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Mindfulness, Meditation and Manifesting

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. In today’s podcast, we’re covering how mindfulness, meditation and manifesting can unlock your full potential. My guest is Emily Fletcher, who is the founder of Ziva meditation and a leader in meditation for extraordinary performance. Her book, Stress Less Accomplish More, debuted at number seven out of all books on Amazon when it was released. Emily has been featured in the New York times. Good morning America, the Today show, Vogue and ABC news. She has been named one of the top 100 women in wellness to watch has taught more than 20,000 students around the world and has spoken on meditation for performance, Apple, Google, and Harvard business school. Her Ziva graduates include Oscar, Grammy, Tony and Emmy award winners in NBA players, Navy seals, fortune 500 CEOs, and busy parents. Emily is back on The Spa Dr. Podcast, to cover more about meditation, but also how mindfulness ties in and how the two of these, why not to help manifest life to the fullest in work relationships love and much more so. Please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Emily is so great to have you back on the Spa Dr. podcast. Welcome.

Emily Fletcher: Thank you for having me. I was just alluding to when I was getting ready for this, I was thinking about how much I love you and how grateful I am. We just, I feel like we just dance in the same circles and I just, I see you at this conference and then this conference and I feel like every time I see you, you look more radiant. You look younger, you look more beautiful. And I’m just amazed at the fact that you’re a doctor. No you are telling me you’re going back to enrich your degree in spiritual psychology and you’re a mom and you’re making everyone else happier and younger. And so I just wanted to toot your horn for a little while and say how, how grateful I am to be your friend and how proud I am of you.

Dr. Cates: Awe, thank you Emily. Well, and you have got some amazing things going on. You’re just, you know, inspiring all amazing people, which is fully step in and be more empowered and embrace more and helping women, entrepreneurs ,and children too. And a young mom now.

Emily Fletcher: Last time I was on, I can’t remember if he was, he’s 20 months old now, so I don’t know when it was, but was I not even pregnant yet or was I expecting? I don’t know. Yeah, it’s been a fun year. My 20 month old son and I guess I have one year old book and as you know, birthing a book and a baby at the same time is not a joke. But it’s been so fun to watch people’s lives change. Through not only reading the book, but also implementing the tools that I teach inside of them. Because that’s why we do this stuff, right. We just want to hand people the keys to the kingdom and give them the driving instructions so that they can own these practices and do them everyday for life. Because you know, one detox is not going to change your life. One day of meditation is not going to change your life, but if you make it a daily ritual, a daily habit, then it really can change your life.

Dr. Cates: Yes. Okay. Speaking of changing lives, there’s so much out there about meditation. Everybody seems to know of a meditation or has been taught meditation or most people have some exposure to it, but not all meditations are the same. So tell us how, because you have worked on this for awhile and people come to you that are, you know, award-winning actors and entrepreneurs that are super successful and, and you’re helping them even up their game more. So obviously you’ve got, you’ve got some insight into the types of meditation and what is really helping people with meditation and what may not be, it maybe be kind of like an empty practice.

Emily Fletcher: Yeah. So I think when I started teaching nine years ago, I had the luxury and now I realize it was a luxury of taking people from zero to meditation. Like nine years ago, people were not talking about it like they are now. It was still French then. There were not apps, there were no online trainings, there were no books teaching you how to meditate. And so I had the luxury of taking Virgin minds, Virgin brains and being like, this is meditation and it’s so much easier to teach someone that’s coming with no preconceived, what I would say misinformation. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. And now when I’m teaching, I have to reeducate people to think that meditation is not just an app on your phone. Because that’s what everyone thinks meditation is now. It’s like, Oh yeah, I have three free apps on my phone.

Emily Fletcher: I’m like, do you use them? They’re like, no, actually you and I were at a conference together and I was speaking to someone on the balcony and we were walking in like red wine in hand and she said, what do you do? I said, I’m a meditation teacher. And she goes, Oh my gosh. And she stops in her tracks, she pulls out her phone, she hits a button, puts her phone back in her purse, continues to drink her red wine and walks into the party. And I was like, wait, what just happened? And she goes, well, I have a meditation app and I didn’t want to miss a day. And I was like, but you’re not meditating. And she’s like, I know, but I didn’t want to miss a day. I was like, Oh who are you lying to? That was so funny. Anyway, look, there’s nothing wrong with meditation apps and I think they’ve been a great gateway drug and they are helping a lot of people to deal with their stress in the now and interestingly, what I would call mindfulness is actually what most people are calling meditation apps.

Emily Fletcher: And I would define mindfulness as the art of bringing your awareness into the present moment. So you are stressed at work, your kids are going crazy, you’re in traffic, you get home, you do 10 minutes of Headspace, 10 minutes of calm, you feel better and then now, awesome. Great. The meditation portion of the Ziva technique is all about getting rid of your stress from the past. All that stuff we’ve been storing in our cellular, and now we even know in our epigenetic memory. And that’s what I found really gives you that ROI. I think that’s why high-performers come to me because I mean all of us time is our most valuable resource. But if you’re a CEO of a company, if you’re an Oscar award winner, if you’re an actor working 17 hour days on set, you know, time is even more precious. And what I love about Ziva is that you’re not spending your time, you’re investing your time.

Emily Fletcher: Because none of us have time to spend. None of us have time to waste. And so if your practice is not giving you an ROI, if you’re not seeing that you have more productivity, more energy, better sleep, better sex drive, better ideas then I would say, stop doing it. Like don’t do a meditation practice that’s stealing your time. You know, if you’re not really getting that precipitous, like, Oh, I have more time now, I would say it might be time to adjust practices.

Dr. Cates: So I like that. Let’s talk more about what people should expect from a good meditation practice because the things that you’re talking about are the things that everybody wants. How quickly should people expect to get those results?

Emily Fletcher: Well, everyone’s nervous system is different and everyone’s level of trauma is different, but there are some patterns that I see and, and I’ll speak now about my live classes.

Emily Fletcher: So I teach in person and we also have an online training. And I would say if you wanted to think about the different kind of levels of learning Ziva, the live is like the Maserati. The online is a really great Toyota and the book is an adorable Vesper. Like they’re all going to get you there. It’s just to varying degrees of empowers. But when I teach people in person, usually the first day they’re like, that was cool, but I’m not really sure. And like, Whoa, you know, it’s different, but they don’t, they just chalk it up to like, well maybe I was just tired or something. And then day two, they’re like, Oh, the birds are chirping and the Apple tastes sweeter. And I could feel the sponge tip applicator of my eye shadow on my face. And I was nice on the subway and, but they’re like, mom, maybe I was just as in a good mood.

Emily Fletcher: And then by day three, that’s when that’s when the S starts to hit the fan. That’s when stuff starts to bubble up a little bit because Ziva does create a bit of a catharsis or a healing detoxification and then people can get a little tired. A little sad, a little angry is that lifetime of trauma starts to come up and out. And that’s really where my job becomes a job. You know, I’ve been through that process myself. I’ve helped 20,000 people through it. And that’s why I think it’s important to have some sort of guidance if you’re going to do a meditation practice that is promising to heal the old stresses in your body. Because, most of us need some support through that because it’s, you know, there’s a reason why there’s billion dollar industry is built on top of ensuring that we never have to feel our feelings.

