self Love and Sweat The Podcast, the place where you'll get inspired to live your life unapologetically, embrace your perfect imperfections, break down barriers and do what sets your soul on fire. I'm your host, Lunden Souza. Hey, have you grabbed your free Self Love and Sweat monthly calendar yet? This calendar is so amazing. It comes right in your inbox every single month to help you have a little nugget of wisdom, a sweaty workout, a mindset activity, just a little something, something to help keep you focused and motivated and keep that momentum towards your goals. So every day, when you get this calendar, you'll see a link that you can click that will lead to a podcast episode or a workout or something that will be very powerful and quick to read. And then you'll also see, on the top left corner of every single day, there's a little checkbox in the calendar and what that is is that's for your one thing. You can choose one thing every month, or it can be the same, something that you want to implement and make this something that you can easily implement, like daily meditation or getting a certain amount of steps or water, for example, and staying hydrated and even taking your supplements. This can be something if you want to get more regular doing a particular habit and routine. You can choose what that checkbox means. So if you want your Self Love and Sweat free monthly calendar delivered right to your inbox every month on the first of the month, go to lifelikelunden. com/ calendar, fill out the form really quickly and you will have your calendar in your inbox within a few short minutes. That's lifelikelunden L I, F, E, L, I, K, E, L, U, N, D, E, N dot com forward slash calendar. Go get yours for free and enjoy this episode.

Lunden Souza: 4:32

Happy today and welcome back to Self Love and Sweat The Podcast and Self Love and Sweat radio, wherever you're listening from today. Welcome, super excited to have you here and also our guest for today. Our guest is William Siff. He's a licensed acupuncturist, clinical herbalist, author, and I asked you before we started this how to pronounce this word. But ethno botanist. Did I say that right?

William Siff: 4:58

Yeah, ethno botanist.

Lunden Souza: 4:59

Ethno botanist big word of the day for me who practices Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine. He has worked with thousands of individuals and groups to successfully incorporate plant based- medicine into their lives for more than two decades. Along with running a busy clinical practice, his work with plants and people includes founding the popular Gold thread Apothecary and Herb farm, the farm to Pharmacy Educational Program and Gold thread tonics, a line of functional wellness drinks that I absolutely love. His work takes him around the world sourcing medicinal plants and creating long lasting relationships and partnerships with the people who grow and gather them. He recently wrote and released the Plant Medicine Protocol book. It's a comprehensive and easy to follow guide to integrating healing plants into daily life.

Lunden Souza: 5:50

This book, for those of you looking at the video, for those of you listening you can't see it, but it's so beautiful. I have it on my coffee table. I feel like it's like the gift that keeps on giving. I just keep learning so much. I'm so excited to have you here, William, today on the show. I'm going to ask ethno botanist, what is this? Tell me more.

William Siff: 6:11

Well, I studied Medical Anthropology when I was in college and then I started graduate school in that same discipline and then I switched over to actually traditional and natural medicine.

William Siff: 6:25

But I've always viewed the world through the lens, I guess you could say, of an anthropological lens, in the sense that how cultures utilize plants specifically for medicinal purposes and like a real interest and study in that for the past 20 years in person all around the world, is kind of what ethno botany is.

William Siff: 6:51

I mean, there's a lot of directions ethno botany can go. People can study how cultures use plants for food, for aspects of their economic development and so on. But I was specifically interested in how cultures around the world have utilized medicinal plants for medicine. And of course that fits perfectly well with becoming a practitioner of natural medicine, because all of this is rooted in something ancient and something that has kind of been the norm for humans throughout the world since we've been humans and also people would find surprising that the vast majority of people still utilize medicinal plants for primary healthcare, for health optimization, all throughout the world. You know 80% of the world uses plants on a daily basis medicinal plants for that purpose, and so it's great to talk about things and see things through. That lens when I'm discussing the whole subject and certainly it runs through the book in a large way as a central theme.

Lunden Souza: 7:58

Cool, and so what I hear you saying is like we're going back to our roots. We've always used this. This is like in our DNA of using plants as medicine, and you said 80% of the world is using plants as medicine. Is there some like? Is it mostly? I guess it's not a lot in the US, maybe I'm just guessing, but like what are some plants that we use as medicine every day that maybe people use and aren't aware of? Like in some cases? Is it really like we're using it but we don't even realize it? What are some of those?

William Siff: 8:31

Yeah, and that's great. So I'm no statistics. I was just mentioning 80% of the world. It comes from the World Health Organization and a lot of it is based on necessity, frankly. I mean there's a lot of it is like it's certainly about tradition and passing down what works generation to generation, but it's also based on necessity because plants are inexpensive, they're accessible and they work. That's the main thing. But the idea here is like that what you were just bringing up is very interesting because again, it's another big theme of the book is like what's hidden in plain sight. That is actually a medicinal plant that has made it through the kind of gauntlet of Western culture you could say, and it's still used. But we don't really recognize what its medicinal value would be and I often use.

William Siff: 9:17

I think in the beginning of the book I started off with black pepper as a very simple example. I mean, black pepper is available on every table in the world. Pretty much it's like I make a joke in the book that it's probably on the International Space Station. It's on every airline flight. You can get black pepper. But if you start looking into it and this is again where Ethnobotany comes in start looking into where does black pepper come from. And what is it? And it's a climbing vine that climbs up trees in tropical forests, originating from Southeast Asia All over. India is a big place where it grows. Now in Central and South America it grows there too. It's pretty much anywhere in the tropics.

William Siff: 9:57

But it was used and traded as a spice for its flavor and its ability to make bland food taste good. But that's one reason. The other reason it was very powerful antimicrobial components in black pepper, which was very important in days before for refrigeration and when there was more communicable diseases going around. Food- born illnesses, things that were the result of food hanging around too long. And then, on top of that, when science starts to look into black pepper, oh, so many antioxidants in there, tremendously anti-inflammatory. It has components in it that improve circulation to the digestive tract. I mean the spiciness and the flavor of black pepper. Obviously we recognize on our tongue as pungency and spiciness. But what that is doing on our tongue it's also doing throughout our whole GI tract. It's stimulating circulation and nerve current to the organs of digestion. That accelerates and improves and enhances the absorption of nutrients, the absorption of vitamins and so on.

William Siff: 11:00

So I could go on about black pepper as cognitive enhancing functions. I mean, the litany of things that it can help with are sort of like extensive, and yet we're so consuming and consuming it every day. We're not necessarily aware of that. Most people just think of it as a flavor, a flavor enhancer. So there's a lot of things like that. Chamomile might be another one. Chamomile is something that is widely available. You can get it at like a Denny's or like an iHop or something like that. You can get camel anywhere, any most restaurants and stores, always available.

William Siff: 11:35

We think of it as kind of a gentle, simple thing that maybe tastes good and has a mild calming effect and those are all true. But the idea being that it can also be used as a medicine. If we use these things continuously, consistently, in regular doses throughout our lives, they start to their benefits, start to accumulate and aggregate and add up. So what might be a nice cup of tea after a meal one day, fine.

