Listen here:

In this episode, we will cover:

• The role of patient versus self healer
• The science of self-healing
• Building emotional resilience during chaos
• How to naturally heal eczema and other skin challenges
• Spiritual understanding behind birth control and fertility
• Rebuilding our skin and body on a cellular level

Additional Resources:

COURSE: The Lightworker’s Library

Over 40 activations to help the lightworker who wants to use their story with chronic illness to inspire others and activate their life’s purpose. These activations help you to rewire your beliefs around self worth, money, fear, time, confidence, and more.

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Save 10% with code SARAH10. Align with your higher self with herbally infused CBD. Use the power of herbs + full-spectrum CBD to allow your body to return to the self-healing powerhouse we know it is.

GUIDE: Empath Empowerment Guide

A 7-day email course to help you discover what type of empath you are, how to protect your energy, harness your intuitive strengths, and release energy vampires.

Episode transcript:

Sarah: Welcome to the Healing Uncensored podcast. My name is Sarah Small and I’m a life and success coach for empaths who want to create a thriving body, business, and life. Healing my own chronic illnesses as an empath led me to become fascinated with energy, and more specifically all of the emotional, spiritual and holistic healing modalities my doctor never told me about. I began to share my insights and journey online, and over time, built a powerful community and business supporting women who were also on the pathway to healing. Think of this podcast as your uncensored and no-BS guide to navigating life, health, and entrepreneurship as an empath. You’ll get no-nonsense and totally holistic tips from me in real-time as I navigate this healing journey right beside you. Now, let’s get started.

 Welcome, welcome, welcome. We’re back for another episode. On today’s episode, I have Amy Zhou with me. She is a modern-day medicine woman and a certified Holistic Health Coach. We are going to be talking about so many things today, including restoring the belief in our power to heal ourselves and rebuild both our skin and body on a cellular level through things like food. Amy works and is on a mission to inspire women to reverse the chronic health conditions that have robbed them of their competence, sensuality, and desire to live their dreams. We are going to dive in deep to the science of self-healing, how to build emotional resilience during chaotic times with health, which I’m sure many of you can relate to, and then we’ll talk more specifically about how to naturally heal things like eczema and other skin issues and as you all know, I’ve had my own journey with skin issues as well. 

 

And then – oh my God – we are going to talk about the spiritual reasons behind taking birth control and clearing up acne, as well as fertility issues that you may experience after the pill, which is just so mind-blowing, you guys are going to love this, and talk about how to rebuild our skin and body on a cellular level through food, the act of cooking for healing the body and so much more. So you’re going to love it. Let’s dive right in. 

Welcome to the show, Amy. I’m so excited to have you on today. 

 

Amy:     Thank you so much for having me. Sarah, I am so excited too

 

The role of patient versus self healer

Sarah:   So you are a modern-day medicine woman and actually the archetype of medicine woman is one that I’ve talked about on the show before, and I think it’s something that we can all embody more of. And I was looking at this post that you have on Instagram, and I was Yes!! It was a picture of two separate bodies, and it was the role of the patient versus the self-healer and how your body – I won’t give it away, I’ll let you answer this part – operates in different ways, whether you’re going on that path of patient or self-healer. Can you talk about the difference for us?

 

Amy:     Yes, that image is really powerful. It’s actually from a book about traditional Chinese medicine and when I was a student at IIN, Integrative Nutrition School, that was one of the images that one of the lecturers, the instructors brought up in his presentation and it just resonated with me so much. I feel like because of modern medicine, we have become so reliant on doctors knowing everything, and we make an appointment when we don’t feel well. We just wait for hours and hours in the doctor’s office, being a patient, and they really view us as a machine. They look at our body as a machine, as little gears, as separate. Organs are separate, they see them as separate entities and they don’t look at it as a whole. You have specialists that’s like a brain surgeon, and you have your OB that is for all the female fertility and pregnancy and delivery things, but it’s never holistic. So when I saw that image, looking at one as being the patient versus the other as the self-healer, that just really shifted my mindset about how we as humans of this society and in this day and age is approaching our healing in general. I think absolutely modern medicine is amazing for emergencies, and they’re absolutely ways to engage with it, but if we were to create long term health and wellbeing, it’s really important to look at ourselves and believe in ourselves, as you know, you talk a lot about that we have this self-healing power within our own body that we can actually tune into without relying on doctors all the time. 

 

Sarah:    Yeah. No, I’m glad you brought that up because there is a time and a place for it. But I see and I used to do this myself where we’re not even considering ourselves self-healing at all and only playing the role of patient when in fact we do have so much. We are naturally self-healing organisms and in that image, it was the patient like you said, where the doctors see more of the body as a machine, versus the self-healer and the body more as I think it was a garden. Yeah, that imagery like I was already coming to my mind, but I would love for you to describe it.

