On Today’s Solo Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• How the Black Panthers and acupuncture intersected in the early 1970s
• Why generalizing about the elements can be complicated
• Commonalities in how Chinese Medicine practitioners can work with people
• Ideas for getting out of the way to allow healing to happen

Links:

Unusual Tale of Acupuncture, Racism, and African American History in the USA by Dr. Tenisha Dandridge

Mutulu Shakur: On The History Of Acupuncture & COINTELPRO

Lincoln Detox Center: The People’s Drug Program

Radical Health: A Threat to a Nation – Mia Donovan on her new film ‘Dope Is Death’

Dr. Tenisha Dandridge

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Explore the Basics of Chinese Medicine course

Reach out to Brodie

Learn about working with Brodie 1-on-1

Transcript:

Welcome to A Healthy Curiosity, the podcast that explores what it takes to be well in a busy world with self-care strategies from Chinese medicine, functional medicine, Ayurveda, neuroscience, and beyond. I’m your host Brodie Welch, a licensed acupuncturist and transformation catalyst here to support you on your journey of health, happiness, and personal evolution.

Welcome to A Healthy Curiosity. I’m your host Brodie Welch, a licensed Acupuncturist, herbalist and Chinese medicine coach. And it’s just me today. This show has essentially four parts to it. We start with a little history lesson for black history month. We move into a question from a listener that gets into kind of the more psycho-spiritual aspect of the medicine involving five elements. We have another question from a listener regarding practitioner cultivation, and then I have a little announcement at the end. So feel free to skip around to whatever part of the episode, peaks your interest. Most a while back, I put out a call for anyone listening to the show to write in and ask me anything that they might be interested in hearing answered on the podcast.

And so today, I’m taking on a couple of those excellent questions that I was grateful to receive, but first it is black history month. And. What better time to share this fascinating historical tidbit that I’m literally just learning about today that has to do with the intersection of the Black Panthers, Tupac Shakur’s stepfather. and acupuncture in the early 1970s.

When I was in acupuncture school, the story that I was told about how acupuncture made its way to the United States went something like this. People immigrating to the United States from Asia, [00:02:00] brought with them their culture. Chinese medicine, and because of racism and segregation, acupuncture, and Chinese herbal medicine and all the rest of the parts of Chinese medicine were pretty much unknown to most of mainstream America.

Apart from these communities of Asian-American immigrants until President Richard Nixon decided to start opening up relations with China. And as part of this liberalization of relations, our reporter for the New York times, by the names of James Reston traveled there. And while in China, he experienced appendicitis.

Was entered the hospital and experienced acupuncture as part of his pain relief in the rehabilitation phase, he was impressed and fascinated by the treatment that he received wrote about it in the New York times, thereby introducing the United States to this system of medicine that had been practiced in China for thousands of years.

Now, while this is all true, like most history, this is a whitewashed version that completely neglects a very important chapter. The very first use of acupuncture by an institution in the United States was at the Lincoln detox center. Which started when a group of activists essentially took over a building at Lincoln hospital in New York, the black Panthers, the young Lords, and some progressive white healthcare workers were tired of people not getting the care they needed for drug addiction, that heroin being pumped into the black and Latino communities.

And essentially people getting off of heroin, but put on methadone, but continuing to stay in this cycle of addiction and psychological and [00:04:00] physiological suffering. And from what I understand, this group of activists decided that to take over this building and essentially not leave. And instead of just helping people get off of heroin and onto methadone, the idea was to get them off of drugs entirely. And acupuncture was one of the tools that they used. One of the people involved in this was rapper Tupac Shakur’s stepfather, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, who was both an activist, as well as an acupuncturist who then went on to found the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America in Harlem.

Shakur trained hundreds of other acupuncturists, essentially providing this different model of a medical delivery system. Shakur describes this providing acupuncture, not only as getting people clean, “not only providing medical care and exposing chemical warfare. We were challenging Western Occidental medicine to Eastern medicine and natural healing.”

Combining the philosophies of self-determination and black liberation, the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association opened a clinic in Harlem and began to teach people of color, how to do acupuncture and provided medical care in a way that was considered threatening because.

Both this organization, as well as the Lincoln detox center became targets for COINTELPRO and apparently assassinations. I am just learning about this now. So I do not have all of my facts in order, but I’m excited to watch the documentary dope is death, to learn more about this. And there’s a few [00:06:00] articles that I’ll have links to in the show notes.