William Siff: 12:03

But if you consume that Chamomile as a habit, as part of your self-care routine and ritual, on a regular basis, it starts to become very potent as an anti-inflammatory for the gut, as a relaxant for the nerves that line the gut. So it's a combative to the whole nervous system. It's like these things. Part of what I'm getting at is that some of these medicinal plants that are just sitting in our spice rack or on our kitchen table or in our cupboard. Part of it is about how we use them and like how we apply them and at what dosage and what frequency. That turns them into medicine, rather than something that might just be something to adorn a meal or just a kind of a ritual here and there for the flavor or whatever.

Lunden Souza: 12:48

Yeah, and I think people listening are probably thinking about the pepper shaker in their home even differently, or I think of chamomile tea as something just like to help us relax and fall asleep, and so that perfectly answered my question, because I figured there were certain things that we were all already like in our programming, using that. Now that we know, we might see that differently and have a different intention and awareness when utilizing that in our daily lives.

William Siff: 13:15

I'll say one more thing about that real quick, just that I often talk about like, because a lot of people wanna know what's the simplest way to get started, and I just often talk about like. Most people have spices in their cupboard, or they have a spice rack and spices cinnamon, fennel, ginger, cumin, coriander, garlic, turmeric. These are incredibly powerful medicines actually to use. It's like the centerpiece of our kitchen. Is this like healing rack full of these amazing spices coming from all over the world? And I say that because a lot of people's health issues really begin and end in the gut.

William Siff: 13:52

In Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese medicine we say that the gut is sort of the origin point of 80% of chronic disease for one reason or another, and which is extensive. I can get into that, but the point being that things that we can use on a daily basis, these medicinal plants are like. They're like the plants we eat and consume on a regular basis vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, the things that are. They're like that, but they exist on like the far end of the spectrum of plants, in the sense that they contain phytochemicals and compounds that in abundance and concentrated amounts that are not in our vegetables and our fruits in those kinds of concentrations. So they're not meant to be something that you you wouldn't have a big bowl full of turmeric for breakfast. It's like they're meant to adorn our meals and be supplemental in our meals, but without them our meals are incomplete, because you're not getting this higher end of the spectrum of potent antioxidants and really important compounds that synergize and catalyze all kinds of important functions, foundational functions such as digestion.

William Siff: 15:02

When we consume a spice again, this circulatory increase that goes basically through the digestive system, it's allowing all the different secretions of acids and enzymes and hormones that are involved in digestion to work more efficiently. And who couldn't use a boost to their digestive function? And it's very simple for pennies a day with the spice rack. And that's what most every traditional cuisine is made of. If you think about what makes up a cuisine like food from the Mediterranean, we start thinking about oregano and rosemary and garlic and basil, and when we think about Southeast Asian, you might think of Thai basil and galangal and ginger and curries in India. And it's those spices, those culinary spices, that really make the cuisine medicinal, healing, as we're just living.

Lunden Souza: 15:54

Yeah, and I think you probably think that those herbs and spices are there to enhance the flavor of the food without thinking about what's happening after we chew and swallow them, and, like you mentioned, digestion, which is, yeah, something I think we can all use a little help with, for sure.

Lunden Souza: 16:12

When it comes to so, there's two components I want to focus on today because I think this is a topic that comes up a lot from my listeners.

Lunden Souza: 16:19

Also, like personally, I'm curious and it has been part of my journey is a nervous system regulation and natural sources of energy.

Lunden Souza: 16:29

So just a quick backstory on me I had a lot of hormonal issues, PCOS, a lot of things that I was able to reverse naturally with doctors like yourself, with natural remedies and things like that, and so a lot of adaptogens, a lot of medicinal mushrooms were part of this nervous system regulation component, because I was just go, go, go, doing all the things, masking some of the healing just by doing more, and then I was addicted to coffee like just all the time caffeine all the time to just get that next win to do.

Lunden Souza: 17:02

The next thing that I realized was not working for me. It was actually working against me, and so I want to talk a little bit about natural plant remedies to help with our nervous system regulation and then ways that we can get that energy and cognitive boost naturally without needing to chug the monsters, have the extra three or four cups of coffee, because I know there are some really awesome medicinal plants that can help us with that. So how about we start with nervous system regulation and ways to really come down and land a little bit? I know that adaptogens have been so helpful for me, so maybe we could touch there a little bit.

William Siff: 17:44

Yeah, that's obviously a big subject. It's something that almost virtually everyone I see in the clinic has some aspect of nervous system dysregulation, or they come in with a main complaint that ultimately stems back to nervous system dysregulation. Oftentimes it's hyperactivity of the nervous system. A lot of times hyperactivity then leads to exhaustion because we're spending a lot of energy on, we're spinning. Essentially we're like spinning energy and it's not really, it's not promoting any benefit in that sense and it's preventing rests and all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of that going around. Of course, I would say that, like to break it down one of the things that there's a category of medicinal plants called nervines, which traditionally they have different names and different traditions, but nervines are medicinal plants that benefit the nervous system in some form or fashion.

Lunden Souza: 18:42

I like that name easy to memorize, nervines and nervous system cool.

William Siff: 18:49

Right and they fall into different categories. A lot of it's based upon either their target, what part aspect of the nervous system they're benefiting or impacting. Some of it is about their strength, their relative strength. Some of them are stronger than others and the form, for example, like. Some of them are essential oils, some of them are medicinal plants that you consume as tea. Some of them are more in the supplemental category or tinctures or something.

William Siff: 19:15

When it comes to nervous I'm sorry, when it comes to nervous health, nervous system health, one of the things that's apparent is that we wanna prevent the coiling up of the nervous system that occurs throughout the day that then we expect or wish would unravel in the evening to get us to come back down to baseline and then below baseline so we can rest deeply.

William Siff: 19:40

A lot of times people's rest and sleep issues are coming mostly from what they're doing in the day, how the nervous system is getting tense and coiled up and hyperactive and building up a charge. Basically, we're stimulated and we're. Our whole nervous system and our endocrine system are dumping chemicals into our body and we're essentially generating a charge of electricity in our nerves. That is like leading to potential energy ready to go-ness. And yet a lot of times what we're doing is not that nervous system charge is being built up. It's not actually, it doesn't have an outlet. It's a lot of times it's happening in the it's mental. So it might be happening in the midst of a meeting or some kind of thing, where your body is kind of relatively sedentary but your nervous system as it all jacked up because your mind is like sped up and creating this like Essentially a fight or flight reaction and all the thoughts that might be happening, of what's going on between our ears in the meeting or whatever.

Lunden Souza: 20:45

I like that visual, like you said, of coiling up, where you're just like tensing up, even in a sedentary position, even when you might not be doing something physically demanding, what's going on in our mind can even pull us in and coil us up a little bit.