Emily Fletcher: And then the meditation makes the feeling non – negotiable rings you out. So if you’re looking to meditation exclusively to be a reprieve or a vacation from your brain, Ziva is not your answer because it’s not about 20 minutes of feeling good. It is about systematically eradicating the entire backlog of stresses you’ve ever accumulated. And that’s a process. So once people move into that intensity, that can be a couple of days, sometimes even a couple of weeks. With a lot of trauma and inherited trauma, it can be months, but all the while they’re seeing upgrades. You know, they might be crying, but also they’re happier. So it’s like a bit of a pendulum swings. And that happens for the first few, two to three months. And then after that, most people are just like, upgrade, upgrade, like a shedding of skin. You know, just each meditation day by day. We get lighter, we get brighter, we get happier, our sleep gets better. But it is a practice and it is probably more gradual than most of us would like. You know, we’d love to just go do Iowasca for three days and come back enlightened. And that’s not to diss that. But I think we need all the tools, you know, we can have these massive shifts, but we also have to be doing the daily practices to accompany them.

Dr. Cates: It’s so true. We just can’t expect to go and do a meditation retreat on a weekend and then come back and for it to last forever without continuing to do the work. Right?

Emily Fletcher: it’s just like exercise, just like skincare, you know? It’s like you got to wash your face every day and you gotta exercise pretty much every day.

Dr. Cates: Yes, so can you tell us like how does that work? How is, how is your meditation technique, how does that help clear and clean up things that hurt from the past?

Emily Fletcher: So the Ziva technique is a, it’s a trifecta of mindfulness. Like I said, we use that as the appetizer. The main course is meditation, which is getting rid of that stress from the past. And then we end with manifesting, which is imagining your dreams as if they’re happening now, helping you to get clarity on your dreams for the future. But the meditation really is the main course and that’s where that ROI happens. That’s why people start to see this increase in cognitive and physical performance capabilities. And the mechanism that we’re using is we use something called a mantra, and that word has been very hijacked by the wellness industry. A lot of people are using that term as a slogan or a saying or an affirmation. And look, I’m all about affirmations. I use them when I work out. I think they’re great, but they’re not the same thing as mantra.

Emily Fletcher: Mantra is a Sanskrit word man means mind. Trump means vehicle. And so we’re using these mind vehicles and the whole point of them, the ones I teach in the live class, they’re meaningless primordial sounds and the sound quality of the mantra helps to de-excite the nervous system. And that might sound like witchcraft, but if you’ve ever studied cymatics, which is the science of sound, or if you’ve ever done a sound bath or I heard a gong or a singing bowl, then you know that that vibration, that sound can do something to your body and there’s actually cool YouTube videos you can watch what they have a sheet of metal and they’ll pour a blob of sand on it and then they’ll play music at a certain frequency and that blob of sand will take these beautiful sacred geometric shapes and patterns.

Emily Fletcher: So something similar is happening in the body even though we’re thinking the mantra silently, even imagining it, even having just like we can have a visual without seeing something, I could say imagine a purple elephant and we could all see a purple elephant. I could also say, why don’t you hear somewhere over the rainbow and without you actually singing it, you can hear it in your mind’s ear. And so similarly these mantras that sound quality of the mantra helps to de excite the nervous system and when you de-excite something, you create order and when you create order in your body, that is the mechanism by which this lifetime of stress can start to come up and out. I don’t think that nature intended for us to be sick, tired and stressed all the time. I think that stress is trying to leave the building, but if we don’t ever give the body the rest that it needs, it’s very hard for the body to create order and for that stress to leave.

Emily Fletcher: Maybe a better analogy is every time you have ever been in fight or flight, it’s left an open window on our brain computer. It’s like a premature cognitive commitment or PCC. By the time the average adult is 20 we have about 10 million of those open windows on our brain computer and that’s what’s making us stupid. Second slow. And so meditation, we just go in and bit by bit, window by window, we close those windows down and then we have more of our computing power and battery power for the task at hand.

Dr. Cates: That makes sense. You know, a lot of people think that they don’t have time for meditation. Does it take a lot of time? Do you need a lot of time for meditation?

Emily Fletcher: I mean there are a lots of different styles and some people go away for 10 days.

Emily Fletcher: Some people, you know, do all kinds of things. At Ziva I get the time is your most valuable resource? I do tend to work with high-performers like you said, entrepreneurs, moms, TV, you know, folks. And so what we recommend is after you graduate from the training, we recommend 15 minutes twice a day. That’s what I teach in the book. That’s what I teach in the online course. And look even that sounds like a lot. I get it. 30 minutes a day could be like, are you out of your mind? I don’t even have 10 minutes to myself. And most people who have that narrative likely aren’t really truly, accurately one budgeting their time, but to gaging the impact of just how much stress is costing you. Right? Like it’s like this, um, we don’t even know the opportunity cost of stress if we had never seen ourselves without it.

Emily Fletcher: And if you are in overwhelm and living with anxiety and not sleeping well and not exercising, then of course you think you have no time. But if you were to insert this meditation practice and maybe your sleep became a little bit more efficient, maybe you need a little less of it, maybe your workout becomes a little more efficient because you’re not as inflamed because you don’t have that acidic, you know, adrenaline and cortisol coursing through your body. So your overall inflammation goes down a little bit. If you’re not getting sick as often as you’re getting back those sick days, if you’re making less mistakes so you don’t have to waste your time cleaning up those mistakes if you’re making better decisions. So not having to rewind bad decisions. This is all of the ways that stress is costing us. You know, they did a study at Aetna, which is a giant insurance from the CEO learn to meditate.

Emily Fletcher: It changed his life. So he brought in, and this is just mindfulness. He brought in a mindfulness training, an eight week mindfulness training for, it was something like 20,000 of his employees. And they noticed that per employee, they gained three hours of productivity a week and they saved the company about $3,000 a year. And that’s just with mindfulness. Dr Mark Hyman, who’s a mutual friend of ours, he says, for the few minutes a day, I invest in Ziva, I get back three hours of productivity a day. And Mark Hyman does not have extra time. You know, he has written a thousand New York times bestselling books. He’s a dad, he’s traveling all over the world. He’s running the Cleveland clinic, he’s speaking to Congress, you know, like he busy and yet he knows that he’s more productive. His his time is more efficient if he’s less stressed.

Dr. Cates: That is definitely a matter of being mindful of our, how we manage our time and because 15 minutes can be a long time and it can be a short time just depending on how we use it. But 15 minutes overall twice a day, that’s really who doesn’t have that especially gives you better sleep, gives you better productivity, focus, more energy now, and things that you were talking about

Emily Fletcher: And when people are really committed to that argument, I’m really like, hand me your phone real quick. And then we just check their social media usage and if it’s like, you know, an hour and a half a day, you’re like, okay, well what if 30 of those minutes you use meditating instead of scrolling through Instagram and stressing yourself out because everyone else’s life is better than yours. Might be a better usage of time.

Dr. Cates: So you talked about different ways to use your technique. You have the book, you have the course, and then you have an online program too. Is that right?

Emily Fletcher: Yes we do. It’s called Ziva online and it’s actually now become our flagship training. It’s the way that most people learn Ziva. And it’s, it’s great. I mean I’m biased, but it is not an app, meaning that you don’t just log in every day. I’m not guiding you through every day. I’m giving you the keys to the kingdom and the driving instruction. So you do 15 days of training, it’s about 15 minutes a day for 15 days. And then you have these tools to take with you for life. You don’t need me anymore once you graduate. And one thing I’m really proud of is we just learned that most online courses have a 3% completion rate, which is a Bismal 3% ours has a 70% completion rate. So I was very proud of that. So even though I want the other 30% to be graduating, it’s like, that’s like a thousand X more than most courses.