 

Amy:     Yes, when we go on the self-healing journey, I feel like inevitably, as we continue on that journey, we will feel more connected with nature. I feel that way. When my mom started healing her chronic illnesses. She feels that way. She’s more drawn to nature. Before we were just bugs, dirt, sweat, and the sun, but now it’s like all of these things are filling our body and recharging our body and that is what that image is trying to articulate to us. When we see our body as a garden, we start to understand that everything is like an ecosystem. Everything in our body has a place. Even the bacteria in our microbiome has a place, and so everything kind of works in synchronization as an entire unit. That creates balance because that is what a garden that’s what this entire planet works off of this, this delicate balance that creates life, right the cycle of life and death, life and death, and transformation. So it constantly regenerates. I think that is how we want our bodies to feel. We don’t want to feel like it’s going to break down on us anytime. and we need to go get a fix like a car, okay to the doctors. We want to feel like we know what’s going on. We know how to garden our bodies because we know that is a delicate balance in the ecosystem and we have the tools to regenerate.

The science of self-healing

Sarah:    Yeah, it’s so much more empowering. And so something you talk about is the science of self-healing. And I have said on my show before, I definitely get into my nerd/dork out mode a lot. And when we talk about self-healing, or what I mostly see on social media around being a self-healer is more in the spiritual side, more in the energy realm and so I’d love to break this down for listeners to really understand there is science behind this, and it’s not overly complicated but I don’t feel like it’s talked about quite as much. So can we talk about the science of self-healing?

 

Amy:     Yes. So when I say science, I really just look at nature. Everything that we have actually developed through science is a study of nature in general. If you have a man that challenges God to create a human being, God would tell you, well go get your own dirt because as humans, we’re not at the same level as nature itself. So, science inevitably is at the mercy of nature, the teachings of nature. So when I talk about the science of self-healing, we really just have to look at the science of nature, natural healing and the natural world to teach us what the truth is.  So that’s kind of where I go. And I tell people, and when you say energy, I feel like that is a lot of it is science. 

 

Sarah:   It is. 

 

Amy:     It really is. So for instance, when you know the root cause, for instance of your chronic condition, your body actually starts to recognize what’s happening on a cellular level, and it can create because of the way that you’re thinking the intelligence, the wisdom that is suddenly unlocked within yourself, that it could start to create its own antibodies to increase immunity to actually target that root cause and help you heal. So really all of this, the metaphysical stuff versus the physical stuff, they’re all part of it I believe. That’s how I would put it.

 

Sarah:   Yeah. And, as you said, they all play a role in self-healing. What are some examples of self-healing that you’ve either seen in your practice and your work or even in your own body that allows you to play more of that empowering role in your life, versus the patient who is more at the whim of external circumstances, and instead, the internal ability of the body?

 

Amy:     Yes, it’s really shifting my mindset. I love how you pulled out the example of the body as a machine versus a body as a gardener or self-healer, being a patient or self-healer because once you have that mindset shift, you start to become empowered inside, then you start to look for messages and you start to look for information that will guide you along that path. And the more that you kind of explore and the more that you apply, it’s not enough to have knowledge of something. Just knowing that I think I could heal, it’s not going to get you on that healing path unless you apply the knowledge because applying the knowledge is wisdom. It’s about taking that action. So a lot of self-healing needs to be combined with knowledge and action, which creates the self-healing wisdom that takes you one step at a time to shift your entire being on a cellular level to rewire yourself to be self-healing on that level, literally on the atomic level. So that’s how I see it. I tell people, there are really only two types of cells out there. Cells that are coward – and I call them C cells – they complain a lot. They cause chaos or cells that are champions. They believe in you. They conquer. They have confidence. So you really need to choose which one are you going to be when you decide to go on a self-healing path. I don’t know if that answers your question.

 

Sarah:    I love that. I love the C cell analogy there related to the mindset as well. And so you use that word mindset and I’m sure people are curious about it. So we are, naturally as I understand it, self-healing organisms but how do we step into more of that self-healer role and that power in our life? Are there any actionable, tangible things that we can do, maybe around mindset to empower ourselves to heal even more?