William Siff: 21:02

Exactly. And so what is that? So it's again, it's like thinking of it as nervous system, as like this charge that's like now got nowhere to go, that we built up all this charge and now it's got nowhere to go. So a lot of times it's dumped first in the muscles and the nerves are intertwined like spaghetti. So when we have excess nervous system, charge at first results in tension, the muscle tension, the muscle readiness, and so the objective is first to consider, like herbs that aren't sedating, for example, what we're looking at, what we're talking about in this metaphor is like we need more flow.

William Siff: 21:35

In Chinese medicine we talk about Chi, and already we talk about Prana, and it's a life force, it's the nervous system, it's energy flow, and if we can allow energy to flow and of course that's like breathing and sort of governing somehow, like having a relationship to our mind where we're not latching onto every thought, and then like going with it and creating more tension and so on, it's all about flow. So certain medicinal plants in the Nervian category are very good at untieing the knots in our nervous system, you could say, and in a gentle way, in a way that's not sedating. In fact, we gain energy when our nervous system is flowing properly, because when it's all coiled up, you can think of it like a hose the hose at the nozzle on for a blast.

William Siff: 22:23

Yeah, if there's kinks at the end of the hose, you have this little trickle, but the hose at the origin point is on full blast, so it's actually like too much energy over here not coming out over there. So you want to untie those knots and that happens a lot of. So let me just get to what like. So, for example, I just mentioned chamomile that's a good one, lemon balm is a good one, peppermint, lavender, linden, rose these are very simple herbs that can be consumed as tea. They're available in capsules, they're available as liquid extracts, they're, but they're common to find people consuming these kinds of herbs after a meal as like an offering, like kind of some peppermint tea after a meal. But actually they're very good to drink throughout the day for people who are coiled up in this way that I was just talking about and generating excess tension, because they relax the enteric nerves in the gut and there's so many nerves in our gut, that is where we first hold our tension. Most of us are tense. If we're feeling tense, yes, we might feel neck and shoulder tension and we might feel the back of our head might get tense. But a lot of times, if you look trace the origin point. It's like we're holding our tension in our gut in this area and that's because it's so densely lined with nerves. It's a place we feel very vulnerable and the herbs I just mentioned are very, very good. They're anti-spasmodic is one of the names of their terms and they relax the enteric nerves directly. They allow space to occur here. That's why we consume them after meals, because they relax the whole gut region, which allows more space, which has improved digestion.

William Siff: 23:56

But just during the day that can also encourage better breathing habits. A feeling of ease here translates into ease throughout the entire body and so I recommend people consume these things. Kind of you eat your breakfast after maybe another half an hour, 45 minutes, maybe an hour. You're in your office, you're at your desk and you have a strong cup of lemon bomb tea I have right here and you just sip on it throughout the day and that will help to sort of siphon off some of the accumulated tension so that when you go back home and your day is over or whatever you're doing at night, you're not having to get rid of a whole bunch of stuff.

William Siff: 24:36

I mean it's not like there's going to be nothing and you certainly exercise at the end of the day, or taking a walk or doing something that shifts gears can help to remove it, but you don't want a whole backlog that then accumulates day after day after day. So we want to reduce the possibility of generating this tension in a gentle way that's non-sedating, because when you consume these types of things they're like peppermint. People don't realize. Peppermint is very anti-spasmonic, but it's also got that like refreshing peppermint flavor, which is also stimulating. So it's both.

Lunden Souza: 25:06

Yeah, stimulating awakening. And when you were talking about what were the nerve names again that you mentioned that are in our gut.

William Siff: 25:14

The enteric nerves.

Lunden Souza: 25:15

Enteric nerves and for those listening and not watching, a lot of those nerves you mentioned are in like that solar plexus gut space and like in our heart space and I was thinking.

Lunden Souza: 25:26

I just thought of this when you mentioned peppermint and also like our lifestyles of being seated and kind of more hunched over, closing off some of those spaces that you mentioned where those nerve, where those nerves kind of congregate, if you will. And when I smell peppermint, my whole like physio, my whole physiology changes. Like I smell it, I sit up straight, like it. It brings an awakening and kind of a yeah, like an opening in my, yeah, my breathing pathways and it just changes the posture. And I just kind of noticed that in terms of yeah, when I smell peppermint it's like this awakening and this opening, especially in that space that you mentioned where a lot of the those nerves congregate. So, anyways, just an observation, learning moment.

William Siff: 26:11

No, that's great, that's actually great, and that's the next thing I was going to say too. You're right, it's got an effervescence, and that is another way to utilize the nerve in category of herbs throughout our day to day, for example, like having an essential oil diffuser around your home or your workplace or whatever. This is one of the best things to do, because fragrance directly impacts our limbic system, because right in through the olfactory system, into the brain, into the nervous system, there's no needing to digest anything and it's immediate. And we, the fragrances that for example, fragrances like peppermint or lemon, verbena or rosemary Now these things can be uplifting and promote this flow that I'm talking about. This ease and flow where the nervous system knots are getting untangled, and having it diffusing as an aromatic vapor in the background of wherever you are is a subtle input, but actually it has yields tremendous benefits over time. It's not some woo-woo thing, it's actually really potent. It has to do with, again, the first of all the more we contact fragrance and associate it with the state that we're hoping to attain. So if we're like okay, I'm going to get to work, I've started breathing my rosemary oil and you're going to develop new neural networks that start to associate the fragrance with the activity and the intention.

William Siff: 27:42

And that's important because, for example, like in religious ceremonies all over the world, frankincense is used and frankincense in certain places, like in Japan, you find sandalwood and augerwood and different temples as soon as you walk in. When you walk into one of these places, these fragrances are not there just randomly. They're there because they calm the nervous system and they allow us to feel more open and receptive and out of our agenda ambitious driven mind state and more receptive and intuitive and relaxed and open to what other inputs are available through other means. And the more people then associate frankincense or sandalwood or whatever it is, they would immediately be able to shift into that state because they already know that fragrance. And it's all subconscious that fragrance means something. It makes me feel a certain way, but it also means I'm crossing a threshold into a different place, a place where I'm going to drop all that stuff and be in a whole other state.

William Siff: 28:50

So fragrance is very powerful and we can utilize it in our homes and like again, lavender, neroli, rose these ones I just mentioned sandalwood, frankincense, clary sage there's so many when you diffuse them around the home or you put a few drops in your hand and you do some deep palm inhalations a few times before, periodically throughout your day, actually whenever you want. You're sort of just short circuiting the stress response continuously on purpose. And if you have a little bottle of rose oil and you put a few drops in your hand, you breathe it in. For you know you take 10 seconds and you just breathe it in. It's kind of like when we recommend breathing exercises. Of course breathing exercises is a very powerful way to shift from sympathetic nervous system dominance to parasympathetic, you know, to govern the autonomic nervous system, to relax us.

