Mona: Ayurvedic wisdom is a 5,000 year old method of healing the body that takes an integration and looking at the body, mind, and spirit as a whole to heal. Doctors I've worked with, they can really track trauma now being transferred. Genetically anxiety related disorders are on the rise. I don't think I've met one person who doesn't feel they feel too much stress today.
What happens over time when we deal with digestive issues, headaches, trauma, what's happening in our life? Little things living with pain. Mm-hmm. That becomes. Part of your DNA that becomes part of your thought process. What kind of information then starts going to yourself? Ancient wisdom new to check our pulse wines and could really understand how our pulse on each side of our body was associated to every single organ and how it functioned in order to prescribe specific energy points within the body to bring balance back into the body.
Dave: How do you adjust your nervous system so that you're not hypervigilant? What are your steps? You are listening to the human upgrade with Dave Asprey.
You grew up in an ashram and you're in the US spreading Ayurvedic and ancient knowledge, but you got a lot of science mixed in there. Walk me through how you transition the sanction knowledge into making companies listen. 'cause companies are kinda stubborn.
Mona: Honestly, the ultimate goal is to merge the two together.
Ancient wisdom with modern day medicine, you and I know we talk about this idea of integration or integrative medicine, but no one's actually practicing it, right? Mm-hmm. And for so many years, we've been waiting for science to validate what 5,000 year old ancient wisdom practices have known. All along you look at.
Any of these spiritual texts from all of our backgrounds and cultures. And you'll see the same kind of traditions, which we can dive into. And for me, I think ultimately it just came through my own experience of having the Western conventional medical system kind of fail me. And going back to my roots growing up at the Ashram as the Shivan Ashram and Val Moran in Quebec, where we spent every single summer, and it was there that I saw firsthand the power of food, mindfulness, nature, um, you know, living in community.
Practicing self-regulation every single day. But I kind of had to get parting outta my way in my twenties and Chase success and do all that before I had to go back to my roots.
Dave: As a fellow Canadian, knowing that your ashram was in Quebec, was it like an angry ashram?
Mona: They didn't have the hard accents. No, they didn't.
This is the thing with the, this organization, they have people who come from all over the world, but I'll never forget like. They had their own farm and grow your, we'd go pick berries off the mountains in the morning. There's people from all over the world that came to kind of meet and they always had guest speakers come to speak at Zeng every single night.
So it was a really crucial part of, I guess, imprinting growing up. Um, it kind of felt like torture because I don't know if you got to go to fun summer camp.
Dave: Oh yeah. I got to go to lots of summer camps, but. Uh, they were not fun for me. But having Asperger's, that was mostly 'cause Okay,
Mona: there you go. I didn't get to do any of that.
I got to go to yoga camp. My dad would tap me on the shoulder at five o'clock in the morning to go to Tsing and go meditate. So as a teenager, as a child,
Dave: you're supposed to be going to sleep at 5:00 AM not waking up at 5:00 AM
Mona: We know this now, but back then it kind of felt like, ah, I've gotta go meditate, I've gotta do, go to yoga.
And hearing me say those words now is kind of comical because like, what a gift that was for me growing up. Yeah, and it's something that I needed, and we can talk about this as well. You and I share this kind of hyper-vigilant background.
Mm-hmm.
And I didn't notice that I drifted so far from as ashram rituals probably.
'cause I was like rebelling against it a little bit. And then it took me really going back after my heart surgeries that had to kind of reground, regroup and get to know myself again.
Dave: Mm-hmm. Okay. A lot of listeners have heard of Ayurveda, and maybe they know a little bit about it. Can you give me the one paragraph perspective of Ayurveda on the world?
Mona: Ayurvedic wisdom is a 5,000 year old method of healing the body that takes an integration and looking at the body, mind, and spirit as a whole to heal instead of looking at systemic. Parts to heal the body or systemic ways to heal the body. We look at the body as a whole to heal, to come back into balance.
Dave: Oh, so it's just old biohacking?
Mona: Old biohacking. It literally is the, I call it the original biohacker. I
Dave: have said the same thing. I'm, I'm very much in alignment. A lot of the things that I've been able to bring forward, like put ghee in your coffee. I didn't invent gh. No, exactly. Um, it comes from Ayurveda or sometimes from traditional Chinese medicine or an old shamanic practice.
I. And one of the rules of biohacking is to take very ancient things and validate them using data. Mm-hmm. For instance, you use GH and your liver gets healthier and you lose weight and things like that. And the idea that no one would accept that in the West until we had data is kind of funny because. I think they had some data to develop at this.
How did Ayurveda come about?
Mona: So here's the thing, and I love that you brought that up because we're so focused on data, and I know you work with a lot of people who are so science driven. We need data, data, data. But if you have something that works, if you've experienced it working within your body, and for me, you know, I don't have a lot of data for a lot of the things that work for my clients, but it's been now 15 years of me using those modalities.
I see it work. I see my clients' lives. Change. That's the proof that I need. And I think it's time for an awakening of this to begin with. And to your point about where it comes from, I think growing up, um, you know, a lot of my aunties in India, a lot of these practices, even biohacking, is just part of the everyday way of life.
So for example, on my auntie's balcony, there would be brahmi and, uh, ashwagandha and all of tulsi herbs just growing there. But it was. Part of what they did starting their day during, um, you know, if they were focusing on detoxification, doing Pancha Karma, they would consume ghee as a form of detoxification because they understood this body might need a little bit of support in this modern world, detoxifying.
And then we talk about yoga, and I think in the west we kind of mixed up with these like hardcore, you know, ang practices or doing hot yoga in a studio and holding these hard poses. Yoga ultimately, and especially through the ashram that I grew up with. Is breath work. We sit for 30 minutes breathing to start the day.