Dr. Cates: I get the in person and I get online, but how keep something in a book.

Emily Fletcher: I mean that’s a good question. And to be honest, it was an experiment when the book came out. There weren’t really any books that were teaching you how to meditate. So I didn’t know if it was going work or not. I mean, thankfully it does and the book is changing people’s lives. But basically you get very repetitive, you know, you say the same things a few times and I walk people through like I’d walk them through one section and then I say they close your eyes and practice this, you know, walk them through in writing. Okay, now close your eyes and do this because it’s hard to read. You know, meditation is an eye closed activity and reading is an eyes open activity so they can seem sort of counter to each other. So you just have to do it in digestible chunks where you read, close your eyes and do it.

Emily Fletcher: Read close your eyes and do it versus trying to walk people through the entire technique and expect them to memorize that or know it right off the bat. Also there are a lot of bonus materials and not to like Hawk my wares, but when people buy the book there is a link in there that has a lot, a lot of audio bonuses because I think that meditation is such a visceral experiential thing. I wanted people who need a little bit more hand holding and a bit more guidance to have my, at least my audio guidance and there are some videos as well. So when you get the book, there’s a link in there. This is go here if you want me guiding you through this exercise.

Dr. Cates: So I know it’s one thing to talk about meditation, another thing to do it. Is there anything that you could kind of give us a little bit of hint or a little bit of a taste of what you do?

Emily Fletcher: Yes, well I think what might be nice is actually to speak about the manifesting because there is plenty of mindfulness out there. If people want mindfulness, there’s hundreds of free apps, hundreds of videos. Like no one really needs me for just the mindfulness piece. The meditation takes me longer to teach, but the manifesting portion we could do a bit of right now, or at least speak about. So for me, the pro tip for manifesting, which I do get some eye rolls in New York city from people who are skeptics and they are like, Oh gosh, Emily, you want me to secret my dreams? But to me manifesting simply means consciously creating a life you love. It’s getting intentional about what you want your life to look like. And what I have found is the magic sauce and manifesting is one, combining it with the meditation. That’s what matters.

Emily Fletcher: The state of consciousness that you’re in when you’re manifesting matters. So I think to do it right after you meditate is very powerful. If you don’t yet have a meditation practice, you could do it on your way to sleep or right when you wake up in the morning. So just in that very d-excited state where the right and left hemispheres of the brain are talking to each other. But to me, the other trick to manifesting is imagining your dream as if it’s happening now. And that sounds simple, but what a lot of us are doing when we’re praying or manifesting is that we’re worshiping the space between where we are and where we think we should be. And that’s actually the definition of stress. The space between where you are and where you think you should be is the only thing that makes stress in our lives.

Emily Fletcher: And so we don’t want to water those weeds when we’re manifesting. Instead we want to water the flowers. And so if your dream is to buy a house, you know, what would it feel like to have those keys in your hand and put them in the doorknob and open that door for the first time? Like what would it feel like to see your home decorated? And this just happened to me. I’ve been in this house since April and we just finished decorating yesterday, but I just walked in and saw it decorated for the first time right before this podcast, and it was like a tear inducing moment. So that feeling of joy of accomplishment and enthusiasm, that’s really the gift that we’re giving ourselves when we manifest. And it’s really just about feeling good. It’s about almost tricking yourselves into feeling like that dream is already here.

Emily Fletcher: Because then a couple of phenomenons happen when you, you self sabotage less. So when the opportunity comes you already believe that you deserve it because we don’t get what we want in life. We get what we believe we deserve. And if you’ve been imagining this dream as your current reality, then when the opportunity comes you’re less likely to self sabotage. And then also what we’re doing when we’re manifesting is that we are programming something called the reticular activating system, the RAS, that’s a bundle of neurons at the base of the brain. And the whole job of the reticular activating system is to be a filter. You know, at any given moment we have millions of potential inputs available to us. And so the, the RAS has to filter out the noise and really focus on what’s important. And if we’re stressed then it’s really looking for fight or flight.

Emily Fletcher: What’s going to kill me? Is that a tiger? Is this very poisonous? Will this chair fall out from beneath me? Is my boyfriend cheating on me or my kids safe? Am I going be able to pay rent? You know, just the stress. And so if you meditate, get out of that fight or flight one, you’re opening up that RAS to have more space for new types of downloads. And then with the manifesting, it’s like you’re programming it. You’re putting in the destination into your GPS so that it can filter in all of the opportunities that are going to get you to your dream. But what a lot of us are doing is that we’re not placing the order with the cosmic waitress at the cosmic restaurant. We’re just like, I want more money. I want, I want a boyfriend. And we’re going into a restaurant and saying like, I want food. And so we have to be specific and we have to imagine it as if it’s happening now.

Dr. Cates: And when I think one thing that you talked about is not just imagine it like it’s happening now, but the joy we have in having it now, and not being like afraid of it because I sometimes that I think can create a block.

Emily Fletcher: It is all about the feeling. I mean, Neville Goddard wrote a book called Feeling Is The Secret and it was written in the forties, I believe. So it’s like a little bit misogynistic, the language in that he’s basically like the terms that he uses of like husband and wife when he anthropomorphize’s nature is a little old, but I’ll forgive him. And if you just take the concepts for what they are, it’s pretty powerful. But the secrets in the title, the feeling is the secrets all about feeling good because we’re never chasing the thing. We’re always chasing the feeling. We assume the thing we’ll bring. And that’s what I love about manifesting is that you can give yourself that gift right now.

Dr. Cates: So when it comes to tying all this together, you said that you believe that doing a good meditation practice before you do and it is kind of manifesting, is an important kind of step by step process.Is that right?

Emily Fletcher: Yes. What I have found is that the combination is so much more powerful. It’s like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Meditation into manifesting is way better than meditating alone and way better than manifesting alone. Because you could watch the secret on repeat and line your walls with vision boards. But if you’re not meditating and your body is riddled with stress, chances are you don’t believe that you deserve your desires. And again, we don’t get what we want in life. We give what we believe we deserve. And so if you meditate first and then manifest one, you’re less stressed. So that particular activating system is able to be programmed versus just being mired down with survival. And if you have the gift of stillness and DX citation that happens during meditation, it’s easier for you to hear your own intuition.

Emily Fletcher: It’s easier for you to even hear what your desires are. I ran a manifesting masterclass a few months ago and the number one thing we did, was we surveyed everyone beforehand and out of 1200 responses, 800 of them said their biggest challenge was that I don’t know what I want. So it’s like, what? What’s really going on there? What’s underneath that? And I think that people do know what they want, but I think they’re scared to admit it. I think people are scared to say it out loud or write it down because of the fear of the pain of the failure. And to me that’s the price of admission. You want to play big, you’re going to fail. You know, I, I worked so hard, you know, day in and day out with a seven month old nursing around the clock for my book launch because I wanted it to be a New York times bestseller.