William Siff: 29:48

Well, when you use fragrance it's just 10X is that? It's like when you use the right fragrance? When you smell a rose, we all soften. I mean it's an attracting force. It's like the rose produces this oil to bring a pollinator there and it can be like, from miles away, a hummingbird finds a rose and it's like people use rose oil as perfumes forever and stuff. So it makes us feel more relaxed and safe and calm. So it's like one example of something we can use on a regular basis and these subtle things I'm talking about.

William Siff: 30:22

So now you're drinking your cup of lemon balm tea, you're breathing in some rose oil and they're making a habit out of it.

William Siff: 30:28

You know, maybe it's two or three cups of lemon balm tea and several different doses of the lemon, of the rose oil, and then meanwhile you have a diffuser going in the background with some lavender and you turn that on towards the evening when you want to like actually start to shift into a much more relaxed state and it becomes something you can actually work with, like playing an instrument. You can work with your physiology, as if you're sort of you're very present in your body and you're realizing what it needs. And then you have all these small inputs from the plant world to course, correct and adjust and, you know, catalyze these different feelings and sensations and functions. And that's the whole system. That's in the book, but that's it's a very important way to understand it, because we think of these things as very, very subtle. But if we do them every day, it's not so subtle. It's not a sledgehammer, it's, it's a retraining process for your nervous system.

William Siff: 31:25

It's a subtle retraining about how the tension reaction builds up and how to turn it off. Short circuit it.

Lunden Souza: 31:35

Yeah, so the benefits exist, you know, inherently in the compound that we're smelling and utilizing and whatever, but there's also like a conditioning and programmed response within our own selves, of like, as we continue to utilize the different teas, the different smells and the kind of journey that we get to go on throughout the day that you kind of painted, in terms of having the cups of tea, then the diffuser in the background, then rubbing your hands together and utilizing essential oils. I feel like that makes the next domino of, let's say, relaxation or coming down, knock down faster the more that we utilize it, like training the dog, if you will, for lack of better, like worse at the moment.

Lunden Souza: 32:15

But I know that for myself too. It's like when I utilize peppermint as an energizing, awakening thing. It's like it works because it works, but it also works because the intention is there, and so I love that. You, what you illustrated.

William Siff: 32:32

And I'll just say like so. So that's what I would recommend like a lot during the day, because we don't want a heavy like I say again like a sledgehammer, we don't want to knock ourselves out during the day, we want the clarity to be able to function, we want relaxed energy.

Lunden Souza: 32:46

It's like rounded energy.

William Siff: 32:49

Yeah, but alert and clear. And, like I said, if you untie those knots you feel more clear, you feel like there's less like static electricity in your head, like you know, all the thoughts ricocheting off your skull, like competing for attention. So it's hard to grasp onto one thing and focus when there's like that much energy being like generated all the time and stuck and stagnating in your body. But when, in the evening time, as I mentioned, I recommend a lot of times to people that they do some kind of ritual when they, whenever their evening begins, whenever their workday ends and some of us, especially entrepreneurs, have a hard time shutting off our workday- it's like we don't know where there's.

William Siff: 33:30

there is no boundary and and with phones and technologies, no boundary it's like something could come in. Hey, I'm working again. It's nine o'clock at night. I was doing something totally different, but now I'm back at work.

Lunden Souza: 33:39

that working from home to is also like it's like where are those boundaries within our whole? I can, just, speaking for myself, like I'm entrepreneur, I run multiple businesses. I do it from my home, so I have like designated specific seats that I'm allowed to sit in when I'm working and when I'm eating, and vice versa, because if not, it's like always open, you know, and it's like able to compartmentalize is so powerful, I know, for so many people.

William Siff: 34:07

Exactly. I mean, that's so, so, so that's what I'm referring to is that thing that a lot of people can obviously identify with and have, you know, some understanding of. And even if it's not entrepreneurial, you're not working at home. It's like there's still things. What I'm getting at is demarcating when we are now in a different mode called I'm not doing that stuff anymore and I'm going to draw boundary or however you want to phrase it. Words no longer an option for us to, because we can't exist in those really intense brainwaves all day and then into the night and randomly whenever, and then expect to rest and rejuvenate and replenish our nervous system. So what I had mentioned about you know, when you walk into a temple or you walk into a certain, you know, a church or cathedral or something, there would be these fragrances that are associated with these religious ceremonies. You can do something like that at the threshold where you want to demarcate Okay, I'm done with that stuff. So I recommend, a lot of times people walk in the door, they put their keys down or whatever, and then they consciously use something such as one of these fragrances and they're like okay, I'm going to burn some resin of frankincense or I'm going to burn some Palo Santo wood or I'm going to turn on the diffuser and put some frankincense in there, or some rose or whatever, or just do some inhalations again and it's just just to demarcate. Okay, now I'm shifting gears and everything. After this I'm in the letting go phase and I'm in the phase of letting my nervous system relax. There's nothing I have to do, and even if there are things you have to do, it's still. Those rituals are very important for us and plants are a nice sherpa to sort of like usher us across those thresholds. And in the evening time I recommend you could continue on with these kinds of these herbs that are like these what I call fragrant relaxants the chamomiles and the mints and the lindens and the rose and lavender.

William Siff: 36:11

But also sometimes people like say, after dinner, right when you're going to go to sleep, some people like need to relax more. Now it's time for you can bring a little bit more sedation in there, something a little heavier, to start to really, really really ground us and calm the nervous system. And there's many, many herbs that are deeply commative to the nervous system but they're not creating torpor or sort of like any residual toxicity, like, of course, you can drink alcohol and it's going to relax the nervous system, but it causes all these side effects that, like over time, are going to weaken the body and agitate and create more inflammation. I'm not saying never drink, but I'm saying it's not a good strategy to just rely on alcohol as like the primary way where you relax at night. I mean, you know, take the edge off, and stuff like that.

William Siff: 36:59

So there are herbs for example, skullcap is an herb and from the Western herbal tradition, passion flower, california poppy, kava, kava from Fiji in the South Pacific CBD would fall into this category Magnolia bark from Chinese medicine. There are medicinal plants and there are many more that are these ones you wouldn't want during the day so much, because they actually do sedate, they calm the nervous system. It really make you feel heavier, a bit more groggy, not in a way that's like like as heavy duty, as sort of a trazodon or some kind of, you know, like ambien or something like that. It's gentler than that Again, but it's very noticeable and, depending on the dose, it can usher us very reliably downward into sleep and into restful sleep, and so I often recommend that if you're going to use those, for example, most of those are pretty bitter tasting. You know they don't taste great. I don't usually use those as tea. They're oftentimes given in tincture form or in tablet or capsule or drops of some sort, and I recommend that people use those ones at night. So you have your, your, your sort of lighter duty ones, the essential oils and these herbs that relax the enteric nerves, keep your clear, but untie the knots, keep things flowing so there's not a lot of accumulated tension. But then in the evening use the heavier ones and the ones that go deeper, the ones that are going to actually plunge us into deeper, more restful cycles of sleep and replenish the nervous system in that way. And so I often will recommend and it's in the book a methodology called pulse dosing.