 

Amy:     Yes, so I used to just say affirmations are for people that just can’t get their minds that as they were, but I truly do now believe in affirmation more and more. It almost feels like it’s been played out by a lot of us who are on the spiritual path, but I do believe that there is power in it. But it’s really important for you to believe in the things that you’re saying. You can take someone’s affirmation and make it your own, as long as you feel inside that that is something that you truly believe that can happen for you. And I think a lot of it has to do with our patients. And in addition to that is actually endurance and resilience on this path. Because as my mom was healing with me, and she took on her own self-healing role, she noticed that a lot of times when you’re on a self-healing journey, your symptoms, whether it’s chronically physically, mentally, whatever it is, gets a lot worse before it gets a lot better. So there’s this roller coaster ride that you kind of have to go through, and you have to be able to kind of pick yourself up and those are the points in the dip of that roller coaster ride, that all the tools that you have, whether it’s meditation, affirmation, chanting, prayer, whatever it is that will restore that faith and trust, that those are the things that you want to use to kind of make sure that you stay on that path and continue to embody that role of a self-healer because you’re constantly trying to regenerate from it.

 

Building emotional resilience during chaos

Sarah:    Yeah. Can you talk about building emotional resilience during the chaos that is that roller coaster of a health journey? Like you said, sometimes we take a few steps back or you saw your mother take a few steps back before she went forward. And that can wear I think, on our psyche and on our hope and our excitement to get better when we do feel like we’re not consistently making progress at a steady pace forward, forward, forward, or it’s not fast enough or whatever. How do we start to build that emotional resilience that truly helps us continue along this path?

 

Amy:     I think the most important thing is to change our comparison to celebration, because a lot of times when we’re on a healing path, we hear other peoples’ success on their healing quite a bit, and then we start to compare ourselves to why have they gotten this result and I haven’t? Versus if you change your mind to celebrating their success, I feel like that could actually accelerate your success rate as well on this healing path. It’s about just coming together and healing faster together and obviously asking for support when you need to. A lot of times I feel like when we’re self-healing, because even the worst self-healing, it feels like, oh, we’re doing it ourselves. We’re not doing it alone. And asking for support is really important. So changing your mind, changing your perception of comparing yourself to the results that you anticipate or seeing in others to celebrate the potential in you, and also the success of others as you’re going. I feel like that, for me has been really, really, really helpful, and a lot of other of the clients that work with and students that I mentor, that’s why we have a tribe and I know you have your community too and that’s why we’re doing this podcast because the more we talk about this, the more that we show each other that it’s possible that we have compassion for each other, and that is when we can actually heal faster or that resilience. It’s a muscle. It’s a muscle. It’s hard when you’re building it. You’re in pain, so I get it. I totally get it.

 

Sarah:    Hello, my loves. I am popping in for just a moment to let you know that this episode was brought to you by Beekeepers’ Naturals. Beekeepers’ Naturals create amazing clean, non-toxic, natural products that they obsessively research. They do pesticide testing, and they support pollinators, and these are just a few reasons why I love this company, and especially the Propolis Throat Spray. You all know that there is a little thing called coronavirus going around and I’ve been doing so many things to just naturally support my immune system lately. I went to acupuncture yesterday morning and stimulated some of the energy meridians related to our immune system. But I’ve also been supporting it in more of an internal and physical way with things like the Propolis Spray because it has just three simple ingredients. It is powered by bee propolis. It is an incredible germ fighter and contains over 300 beneficial compounds including lots of antioxidants. I know I have a few travel dates coming up and this is going to be literally in my pocket as I travel so I don’t get sick with anything, regardless of what it is. So I encourage you all to give this product a try. You can get 15% off your first order. Head over to beekeepers naturals.com/healing uncensored, or simply enter the code ‘healing uncensored’ at checkout for your 15% off. Alright, let’s get back to the episode. 

How to naturally heal eczema and other skin challenges

So I want to just shift gears a little bit here because I really want to make sure we have time to talk about skin and skin health and skin healing, and it’s something that I’ve talked to my community about and my own struggle with that, and what I saw on your Instagram as you’ve had your own challenges with skin, though you are glowing today, but I’d love to hear your own journey with skin as well as how, in your experience is the best way to naturally heal from any skin symptoms that we may be experiencing, whether that’s eczema or acne or anything else?

 

Amy:     Yes, absolutely. So I’ll rewind to talk about my own journey with skin. So it’s interesting. I never actually had eczema in my life until probably after I graduated from college, and I started working really long hours and then I have flare-ups every other month, and these flare-ups are fine. I mean, they come, they last for a week, they would be all over my face, and I obviously can’t see anyone during that time, but they would go away. But it isn’t until probably around eight or nine years later when I was in a really high-stress environment. I was working for billion-dollar eCommerce startups and I was running teams with 20 people, engineers, and it just kept coming back. It was over my eyes. It was all over my neck, different parts of my body, and I was like What is going on? I want to see all these doctors, basically going to the doctor’s merry-go-round. I’ve seen experts. They prescribed me steroids and different creams. There’s a cream for my eye, there’s a cream for my neck, and there’s all these different protocols and put me on these allergy tablets because it looks like it’s an allergic reaction. I feel like it is too, but let’s figure out what it is, and then they say maybe you’re allergic to gold. I don’t even wear gold, and my parents were humoring me. My mom’s like, give me all your gold. I’m pretty sure this is not the right diagnosis. 