And one of the oldest things, and just like imagine if you were to go to your doctor's office and they prescribed sun salutations. What are we doing in a sun salutation? We're facing the sun first thing in the morning. We're getting a red light therapy. We're merging our movement with our breath. We're we're, um, we're, uh, bringing light to the mitochondria.
Within our body, we are working on our fascia, we're focusing on our posture, and we're practicing liberation from emotions that might not serve us off the mat, but everything that we practice on the mat, we take out into the world. Foundational, simple, free modality for bringing the body back into balance and bring, uh, building resilience.
Dave: I don't think it's free. It's like $28 a session here in Austin,
Mona: I think like 39 at some studios right now. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it at do it at home. Look up the video.
Dave: I talk about this sometimes, but breath work has been a major part of my practice. I did Art of Living every morning for five plus years.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I've done relatively advanced yoga practice at times in my life. Um, and. Holotropic breath work, and it, it is really important. My newest book is called Heavily Meditated, and I'm talking a lot about these things because consciousness or what you're calling liberation, it means that you're not triggered by things.
Mm-hmm. And I feel like now's the time for that. I, I haven't heavily emphasized that in the evolution of biohacking, because especially at the beginning, it would've, people wouldn't have listened 'cause it was just too much. Mm-hmm. Recently to your point about, uh, science. Well, I was giving a talk on stage with some of the leaders in consciousness and science, and I said, I am going to be misquoted on this.
I. But science is bullshit. And you said this, I said it, and I, and I explained why right after that, and as predicted, the New York Times quoted me saying, science is bullshit. And I referenced thousands of those. I am a scientist, but the reason I say it's bullshit is that. Science is the best story we can concoct that explains what we observe.
That's all it is. Mm-hmm. So it's a story we tell ourselves and there are many different stories. Some better fit the facts and none of them are the correct, true story. Mm-hmm.
Mona: We're
Dave: always learning more.
Mona: And I think that healthcare, our medical system, we kind of got trapped in that Newtonian way of thinking, right?
Look for the problem, find a solution to fix it, map out A to B, and that has to be the answer. And there's nothing else outside of that, right? And so this conditioning lives still today I have so many people aware if I give them a hardcore practice or protocol to follow, that might have shown up on your podcast or through another doctor.
I'm all in. I'm in for hard. I wanna do hard because they're also stuck in this state. Of hypervigilance to get there. Mm-hmm. Um, but then when I can take that same client away somewhere and literally show them how to shift their nervous system into rest and safety, and they can actually feel their bodies come back into balance, kind of like a domino effect.
Mm. Every system in the body, body just comes back into balance. And I'm gonna hover on this just. From my heart surgery, so I'll never forget doctors saying, you know, they go through, they wanna know, is there any stimulants that you're using? I had atrial tachycardia, so my heart would just go from zero to about 200 beats per minute.
Outta the blue. Yeah.
Dave: So that'll wake up in the morning.
Mona: That'll wake you up. I almost thought I would pass out. At that point in my life, I was not looking to get to the root cause of my healing at all. I just wanted a quick fix. Right? They put me on a beta blocker medication because that's what they did.
They knew that. They wanted to know, were you on a lot of stimulants? Maybe some, but not too many.
Dave: So not a lot of meth?
Mona: Not a lot of meth, nope. Not a lot of crystal or any of that. Um, they wanted to know if I, um, if I had stress, but their way of assessing stress was by doing a stress test, which I think like the majority of the population could probably somehow pass or on behalf of the population.
And then the last one was sepsis. So if I had an infection in my body that was driving these sar palpitations, well they ruled out all those three. They never once asked about my stress. My worry, my anxiety, um, the fact that I felt depressed most days. I felt like I had a hard time showing up for daily activities.
Like they weren't really interested in that part. So we went straight for the beta blocker, right? Science proves that beta blocker doesn't deal with the problem, but it can subside the symptoms. And God bless these doctors. They were doing their best. They saw my suffering and were trying to take away the pain.
That's exactly what doctors did. The beta blocker medication caused me to gain 45 pounds. Oops, 45 pounds heavier, completely lethargic because by the way, medication doesn't just work on one thing in the body. It's systemic. It goes to every single cell within you. So I literally like lost. Any joy that I had, I had no direction in my life.
Dave: It's amazing what no blood pressure getting blood into the brain would do for you, huh? Yeah.
Mona: So now I would almost pass out, not from the heart palpitations, but just by going from seated to standing. Yeah, it was crazy. So, okay, S os plan B, please. Well, let's go in for an ablation. So it went in for my first ablation for atrial tachycardia.
Okay. They go through your groin, they grow through your neck, you're awake for the entire thing, and they burn off these extra electrical valves. That are surrounding the heart. They pump you full of adrenaline and cortisol and all of these uppers to induce these palpitations that I knew would only happen if I was moving my body hour into it.
They found one area, they did one ablation. There was another spot that came up. They did a second ablation. The next morning in the hospital though, I woke up, my heart was pounding. It didn't work. Full of tears.
Dave: Cutting the wiring control systems is totally gonna work,
Mona: right? Yeah. Like that's the solution.
I do it in
Dave: my car sometimes. Like there's a rattle that's cut some wires. Solves it. And
Mona: why weren't they curious about the onset of the palpitations. Yeah. And what was happening in my life and the literal heartache that I was going through also. Um, so I went in for a second surgery, like things were that bad that I went in for a second surgery.
Dave: Mm.
Mona: They did another ablation for atrial tachycardia. They found another spot, but it was too close to my essay node because it was sinus tachycardia. And they said, well, we can do this, but you might have to wear a pacemaker for the rest of your life. And it was one of those moments. I dunno if you've had one of these moments where your life.
Flashes before your eyes. And I realized I've now, I'm overweight. I've identified as somebody who has a heart condition in my twenties. Um, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm not happy when I wake up every single day. Mm-hmm. I'm stunted, I'm not doing anything. I used to be super active, not doing that anymore.