A big, thank you to acupuncture colleague Tenisha Dandridge, licensed acupuncturist, whose article on everyone’splace. com got me started in learning about this fascinating intersection of activism, acupuncture, and African-American history. I am in awe of these activists who took it upon themselves to learn about acupuncture at a time when there were no schools in this country and then take what they learned and.

And deploy it as a weapon in the fight for taking back control of their communities and figuring out a way to provide health care to people who really weren’t getting it any other way because of racism. I hope you enjoyed that little black history month anecdote on the history of acupuncture. Now I’m going to get into answering a couple of listener questions.

The first one is from Candy from South Western Australia who writes, I have a massive amount of the earth element within me. And I know that I’m lacking in both the wood and metal elements. My question would be what are some ways that we can try to bring more of a depleted element into our everyday lives?

So first off :Candy, thank you for your awesome question. I’m excited for the opportunity to answer it. Candy’s question is a sophisticated one in part, because she has taken my basics of Chinese medicine course. And so she knows a bit about what these elements are all about and has self-diagnosed herself as having.

A lot of earth, energy and less in the metal and what elements. So for those of you, for whom these are not quite terms that just, [00:08:00] you, you just understand intuitively what they’re all about. I want to unpack a little bit about what we mean by earth element metal elements and what element. And even before that, what the notion of the five elements are in Chinese medicine.

So to start things. Chinese Medicine is a true body, mind, spirit medicine, and one that is holistic in a sense that everything that exists in the natural world out in the environment exists in the human body as well. And this goes for really every aspect of life and every aspect of the human experience.

And yet, if it’s all qi, if it’s all just considered qi, it can be very difficult to talk about. And so we create these subcategories. So just like looking at light through a prism, we can see all the colors of the rainbow, but it’s all still light. You can think about the elements, that way, that it’s like, it’s all just energy, but it’s, it’s all the same thing, but it’s different aspects of all that is.

So each of the elements has an organ system internally that it corresponds with as well as an emotion, a dimension of the soul. A color a, smell, a taste, a season of the year, a pathway in the body, a sensory organ. And a phase of life. We all have all five elements within us, but the elements aren’t necessarily distributed equally among all human beings.

And that’s what gives us our uniqueness is that like not all of us have equal slices of the pie in, in all of the different elements. We are born with particular strengths and weaknesses, particular tendencies of both physiological and personality. Kind of [00:10:00] tendencies and it’s just the way we’re built.

So when we’re talking about creating a balance within, it’s not about making everyone the same, it’s about making ourselves balanced versions of who we are. So some of this is innate. It’s just what we came in with. It’s your natural strengths and weaknesses. Some of it. Is a survival strategy. It’s a way that we decided to shape ourselves in order to stay safe.

So in other words, for some of us, there may be a gap between the person that we were born to be their natural strengths. Versus what we needed to do to survive our childhood or to survive circumstances that shaped us as we were growing up. And so it may be that some of us have overdeveloped or hyper developed as a survival strategy, a particular element at the detriment of another element that might actually be more true to.

The person that we feel like we are at our essence. So the difference between an essential self and a social self, so to speak. I’ve talked a lot and various shows in the past about the different survival strategies that we employ. So just to go there for a moment, an earth type or someone with a lot of earth, energy might be very supportive and caring and nurturing and stable, loyal.

Nice. Sweet. Want to feed you? Biologically, they might carry extra weight around their middle. They might have digestive challenges. They might crave sugar because the taste of earth corresponds with sweet. They might have a tendency to overthink things or worry because that’s the emotion that corresponds with the earth [00:12:00] element.

That idea of chewing on something over and over again, without swallowing it or getting rid of it. They might really need to hear that self-care is not selfish because a lot of their energy goes towards supporting others. And it might feel really weird and alien to give that same sort of compassion and support to themselves.

They might be very stable people and an exaggeration. They might be kind of stuck in a rut sometimes. So to speak like stuck in the mud, when earth gets too damp or too boggy, it can feel heavy. It can feel. Sticky. The tastes that corresponds with earth element is sweet and being sweet to people and wanting harmony, wanting everything to be sweet for everyone all the time can be a tendency that earth element people can have.

And. That may sometimes block the ability to be assertive, the ability to stand up for oneself or draw boundaries. If earth element is in excess, it can be depleting to other elements, or if that’s the way that someone. Learn to survive their life circumstances, maybe by being a people pleaser that would be considered an earth element, survival strategy.