 

Sarah:   Yeah.

 

Amy:     So that was a huge thing for me. It’s difficult to wake up in the morning and look at your skin and have to think okay, well, how many minutes do I have to put on all the makeup to cover it all up before I feel confident to go out in the world and engage with people There’s that self-image. I feel like a lot of times we’re like, you don’t look sick. It’s not that bad. I’ve seen worse, and that may be true but for ourselves that self-image is really important, and we wear our skin as this human meat suit every day. You see it every day. So that was what was happening to my body and I wanted a natural solution because every time I stopped the steroids, I would have withdrawals and it comes back worse and I was like, this is not going to work. This is not the long term solution. I don’t know what to do. So I started playing around with my food. I turned vegan. The inflammation would be more manageable, but it never really truly went away, and a lot of times, I feel like I have a T-zone issue, like your forehead would get really greasy and the rest of your face is dry. What is going on?

 

Sarah:   When is happening here? How do I fix this?

 

Amy:     Yeah, how do I fix this? I have to powder myself in the bathroom in the middle of the day if I worked too hard during the day and use too much of my adrenaline, so something is going on with my skin. And so I enrolled myself to become a health coach at IIN. There’s more information there. But at that time, one of the students told me about the Medical Medium. Have you heard of him before? 

 

Sarah:   Yeah, yep. Yeah. 

 

Amy:     So I looked into his information, and when you’re desperate for healing, and when you’re desperate for natural healing, you want to try everything possible. 

 

Sarah:   Absolutely. Yeah. 

 

Amy:     I really resonated with his story. His history really did feel to me comes from a place of compassion, and heart. And so I said, Okay, well, let’s do this. Let’s try it. And his theory is very scientifically based. So when we’re talking about the science of healing, the science of nature. It’s very simple. He said, our bodies don’t attack ourselves unless there’s viruses and bacteria that is making our body their home, and that really resonated with me. I said, Well, duh, but almost seems like it’s too common sense. So I said, Okay, let’s just test this theory because I’m an engineer, I have an engineering degree. And I say everything that I do, I need to test the theory, I experiment. So I did it on myself and I cleansed my body. I used food only and I taught myself basically food literacy from reading all of his books. And also, I’m studying energy, studying all these different healing modalities from school, and then I finally saw healing in myself, but it’s fascinating. It isn’t just about applying Medical Medium’s information and food. Like you said, Sarah, it’s a lot about energy and your mind. 

 

If I did not have the resilience in my mindset, and it was a difficult journey, I don’t think that I would have been able to heal my skin all the way. Yeah. And I see it time and time again, even with my students, the ones that take a little longer to heal usually are the ones who need a lot more spiritual development, to build that resilience, to have that belief to pick themselves up when they’re going low. So that’s my story and I really do believe that. For eczema, it is a virus. It is a very patient virus. So when you’re fighting something that is very patient, you have to be patient with yourself. And I want you to know, when I was healing my eczema, my acne came out as if I was a teenager. It covered my entire face because I didn’t know that acne is caused by Bacteria Costa and he is best friends with the virus that causes eczema. So when you’re healing your eczema, this whole healing process like I said, you kind of have to turn into a monster before you can have the glow and the beauty.

 

Sarah:   Takes patience like you said. There have been moments, there have been days, there have been weeks. there have been months at a time where I’ve woken up looking in the mirror and been so frustrated and not wanting to be seen by the world, and even right now in the middle of a detox and things purge through your skin. Oh, man! It’s not easy. It takes resilience but leaning into the patience of this is my body getting rid of something and eventually, this is going to clear itself out of my system, as long as I’m doing the right methods of clearing, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that eventually, it is going to clear itself up, but when you’re in the depths of it, gosh, it can be so hard, so challenging for your confidence.

 

Amy:     It really, really was for me too. I have family members who would see me at family gatherings, but they would be afraid to tell me to my face that my skin looked bad. So they would be telling either my mother-in-law or my mother and then they will eventually tell me, and now you see that my skin is healing really well, but at that phase, it felt almost like you’re changing your skin. 

 

Sarah:   Yeah

 

Amy:     I have students that send me photos of their eczema and their eczema were way worse than mine, covering their entire body and you’re going through topical steroidal withdrawal so badly that they actually have to take time off from work because they physically cannot go outside. It looks like reptilian skin, just coming off like a snake.