Emily Fletcher: We made it to number seven out of all books on Amazon, it sold 50,000 copies. By all intents and purposes, this book has been a raging success and we didn’t make the New York times. So like I failed. You know what I mean? Price of admission. That doesn’t mean that the manifestation doesn’t work. You know, all these other things manifested. All these lives have been changed for the better because of my selfish desire to get on the New York times. But it was never about me. It was never about my happiness coming on the other side of that one particular goal, and that’s the other way that meditation can supercharge your manifesting practice is that it gets you out of the I will be happy when syndrome, I will be happy when I have a boyfriend, when I have $1 million, when I get this job, when I get on vacation, when I can finally check my emails again after this vacation.

Emily Fletcher: You know, we just play, these little loops in our minds. And if you’re in the all be happy when syndrome than likely you have a death grip on your desires and you think that if I manifest this thing, then I will be happy. And meditation flips that on its head. It floods your brain and body with dopamine and serotonin, which are bliss chemicals. You’re able to access your happiness in the here and the now and yet you still have these desires. And so then the question becomes, why do I want to sleep with that guy? Why do I want $1 million if I just meditated and I just access my fulfillment internally? And I would say that the answer to that is that your desire to become an indicator of where nature wants to use you to deliver your fulfillment. It is no longer an indicator of where you need to go to fill yourself up.

Emily Fletcher: And that is a very powerful shift to make because if you’re going through life, the bag of need, like please complete me. Please fill me up, please fulfill me. It’s not sexy. You know, neediness is not sexy. Detachment is sexy, and meditation is giving you that detachment. It’s giving you that access to your bliss, in the only place that it resides. And then you’re able to have a lighter touch, a lighter grip on your desires, which allows you to be in flow. It allows you to not be too attached to outcome or timing, which is oftentimes where people mess themselves up with the manifesting.

Dr. Cates: So you are using the word detachment in a positive way, which I am a little bit confused by that because you know, at a time when we talk about connection is so important. I don’t want people to misinterpret that word. So can you explain a little bit about what you mean by that?

Emily Fletcher: Yes, thanks for clarifying that. Because I think historically detachment has been, has had some negative connotations, especially when we’re dealing with depression epidemics. And I think detachment can be an unhealthy byproduct of depression. That’s not the way that I’m using detachment. And maybe I’ll find a better word, but to me detachment means that beautiful, confident knowingness, that groundedness that comes from knowing that you are the key to your happiness, that your fulfillment lives internally. So I don’t need, this partner, this zero in my bank account. This one particular job, in order for me to be happy. It is that X factor that celebrities have, you know when they walk in the room and they’re like the coolest person in the room and everyone wants to talk to them and they’re like, well I could talk to you or not, but either way I’m good.

Emily Fletcher: You go to a job interview and you’re like, you’re not really sure if you even want the jobs. You are just there, showing up as yourself and you’re detached, funny and fun and charming. You’re on a date and like you’re just kind of on the date to have fun and be present, but you’re not that interested. You’re not like, please, please marry me because I’m 40 and my eggs drying up and I don’t want to die with cats eating my face. Like, I’m just talking about like the opposite of that neediness, which is really self-sufficiency. That’s not to deny the importance of connections. We are all humans. We are social creatures. Yes, we need each other. So there is a level of need that we all have on other humans and yes, money and food and all of those things. Yes, they are needs. But I think for many of us, because we’ve lost that connection with ourselves, we’ve lost that ability to find our happiness internally. The need dial is too high. We’re too needy about the external validation without the internal validation.

Dr. Cates: Right. I completely agree with what you’re saying, especially when you come from that place and you enter into a relationship and you’re not coming from a place like I’m needy or I need a relationship to complete me. But that you feel fulfilled. You’re going to attract that kind of partner that’s going to just help you be more of who you are and you’re going to have this amazing union and do even more together. Like, it’s not that you can’t have a relationship because you’re so independent, you know, like, I don’t need anybody because I’m so awesome. It’s not that. It’s like you’re allowing more of your greatness to unfold.

Emily Fletcher: That’s really well said and it harkens to this concept in the Vedas, which is that relationships are an outlet for our fulfillment. That if you’re 80% fulfilled, then you have 80% fulfillment to bring to the relationship. That relationship is not giving you the other 20% that doesn’t mean the relationship is bad or irrelevant. It is great and it’s a place for learning and we need outlets for our love. I think it’s when we mess it up and we assume someone else is going to make us happy and no one can do that. And then we’re mad at the person for not making us happy and then we think, or our happiness will be in the next relationship.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, so much there that we could just keep going on. And you know, I’m now thinking like, Oh, I want to come to one of your events.

Emily Fletcher: Yes, I would love nothing more. It would be so fun to dive in with you.

Dr. Cates: Because really it’s about the experience of it. Now. I’ve done TM, transcendental meditation and the mantra is that similar to kind of what, what your program is?

Emily Fletcher: So there are some similarities between the meditation portion of the Ziva technique and TM. A lot of people think the TM is a style of meditation, but it’s actually the name of a company. Like a name of this beautiful organization and they, I think they’re doing some great work in the world. For the first six years of my career, I was just teaching meditation and then I started noticing that the world is filled with a few too many ex-meditators or people were starting and stopping, like getting the keys to the kingdom and putting them down. And that was baffling to me. I was like, what? I just couldn’t comprehend it. So I started asking lots of questions. And I have been doing a deep dive and really figuring out what was the barrier to entry, and people starting. And then also when people started, why were they stopping?

Emily Fletcher: And the barrier to entry to starting is usually the time piece, which we’ve addressed. But the reason why too many people were stopping in my opinion, is that they were actually scared of the feelings. You know, I kept talking about the detox and that purge of the stress from the past. And because a lot of teachers, and this has been historically male dominated lineages, they have not talked too much about that catharsis or enabled people to really process those emotions fully. And I noticed that a lot of people were like shooting into very high States of consciousness, but not fully doing that, for lack of a better word, shadow work or clearing the trauma or really honestly looking at their past. It was just like, Oh, don’t worry about that. Just eye on the prize. And, and so when I started asking the question, well, what do I have to bring to this party?

Emily Fletcher: How is divinity or how is divine spirit moving through me using Emily Fletcher in 2017, which is when I developed the Ziva technique, I realized that there does want to be a more of a feminine energy and that is embracing those feelings, processing them fully, not pushing them to the side and really empowering and educating people that it’s a possibility and there’s nothing wrong with them if it happens and almost celebrating that release versus brushing past it. And so once we’ve incorporated that and developed this trifecta of mindfulness, meditation and manifesting, which is one of the things that makes Ziva unique, I have noticed that the completion rate is higher, the adoption rate is higher, that the commitment is higher. People are just invested in the longterm because they don’t get so scared when the feelings come up.

Dr. Cates: Right. Okay. That makes sense. One last question for you and that is around religion and meditation. I guess there are some people believe that if they are of a certain religious, like if they’re Christian or different, I have a religious background that meditation is, against their religious practices. What do you do, how do you respond to that kind of question?

Emily Fletcher: Thank you so much for asking it because I do think that it is a big deal and it can be a big fear or block point for folks. And you know, I was raised Southern Baptist, I’m from Tallahassee, Florida. I teach in my hometown. And so it’s come up quite a bit. And even in New York, you know, I’ve had Rabbi’s take the course. I’ve had priests take the course you know, and they will ask the question, you know, I believe this and is this in conflict? And what about this? And the simple answer is that this is not in conflict with any religion. It is more of a hardware upgrade versus a software upgrade. Meaning like meditation is going to defrag your brain computer so that you can run whatever software you already have. And I’m using software as an analogy for religion or self-help or any philosophy that you believe.