And it’s not necessarily the truth of who that person is. Right. They have these other elements within that. They maybe don’t go to as much, especially when they’re under stress. It’s easy to contract back to that learn survival strategy that got us through when we really needed it too early in life. So if.

And adult, we can recognize our tendencies so that we don’t have to be bound by them. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where we get to evolve. I really want to make it clear that as far as I’m concerned, the five elements are a useful tool in terms of understanding tendencies and also understanding the way that nature works and understanding.

Phase the origin because these elements exist within us, but we also move through them. Like [00:14:00] the earth phase of life has to do with reaping what we’ve sown and being able to integrate what we’ve just done and let it nourish us. Right. It’s about nourishment. Digestive system is about taking. Food and making it nutritious as if we can’t digest it.

We can’t process it. We can’t make use of it. It’s not nutrition to us. So in the organ systems, the spleen and stomach and pancreas, all of these are kind of subsumed under the heading of earth element are what we rely on to make that possible. So if there’s basically a slice of everything that is, that exists in each element, it can be really hard to answer this question.

In a general way, because there’s lots of different aspects to each of the different elements. So that would be my first question is like, is getting clear on which aspect of the element are we really talking about here? Because in terms of how we would nourish it, there’s going to be acupoints, qi gong exercises, herbs foods, colors, and smells and tastes that we can add to our lives. Attitudes, postures times of day, reflection questions, all of which could be skillfully employed to help shift the balance. So Candy was wanting to have more of the metal element in her life. She’s identified this as a depleted elements and wanting to support it.

But I have no idea whether she wants to support it because she’s got asthma, like a lung issue, metal element, is lungs and large intestine. So like, does she get sick easily? And she wants a stronger immune system? Is she dealing with constipation? Is she too hard on herself, like being metal cah be — is, is being a little too rigid or a little too harsh.

The emotion that corresponds with metal is grief and loss and loneliness. Is that what she’s dealing with? The Metal element helps [00:16:00] to give order to our lives, to know what’s valuable and what we can let go of. So is she having issues with being inspired, like literally breathing in new life or is she having difficulty letting go of stuff that no longer serves her?

Like, is she a hoarder? Is she mired in stuff that she doesn’t need anymore? Obviously, there’s going to be different advice that I would give her, depending on which of these things are true. Right? So as a Chinese medicine practitioner, I’m going to suggest different points, different herbs, different foods.

As a coach, I might suggest different lifestyle or diet or embodiment or reflection question exercises, depending on what aspect of the element we’re talking about. And then also considering whether it’s the fault of that elements at all, or could it be that the metal element is not getting what it needs from its mother, the earth, like maybe the earth is holding onto its energy and not passing it on along the creation cycle to metal.

Because all of the elements have an element that they support pass their energy onto an element that they are responsible for keeping in check like a big game of rock paper scissors. And so it may be that the element where symptoms are showing up that, that’s actually being impacted by an imbalance in another element somewhere else.

And that is really why Chinese medicine is both an art and a science is the practitioner’s ability to discern where the imbalance is and what needs to happen in order for the ecosystem as a whole to come into balance. So if someone is getting sick frequently colds and flus a lot, we might nourish the mother to nourish the child.

In other words, we might treat the earth element because the earth is the mother of metal in order to support the Lung. Or it could be that the metal element is being over controlled by the heart or rebelled against by [00:18:00] the liver. So there are super nerdy ways of getting the energy of one element to confer its power and virtue onto another.

And that is going to be where seeing an acupuncturist who is adapt and understanding the relationship between. The points and the elements can be really helpful. And that really kind of goes beyond the scope of this podcast because it’s so specific. And also why studying acupuncture is a journey that can last a lifetime or even multiple lives.

But as you’ve likely heard me say before on the podcast, Chinese medicine is also applied philosophy. And if we’re thinking about the psycho-emotional aspect of a particular element, there’s often work we can do with our consciousness and our thinking that can help us live different. So getting into some of the psycho-emotional and psycho-spiritual aspects of the metal element taking in and letting go, right?

The lungs take in oxygen. They let out the carbon dioxide, the large intestine receives the last of the intestinal waste and it lets go of what we really don’t need anymore. So on a psycho-spiritual level, the question of. Are you taking in enough new, fresh cheese? Are you inspired by her life or do you feel kind of flat and depressed?