William Siff: 38:41

And then what I, what I? I won't go into the whole thing, but like, basically I'll just say this when people consider medicinal plants and like valerian and hops and these things that you can get in the supplement section of, like Whole Foods and other health foods stores and stuff, people's one of the gripes or sort of the common misconceptions about medicinal plants that relax the nervous system is that they are, they're too weak, you know, compared to pharmaceuticals. They're like they're great, they sound nice, but they don't work because they're not strong enough. And that's a misconception. Because, again, how they're being used, what they're being used like, what other methods are we using besides them? In conjunction? Because, of course, you can knock yourself out with a pharmaceutical, but does anyone think, hey, I got, I got back covered. Now All I have to do is that you know nothing else and I feel great? Of course not. It's like there is no free lunch.

William Siff: 39:34

When it comes to like governing our body in a rational, like sane way, and also like the dosage range is very important consideration. So the pulse dosing method essentially looks like about eight o'clock, nine o'clock, if you go to bed at like 10 or 11 or whatever it is, you know. An hour or two after dinner, you start take, you take a dose. Maybe if it's a tincture of skull cap, you take a dose of the tincture and that might look like a dropper full or two dropper fulls. This is, this is malleable. We, you know, adjustable, but you know say it's a couple dropper fulls and you have a little water.

William Siff: 40:11

You just get this first dose of relaxation. It's mild, it's not enough to like knock you out, but you don't want to get knocked out at that time anyway. But it's the first input of sort of relaxation. Then maybe half an hour later, another couple of doses, you know. Another dropper full, another two dropper fulls, little graph, little sip of water. Second dose Now it's 830. Okay, a little bit lower. Now, nine o'clock, do it again. And basically you do this on inter intervals. It doesn't have to be half an hour, it doesn't have to be an hour or 15 minutes. This is stuff I work out with people and people find through trial and error. But the point is just like small, subtle input spaced out and pulsed out over the course of the evening so that by the time you go to bed two hours, three hours later and you've had six doses, very small, nothing heroic, no big giant like again knock you out thing, but your body's getting trained to start to relax in the evening in a gentle way.

Lunden Souza: 41:09

Yeah, some going down stairs almost.

William Siff: 41:11

Exactly.

Lunden Souza: 41:12

That's the good will I have, where it's like taking it down one step at a time, whereas like an ambient or other thing like that will just like knock you down all the stairs and you know you're done, whereas you're consciously taking those steps down into that relaxation mode because that feels good too, to start becoming a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more tired, and then adding in a little bit more if you need it and creating this like winding down process and kind of that other side of the bookend where we talked about what's energizing, what's stabilizing, what's going to help us focus and help our nervous system, not all the way. And then when it's time to come home and shut off and draw that line in the sand of one state of being to another state of being, there's ways to. What did you call the process again? What was it called?

William Siff: 42:00

I call it pulse dosing.

William Siff: 42:03

And you think about like, you think about like. The metaphor is like you drop a pebble into a pond and it creates some ripples across the pond, but by the time those ripples get to the edge they might not even be visible anymore, like the whole pond might have reestablished itself, whatever state it was in. But if you drop another one 10 minutes later, another one, another one, eventually you start to get those ripples washing up against the shore, because that constant small input has power when it's like repetitive, and a lot of times people want to knock themselves out. But that doesn't. Like I said, that doesn't bode well long term for sustainability because, first of all, the quality of sleep and the sleep cycles and stuff that people use when they're taking pharmaceuticals long term for sleep issues are the quality is diminished. It's not the kind of restorative sleep we want. It definitely messes with cognitive function the next day, and so on and so forth.

Lunden Souza: 43:02

And I find it to become reliant on it, like even Nyquil or other maybe more mild or minor sleep aids you can just easily find without a prescription, whatever it's like yeah, it works. When you keep taking that into your point of like alcohol, it's like the residual effects are not wonderful, and then you find yourself in stays where you're like, oh I can't sleep without it, or I need it to sleep, and that kind of reversal process of getting your body to like either use plant medicine and natural strategies to get to that relaxed state. I feel like that is another retraining process.

William Siff: 43:37

Right, and what you mentioned too. You know you were talking about adaptogens. One of my favorite adaptogens, ashwagandha, is very, very good. I love ashwagandha.

Lunden Souza: 43:45

All the time, well, in the evenings. And then a friend of mine made me like an ashwagandha elixir, which I love a beverage, and it's kind of has like this numbing effect and it's really calming and I love it.

William Siff: 43:58

So, yeah, I'm a huge wonder if there's some kava kava in there. I think there might be.

Lunden Souza: 44:03

Yeah, I think there might be. It's not just ashwagandha, but she, yeah, she gave it to me one day. I was at her house and she's like try this, drink this in the evening and I was like okay. And I was like this is really good, it was really relaxing and it tasted good.

William Siff: 44:18

Yeah, and ashwagandhas I mean kava is different of course, but ashwagandha by itself is very, very grounding. Its name, ashwagandha, is a it's with ania somniferem is its Latin name, which means like sleep inducing, and it's one of these. It's an adaptogen. That's very unique because it has it's like a hybrid in a way of nerve and adaption. It has very potent effects of regulating hyper cortisol lemia and sort of like the aspect of our endocrine function that's jacked up in fight or flight. It helps to moderate, that helps to sort of smooth out the ups and downs of the fight or flight response that's going on in the nervous system when we're in neuroendocrine system, when we're hyper excitable and sort of stressed out and stuff like that. And longterm that means it's an energy conservation herb because it helps us by smoothing out the sort of like reactivity of our endocrine system and our nervous system to stress. We're just wasting less energy in general it's so we're conserving energy that would otherwise been wasted in stress response. And then the second part of the stress response, which is like kind of the cleanup and the rebalancing of the whole system to like which, which can kind of go on all the time for people you know it's, it's. It's a meant to be a here and there kind of innate function of the body to sort of like address real acute threats. But it's obviously not meant to be something that's never turned off for not real acute threats but perceived threats. So our baseline of stress can be way up here instead of like way down here where it occasionally has a blip, occasionally has a blip because something stressful is going on. We're kind of like if our, if our set point gets too high, then even everything small things make us reactive and then there's oh, not the stress response, not the stress response and we never even get back to the restorative kind of normalization.