I knew that there was a better way to heal, which was going back to the ashram where my mom, who's experienced rheumatoid arthritis her whole life, these complete deformity, I saw firsthand the power of the healing of going somewhere to regulate her nervous system, to build resilience within her body.
Her arthritis didn't go away, but her symptoms definitely subsided. And so, you know, looking back. What was happening at the ashram? Um, first of all, I got off the medication. Um, I was in these practices, so practicing, chanting every day, meditation every day, and breath work every day,
Dave: and circadian biology.
'cause you woke up early,
Mona: you got it. So there's my circadian rhythm. I was basically upgrading my mitochondria. I was healing my digestion, and I was honoring my nervous system. It's like four things that the doctors never addressed. So looking back, I just, I wonder if my story could have been different.
There's a time and a place that people are listening who do have tachycardia where this surgery might support you. Mm-hmm. But inquire to the other ways of healing the body and it now everything that we know about the heart and our bio field and the electromagnetic frequency that, you know, where our biofuel can be altered by the emotions that we feel.
Yeah. Like, holy moly, we have to be talking about this.
Dave: You can also use meditation and other techniques to change how the body feels. Yeah. And you can do that consciously, which is some meditation practices, some breath work, some of the other stuff. And that's the whole point of, of my new book, it's like, here's all the technologies and techniques and knowledge.
That I've used and that others have used. So even the type of meditation, right. Can change that.
Mona: Absolutely. I
Dave: gotta ask, did your doctors ever maybe look at methylation pathways or look at the levels of dopamine versus adrenaline versus noradrenaline? I.
Mona: None at all. I never asked about whether I was in nature, access to sunlight, my genetics.
Um, I also have, I have every weird thing. I have beta thalassemia, so oxygenation in my body and blood flow, like, hello. Those two things also go hand in hand.
Dave: Well, no, under your heart's getting a weird signal if that's happening. Yeah. And so many people like take some licorice root. Yes. You know, take some adrenal extract, take some rhodiola or tyrosine.
Mm-hmm.
Or green tea extract, depending on your genetics.
I've had very rapid heartbeat things, um, like that, where it's really str Oh, great. That's, that's an issue for me of catecholamine balance. Yeah. And it's all mitigated by genetics and the right supplements or the right foods. Absolutely. No doctor ever teaches that, especially back then. And now you have to find functional medicine.
If I was to go to a functional medicine doctor to look at all that stuff, and then I went to an Ayurvedic expert. Mm-hmm. How in alignment would their recommendations be?
Mona: They'd be completely different. Okay. I think that, you know, what are the, what does an Ayurvedic practitioner do? They will look at the whites of your eyes.
They'll look at the coating on your tongue to check on your digestion and your body's detoxification.
Dave: How's my tongue?
Mona: Gorgeous. Actually, that's a beautiful tongue. I
Dave: should have watched it. Yeah.
Mona: Do some scraping, which I can't live without a tongue scraper. Um, but they'll feel your pulse points, right. So biometrics are looking at this today, and you're an expert in this obviously, but if ancient wisdom new to check our pulse points and could really understand how our pulse on each side of our body was associated to every single organ and how it functioned.
And they were to prescribe marma points afterwards, like specific energy points within the body to bring balance back into the body. Yeah, I just, I think that this is something that needs to go mainstream. And now that we're onto the fact that doctors had no new, no education in, uh, nutrition, for example, it's not their fault.
It's just a very antiquated system and model. And maybe until we have the science, I. We might as well look at a system that just holds so much value and that's been tested over time to have such relevance and and healing. And you feel it. And it's funny, I'm thinking of people thinking, yeah, it's not for me.
Or often when I use the word vibration, a lot of people still roll their eyes. Well, we can validate vibration now. Right? And for people who think that, oh, I can't meditate, can't do it, not for me. Can't do yoga. No, yoga's not my thing. Like you are the person that just needs to experience it. Gimme five times, five consistent times, ideally done with a practitioner so that they can really guide you and understand, you know, when you are opening your eyes and wanting to get out of being in your body so that they can teach you ways of feeling comfort and ease within the, your body.
Again, and you felt this too, having these moments of awareness when you feel your physiology shift, that's all the proof that you need. You don't need doctors to tell you anything. You're like, oh yeah, I remember that time where I felt really good. Right? And all I did was.
Dave: Meditated you. You're like, I liked that feeling.
I think I'll do it again.
Mona: You got it. And
Dave: then someone may come along and say, you didn't have that feeling because you couldn't. Right. And you're like, that doesn't sound like science. That sounds like gaslighting.
Mona: You got it right. And you know, when we're, we're speaking about, um, and I wonder if there's gonna be a genetic side of this also.
So if we can understand methylation and maybe somebody who is a poor detoxer now. You know doctors, I've worked with the scientists out of John Hopkins and they can really track trauma now being transferred genetically. Generation through generation. Through generation. How many generations of trauma can we now associate being within this body?
Dave: I'm gonna bet seven 'cause that's the Native American thing. Is there an Ayurvedic approach to how many generations trauma lost?
Mona: No, that's a good question though. I'm gonna look into that.
Dave: Yeah.
Mona: But if you think about the background, where you come from, right? If you think about that trauma on top of the trauma that you've had from childbirth, the amazing job that your parents probably did growing up, and now we know, you know, a lot of the work that I do with my clients is just understanding the state of their nervous system.
Oh
Dave: yeah.
Mona: And. People think, oh no, I'm good. My stress isn't that bad. But when we do a deep dive on our first call together, you know, I'm often met with tears from somebody who's talking about an issue that happened when they were six years old. From a bully. Yeah. A teacher that made them feel a certain way, a brother, a sister, a mom, or a dad.