Uh, do you feel stuck in a rut? Do you need to open yourself up to fresh, cheesy in the form of new experiences? If someone is indeed feeling that way, I might suggest like, okay, well maybe put yourself in a position where you’re opening the lungs physically, like maybe reclining over a bolster, kind of a reclined fish pose, or do some chigong where you are literally lengthening the lung meridians and breathing in, in a new, fresh way.

Or if it’s the letting go aspect too, you need to clean out your house. Do you need to [00:20:00] declutter for example? Or maybe you’ve got so much clutter because you don’t actually know what’s useful. And what isn’t, or if you think about your space as a reflection of your values, maybe you can’t get organized because you don’t actually know whether this particular corner of a room is a craft center or a reading nook because you haven’t made that decision.

So looking at what is the issue here and what is necessary in order for it to feel better? Another aspect of the metal element is if we think about metal as like it’s it’s firm and rigid And if it’s overly rigid, like if we have too harsh of standards for ourselves and we can be maybe overly critical.

So perhaps then the medicine has to do with self-compassion or self-acceptance or valuing ourselves for who we are instead of wishing that we had traits that might look good on somebody else, but are not necessarily our own intrinsic strengths and weaknesses. And so those effects it’s like there may well be an essential oil that brings out that quality or a mindset shift or a reflection question, or the fact that the metal element goes with the color white.

And so maybe, maybe this person can bring in the color white as something that they wear or something that’s in their environment to help bring it out. And in Chinese medicine, every organ system is said to embody and contain some aspect of the spirit overall. And the spirit of the lungs is, has to do with the body’s intuition, the bodily intelligence.

And so someone who is maybe feels disconnected from their body or their intuition, I might give them an assignment like to feed your senses to, to be around something beautiful, to smell. Gorgeous scent to put on beautiful [00:22:00] music or to have a practice like Xi gong or yoga, where you let yourself connect to your body in a way that isn’t this top-down relationship of mind over body, but one where the body and mind gets to unite and be with each other and just let yourself move in a way that feels intuitive and natural.

Maybe it’s a practice, like setting a little alarm on your phone to check in with yourself throughout the day and just to see how you’re doing or to take yourself through a body scan. If that’s the aspect of metal that you are needing to work on. Being unable to let go of something might be connected to being too sentimental, right?

Like having too much emotional attachment to physical things. In which case, being able to honor the emotion, but to get rid of the thing itself might be what someone needs to focus on. So in other words, There’s lots of different ways, lots of different strategies that we can employ that pertain to a particular element.

And some of those can be things that we reflect on. Some of those can be things that we just employ in our environment. There could be ways that we tap into it with these portals of consciousness known as acupoints. Right. So I might give someone a prescription to work with lung seven. If they’re dealing with grief and sadness that they need to let go of because that’s the points on the channel that vents emotion to the surface.

It’s the low point. Anyway. So there’s a whole lot of theory that we as acupuncturist learn about very specific ways of working with the body and working with herbs, working with foods that can help bring out a dormant aspect of ourselves. Or temper and aspect that we might be overdoing and a skillful clinician or a coach working within the Chinese medicine framework can help a person identify what’s what, and [00:24:00] to be able to, to rectify that balance.

So while there is no magic formula, there are a few things that I would say are pretty common to the way that we work with people. One is to. Heal the wounds of the past, right? That, that as a clinician or a coach, I look at where someone is telling themselves a story that, that depletes them or where they’re stuck and.

To help them tell a different story that empowers and strengthens them that adds to their cheeky and to their health rather than contributing to this sense of stuckness. It’s a process of self-awareness it’s about noticing our tendencies so that we don’t have to be bound by them. It often involves in my experience having compassion for ourselves and where we’ve been stuck, or have not felt safe enough to fully express who we really are.

And to develop an appreciation for the gifts that we do have as opposed to looking at outside ourselves and wishing that we were, that. It definitely helps to have support along the way, because a lot of times, as we’re trying to build a new muscle psycho- spiritually, it’s hard to see that we’re making progress on that without the support of others.

And so if you have someone in your life who can reflect that back to you, whether that’s a spouse or a partner or a good friend, or a coach, anyone who. Who sees you and really gets you and is around you enough to see, and to provide you evidence that you are in fact changing, that can be really critical and helpful.