 

Sarah:   Yeah, I’ve seen some pictures of people have posted like that withdrawal from especially like a steroidal cream, and your skin like you said reptilian, it flakes like crazy and it’s painful as well. I mean, I went through my own skin healing journey, part of which was eczema, part of which was cystic acne, part of which was melasma, and I still go through part of this but was originally just given that option of steroids, steroids, steroids, steroids. Here’s a cream, like you were saying, here’s a cream for under your eye and here’s one for your neck and here’s … I had it on my stomach so there was a different cream from my stomach. Oh my gosh! But to find more of a natural healing path ultimately, not only helped me see sustainable, lasting results that didn’t depend on putting a cream on my body every day but also got to the root of what’s going on. And so you mentioned three things that stood out to me so far, which is if there’s a pathogen that your body’s attacking, or causing or even interplay of different pathogens like you’re saying, like strep …and did you say EDB? 

 

Amy:     Yeah, EDB. The virus, yeah. 

 

Sarah:   And then the mindset, the resilience of healing, the patience around healing, the ability or the belief to say I know I can heal, and then changing your food and your dietary needs so that you’re not causing maybe more inflammation in your body. So are those kind of the three main pillars that you used to heal your skin as an entire protocol?

 

Amy:     Yes, it is, and it all starts with the liver. I think if we want to just also break it down even further, your liver is using your skin as a secondary detox center, so if we want to just start by loving our liver and doing all of those things around the liver, then everything else as an entire unit of your body will start to kind of take command. In Chinese medicine, they say the liver is the general of your body. It is literally, so imagine if you’re eating food that is heavy in grease, lots of protein, lots of fat, lots of meat, and I still have a lot of people that still eat meat. It’s just a way smaller amount than what they used to eat. Imagine you’re drinking alcohol, you’re partying all the time. Your liver is literally this fat general that’s just sitting on a ton of trash. That’s not going to be doing a lot of work and getting your organs and everything else in your body orchestrated to work well with you. And that’s why you’re seeing all of these things like coming out from your skin. So that’s really important to know. 

 

I think another thing would be just your lymphatic system, and when you’re healing and detoxing really, really hard, depending on how your lymphatic system works and how it flows, it could determine how much you break out, how much you are reacting and flaring up. So just kind of noticing all these different ways that your body work together, like you said, with the food, with your mindset, and just with the knowledge that you are fighting against some of the most patient and nastiest pathogens on this planet, then hopefully you would be able to win the battle. I feel like it’s a pretty long battle, but if you’re determined, I know that we can do it.

 

Sarah:   Everyone can heal their skin. Everyone’s body when given the right nutrients and the right environment can heal their skin. I know I’m somebody who thought that I couldn’t at one point in my own skin healing journey. I just thought, oh, well, this is just going to be the way my skin is forever, and I really gave up hope for a period of time until I eventually found a practitioner who could help me figure out the pathogens that were causing the breakouts. And what I’m hearing from you is really an integrative approach. If you just get rid of a pathogen, but then you are still eating super greasy foods, then you’re probably still going to break out or have inflammatory eczema. Or if you just change your mindset and you have a freaking top-notch, amazing mindset, but you still have a pathogen in your body, that’s not going to be this integrative approach of really looking at it from multiple angles.

 

Amy:     Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny because I have some spiritual healers that are attracted to my content and my message, and I would engage with them and see what they post and obviously love them back, share my love back with them. But a lot of times they would associate some of our physical symptoms to messages that they’re receiving from the spiritual realm, and when I look at those two together sometimes I say well, you know if it’s been a chronic thing that you’re experiencing like ringing in your ear or having a migraine, those are actually signals that your body’s trying to send you, you would need physical healing, not just spiritual healing. You’re absolutely right about the fact that we have to recognize that we live in a heavily toxic world because we have processed everything because of consumerism and convenience and capitalism, all the Cs, and every 10 years, our pathogens get stronger and stronger and stronger. We have to understand that we have to stay clean, really on the physical level so then we can stay clean on the spiritual and the metaphysical, mental level as well, so it’s all of it like you said.

The spiritual understanding behind birth control and fertility

Sarah:   Absolutely. Okay, I really want to talk about this because I also saw a post in your feed that I was just so excited. I had never heard this perspective before, and it was around birth control. I feel like every woman listening is going to resonate with this if they ever went to a doctor and said, I have issues with acne, there’s a high percentage that birth control was a …

 

Amy:     An option. 

 

Sarah:   An option, yeah. Oh, just take birth control. It’ll clear up your skin. And then they take the birth control regardless of whether they’re taking it for literal birth control reasons or just skin issues to try and get that glow and get that clear skin. But what you talk about in the post is like, you could tell the story but there’s spiritual and physical reasons around why that would clear up your skin. But then also what we’re seeing now more and more I think in my generation is that women who come off the pill are now having fertility issues and not able to become fertile or get pregnant as easily as they would like. Can you break this down for us, because it is blowing my mind? It is so fascinating.