And it's this training of our nervous system that we have to understand by the time we get to our thirties, forties, or fifties, it becomes us. And you and I share this, I'm gonna keep going back to this 'cause I listened to your story and just. The addiction that I had to hypervigilance.
Dave: Oh yeah.
Mona: If I could be busy, if I could be productive, if I could show my Indian father that I was gonna be a success without becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a judge, then I'm good.
Because busy means productivity and success.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, and that was the opposite from the truth. This hypervigilance led me to burnout. My heart literally got to a point where like, I can't take this anymore. You gotta tune in and listen to all the symptoms that are happening right now. From my digestive issues, my hair falling out, the bloating, irritation, the anxiety, the worry, the poor sleep.
Like our bodies are communicating with us every single second of every day. We have to tune in and listen.
Dave: In my early twenties. Um, I like walk into a room and I immediately just scan the room and I'm like, yep, I know anyone in here who's a threat right away. Uh, and I know exactly where the chairs I could pick up and smack 'em on that.
Like literally this was automatic. I didn't have to think about it. It was just there. And I've been in a lot of fights. Never started one, always finished them.
Mona: Wow.
Dave: Uh, and. I was born with a cord raptor around my neck, right? So I came into the world thinking something was trying to kill me. And until I learned how to let that neurological thing go, which has nothing to do with my brain, its my body.
Um, after all that, I took this class on urban escape evasion,
which is like spy
school. And they teach you how to tell if you're being followed, how to escape from handcuffs and what to do when you're kidnapped. And you know, the final exam is they actually kidnap you and you escape from the trunk of a car and run missions with bounty hunters.
It was pretty crazy. But the guys teaching the class were basically bounty hunters and military operators and spies. Like it was, it was pretty badass. I had so much fun, but
Mona: also sounds terrifying.
Dave: Well, it's, it's kind of actually it was terrifying. Um. And also though, by exposing yourself to that, you lose the terror.
Exactly. But I realized what they were teaching. I was like, okay, when you walk in a room, always look around and I always know and always have a knife and you know, all this stuff. And I'm like, that's a hyper vigilance learned lifestyle.
Mona: Yeah.
Dave: I don't actually want to spend my nervous system that way. So I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna do that.
And if I walk into a room and there's someone that wants to kill me. I am gonna trust my nervous system to tell me, but I don't have to scan for it automatically. It'll, I'll just know
Mona: you don't have to look for it anymore. Right. And I
Dave: might miss it. And if so, then I'll die, whatever. But it's just not worth always, constantly worrying all the time
Mona: you got in.
Dave: How do you adjust your nervous system so that you're not hypervigilant? What are your steps?
Mona: My biggest lesson of last year, it's taken me this long to understand and it came through. The most common compliment that I would receive from people. Mona, you're so calming and soothing. Just your energy is so calming and soothing.
It's like, how is that? There was a woman, she's this, you know, Ayurvedic, um, astrologer, and she gave me a hug and she said, you know what, you seem really calming and soothing on the outside, but why is it that you're ticking fucking time bomb? On the inside.
Dave: Whoa. A year ago.
Mona: Yeah.
Dave: You don't seem, I was like, and I seem particularly tweaking right now.
Mona: I took something before. Um, did
Dave: you take a beta blocker?
Mona: Just gaba.
Dave: You really took GABA before this? Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Mona: So in understanding this, I was like, wow. The way that I had to show up in my life as a younger person, as a child, it was better to not be seen. It was better to be the calm, quiet one in my house growing up.
And so that was my survival mechanism. Mm. And yes, it's led me all this way and maybe that's my gift with the students and the clients that I work with today. But I recognize when I become too much of. A people pleaser and I'm trying to make other, everyone else feel good. When I don't give myself the opportunity to tell my story, then I go back to that hypervigilant state of, keep the attention off.
I don't wanna be seen. People are gonna out me. You know, that classic witch syndrome of being outed. I just, I recognize that that was a deep survival mechanism for me. Wow. And so now I turn it around and I think that this is so relevant because going on social media today, when we're. Seeing everything about the nervous system that's popping up.
Having a healthy, resilient nervous system doesn't mean that you are in this peaceful, calming state all the time. It means that you have a resilient system that can go into a stress response, but then come back into a calm, peace state of mind, feeling safe in your body. Wow. And if we can practice this.
You know, shift from going into stress, coming back into safety and rest and digest, then that's a healthy state for listeners who are like, holy shit, I'm so not there. I am stressed all the time. I'm worried. I'm anxious because anxiety related disorders are on the rise. I don't think I've met one person who doesn't feel they feel too much stress today.
We have to understand that the nervous system is like a muscle that needs to be. Practice worked, right? It's like building a muscle again. And there's a couple of ways that we can do this, but again, going back to ancient rituals, looking at the the things that most people resist, breathing, gratitude, breath work, yoga, stopping to feel gratitude in the present moment.
There's an really amazing app called the Lotus Bud app. Have you heard of that?
Dave: I haven't.
Mona: No connection to them whatsoever. But simply a reminder that you can set throughout the day. Maybe every hour, every 30 minutes, every 15 maybe to start. It's like a little chime that pings and it reminds you to just come into your body for a second.
Are you feeling safe? Does my body feel good? And for people who maybe like me, and you lived in that hyper vigilance day for too long
Dave: mm-hmm. Just
Mona: time for some deep retraining.
Dave: Wow. Okay. That's an interesting idea. It's, it's basically you're, you're teaching yourself to. Pay attention to your default mode network.
What's going on inside when you're not really paying attention? And are you tweaked? Uh, for me the path was maybe learning heart rate variability.
Mona: Mm-hmm. Great point. Um,
Dave: yeah, and I, I wrote about that in, in the new book as well, because just knowing the state of your nervous system is one thing and then being able to do something about it's another.