So to recap, some of these suggestions on how to cultivate a particular element could be subtle, like in the form of a color or a smell or using a point. And some of them might be bigger questions to reflect on [00:26:00] things to actually do, to empower the virtue of that particular element or to keep in check the energy of an element that might be overbearing and thus depleting the thing you’re trying to work.

It’s a very long-winded way of saying it depends. I hope you found this interesting and satisfying. And for those of you who are intrigued and want to learn more, I invite you to check out my basics of Chinese medicine course, which you can find at Brodiewelch.com Or if you’re intrigued enough to want to do some one-on-one coaching, I do have room for just a couple of folks on my schedule.

The next question comes from John. John writes:“I recently listened to your podcast and was intrigued by your sensibility and compassion. I am an acupuncture student at school and fascinated with Chinese medicine. What is your recommendation on cultivating internal awareness and stillness?

As I move into clinical rotations, I want to be open and empty, to fully acknowledge, accept, and hear my future patients. I want to help others by being fully present and receptive to their. I feel so blessed and grateful to be selected to practice this ancient healing art. How do I remove my ego from the patient’s experience and disharmony?”

John: that is an awesome question. I thank you for writing it. And I thank you for asking it because getting out of the way of. Allowing healing to happen is definitely an art that takes practice. However, you seem to have me confused with some sort of spiritual master. I definitely am not an authority on how to, how to completely remove one’s ego from practice, but after practicing for 17 years, I’d like to think that I’ve learned some [00:28:00] things about getting out of the way and being able to really hear what people are saying.

When John writes that he wants to be open and empty in order to fully acknowledge, accept and hear his future patients, the word empty stands out to me because if you’re full of what just happened or what’s about to happen, you can. Truly be receptive to what’s in front of you. And the only way around that is to not pack your life.

Right? If you’re, if you’re trying to see 50 patients a day, I’m not sure that you can really be fully present to what’s in front of you. If you’re worried about what’s going to happen after you leave clinic or what you have yet to do in other areas of your life. It’s hard to be fully present. And so having a practice of presence where you practice clearing your minds and.

Honing your focus on just what is in front of you, maybe a meditation practice or Xi gong practice or a yoga practice, but some thing where you are focusing on just one thing and practicing, returning your attention to that thing over and over again, then essentially your patient becomes the object of your meditation.

When they’re in front of. The second thing I would suggest is in a practice of being able to really hear what they’re saying is deep listening, where you’re listening to not only the words that they’re saying, but you’re really perceiving with all of your senses, including your heart, and really trying to.

I understand the meaning behind the words and where they’re coming from. So this is really kind of like listening plus empathy together where you’re not trying to diagnose what’s wrong with them. You’re not trying to fix them. You’re just first receiving them and their reality and their perception, according to them [00:30:00] now, obviously, Hard to do.

And we have our own experiences, our own filters that are going to come up. But if you are acknowledging simultaneously as you’re listening to someone, if you can recognize where you’re starting to insert your own interpretation or your own version. Of, oh, and this happens, a similar thing happened to me.

This is how it was therefore, this is how it is for them being able to catch yourself in that projection and reel it back is an important practice is then you can just kind of let it go and return to listening and just trying to internalize what someone is bringing to the team. It is an incredible gift that you can give someone to truly listen to them.

Giving someone the gift of your full attention is something that even non practitioners can give the people in our lives. And it is profoundly healing because you’re not listening for what’s wrong. And you’re not trying to be the hero or the, the master clinician. You can solve someone’s problems. You are meeting them where they are.

And for most people, they don’t have anyone in their life. Who’s going to do this. Everyone is going to have an agenda. And so for you as a clinician to just hear people’s experience and meet them with empathy and as much understanding as you can bring, that’s an incredible gift. Furthermore, it’s an active healing and really you’re not there to cure the patient.

Right? The body’s intelligence is what cures the patient, the tools of Chinese medicine are suggestions as to how to bring that healing about whether that’s a conversation that helps shift the patient’s consciousness or the skillful application of a needle. So for there to catalyze healing for a patient.

That begins, I believe with [00:32:00] presence, attention, empathy, but ultimately also love, I can’t even. Describe how many times when I’m listening to a patient’s story, I’m just beaming back at them. I love you. It’s like, it may sound hokey or dumb, but it’s like, I’m just showering them with love because I’m seeing them as a whole.