 

Amy:     It’s so funny, some of my content I create because my students would tell me that blew my mind. I didn’t know that. Okay, yeah, I could definitely post about it.

 

Sarah:   I’m so glad you did. 

 

Amy:     Yeah, I just listened to what people are telling me and I said, Okay, yeah, I could talk more about that. I absolutely can. So we in general like I said, live in a very toxic world, and one of the toxicities that we put in our bodies are literally pills that are made in labs that we put in our bodies, and I know they’re made with an intention of achieving a certain result, but when we’re using it in a long, extended period of time without understanding the consequences, and we are creating an environment inside of ourselves that can will actually disconnect us from our ability to create life within us, literally in this sense with the pill. So one thing is when you’re taking the pill, every day that you’re taking a pill on the mindset level it is really important to understand that you’re telling your body I don’t want to create life. That’s it. 

 

Sarah:   Just wait, hold on, because … everyone, let that sink in. Yes, it seems like you’re just too throwing the pill down the throat with all the other supplements or whatever at the same time every day, but on the more emotional, mental, metaphysical level, you are telling your body I don’t want babies and I don’t want to reproduce and I don’t want to create life. You know that little mind-blown emoji? That’s what my face looks like right now because it is so true. 

Amy:     Because our thoughts create our actions and our realities, so every time that you are taking that pill, there’s an intention behind it, like why are you doing it? So you’re training your body to just kind of be like, okay, I don’t want a baby. I don’t want a baby. I don’t want a baby. So I do have a meditation teacher that guides me on all of this stuff. So when I talk about these the findings that I have, about how the mind works and what we’re doing to our body on a physical level, she said, Okay, well, if you really don’t want to have a child, you can switch that mentality and say, I am happy being childfree instead of I don’t want a child, or I don’t want to create life, because different phases of your life you can enjoy not having a child.

 

Sarah:   Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking like when I was on birth control for eight years I was I don’t want a child. I don’t want a child. I don’t want a child, but eventually, that started to shift and that wasn’t the mindset I wanted to keep forever. 

 

Amy:     Correct. Exactly. So what happens is when you want to switch that mindset, your body needs a time of adjustment. So a lot of times people are trying and trying and trying, and they’re not getting pregnant or they can’t conceive, there’s a mental thing that you have to shift yourself into and then your body’s like, okay, now you want one, and then on the physical level, your body also needs time to recover from the artificially trained cycles that …

 

Sarah:   Synthetic hormones that are obviously having some reaction in your body.

 

Amy:     Correct, correct. And that’s what’s happening too when people get off the birth control, their skin breaks out. That’s what’s happening too because it’s artificially telling your body something that is suppressing, that is just basically hiding all of the bacteria from the strep with the acne under the rug until you pull off the rug, and now it’s coming back out. So you’re just really putting a Band-Aid on. A lot of these pills and things like that are just a Band-Aid on top of what is really going on, and when you rip the Band-Aid off, you see that your wound is still not healing and there’s still a healing path that you have to go on. You’re basically just delaying life.

 

Sarah:   So you talked about the acne and a reason why birth control is sometimes prescribed when people are having breakouts to help calm the skin down, but on an internal level, it’s like going back to the liver and the general that you were talking about before, where it’s more like storing and holding on to the pathogens or the bacteria, and then when you go off the pill, you’re like, oh my God, why is my skin so angry? What’s happening? Why am I breaking out worse than I ever had before? And it seems like it’s just like the general releasing all those little fighters now, whereas it was more suppressed while you were on the pill. Am I getting that right?

 

Amy:     Yes, that’s right. Because when you’re taking things like even the steroid creams, you’re basically telling your body, okay, you’re turning off your immune system. That’s what it is because our immune system is the reason why we flare-up. It’s putting on a fight. It’s trying to get rid of stuff for us. That’s why we have the pimples that are red and swelling up, and that’s why we have eczema that’s flaring up, so same thing with the pill. Just as steroid creams, it is basically telling our immune system No, nothing’s wrong, don’t worry about it. Everything is good. It’s creating a placebo effect in your own immune system that’s thinking that everything is fine so nothing is happening in your body. So a lot of times when people come to me and say, Well, you know, that person has perfect skin, and they don’t need to go through all these healing protocols, and I’m feeling way worse than I had before. And I said, Well, you don’t know what’s going on underneath it all. You don’t know what they’re taking to suppress the symptoms that eventually will build up over time. And once you rip the band-aids off, or once you get off that medication, all hell’s going to break loose and it’s going to take you way longer to heal at that point. You’re going to have to build up way more resilience to get through that at that point.