Mona: Right. You got it. Yeah. And heart rate variability too, like when we think about all these wearables that we have. Mm-hmm. I love wearables. I don't think that you necessarily. Need them, but it's great data to kind of see where you're living. Mm-hmm. The higher your heart rate variability, the chances are the more resilient your nervous system is.
So looking at your HRV on a daily basis could be supportive just to help guide you.
Dave: Yeah.
Mona: And the way that ancient wisdom recognized this is through the vagus nerve. Right. That calling it that our vagus nerve, I'm sure a lot of your audience knows this already, but this like. Brilliant wisdom and intelligence.
This pathway within our body that moves from our gut up our spine, through every single organ, through our heart, up into our skull, communicating to our brain, even into the organs and the, and the, the eyes and the ears. And it's this constant communication system. So throughout the day, if you're somebody who's just getting these like micro hits of stress, whether it's at the office, your ex, a little kid who's always, you know, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy.
You're constantly getting that twinge of like, oh, I'm stressed, I'm stressed, I'm stressed, and it becomes you. So you know, we joked, oing to start off this show. The vibration of M is something so simple. You can hum happy birthday. You can gargle at night when you're brushing your teeth. I do that with my little kids.
Just teaching and practicing that vagal tone is something that can really support your body, optimize your digestion, improve your productivity, your move boost, you know, the way that you, your performance throughout the day. It's so important. And again, these free modalities.
Dave: One thing that I love is I will om when I am in the cold plunge with my mouth under the water.
Mm-hmm. So you just oming through your nose. Oh cool. And man, that is powerful 'cause you're getting the cold effect on the vagus nerve and the humming and it. It works really
Mona: well. Oh, yeah, absolutely. For people who ever get into, you know, a really stressed and anxious state, um, going into child's pose, if you go into child's pose, but maybe on the wood floor, it's kinda like your third eye is pressing up against the ground and you Mm, you'll feel the vibration through the floorboards
Dave: That's
Mona: cool.
Into the body and it vibrates to every single cell, which is cool.
Dave: You mentioned growing up or be seen not heard. Do you know Kasha Urban's book Unbound? Yeah. A Woman's Guide to Power?
Mona: No, I can look it up though.
Dave: Kha is speaking at the biohacking conference, May 28th, and, and she's a highly sought after and impossible to get speaker.
Mm. And she agreed to speak. I was really stoked. Um, she was a Taoist nun for 17 years. And she also to pay for that was a professional dominatrix.
Mona: No. Oh, no way.
Dave: So she's like, I've studied power, I've studied magic.
Mona: Wow,
Dave: that's
Mona: so cool.
Dave: Very unusual perspective on things. But I've bought her book for hundreds of women friends because she's like, here's how society taught you to not really know what you want.
Because you're either too much or not enough. Mm-hmm. And here's the exact step by step exercises to get over that. And what I've noticed in women who's like, oh my gosh, let's try that. There's an anxiety. That sits there from being like something inside of me isn't I like, I'm confused. I don't know what I want, but I know that I should know.
And there's a weird loop, and she's the only person who's captured that in a book. So great. And it creates this relaxation. She's like, oh my gosh, I just finally acknowledged what I really need instead of needing what I'm supposed to need instead of what I actually need.
Mona: Hmm.
Dave: So I'm pretty excited for her talk at the Bio Hacking Conference,
Mona: and I'll be there to see her speak.
And that's such a great point because. I think as women and men we're constantly looking for things or modalities or things to add in, and we think about mindfulness as like this practice, but like no, being mindful sometimes is that's it. Just be mindful of, oh, here it is again. Maybe do some inquiries to where it came from within.
And I was so interested in this because I realized very quickly in my career. Helping people heal is so much more than movement and diet. It's the first question I always get, Mona, tell me what's the perfect diet? What's the supplement protocol? I'm, I'm gonna do it. Um, but then when we dive deeper, it's understanding what's causing the body to be outta balance to begin with.
And I ended up becoming a master NLP practitioner. So neurolinguistic programming, really understanding the impact of your limiting beliefs, the thoughts that you have towards yourself throughout the day. How often, and listeners right now, how often throughout the day are you in your judge or critic mode?
Judging others, judging yourself, criticizing others, criticizing yourself. And if you're just mindful at it. About in. Oh, doing it again, doing it again, doing it again. Like, oh my God, you're gonna feel like a crazy person. And now that we're understanding the power of the thoughts on our biology, how the hell could you heal if you're constantly judging or criticizing people or maybe you're angry all the time.
And so I do something called timeline therapy with a lot of my clients where. We go back to a specific moment where we remember feeling that anger or frustration or sadness or depression for the first time, but we go back to it in a safe space and we come back to it as our adult version. A lot of people are calling it Parenting Your Inner child.
Yes. And we reframe that moment and I invite them to go into the space and literally have a conversation with a version of yourself that felt the pain and trauma, no matter what the trauma is. I think a lot of people don't give themselves permission to speak about trauma if they, if if something terrible didn't happen, if it there wasn't.
Dave: Especially guys.
Mona: Especially guys. Yeah. Yeah. I, no, that was true for me also, it's just. No, no, no. Give yourself permission if you had a trauma traumatic moment. Go to that moment and notice how much of the ripple effect the energy from that moment that has impacted your life coming to today. Are you ready to let go of?
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Mona: Another great practice is building a circle of excellence. Have you ever done something like that?
Dave: Circle of excellence. Is this like Napoleon Hill kind of stuff, or
Mona: could be No, in NLP. I mean, they use the word excellence. I don't know that I, I love that word, but stepping into something. So literally visualize.
A circle around you right now, and within that circle the emotions that you've been wanting to feel your entire life that maybe you haven't. Mm-hmm. Maybe a sense of happiness or a sense of peace.