I’m not seeing them as someone that fundamentally needs to be fixed, but I’m tuning into what they’re saying to their suffering. And I’m trying to meet that with. And embrace getting back to the words John used in his question. Saying that he wants to be able to hear, acknowledge and accept his patients.

And I think that that actually is really on target that we need to be able to hear them first and that acknowledge and accept where they’re at is necessary before being able to move on from that in the direction of what would be balancing for that person’s ecosystem in that moment. Another challenge we may face as clinicians is being able to see the person in front of us for who they are and not like the person similar to them, or with a similar condition to this person that we might’ve seen last week or last year who maybe we didn’t get the results that we wanted to with, or that didn’t respond in a way that we would have liked.

And recognizing that that was then, and this is now the past does not predict the future and that no two people are the same and that you yourself are constantly learning new things, refining your techniques and your skills, your diagnostic capabilities, and figuring out new ways to treat people that you can expect a different outcome.

So in other words, giving yourself permission to not be stuck in the past and to move on and to meet the moment as a new mom. [00:34:00] And this of course requires practice. It requires humility and self study and the willingness to learn from the past. And of course just being able to do all this without projecting our own experience onto the patient requires doing your own work.

It requires getting honest with yourself. This may require or be aided by work with a therapist or with a coach or with someone else who can help you see your blind spots. Maybe even just a good. It’s pretty inevitable that at some point you’re going to be triggered by some of your patients. They’re going to get under your skin.

You’re going to have judgment about them. You’re going to be angry at them or you’re, there’s, there’s going to be something that comes up for you. That isn’t about them at all. It is about your shadow issues. You’re human. And we are in a profession where we have the privilege of being drawn to our own material, via our interactions with others.

And so taking the time and space in an ongoing way to look at that and to get curious about why a particular, why you had a strong reaction to the person in your office so that you can. See it and get around it and own it and get over it that you can actually be of service. Your personal cultivation work is every bit as important as continuing education classes that give you more technical knowledge in our field.

So those are some of my thoughts, John. It’s a great question. Thank you for asking it. And I think that the fact that you are asking it means that you’re going to be the kind of practitioner who. Is able to provide medicine just through your beingness, because you have a sincere desire to heal and you get that.

It isn’t all about you. And in fact, it’s really all about them.

[00:36:00]

Brodie: And now I have some news to share with you, and that is that I am going to take a bit of a pause on podcasts. I don’t actually know whether this is the last episode of a healthy curiosity or whether the show will continue or whether a new show will be born in its place.

But I do know that a lot of the questions that I wanted to answer on the show I’ve answered in the past four and a half years of doing this pretty much every week. And that in the cycle of the five phases. I am entering kind of a new unknown, not sure what the future will bring sort of phase. And I want to live a little room for that to incubate.

And so I’m not necessarily saying this is the end of a healthy curiosity, but I am saying that I am not doing any new interviews for a little while. And so if, when the spirit moves me to create a podcast or to bring somebody on who I’m just dying for you to hear from that will happen. But until then, I’m going to honor the phase of life that I’m moving into, which is a little more yen, which has a little bit more to do with inner reflection and digestion than it does with producing and getting a message out.

So for those of you who have been longtime listeners, I just want to say a heartfelt thanks to you for helping to keep the show going all these years. And if you’re rather new to the show, I’d love to hear what’s interesting to you about it and what you’d like to hear more of because. I love podcasting and I’m certainly not done with it, but at the same time, I don’t want to just stay in motion arbitrarily for the sake of motion or for the sake of, uh, because I said I would, or because I’m getting deluged from publicists wanting me to feature Joe average on the podcast every week. And I just, I’m not into that. [00:38:00] I it’s really has to mean something. I value your time and mine, and it takes a lot of time and money to produce a show. So I want to make it count. And right now I am saying no to everything that feels extraneous or unnecessary. So until something feels necessary, I am going to go on a little hiatus.

In the meantime, I’m here for you over at brodiewelch.com. You can email me at Brodie@brodiewelch.com I’m sending you so much gratitude and so much love, and as always, please be kind to yourself. Thanks for listening today.

If you learned something new or feel inspired to try something different in your life, I’d love for you to pay it forward. By sharing this episode with a friend. I think it also benefit and give them a reason to listen. You’ll be helping to create a world where we encourage each other to embody self-respect till next time, be good to yourself.