William Siff: 46:20

Nervous, yeah, and Ashwagandha is great for this on a regular basis to help address that energy wastage first of all. But in the evening time it's overtly kind of calming to the nervous system. So it helps us to in the evening time if we take a dose of Ashwagandha in some form. Oftentimes I like to mix it with some kind of plant based milk, like oat milk and maybe a little nutmeg, sometimes some poppy seeds you know the kind that are in the spice rack, not the ones you get from like Afghanistan, or something that can be a very potent sleep elixir and calming elixir and a very strengthening overall to the whole endocrine system. So Ashwagandha is a nice one. She's another one, rashi Mushroom Very similar, not similar in its how it's working, but Rashi Mushroom is one of the most important adaptogens in Japanese medicine, chinese medicine, for creating focus and calm and basically when the nervous system's in this like what do you call it wired and tired zone, all poppy none of the sleep and trying to run off the floor.

William Siff: 47:34

We're too wired to even relax. Like you know, we're too, we're too jacked, we're, we're over excited, but we and that leads us to become exhausted, but because of the over excited, we can't relax.

Lunden Souza: 47:45

So it goes on and on and you mentioned the Rashi Mushrooms and I want to talk specifically about mushrooms only because I love them. I'm super interested in them. The whole structure of my selium is so interesting to me and I get targeted all the time on Instagram and I know people listening do too for like mushroom coffees and it's good for your gut and it's like you know, just like. I'm sure you've seen many things in your career where you're like, yeah, this has been amazing for many years, but somehow it just becomes like sexy and social media land and you know, on whatever social media and all that kind of stuff. And I remember my mom sent me like she forwarded me an ad that she found that was like, hey, is this good? And it was like a mushroom company brand, for example. And I remember being in Scotland once and we harvested chaga mushrooms and made like a tea out of it and it was so, I mean, bitter, but just so good and so soothing. And so what do we need to know about mushrooms? You know, within the scope of this podcast and those that are listening that are looking for, yeah, just more information. And also, when I was really struggling hormonally, I really had to get rid of a lot of coffee and caffeine and a lot of things that were just like stressing my system out to the max and I started drinking a lot more mushroom coffees and teas and things like that and really still incorporate them to this day and still really enjoy them. So what are the benefits of mushrooms? Which ones should we be really focused on when it comes to, yeah, like overall health and well-being, but specifically, like we talked about, like nervous system, but also energy. That's not so abrasive.

Lunden Souza: 49:25

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William Siff: 51:24

Yeah, well, there's a lot of two mushrooms and obviously I mean unpacking all the benefits would take forever because they're actually just they're amazing, you know. They're an amazing thing to incorporate into our lives and our routines and that means on so many levels. I feel like, as I mentioned, rashi's a great one. If you're also like Rashi when you were just mentioning coffee and coffee alternatives, sort of like energy. Rashi's great because it actually has compounds in it that stabilize the nervous system but also they enhance focus in general concentration. Like Rashi's, one of those ones that you hear about. You know, at least when you're learning Chinese and Japanese medicine. It's like the monk mushroom, you know they call it the. They say it's like when you find Rashi in the forest it basically has like a spiritual or basically it's actually like it's an aid to meditation and concentration. But Lion's Mane, for example, combined with Rashi, is a nice combination and Rashi has a bitter flavor, relatively bitter, and that's kind of nice for people who want that bitter coffee flavor, without the caffeine of course. So it makes a nice substitute for or even additive to coffee. If you want to like cut down on coffee but you want to add something in there, that's going to help to somewhat ameliorate some of the jitteriness and the nerve jangling that goes on with coffee Rashi's a nice one to add in the morning.

William Siff: 52:53

I often use it as a powdered extract.

William Siff: 52:56

A powdered extract is a great way to consume medicinal mushrooms in general because most of their constituents are water soluble but they're so big and fibrous and stuff like that that just eating them as a powdered thing you don't get enough of a dose most of the time because you're getting mostly the fiber and just relatively small amount of constituents.

William Siff: 53:17

So powdered extracts are something where they boil them up for long periods of time, then they dehydrate the remaining bits of like sludge at the bottom and then you've got basically like the most potent concentrated like extract you can get and it's like great because it melts right into water or anything that you're drinking. All medicinal mushrooms have immune enhancing benefits, both short and long term immune enhancing benefits. So for acute manifestations or protective capacity, there are lots of different mushrooms that like mitake and again rashi and shiitake and chaga is another one of these ones, and cordyceps and there's all of them have that function in common and so that's acute sort of protective to cold and flu season that take my daily mushroom supplement. When things are like people are going inside and there's a lot more possibility of getting sick because of stuff we're breathing in or whatever. But also long term modulators of the immune system.

William Siff: 54:24

They're very, very potent for the aspects of our immune system that are responsible for going around and scavenging different cells that are potentially aberrant or could become cancerous or could become or various autoimmune reactions that are going on where the immune system is hyperactive and is doing damage in some form to our system for different reasons and that's complicated.

William Siff: 54:51

But mushrooms in that circumstance medicinal mushrooms are very good to calm the immune system down, to get it to chill out, so they can be good for long term restorative or maintenance or protective ability.

William Siff: 55:05

When it comes to bodily cleanup, what mushrooms do in the environment they go out and they pop up where there's a rotting log and they have to digest all that rot and congestion and turn it into soil and turn it into fertility for all the other plants in the forest. You can say metaphorically they're doing that in our body too. From our immune system is one of its main jobs is to clean up material, dead cells, waste materials and deep seated pathogens of various sorts that are clogging up our system like, basically, get that immune system in there, get those mushrooms to catalyze the breakdown and removal of that congestion that would otherwise lead to not decay but aberrant decay, like a dirty puddle where other things can proliferate and form and stuff like that. They clean up that. They're very much like a catalyst for turning on the intelligence of the immune system is what I would say.

William Siff: 56:16

They're very safe they're like they're extensions of our diet, they can be used regularly. They really have no major contraindications of any kind. I recommend, you know, when it comes to safe mushrooms, and I use them all the time, especially today. I mean you have so many immune challenges. We just went for three years of, like you know, covid. I mean it's these things, anything we can do to benefit our immune system. I mean, why wouldn't we do it? You know, because the immune system is also it's taking a hit on many levels.

William Siff: 56:52

There's so much environmental toxins and there's so many like things that people have to contend with at the level of their nervous system and stress, and like our diets are all over the place, and so it's a the immune system is extremely important to maintain, like to nourish and attend to you regularly, and so I like to use medicinal mushrooms in every form, like I'll have. Every morning I make a drink that has cordyceps and reishi powdered extracts in it, but during the day and during the week now I would say, like I would say five days out of the week I'm consuming some kind of medicinal mushroom. I love to eat my talkie shiitake. I like to cook them into soups. I like to like get the. You know what do you call it like, like what you do with shallots on the stove, you kind of like sear them saute them, yeah, and then I have.

William Siff: 57:44

I was in a recent trip to Japan a couple months ago and I brought back a whole bunch of shiitake mushroom powders as condiments that I can sprinkle on. But they're really potent and they have this great mushroom flavor. But you can get them at Japanese rest, I mean Japanese grocers. You can get them online. So, like I like to use them sometimes and then if I'm traveling I'll use them mushroom capsules, you know, like Paul Stamets, you know host defense, for example I'll bring those with me and take those as a supplement.