 

Sarah:   Yeah, what’s the saying? Its comparison is the thief of joy, and I used to compare my skin progress or going in the opposite direction, getting worse to other people’s skin all the time, Amy and it was just exhausting and it hurt my heart and it did steal my joy. And I think we have to realize that we’re all on our own individual path and to really resist that urge to compare where you think you are compared to somebody else because ultimately we don’t know what’s going on inside their body.

 

Amy:     Yeah, yes, I absolutely agree with that. And that’s why when one of my students said I just quit my job for a couple of months, and I’m just going to focus on myself. That was the bravest thing that I have ever heard. She said okay, I’m just going to focus on myself, not have to feel like I have to put on a show and really just let my body heal. That is the most courageous thing anyone can do.

Rebuilding our skin and body on a cellular level

Sarah:   Another thing you talk about too is in that healing process, rebuilding our skin and our body on a cellular level because we do have turnover, and as I understand it, there’s a general turnover of skin cells that’s like every four to six weeks, I believe, but also we’re all individuals, and it’s probably going to look different in each of our bodies, even how quickly our eyelashes grow back and fall out and our hair falls out and grows back. But can you talk about how we can rebuild and we do have that cellular regeneration and turnover in our body, and how food supports that rebuilding?

 

Amy:     Yes, absolutely. I really love how Medical Medium talks about the 3-6-9. So when we’re talking about the regeneration of anything, we could kind of divide it into that 3-6-9 period. That is three weeks. I know you have a 21-day self-healing block. That’s three weeks, that’s my number. That’s the quickest one, and then there’s the six, and then there’s the nine. So you can do three threes, like three weeks, six weeks, nine weeks, you could think about it that way. And you could do three months, six months, nine months, and you could do three years, six years, nine years. That’s the cycle in general that we’re working with, the rhythm of nature. Breaking it down in that way will help you out, wherever you are in the healing journey, whether you want to work with time on a year versus days versus a week or month kind of level. 

 

So that’s one and then using food. So it’s interesting that you say this because food has intelligence and vibration and consciousness on its own. So when you take a look at the different foods and the energy that it contains, and when you’re consuming it, you’re literally taking on the energy, so why not be smart about what type of energy we’re taking into ourselves. So for instance, I know when I was studying [unclear; 44:13] food and healing modalities, which is even more traditional than Ayurvedic practices in India, they talk about how the Emperors and the Warriors would eat meat because those are highly adrenalized food sources, and their job needs the adrenaline in order to rule, in order to command, in order to lead so it was fitting for them to eat that. But if you are a monk, who is teaching about sharing wisdom, about meditating and connecting with the metaphysical, you want to be eating foods that are of higher vibration potentially, that is less adrenalized. So that would be foods that are like fruits, vegetables, or maybe even fish instead of beef or pork. So those are the different levels of energies that we can kind of play around with when we’re viewing food as energy that we are taking in, because they have information and they actually go inside and train ourselves to match their vibration and their intention, so I personally like to look at my healing and my daily intake of food based on that. Yeah, how much do I want to reach done rate? What type of foods will help me help my cells regenerate faster when I need to? What foods are more grounding for me? when I need that, I would get more of those like vegetables. Just using logic like that and simplifying it down to the fundamentals principles.

 

Sarah:   Yeah, I think we’re, as a society, as a population, as a whole starting to lean back into what our ancestors knew, which is food is medicine. But to me what you’re saying takes it a level deeper as not just food as medicine as in it has all these macro/micronutrients and minerals that literally fuel our body to keep us alive and keep us well. But that the food we put in our body also has a frequency, also has a vibration or an energy that we as empaths are listening, sisters. If you absorb the energy of people, you better bet you’re going to absorb the energy of the food you literally put inside of your body as well. And so just being even more conscious of what the vibration of our food is, not just what the calories are inside of a food or something, and that to me is more holistic view as food as medicine and the way that can support that cellular rebuilding and turnover in our lives and our bodies and our skin. You also mentioned cooking as this healing act as well. To me, it’s almost therapeutic in many ways. Can you talk about that?

 

Amy:     Yes, absolutely. So it’s interesting, because as I was healing with the Medical Medium protocol, and for all the people who are listening who is doing this stuff, I don’t know if you guys can relate to me, but I was eating a lot of raw foods and salad and making spinach soup and smoothies, and I come from a culture and heritage that loves warm foods. And it’s interesting because I’m 38 weeks pregnant right now, and the first 14 weeks of my pregnancy, I have food aversion. I couldn’t eat the raw diet that I was eating, that I was healing my skin and all the chronic illnesses from and so I started to just revolt, even stepping into the kitchen and making these foods because my senses were so heightened and I started to recognize that a lot of my clients and students tell me I can’t just eat this stuff all day, I started to connect with that a lot more. So I got myself into the kitchen, and I started experimenting, the transformational power of adding heat and how my body’s reacting to that. How far can I take that while still healing, and still enjoy my food and actually work with my senses and respect what my body is telling me at the time, and not just blindly following a protocol that I believe that is healing that I need to follow it, really stretch it to the tee. Because when you have restrictions in any part of your healing, whether are you just following a protocol to a tee and not saying no to all these other things or whatever it is, like energetically restricting in your space, you’re not going to heal. That’s just it. When you have a blockage anywhere, when you push things away instead of inviting things in, then that is when your Spirit says, No, I don’t want that. It doesn’t feel good. 