Emily Fletcher: I don’t know any religion that’s saying that you should have involuntary stress reactions on people you know, that you should like flip off your people on the highway or screaming or mother-in-law. Most of us know how we should be acting, you know, exercise everyday. Call our mom more often, eat more vegetables, go bed before midnight. Like we know how we should be acting. Most of us are not doing that and that’s not because we need more knowledge. It’s because we act in accordance with the baseline level of stress in our nervous systems. And so Ziva and meditation, it’s not going to tell you how to act. It’s just going to allow you to act in accordance with what you already know to be true. And so what I found is that if you’re Christian, it’s going to make you a better Christian because you’re not having involuntary stress reaction.

Emily Fletcher: You are not losing your temper on people and not making mistakes as often. If you’re Jewish, it’s likely going to make you a better Jew. You’re going to feel more connected to your own intuition and your own, higher power, whatever you want to call that. The only folks that I say might have their world rocked a little bit are straight up, full blown atheists because, you know, I’m like, look, we’re just probably going to talk in three months because you’re going to start to notice a lot of serendipity and synchronicity. What you call that. I don’t care. I just want you to experience.

Dr. Cates: That us true. All right, well, this has been amazing. I love talking about meditation and manifesting and mindfulness. All of these things they are beautiful and juicy, but tell everybody where they are more about you, where you can get, where people can find your book, your program.

Emily Fletcher: Yes, thanks for that. So everything is available at zivameditation.com. So it’s kind of a weird word, but it’s ZIVA. It’s a Sanskrit word that means bliss. It is: zivameditation.com and you can find the book, you can find Ziva online, you can find our live trainings there and then the book is sold just wherever books are sold, Amazon, audible, Kindle, however you like to get your books. And then we’re all over social media at Ziva meditation.

Dr. Cates: Awesome. Emily, thanks so much for coming on again.

Emily Fletcher: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Emily Fletcher. To learn more about her program and her book, you can go to TheSpaDr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there I invite you to join The Spa Dr. Community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and information. And if you haven’t already found out your skin personality type, I encourage you to hop over to theskinquiz.com and take our free online quiz to find out what messages your skin might be trying to tell you about your health and your lifestyle and what you can do about it. Just go to theskinquiz.com also I invite you to join us on social media. The Spa Dr. is on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, and join the conversation there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.

Mold Toxicity and Your Skin

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Sap Dr. Podcast, I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Mold is natural. We need it for healthy environment because of the way it helps break down organisms, but just because it’s natural does not mean that exposure to it is good for our health. In fact, mold toxicity is a real problem and most people who have it aren’t even aware. So today I’ve asked my guest on to talk about mold toxicity, mold exposure, and how it might impact your skin and your overall health. My guest is Dr. Jill Crista. She has a naturopathic doctor, bestselling author and nationally recognized health educator on mold and mold related illness. In fact, she actually trains other doctors on how to treat and address mold toxicity. Her passion is to improve health through education, bridging gaps between medical research and clinical practice. She writes books and offers online courses for those wanting to gain actionable steps to conquer health challenges related to exposure to toxic mold. On today’s podcast, we delve into more about mold. Now, Dr. Jill Crista has been on the podcast before, so we’re diving deeper this time talking about how these toxic exposures show up in our skin and overall health and what you can do about it. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Dr. Jill it’s so great to have you back on The Spa Dr. Podcast, welcome.

Dr. Crista: Thank you so much. I’m really excited to share with your audience more about mold.

Dr. Cates: More about mold. So for people who didn’t catch you last time, which they should go back and watch that interview because we covered a lot there. Just give everybody an overview of why mold is such an issue. I mean, I remember I grew up with a ton of mold in my home and that was one of the reasons why I think I was so sick as a kid, but my parents would say, oh, it’s natural. It’s just, you know, it’s just part of nature. It’s not a big deal. The fact that you pick up your doll from the, you know, just sitting on your floor after a day and it’s got covered in mold, that’s okay, no worries.

Dr. Crista: I can’t even believe that story when you told me that I was like, are you kidding me? The reason why I’m here on such a mission with this is that mold is such a hidden and unknown issue. It’s like the sleeper condition. You know, it’s something where it can cause almost any symptom in almost any body system. So when somebody says, well, how do you know it’s mold? And I’m like, well, you know, it’s tough. It’s tough to know. But it’s one of those things that it’s miss identified as other diagnoses so often and it’s treatable. So that’s why I’m so excited about telling people about it and not to terrify everybody because I do have a tendency to do that when I start talking about where they might find it, certain foods, you know, that kind of thing. They get a little terrified but that’s not the point.

Dr. Crista: The point is to recognize it, that it’s hidden and to treat it because it’s absolutely 100% treatable when we have mold on the inside. Mold is a really important job on our planet to decay, recycle. It’s our great recycler on the planet and it’s really important have in a compost pile, but not in our indoor environment. You don’t want the mold to be thinking that your indoor environment needs to be recycled. So it starts to, you know, eat and break down your belongings. And it does that to our bodies as well. So that’s where we need mold and that’s where it’s important to have on the planet and why it was put here. But not to take down our homes, our living environments.

Dr. Cates: So what can people do? Are there any simple steps that people can start doing on their own to address mold toxicity?

Dr. Crista: Absolutely. One of the things that’s really important to you from your book is vitamin D and that’s way important for a mold sick person because it’s not just getting the vitamin D is good, is that mold in its wisdom actually blocks vitamin D from being absorbed into your body in the intestines and the kidneys. And this has been shown in studies. So for a moldit person, it’s not just a like general good idea. It’s a necessity to get outside every day. So you convert that vitamin D into its active form and to, for most patients they have to supplement it. And I generally try to keep my patients, between 60 and 90 nanograms per milliliter. So you can ask your doctor to test your D and if it’s low and you’re sick from mold, definitely supplement it. But it’s no replacement for getting outside every day, no matter how sick you feel. Get outside and bundle up if it’s cold, you know, take a fan, if it’s warm, whatever. Make sure you’re getting outside every day cause you need that conversion because mold is smart. It wants to keep you inside cause it wants to compost you like that sees you as a food source, which is really creepy. So getting outside will help. That’s one of the best things you can do to break the mold.

Dr. Cates: So what are the, some of the symptoms that people like experience that you’ve noticed that with, with mold toxicity and mold exposure?

Dr. Crista: The number one is fatigue. That’s the tricky one with that is that could be blamed as lots of other things. I’m working too many hours. I’m not handling my stress well. I’m not sleeping, you know, fatigue. I’m not exercising or I’m exercising too much. It can be lots of different things. So fatigue can get blamed on lots of other conditions as well, like hormone imbalance and food allergies and nutrition deficient nutrient deficiencies, that kind of thing. So fatigue is very common, but not specific to mold cause it can be so many other things. I see often a lot of skin things. A lot of skin whatever your tendency is. So if it’s toward acne, it’s going to be cystic painful, angry acne. If it’s toward aging, it’s going to be increased spots increased wrinkling. So skin something usually is in there and it doesn’t always have to be a breakout.