William Siff: 58:13

So I like to get them in various different forms and fashions, because when you do something, say mushrooms, anything you're doing when it comes to plant medicine, it works better when you mix it up a little bit in terms of like the form you're taking it in, so your body doesn't get too used to it and accustomed to the same thing over and over and over again, because different compounds come out in different forms. For example, like there's a, there's a, some compounds, for example in Rashi, will come out in an alcoholic extract like a tincture, or like in China, you'll find them as wines a lot of times. Or Korea, you'll find mushroom wines all the time just low amounts of alcohol. But certain things like the Ganodermic acids in Rashi will, are better extracted in a, in an alcohol, and then other ones are better extracted in water and some are good just to eat entirely at the mushroom, you know. So I've said a lot.

Lunden Souza: 59:08

I mean, I know I don't want to get that, no, it's so good and I'm so interested because I'm looking at your book now, the page on mushrooms, which is 329, I guess for those of you that eventually get the book. But they're, yeah, they're so beautiful and I remember two instances. So one I was in North Carolina with a friend of mine, dr Lulu, who's a naturopathic doctor, and she's like let's go harvest lion's mane. I heard there was some on this trail like, I'm sorry, turkey tail. I heard there's some on this trail like let's go get it. It was so much fun.

Lunden Souza: 59:37

When I lived in Austria. It was like it was such an adventure and it was like so great. And now knowing more of what I know now about mushrooms is like so cool. And then when I lived in Austria, we did, yeah, mushroom harvesting to make a goulash. So we went out in the woods and learned like what you know, which ones you should eat, which ones could kill you, like all the different things, and it was such a great experience.

Lunden Souza: 1:00:01

So I guess I just share that because I think sometimes we forget that there's like really cool activities or ways that we can explore and do something fun while also incorporating plants as medicine. And it just made me think of that now because I just recently moved to a different state and I'm like, oh, I wonder what like plant medicine adventures I could go on now because a lot of it we can, yeah, find and easily access sometimes when we go out in you know, in Mother Nature and on earth, and then, of course, with you know, supplements and powder and like things we could order online too. But I just wanted to share that, to kind of open the door or window for people listening of thinking like, oh, that's interesting, like maybe I could do something like that. So then it's not just like another list of supplements we need to take and make sure that we add into our routine, but it could be like an experience and a fun thing to do with others.

William Siff: 1:00:51

Oh gosh, you're singing my song. That's like the. I mean, that's what really got me into it in the first place. This whole subject is just like noticing the plants around my environment, then noticing, hey, I don't know where any of this stuff is, but I was in, you know, my late high school years even, and where I grew up in Massachusetts, and I would walk around Walden Pond, which was near my house, and I was looking, all these trees and flowers and plants and like what is all this stuff? I don't even know. Why didn't anyone teach me and I had to learn it myself through field guides and so on and so forth. But realizing that all this, there's medicine all over the place, like I didn't even know, that, like you know fast a lot of the plants, I mean, of course, when we really understand even.

William Siff: 1:01:32

I'm here in LA, you know, in Santa Monica, and if you walk around the neighborhood here I can point out tons of plants that are medicinal, that are just ornamentals that people plant as like because they look nice, you know, or ones that are weeds that like find like a little corner of a lot to like grow in, and it's like really empowering to know how to use medicinal plants for healing and for medicine. Like you said, it's a fun adventure and it's an amazing process To make a part of your life and it's also really empowering and it kind of gives you a real sense of place too. You know, when you can understand, you feel more indigenous to where you are. You understand what the plants are around you, whether they were used for fuel or shelter or food or medicine. That Creates a feeling of like I'm at, being at home, this that I think a lot of us in a culture where we move around a lot, we're always, you know, like going from one urban environment to another.

William Siff: 1:02:29

Like a lot of times, or whatever it's it's, it's nice to know wherever I land. That's kind of the first thing I key into is like what's one of these plants? I'll start grabbing little leaves and smelling them and being like that's an interesting, a lot of essential oils in that one. And if I don't know what it is, I'll go look it up or I'll use an app to figure out what it out, what it is, and then I might say, oh, who used this before? You know in the past what people's use this and for what, and it's toward that's. Have no botany. I mean, that's very fascinating, you know.

Lunden Souza: 1:02:57

Yeah, and it's cool to stay curious. You know, and I think it's so easy for us to be like I don't know, let's go here and do this, or go to the bar and drink, or there's there's so many like Socially things we think we're just supposed to do that I like Sharing, like oh, maybe you can get your friends together and go figure out what's in your backyard or in your own neighborhood and Hire a guide, or like you know, there's so many things available that allow us to learn and be curious that I hope at least one Person listening is inspired to switch, you know, a girl's night from being at the bar to being like, hey, let's go and like discover the herbs and medicine that's in our backyard at least that's. That's the kind of thing that I like to do and I think is really fun.

Lunden Souza: 1:03:40

Your book the plant medicine protocol unlocking the power of plants for optimal health and longevity. I love this book. It's so gorgeous, it's a goldmine. There's so many amazing recipes in it, there's so much Knowledge, but then so many ways we can like bring this into our home, like a ton of smoothie recipes, a ton of elixirs, golden milk, which is one of my personal favorites that I love and incorporate regularly. So I just want everyone listening to get a copy the plant medicine protocol by William sif and this is like. It's so beautiful and I love having it just like sitting and on display, and so I think it makes such a great gift to as well, for people that we know are interested in this type of thing or maybe want to Just, yeah, gift something to Somebody else. I just think there's so much wisdom in this and I'm so grateful for what we got to tap into Today. So let us know.

Lunden Souza: 1:04:35

Thank you, we can find the book how we can connect with you even more, so that our listeners know where they can, yeah, dig deeper with you.

William Siff: 1:04:45

Thank you for the compliment on the book. I appreciate that. It's the book I wrote. It took three, three plus years, but it's really like the 20 year thesis that's in that book. That's why it's so heavy three pounds that book weighs.

Lunden Souza: 1:04:57

It's like the text book you get excited to read.

William Siff: 1:05:00

Yeah, it's really beautiful. I'm really glad and I'm very happy the way it turned out. You know I put nothing on the field when I came to that book. I Well, yeah, you mean the book is available everywhere. But you know Amazon and all I just saw it an independent run my neighborhood the other day. It's, it's available All over the place, I think, and it's available in, you know, in the UK, just got translated into Slovenian, which I think is kind of interesting. My website, williamsiff. com, that's, that's available to you. I mean, that's also where I like my house, my practice, the latest gold thread tonics, which are available all over the country. You know thousands of stores and online.