Dave: That's a way of giving yourself permission
Mona: when you step in. Okay. You got, maybe it's confidence, maybe it's a attraction, maybe it's a sense of success.
And so by visualizing these. Thoughts, we now know the mind. If it doesn't know the difference of it happening in the past or in the present moment, it can feel real. And when I do this practice with my clients, I see their posture completely shift. They're sitting up straight, their heart is expanded, they're open.
There might be a smile over the face. There might be tears, but they're not tears of sadness. They're tears of joy because it feels so good to be in this space and then they go out into real life. But with practice coming in, again, you're building that muscle of becoming the version, not even becoming, it's returning to the frequency that you came into the world as, right?
Like returning to the sense of who you are, the most perfect being that came into this world to play a note in this insane symphony that we live. Going back to that vibration and like owning it.
Dave: I love that. And when you say your clients, one of your clients is the the Smith family. I, uh, this is like Robert Smith from The Cure.
Robert
Mona: Smith.
Dave: No,
Mona: different. Smith.
Dave: Which there's a lot of Smiths out there. You're
Mona: right. Will Smith. Will Smith and his family. Who, who's that beautiful family? Will Smith, the actor?
Dave: I've never heard of him.
Mona: Yeah, I'm just kidding. He's not that big. I've
Dave: heard of him before. Um, he doesn't, he doesn't slap me though, so it's okay.
Mona: My kids know him as Aladdin. And I know him as a fresh prince. The coolest thing. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Dave: Um, a very famous guy. So you, you're working with high pressure people and you and I both know a lot of celebrities and have, you probably work with more than I have, but enough that they're under the public eye all the time.
I mean, you and I are to a certain extent, but not like that. 'cause you know, we have whatever podcasts in social media, but um, they have an incredible amount of stress and it feels like the more public you are. The more famous you are, the more wealthy you are, the more you attract. Mm-hmm. Predators. Oh my God.
Yeah. And narcissists and sociopaths into your life. 'cause they're like, Ooh, I want some of that. Right. So like the higher you go in the public sphere, the more paranoid you get because the percentage of people who want something from you goes up and up. How do you guide your clients to deal with that kind of stress?
Mona: It's funny, just like, as I mentioned before, you know, it starts with nutrition and I think with I, when I work with my clients, it's 50 50, so I wanna understand their biology. We run their blood labs, we do a stool test, we maybe do a cortisol test, maybe we do an MRI like, I want as much data as possible because that's a really cool thing about science Today.
I can understand data about your unique constitution, but then outside of that. I do a deeper dive into understanding who they are, how they wanna feel, uh, understanding what their core value is for life. And a lot of people don't even know what that is. If I ask a lot of people how you wanna feel every single day, they, they say, successful, uh, motivated, uh, wealthy.
I wanna feel, um, confident. I wanna feel, you know, and it's like. What about happy?
Dave: I, I would said horny.
Mona: Maybe they want that too. Just part of
Dave: the picture. Like what do people never like? Most people don't wanna feel that way. They just don't say it. But they
Mona: might go into, that goes in the
umbrella of joy, let's say.
Dave: I'm totally kidding, but not really.
Mona: But people are disconnected again. Yeah. From like the sense of how do I wanna. Feel every day. If you know how you wanna feel, the actions that you take every day are gonna guide you towards that feeling. If you don't know how you wanna feel, you're gonna be lost.
Constantly searching for ways to get to that feeling.
Dave: That's a big deal. If you don't know how you wanna feel, how are you gonna program yourself to do more of that?
Mona: You got it. So understanding this core values is really key and you know, so. While we go through these kind of pillars of wellness, and I really take everything from the ashram, okay?
I teach my clients how to build their ashram at home. So what do we do? We detoxify, I go through their fridges, I go through their cabinets, I go through their personal care products. I go through what their bedroom looks like through all the products that they're using in their home, and we're detoxifying.
Dave: So you get rid of the Red Pine tree Air fresheners replacement with the Green pine tree air fresheners, right? How
Mona: is Glades still? A legal product.
Dave: It shouldn't
Mona: be and spray and like, like those sprays that happen. I don't even That's insane. Yeah.
Dave: You know what you can do? If you go into like any of these public restrooms that have those spray things, you can just rip 'em open.
They're not locked. I, I usually just take 'em off the wall and throw 'em out. But sometimes I open them up and then I take the battery out and then I break the terminals off and then I put the battery back in. So the damn thing will never work.
Mona: That's so much more impressive. I just throw it in the trash.
Dave: But you break it off and it's like they won't replace it with a new one.
Mona: I like it. I like your strategy. And I don't wanna increase
Dave: market demand for that crap. 'cause they'll buy another one. They
Mona: can buy more and they're supporting the brand. Yeah. Do we wanna put that brand outta business? I like your strategy.
But yes, we detoxify because we live in a toxic mess. And you know, as a lot of people don't like that word toxic, but we're, our body goes through lots of burdens through the air that we breathe, the water, the personal care products. When I worked in the cosmetic industry, I was slathering myself in, um, you know, cosmetic perfume.
Dave: I, I see mascara.
Mona: It's clean mascara.
Dave: Is it really? Okay? It really is. What brand is it?
Mona: It's uh, it has a blue box, ex something. Okay. It's from the detox market. Shout out to a Canadian brand. Yeah. Good deal. Yeah, so we detox, then we go through the bedroom and the bedroom should be used for sleep, for sex and for rest.
And there's blackout curtains. There's often an air purifier, but we're making sure that it's a cool temperature. That's Wow, you
Dave: sunk them. Biohacker.
Mona: I do, don't I?
Dave: And it's also a wire of v
Mona: and an ancient wisdom, right? Comes, we sleep in caves, right? Mm-hmm. Um, and then we go through, you know, uh, in terms of nutrition, the things that their body actually needs in terms of their genetics, the supplements that they might actually require to feel their best.