Dr. Crista: It can be whatever your tendency is, it makes it worse. I also see a lot of gut disruption because often it will increase the fungal burden in the body. So people end up getting candida overgrowth. They start getting food sensitivities that they never had. That’s a cardinal symptom for me. If someone comes in and says, Oh, I’m so tired, I’m not sleeping. I’ve got this weird rash thing and I can’t eat certain foods anymore. And I’m like, Ooh, you know, okay, it could be a food sensitivity, but if you could always eat that food and you couldn’t, since you took this new job or since you went on vacation, stayed in a nasty Airbnb or so. And I’m thinking, okay, we might do dealing with mold, so fatigue, skin, gut and also neurological. So foggy brain, cognitive problems and some level of anxiousness.

Dr. Crista: I don’t want to say anxiety because we have an idea in our society that anxiety is sort of like something that’s this panic attack kind of thing and it’s anxiousness. It’s an internal sense of restlessness, unsettled, overwhelmed, easy to overwhelm, can’t get it together, can’t get your thoughts right, can’t read. Often there’s visual disturbances, so you have that combination of just like feeling like you’re not on your game. So those are some of the kind of common ones. There’s some quirky ones that are a little more diagnostic of mold, like ear ringing. One of the main medications that causes ear ringing is antibiotics and most antibiotics are actually mold toxins. So that’s one of the things that we see. It’s a quirky one. Pelvic pain is another one. People who have chronic pelvic pain and there’s no explanation, no bladder infection or anything like that.

Dr. Crista: We see that a lot as a quirky one. And another one is urinary frequency. So mold gets in the way of keeping water in our body. There’s a hormone that it gets in the way I’ve called ADH or antidiuretic hormone. So people are running to the bathroom a lot because the toxins irritate the bladder, which makes them have to pee more often and then they can’t hold water in their body so their pee more often. And so those are just kind of the little quirky ones that if that’s along on the symptom line and I’m thinking, Hmm, okay this, this could be a mold thing.

Dr. Cates: Right, okay. And you have a a mold quiz that people can take, right. That, tell everybody about that because like you said there, there are other symptoms too. So people really identify, cause sometimes it’s hard to all pull it all together and figure out if it is an issue. So that’s why you put this quiz together, right?

Dr. Crista: Yup. Yeah. So a lot of times when people hear about mold, they think of it as an allergy. And that is one of the components of having mold illness is mold spore problem. But mold illness is more the toxins that mold makes. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have allergies or sinusitis or anything like that. So I put together this quiz so that someone could just like, if they’re listening today and they’re wondering your, that’s what’s going on with my skin, they can go to moldquiz.com and they can fill out the quiz and it’ll give them a, a probability of it could be mold or not it’s probably not mold, it’s something else. So you talked about a lot of other things in your book that that could be contributors, you know, just lifestyle things. So, it’s nice to have that little quiz to kind of, as you go through the quiz, people are saying, Oh I learned, I didn’t know that that was a mold thing and learned a lot taking the quiz cause I didn’t know that was a mold thing.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. And so with skin, you know, do you have anything more specific on why like why mold would particularly create skin issues and any case studies or anything that you want to share with that?

Dr. Crista: Absolutely. So the reason why skin gets hit the hardest is that our skin is our largest organ of detoxification and it’s our largest boundary against the outside world. The next one is our gut. You know, the body thinks of itself as a donut. So the inside of our gut is kind of an interface with the outside world until the body decides to bring it in as nutrient or poop it out as a critter or a toxin, that kind of thing. And then the lungs get hit. So the skin takes the biggest burden of this toxic exposure. Like I was saying, mold is a spore illness and a toxin illness, it’s way more a toxin illness than it is a spore illness.

Dr. Crista: So if you’re in an indoor toxic and toxic mold environment or even a water damaged area, you can be inundated with these toxins that are riding along on ultra fine particulates and in the air. So those will collect and really porous areas like mattresses, couches, furniture, that kind of thing. And if your skin, which is our largest organ of detoxification, but also a great way to get things into our body, if you plop down on that couch and you’re wearing shorts and t-shirt, you are now able to absorb all those toxins. And that’s how then your skin becomes toxic. And that’s the way that the body tries to handle that is to have an inflammatory reaction to push it out. So that can look like all kinds of things. You know, we talked about some of the symptoms, whatever is your tendency, it can make worse.

Dr. Crista: But there are some Cardinal ones like, a new skin allergy so somebody could eat strawberries and then now they get strawberries and they get a skin reaction. That’s one of those things I’m like, huh, what’s going on there? You know? Or they were able to use certain products. While they may not have been really good products to put on the skin, they might have contained some of the things in your book that are super toxic or mineral mineral oil. And now they can’t tolerate that. It’s because now the body has tipped the scale over on the amount of toxin that it can handle. And it tries to do that by having an inflammatory reaction or an aging reaction.

Dr. Cates: And it all plays a role in the microbiome or I’ve had a podcast guest on recently talking about the microbiome. You know, we have a fungal, micro-organisms that live on our skin too that are normal. But when we have the toxic mold interacting with them, I’m sure that’s when it kind of, like you said, tips the scale and people start to have problems, right?

Dr. Crista: Yup. Absolutely. Yeah. If you tested everybody’s skin. It would have bacteria, fungus, it would have viruses, you know, all kinds of things ride there. Same thing with our sinuses, our gut, our lung tissue. So, when we, when we look at what happens when you’re exposed to an indoor toxic environment, that those gases from the toxins trigger a protective mechanism of the normal flora on our skin, in our sinuses, in our gut, and they start acting up like they’re threatened. Like their territory is threatened. So they’re not even acting. They may be present, but they’re no longer acting in a, in a cohesive way with the other microbes. They’re not acting in a competitive way, which means the other normal microbes have to do the same thing. So micro and mico biome of your skin, your sinuses, you’ve got, that’s all really critical to stay in balance, to get better from this.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So let’s talk about foods now I think people would think, okay, blue cheese has mold, but that’s like what a, you know, like what else, you know?

Dr. Crista: Yeah. So the concept of the foods to avoid are the things that are fungus or fun in the fungal family. Because like I said, those fungi are starting to get competitively. So you really have to knock down the total body burden and sort of put it back in its place. And that’s really hard to do if you’re continually ingesting things that are in the fungal family. So I have my patients stay away from cheeses, aged cheeses especially, and then mushrooms cause they’re just in the fungus family yeast also in the fungus family. So that means any bread that’s leavened. The other thing then you have to avoid are things that encourage fungal growth, which is its favorite food is carbohydrates and sugar. So baked goodies are like the kiss of death for a mold sick person cause it is going to feed all the fungus in their body and it’s going to have a party.

Dr. Crista: I can’t tell you how many people say, you know, I ate it, I got a little buzzed and then I got really sick. And that little buzz thing is the inflammatory reaction scoops up this big endorphin response. So people can actually get addicted to eating these foods that make them sick. And then they get the inflammatory reaction afterwards and the fungal overgrowth, and then they just feel brain fog, tired, can’t get it together. Maybe some gut things like bloating, gas pains, that kind of thing. So the fungi themselves, the things that grow them. And then there are certain foods that the way that we grow and store them tend to grow mold in storage or in the way that we’re growing it cause we’re not renourishing soil. So those foods are like potatoes, corn, soy is a big problem and peanuts. So those are on my no-no list because I just feel like, you know, if you’re going to get better from all lists, take at least start by avoiding the things that we know are going to tip the scales in favor of the mold.