 

And so that’s why cooking has been such a magical practice for me because it removes all of my blocks on the physical level. All of the stories that I had about different ingredients, doing different things to my body, different ways of cooking, being creative, it slowly rewrote all of those stories for me over time as I was working with the food, and I started to have so much love for the process. And you were saying how everything is energy. I actually do look at the ingredients and who actually produced it. The story of the family on the farm. I actually do imagine how the food is being handled in the production process because everything down from the planting the seed to the harvest, staying to the production of it, it’s absorbing energy. So I translate that into my kitchen and cooking, and how it’s become this practice of literally just charging food with so much love, creativity, and loving myself for it in the process, and not feeling like healing with food is a chore, that it takes a lot of time, that it’s restricting, that I have to do this in order to achieve this result. So just getting rid of all of those stories one by one, by taking action. So that’s how I do cooking.

 

Sarah:   That’s probably really different than a lot of people view it, but such a beautiful way to transition into that connection to food, where it’s not a restrictive relationship and it’s one that is so healing, and to me, the connection is the word that’s coming up. You’re deeply connected to your food, and grateful for the food that is that medicine energetically and on a more physical level that you’re putting into your body, and just how much more healing and magical that is for our body. So I thank you. Thank you so much, Amy, thank you for being on today. Is there anything else you want to share? And also where can we find more about you and the things that you have to offer this world?

 

Amy:     Yeah, absolutely. So you guys can find me on Instagram @amythemedicinewoman, and I just released my first cookbook, which is an unconventional way of cooking because I teach you how to actually work with all your physical senses. And that’s another thing that I wanted to say if there’s anything else to add, I do want to add that because I feel like because we live in a world where technology is so big, everything that we want is created for us, whether we go to a restaurant or everything is packaged nicely for us, or go online and all the information is there. But with cooking, a lot of times we get a recipe book, and it just gives you like 100 recipes and then you’re done with maybe two or three of them, and you put it away and at the end of the day, you’re like well, what did it teach me? Did it really teach me how to cook? Did it teach me that we eat first with our nose, that we can actually cook with our ears? All of these senses that we are gifted within this physical body, we can actually activate them when we’re in the kitchen because it’s an entire sensory experience. It’s even more advanced than painting an oil painting as an artist because you have to use visuals, you have to use your ingredients, you have to use color and you have to use your nose, your mouth, your taste, everything in order to create something that is satisfying, especially if you’re a plant-based diet. Yeah, so I wanted to point that out my cookbook is out and it’s taking me a long time to kind of get that in. It’s just the digital version but it teaches you how to kind of pull those elements together and design a dish and create variations of it, so that you can actually be more intuitive with the way that you create and work with your food. So you can find that on my Instagram as well, and that’s probably the only thing I have to offer right now because I’m about to give birth. So if there are any moms out there hanging out with us today, you can also follow that journey. First time mom doing a first time thing.

 

Sarah:   Congratulations, and thank you so much. And yeah, you guys go check out Amy’s Instagram that we’ll also link to in the show notes. And this cookbook sounds very unconventional in the way that you put it together in a way that really educates and empowers people to use those intuitive senses and the kitchen that I’d love to see more of us come back home to those roots when we do step into the kitchen when we do make our meals. Thank you again.

 

Amy:     Thank you so much, Sarah. It was such a pleasure.

 

Sarah:   Thank you all for tuning in. As always, I appreciate your time, your love, your reviews. It means the world to me, and I hope that you’ll leave after listening to this today just feeling empowered by your body’s self-healing abilities, natural self-healing abilities. I’d love to hear what you learned from this episode. Feel free to tag me or DM me over on Instagram at the_empowered_empath. Have a beautiful rest of your day and I’ll talk to you soon.

 

About Amy

Amy Zhou is a modern-day Medicine Woman, and certified holistic health coach. Her message of restoring belief in our power to heal ourselves and rebuilding our skin & body on a cellular level through food has empowered women around the globe to change their lives. She is on a mission to continue her work in inspiring women to reverse the chronic health conditions that have robbed them of their confidence, sensuality, and desire to live their dreams.

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