But then we also do the emotional and the spiritual work also. And really a lot of the most profound work that I've done with Will is through meditation and through yoga practice.
Good for him.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think for him and for me, also. My greatest healing came from not acknowledging that it was this physical journey mm-hmm.
Of things that I had to do and add things that felt really, really hard and taxing. But instead it turned into this spiritual awakening. It was like tuning into my own consciousness and it's like, oh yeah, my body. Knows how to heal itself. If I break a bone, it can heal. How else can it heal? And then I've felt it heal by going away somewhere where I've kind of plugged into the source energy.
And when you feel that you've got the resonance within you to know when you drift, like, oh, I'm feeling completely disconnected. Oh, I've drifted again. What can I do to go back? And so by understanding not only your biology, your belief systems, your thoughts, your, your core way of being, when you've drifted too much from how you wanna feel in this lifetime, then you go back to the modalities that, that work.
And vagal tones, one of the, the big ones, nervous system regulation is the big one. Optimizing your mitochondria. Mm-hmm. That's another really big one. We do all these things to build back the resiliency within the body. All of a sudden you turn on these like intelligent communication pathways for the body, the body to just work.
Dave: Wow. It's uh, it's almost like every time we do an interview, no matter which background someone comes from, people who've learned how to do these things, we all come back to the same thing, make the body stronger, and then train the spirit.
Mona: Right. You got it. Okay.
Dave: And
Mona: it's like when you come into the spiritual approach, and I would say too, from the ashram, the bad side of it was.
Living at an ashram, you're in this spiritual pursuit, right? You've been to India, you've met with all these swamis. Also, it's about the attainment of Brahma, of Ottman of God, becoming one with something else. I'm lifting my hand for listeners. Um. This awakening is outside of you.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Mona: And I think it's time to bring that awakening like within us, because I always thought that in order to be healthy, I had to go to the ashram.
I have to meditate hardcore. I have to be doing two hours of yoga. I have to be eating really, really well. It's like doing these really, really hard things instead of No, no, no, just come back into my body and what does my body need today? Today? Do I wanna meditate or do I wanna do yoga? Do I need to maybe just go for a walk instead?
Do I need some love? Do I need some laughter? At a serious void of fun,
Dave: you, you need a rigid schedule that requires you to fast for an exact number of hours and do an exact number of minutes in a cold plunge, no matter what you feel like, and to say no to all the things you want. Uh, if you don't do that, you're not a good person.
You didn't, you didn't hear this?
Mona: No. And this is the thing, like, and I get a joke, joke about this. There's all these like, funny meme videos that are going on. TikTok around, all right. Was up at four 30. I meditated, I got red light, I uh, had my water. I went outside. I grounded, I used my red light therapy device.
I practiced biohacking. It's 7:00 AM and now we're having. It's crazy. Simplify. And that's a really good point to have on for listeners. Find the three things that you know to optimize your health, that make you feel really good in your body. Start with prioritizing those three things in the morning. Like what's your non-negotiable?
I. If I'm not meditating every single morning, I might be in tree pose with my hand over my heart thinking of these things that I'm grateful for as I'm hitting the button on my coffee to brew my espresso, right? Like get it in as you have to, but just make sure that you're doing it every day. Practice building the muscle instead of drifting.
Dave: I set aside time every morning to do something to improve myself, and it's not the same every morning except for coffee.
Mona: Mm-hmm.
Dave: Um, other than that, and it's nice to get some sunlight in the morning, but sometimes I don't because I'm up too early or because I had a call or whatever. But most of the time, and I.
Just setting aside the time rather than focusing on the activity, allows you to use your intuition to know what you need. Right?
Mona: Yeah.
Dave: Okay.
Mona: One of the best modalities I find with my clients that they love because it's just easy the second you wake up in the morning without opening your eyes when you're in that beautiful state.
Mm-hmm. Take one hand, place it over your heart, take another one, place it over your abdomen, and just think about three things that you're grateful for. Mm-hmm. But also feel your heartbeat. Okay. You have this heartbeat that's been beating for you since before you even arrived on this planet. Like just acknowledge the wisdom of your body.
Come into your center before this insane mind that we have wants to take over. Go into overdrive to get into your very busy daily schedule and life, which we all have, but don't give the control to the mind. Bring the wisdom back into the body. The body knows the way. Mm-hmm.
Dave: That's so beautiful. And. It's just learning how to listen to it.
It, that's also where intuition comes from, which is kind of a useful thing.
Mona: Mm-hmm. I'm sure you'll say, you know, I'm sure a lot of the people that you've had on a lot of our problems really come when we're disconnected from listening to it. Often when I'm speaking at conferences, I'll say, all right, a show of hands, how many people here suffer from.
Uh, irritability, brain fog, uh, heartburn, gas, uh, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, low sex drive, sore, achy joints, lack of focus, lack of creativity, depression, sadness. Every hand obviously is up, but this is our body's GPS, right? If you've said yes to any of those symptoms, then I beg you stop ignoring them.
It's like driving your, your car with the red light. You know, emergency sign flashing, like, tune in, don't wait any longer. Do this. Now, I didn't just wake up with heart palpitations one day. I was ignoring my symptoms. I was ignoring my major digestive issues, anxiety for years, my poor sleep, my hair falling out, my acne, the fact that I'd never had a regular.
Cycle in my life. Wow. Yeah. And so finally things just got so bad and promise you, and I pray that not a lot of people listening have had to experience this, but nothing matters when you don't have your health. Nothing. Time stops the world. Mm-hmm. Stops.
Dave: Yeah. The only people really care about their health are sick people, like really sick people.
Everyone else. It's number 17 on the to-do list.
Mona: Yeah.
Dave: Um, it's funny though, if you're healthy, you care about your performance.
Mona: Mm-hmm.