Dr. Cates: Right. And those are pretty much the things that I tell people to eliminate in my book. Yeah, I think I have mushrooms in one of my recipes though.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. Well, you know, if you’re not sick from mold, mushrooms are wonderful and medical mushrooms are medicinal mushrooms are part of my, what I call the remediation phase. After you’re all done and you need that immune boost, they’re really important. But while you’re sick from mold they can be hard to tolerate. The other thing in your book is fermented foods, which we know is really important for anti-aging and healthy skin and healthy microbiome. But when you’re sick from mold can actually make you sicker.

Dr. Cates: Right. Yup. So, certainly now you in your book, you talk about, what’s the name of your book? The full name of your book?

Dr. Crista: Break The Mold: Five Tools to Conquer Mold and Take Back Your Health, right there. You can recognize the big flower of herbs on the front if you can tell him in naturopathic doctor.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. So there’s, you know, there’s a lot of overlap when we talk about, but if you’re listening and you’re thinking, Oh, this sounds like me, get Jill’s book, Dr. Jill’s book too, and look at what she’s got and, and cause then the two are complimentary. You know, our programs are complimentary and I mean, Hey, we’re both naturopathic doctors. We went to school together. We have a similar approach of get to the root cause trying to find what the root causes and then address that. Right? Yeah.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. I mean you even talk about mold in your book too. I’m sure that’s from your personal experience that it’s on your radar now only because it was in our training. But because you lived it, you had that experience.

Dr. Cates: Right. And coffee also, can have mold growing in it. What about tea?

Dr. Crista: Yeah, tea can, I think that as long as you’re doing organic green tea, the growing practices of using organic, they don’t necessarily store the leaves and it doesn’t get a chance to get as moldy. So I feel pretty confident with organic tea. But coffee is a real bugger. It’s just like the other things we’ve talked about, potatoes and corn it way that we mass produce and mass store it, it can become a really important part or a really big problem and someone could be drinking it everyday and not know that they’re making themselves mico-toxic. So you know, having mold free coffee, like Bulletproof coffee, that kind of thing is really important. And you have a great coffee alternative in your book. The only little adjustment I would make to that is a mold person they can’t handle a Roybal. Many can’t because it’s a fermented. So that could be something they just take out of the recipe and then they can, if they don’t tolerate coffee or they can’t find mold free coffee and they can be using that alternative, that’s then if they do find on the mold quiz it’s probably mold. That’s one tiny little adjustment they can make and still do something really good for their body because dandelions incredibly important for the detox part of getting better from mold.

Dr. Cates: Great. Great. You know, I think that the way we live has really contributed to the mold problems that we have, that the way our homes are built, the way our food is, like you just mentioned, our mass, the mass production and storage of our food and the way that it’s, you know, it’s kept around for a long time. It’s not as fresh. So the opportunities for mold, our overuse of antibiotics, um, and all of that certainly has contributed to the, you know, the problems with the toxicity of mold. Right. I mean, especially with our homes too.

Dr. Crista: Absolutely. You know, we used to honor nature’s cycles and seasons and when we would build our homes, you would never build a home through the rainy season. And now, because we have this over faith in treated wood and these kinds of things in my area, you know, I’m seeing things go up all winter long, all through the rainy season. They’ve pour a slab or put in a basement and it rains and rains and rains and that soaks up all this water and then they close it up. And there’ve been materials that we’re ordering from places that are too far away like China and in on the way to the United States, it gets water damage and they just turn the moldy side the other ways he can’t see it and slap it up on the wall. I mean those kind of the quick building practices so that we can all have these McMansions you know, I think that if we were to slow down and, and build the way that honored nature, I think that would be a very important first step.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So what can people do with their homes? I know we talked about this some in the last podcast, but what are some simple things? Cause I don’t want to leave that out of this one too. Yeah. Cause I mean you talked about mold in your sofa.

Dr. Crista: Yeah. So I say in my book there some things. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. No pillows, no nothing. So yeah, I have some things laid out in my book that are not only just remediation tips. So if it is something that’s a problem in your home, the things that I’ve learned taking my patients through remediations and learning how they can protect themselves, how to have a good remediation. But the prevention piece that’s easier. You know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound to cure. So two really important things that you can do for your home. Manage the humidity no matter where you are. I mean I hear it all the time. I couldn’t have a mold problem. I’m in Arizona. Well that has to do with the outside. What talking about is that something going on in the inside and because we’re human and we like you know about 70 degrees and we like a certain kind of humidity, we all are in the United States experiencing the same risk factors for mold.

Dr. Crista: And sometimes the more warm environment you are, the more cold and dry you are, the more you get that humidity difference. So managing the humidity in your home. And I have people just go to the pet store and get those little humid iStats and put them in every room because as we know, every room was going to be one room was a little colder and one’s a little warmer. One gets more moisture so that you can manage the humidity at each of those spaces. Mold can grow in as little as a 50% or more moisture. So people think flood, I haven’t had a flood, I haven’t had a water damage. You’ve haven’t had a leak, doesn’t matter if you have a consistently humid home, it can grow because we make our homes with its favorite food. All these easy to digest carbohydrates. So managing humidity is super easy you know like anybody can do it.

Dr. Crista: It’s not expensive. Get multiple dehumidifiers. If you have an area that’s a problem area, you might need more than one but manage humidity. And the second one is dust. I say my book dust with Gusto because the dust is those little fine particulates. That’s what’s carrying around all these toxins. That’s what’s carrying around the chemicals that make you sick. So if you can manage the dust and clutter, that’s a really simple way to make sure that your total load is lower. And I know you mentioned your book, you go more aggressive than I do even on changing your filter every month. I think that’s a great recommendation and I’m going to actually borrow that. That’s all right. As I say, at least two times a year. But you know, if you have a mold problem, why wouldn’t you? It’s a very inexpensive way to maintain your health and prevent, which ends up being very expensive disease and condition.

Dr. Cates: Right. And especially when you live somewhere like I live in Park City, the air is constantly going through that system. So it’s pulling out stuff through the air. Now somebody is not, you know, and when we lived in California, I didn’t have to change my air filters as much cause we would just keep the windows open and the, you know, the, the outside air and you know, would help kind of help the circulation. But yeah, here I feel like that’s one of the reasons why I like, you know, that’s what I say. If you, if your constant, your air is constantly running, especially, and then also getting the ducts clean cause people forget about that part too. And you don’t have to do that, you know, as frequently, but at least every couple of years.

Dr. Crista: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you’ve had mold in your environment, I recommend having the remediation company do the duct work. I’m about to post a video that shows why that is because they pull the yucky air outside and into an encapsulated bag. So it’s a, it’s a HEPA filtered bags so that anything that was residing in your house and in the ducts is now captured and not outside for you to bring back in on your shoes or on your pets, you know, for, and those kinds of things.

Dr. Cates: Oh, that’s amazing. And, and then also with air do you know, how do you feel about air purifiers and I, I’m a big fan of those. We have, I don’t know how many we have on at my home now. I think I have like four or five. Um, uh, we have Austin Air and Blue Air. Those are some of my favorites. But do you have any others that you like?