William Siff: 1:05:44

That is a tonic company. I started there a few years back and it's really taken off and is doing really well and essentially it is a way for people to consume these medicinal plants that I'm talking about in the book and we talked about today on a regular basis in a really easy and like Tasty way, because it's like it's a low investment, something you get on your lunch break. You know it's not some high-powered supplement, but it's very their pot. You know, there's like I put it. I put enough herbs in them to make sure that they were.

William Siff: 1:06:16

You're getting a clinical dose of herbs in that, in a way, that's agreeable and tasty and delicious, and I really wanted to make something because there wasn't anything on on the market and I always found that people I can talk about this, so I'm blue in the face, but when you try the herbs, it's all different experience. It's like when the, when the body meets the medicinal plants directly. That's when the real magic happens. That's when people be like oh, I get it, you know, this is what. This is something I get, you know. Yeah, so that's available and they're super delicious.

Lunden Souza: 1:06:45

I've tried a variety of the flavors I think I shared this with you before we pressed record but the Hawaiian ginger flavor is my favorite.

Lunden Souza: 1:06:52

I it's just so potent and I love that they're not Full of sugar just to make them taste good, like the green one no sugar taste green, like greens, and my friend, cara Actually, she came out from Mexico after being at this wonderful wellness retreat and she's like, oh, every morning I would have a green juice and all the things. And now I'm back to work and in my flow and I was like center of picture.

Lunden Souza: 1:07:12

I was like, oh, go buy these, go buy the oh yeah, I saw one of the gold tonic and she wrote me and she's like, oh my gosh, this is perfect because it's yeah, it's easy and effortless to grab them at the store and open them up and have them ready to go. Plus, they're really potent and so delicious and yeah, I love them. Like thank you, they're so good.

William Siff: 1:07:31

Yeah, great yeah, and we go all over the world to get those ingredients. You know, like, one of my main skills is as a clinician, as a ethnobotanist is curation. So I make sure, like that cold, that Hawaiian ginger, it's a hundred percent Hawaiian ginger, it's not just saying that and it comes from Kauai. I went there and sourced it myself and found this like amazing Gigantic ginger farm. That's like you see whales breaching from the farm and rainbows, you know, over the farm. It's like I make sure that what's in these things is actually the best medicinal plants on earth that I could possibly find and I know how to find them. So those things, all those ways, that's how you find me.

Lunden Souza: 1:08:10

And then yeah, love that your book, your website, the gold tonic beverages. I'm so grateful that you were here today. I feel like I don't know we could have just talked about all the things all day, which I love. I love it makes me excited to dive even deeper into your book and also just like Get more excited about the everyday ways that we can use plant as medicine. Is there anything that you want to share as like final words, something that you're excited about, or a message that you feel Called to share to the people that you didn't already share today?

William Siff: 1:08:42

Whoa, it's a lot of pressure at the end here. I Think I shared. I mean, I shared a lot. I think I think we had a great conversation. Like you said, this conversation could go on and on and on.

William Siff: 1:08:54

It's like this format of like podcasts and I do them fairly frequently and I go out like a couple of a couple nights. I'm going out to Noia house and Hollywood. I'm gonna do a people can come to that. I'm gonna do what's called a plant venture and Essentially what a plant venture is like. I pass around all these things we're talking about that I've gotten, you know, around the world. I have a little backpack and I just pull out these different remedies and I pass them around to people and I explain what they're about. But I like trying, I try to facilitate the contact and the connection between the plants and the people, or plants and people and and my. That that's the best way to learn this subject. That's the way it's always been. Yeah, I mean. But a plant venture you know, plant ventures a word I made up to describe this process of like. Okay, let's not just talk about the Beneficial effects and the compounds in here, so, but let's talk, let's, let's experience it now you tell me what you're experiencing and I'll tell you what's happening and I'll you know, verify it. And then you know, try this one and try this one. And by the time people go through it, they feel charged up and their body feels totally different and then they really see what the power of medicinal plants is all about and you can do that in your own house. I mean, the idea is like there's this also. End with this is that there's.

William Siff: 1:10:12

There's this Tail in the book, I tell, but we learn it and you know, when we learn Chinese medicine, I certainly heard the tale of this in Asia, but there's this guy named Shen Nong who's like the patron saint of herbal medicine in in China and other things. But he's credited with writing the first big giant book on herbal medicine and and his methodology. They said he had a transparent body. You know that's the myth, because his methodology is that he would live up in the mountains and he would pick these herbs and his like students would pick these herbs and then they would taste them and smell them and try them in this contemplative way and experience their Effects, going through their body, using concentration, using Contemplative practice and being in a nice environment out in nature where the mind can be very tranquil and pay attention to things, and Then he would actually watch what they're doing in the body. They would experience it out, going into the liver and it's doing this, and it's going into the stomach and it's going in the intestines. One's going up to the brain and it's doing this, and that's why I say a transparent body, because he was using his own senses to Unravel and unpack what these medicinal plants were doing in real time as an actual experience, and that using our own bodies in that way, I think, is one of the most powerful. That's how I was taught how to use medicinal plants, along with all the book learning. But I think, people, that's something that's interesting.

William Siff: 1:11:34

If you're interested in this subject, next time you're out at a restaurant, say you're a Japanese restaurant. You know, get, pay attention to that wasabi and that fresh ginger and that green tea. No, when you're eating in there, have the black pepper on the table. Like, put it on there consciously. Pay attention to what it's doing in your body. When you're looking at the spice rack, take off the cover of the cinnamon, smell it.

William Siff: 1:11:54

No, it's like, get into it, like use your senses that the plants actually be a grounding rod to get you back into your body and it will, you know, demystify a lot of this and it makes, it makes life really fun to have a plant, medicinal plant Lifestyle. You know, because you have all these unique, novel experiences to look forward to all day, adorning your day. You know you've got your racy mushroom and coffee in the morning, that you got your ginger tea in the afternoon and you've got your fragrances Diffusing around the house and then you chop up some cilantro and basil to put on your food and then you eat some garlic and then, you know, you take your your skull cap to calm you down. These are like really unique and novel experiences and they reconnect us to ourselves and to nature. And yeah, more I could say. I know our time's up, but it's one of the right, no, that's good.

Lunden Souza: 1:12:44

I love it. I'm so much good stuff. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you so much. I'll put all the links to your book, your website and your beverage company in the description, whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to it on the podcast, so then you can get connected with William and, yeah, dive deeper into this topic. Thank you, William, for your time. I appreciate you. I'm excited for all you've done in the world and what you continue to do. It's so inspiring to me and thank you guys for listening.

William Siff: 1:13:16

Thank you, thanks Lunden.

Lunden Souza: 1:13:19

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of self-love and sweat the podcast. Hey, do me a favor wherever you're listening to this podcast, give us a review this really helps a lot and share this with a friend. I'm only one person and with your help, we can really spread the message of self-love and sweat and change more lives all around the world. I'm Lunden Souza, reminding you that you deserve a life full of passion, presence and purpose, fueled by self-love and sweat. This Podcast is a hit spot. Austria production. You.