Dr. Crista: Yeah. Yes. And I think they’re very important for prevention. I am not a fan of trying to use them as a remediation cause you have to get rid of them all, you have to get rid of the mold. It’s making so many more toxins in that filter than even the best commercial filter can handle on a daily basis. So once the mold is gone or as a prevention, then I like to use air filters. But the ones I focus on because I’m a mold specialist are things that go down to the mycotoxin level, which is very, very, very small 0.01 microns. It’s like tiny amount of filtration. So that would be things like hyper HEPA. And another one that I like is using DFS technology is what it’s called and it’s the IntelePure So IntelePure and IAQ air or IQ air. Sorry, I say that wrong, those are two that I really like cause they get it down. They, if they’re thinking about the mycotoxins.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And I believe Austin Air does too. Yeah. So okay, so we’ve talked about air purifiers. Oh, and I also want to mention as you were talking about humidity in homes, I mean showers, everybody takes showers and I turn the exhaust fan on just like a simple thing just to, as a prevention, like turn your exhaust fan on whenever you take a shower. I mean, I live in Park City it is so dry here, but we can, we’ll get mold will start to grow if we don’t keep the air you know, the exhaust fan running and maybe even a door open just to kinda let not let the, all the humidity trapped in that in the bathroom. Right.

Dr. Crista: Right. Absolutely. Use your venting. You know, that preemptive venting is really important. If you know you’re going to cook a whole thing of pasta and steam some vegetables, you better have something moving that air out of that environment or it will collect.

Dr. Cates: Right. And again, it’s not, you know, it’s really more of the way that our homes were built and the way that we live, we have to be mindful of all that. Now as far as testing in the homes what kind of tests do you recommend?

Dr. Crista: Since I’m way more a body expert than a building expert, I think that, you know, we’re often in the position as doctors to try to help our patients navigate this. So it’s good to know about this. You know, what the testing options are. And I teach about that in my mold training course for doctors just so they have a literacy about what tests are out there, what are the strengths and weaknesses of each kind of test. And that’s the complicated thing is that you and I know that every body is different and an individual, every history of that body contributes to that person’s health or wellness. Same thing with a building. Every building is individual. So you want to find, what I usually do is recommend an indoor inspector that is a holistic minded inspector. So they’re using, there’s no like perfect test. There’s no one perfect test, just like for a body.

Dr. Crista: There’s no blood test that tells you everything about you. Same thing with a building. They’re positive and negatives to each test or strengths and weaknesses. And you’re trying to find somebody that’s going to be using many data points that can tell you where the problem is. How bad is it, what kind of species are you dealing with. Cause then as doctors, if we know the species, we know somewhat about where that person’s needing more support. So there’s anything from ERMI testing, which is very popular to mycotoxin testing in the dust. I am not a fan of somebody just coming in and bringing a plate in, taking the top off, putting the top back on after, you know, 90 minutes or whatever they say and then shipping that in, that is a good pre test. So if they, if it shows mold, you know, you have a problem but it only catches 10% of the toxic molds, 90% of the species don’t grow on that auger, they don’t grow on that plate.

Dr. Crista: So you could be missing a lot of problem. So if they do see mold, definitely that is time to call an inspector. If it’s negative, it still may not be really not mold. And that’s what I’m seeing frustration with is that people come in they’re resistant to the fact that it could be mold in their home cause they’ve done the plate test and said it was fine. It’s like, no it isn’t fine. And they’re, they’re diagnosed with big scary things like MS and you know, alzheimers are dementia, irritable bowel syndrome maybe needing to go on an immune modulating drug. And it’s really because they are living in a moldy home.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And, and like you said, you also help with training practitioners. You have a program, a course for practitioners too. And I know a lot of our colleagues are big fan of your program. And so how do people learn more about it? And I also think it’s, I think it’s great for everyone to know that you have this because there aren’t more people specializing in mold toxicity and addressing it for humans in the body, there aren’t, they aren’t easy to find. So we need more people like you around the country because it’s much better to work with someone locally than trying to work, you know, for somebody across the country. So we need more people like you around the country. So I appreciate that you’re doing this. And so people, you know, if you, you know, you’re listening and you know, somebody, a practitioner that might be interested in this, certainly check out Jill’s stuff. So how do people find your practitioner training?

Dr. Crista: Sure. They go to my website, drcrista.com, that’s D R C R I S T A.com/courses. And on there, if you’re a practitioner, you can get my clinical questionnaire. So I am the mold quiz and that’s just kind of a pre-screen. It’s fun, you know, it’s kinda educational. Go through it and realize, Oh wow. I didn’t know that was a mold thing. But for clinicians, I have a clinical questionnaire that I created. I put it in my book. But if any clinician wants to start using it just to start screening their patients, they can go to that drcrista.com/courses and get the clinical questionnaire. It’s a great way to convince your patient who is resistant to the fact that it’s mold and also it’s really nice to track the treatment progress because people will forget how horrible they felt. That’s the good news about our amazing brains is that they, Oh yeah, that was pretty bad.

Dr. Crista: And then they forget and they might come back to that doctor and say, Oh, nothing that you’re doing is working. And then you go through that clinical questionnaire. It’s like, wow, that’s better. That’s, Oh, I forgot I had that. Oh yeah, that was, that was a really big deal. So it shows you the progress through treatment and also they’re getting worse on the treatment then you know, that their environment didn’t get taken care of. And that’s, you know, in our area, one in three remediations has to be redone. So those are the, some of the tips that I put in my book, about how to get a good quality remediation. So it’s done well and done right the first time.

Dr. Cates: Okay. Good. Awesome. Well, we’ve covered so much Dr. Jill. So tell everybody where else can they find you? You’re on social media, you’re all over the place. The big thing you want people to do is take your skin quiz, right? I mean, like, that’s gonna be helpful for people to figure out if this is an issue for them, right?

Dr. Crista: Yeah. The mold quiz Yeah. Yup. And then all, so many of the things in your book that are, are exactly on par with the things I’m talking about in my book. There are a few tweaks for someone who has mold sickness where well-meaning, good ideas can actually make them feel a little bit worse. So that’s why I honed in on mold. I’m trying to treat practitioners about mold because there are certain things that we could be doing that could make them worse. We don’t want to do that, we don’t mind to make people worse we want to make them better. That’s the whole point.

Dr. Crista: So I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook, Dr. Jill Crista and whenever I get inspired to share information, I make little one minute or less videos. They’re video blogs, which they can find on my website. I have like a years worth of viewing on there if anybody really gets bored and wants to hear all about mold. There are all kinds of videos out there for education. So if I’m having a conversation with somebody I’m working with or family member and they’re like, Hey, tell me about this and I get inspired, I’ll do a video blog and try to share information. So I’m out here to help break the mold.

Dr. Cates: Thank you, Dr. Jill. We’ll have other links up on The Spa Dr. Podcast page as well. Sounds good. All right. Thank you.

Dr. Crista: Thank you.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Jill Crista. To learn more about her, you can go to thespadr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there at thespadr.com, I invite you to join our community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and information. You can also hop over to iTunes and leave a review. We always love to get your feedback and understand what more you want from us, what guests you enjoy, what information you enjoy, so we can give you more of that. Also, if you haven’t already taken The Skin Quiz, find out if you’re Amber, Olivia, Sage, Emmett or Heath, what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health. You can go to theskinquiz.com it’s a free online quiz that gives you messages about the root causes behind your skin and other health issues. Just go to theskinquiz.com. Also, The Spa Dr. is on social media. We are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. So join us there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.