Dave: And the same things that make sick people. Well make well people perform better.
Mona: Yeah.
Dave: So. Most people listening think they're well and they have no idea that they're at 50% of their capacity.
And just showing people that, and here's one really good day, like, oh, I wanna feel like that all the time. And well, now you have a roadmap. Right.
Mona: And I love that you said that because I think as an outsider who might be, you know, new to your work or to your podcast or this idea of biohacking or living until you're a hundred and.
How, how old do you wanna live to now?
Dave: At least 180. 180. I wouldn't die at a time in by a method of my choice. I and I have no interest in not dying, ever. That sounds like hell to me.
Mona: Yeah. Right. But knowing you Yeah. And knowing your work. Mm-hmm. And hearing you speak and connected with you, I know that you're super connected to a feeling in your body, and you probably have a feeling, okay, when you're a hundred, 120, 50, however long you make it, there's a feeling that you wanna keep alive.
And if you're drifting from that feeling, you know that you're on the Asian. Process the aging path a a lot faster than most people. Mm-hmm. And most of the people, especially in the us uh, you know, not feeling good is part of aging. This is what it is. We're in our forties. Here you go. Losing your eyesight.
Yeah. It comes with it gaining weight. Here you go.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Mona: And it doesn't have to be the way we have to unlearn aging poorly and learn aging well.
Dave: Um, I was sitting next to Deepak Chopra, uh, last, last weekend. Weekend before. Nice in Lake Nona. And I asked him, how's your health? And he's like, well, I'm 78.
I've never taken a drug. I just do yoga and meditation every day and my health is excellent. I'm like, good. You know? So good. That's so cool.
Yeah.
And he's aging well. And we actually talked about his AI conscious and he says, no. Uh, and about, you know, the nature of death and he's like, oh, I know what, I'm gonna die.
I am happy with the number. I'll wait. Like, wow. Like, that's way better than worrying about it and thinking you'll be sick for 20 years first. Right. That's just a more enlightened approach.
Mona: My dad, like Deepak would always say, this body is just a vessel. How are you gonna treat the vessel? Right. And um, the cool thing about Deepak is he published quantum healing.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Mona: He was outcasted, right? I think he even got fired from the university that he was at. Outcasted. Now he's republished quantum healing. Mm-hmm. Because we have the data showing that if you change one's beliefs and um, the way that they literally speak to every cell, it's called those cells also mitochondria within the body.
Mm-hmm. You reactivate them, the body can heal itself and obvious. We can't explain spontaneous remission, but we've got these cases that are happening globally. Why isn't it front page news? When my health was at its worst, I was on the Atkins diet. I was working out for two hours a day. My apartment was the house of free, sugar, free fat free, carb free, everything free.
My weight was going up. I stopped having my cycle in my. Prime fertility years. Mm-hmm. And yet my health was at its worst and my heart was obviously completely outta balance. Right? Went to the ashram, started eating more carbs than I'd probably eaten in the last, you know, eight months. All from the earth, right?
Vegetables, fiber, squash, potatoes, stuff like that. The weight melted off my body. I was meditating for four hours a day. I was getting sunlight first thing in the morning. I was breathing. I was connecting with others. And the most important thing is that I was shutting down. Probably the 50 running open tabs in my mind that were constantly chattering about how.
Not good enough. I was in my life.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Mona: And finally came back into feeling okay. And that Okay. Turned into good. And then great
Dave: for our younger listeners, um, the Atkins diet was the original keto diet.
Mona: Mm-hmm.
Dave: And I lost 50 pounds on it in when I was maybe 24. The other 50 pounds took me 10 years to lose.
And I've met so many people on it who were saying, well, I lost, you know, a hundred pounds. I have another a hundred to lose. I know it's 'cause I'm at, you know, 12 grams of carbs, not eight. So this was the first keto diet, but it didn't include the type of protein or the type of fat and toxins were okay.
And the modern interpretation of that, what might be called the bulletproof diet, where cyclical, keto with the right fats.
Mm-hmm.
And minimizing toxins. That's what got me my other 50 pounds off. So this is why to this day, I don't recommend Unending Keto for most people because they typically run into problems the same way you did.
And yeah, surprisingly carbs can help you lose weight some of the time, and other times they can help you gain weight depending on the carb, depending on everything else, which is probably something I Veta would tell you in the first place, right?
Mona: Absolutely. But you learn which foods are good for your constitution or not,
Dave: right?
Mona: Okay. Yeah,
Dave: we we're coming towards the end of the show, but. I would love a primer on the constitutions.
Mona: Yeah.
Dave: Uh, you know, earth, wind, air, water, fire, turtles, gimme the whole thing.
Mona: So anyone can go online and do something called a dosha quiz. And, uh, Deepak Chopra has one too.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Mona: Um, understanding your dosha is your body's constitution, so it's your unique way of being.
And we all have a balance of Pitta Kafa, um, and Vata. Right? Mm-hmm. So for me, I'm a Pitta Vata and years with, with Ayurveda. I think that we need to understand, it's a very ancient system that can feel extremely overwhelming and complicated. But the idea is that every part of our physiology is connected to nature.
I. And if we think about something who, somebody who has this Vata imbalance, think about the wind. You're constantly like catching onto a thought over here and then a thought over here. You're very easily distracted. You're prone to anxiety and worry and living in your head and stuff like that. You need grounding somebody maybe who's dominant in Kapha is incredibly.
Grounded, they might be lethargic. This is more of like the earth quality. They're rooting down deep into the earth and they might need a little bit of support getting activated and moving out into the world. Then we have pittas, more of our fire. It's our drive. A lot of people who are very thin, they're constantly moving and in action.
And focused. And driven, and you can see that like. The point of all three of those is that that's who we are. They should be in balance, but when we move through life, we become too dominant in one or the other. For me, I go into Vata dominance, which means I get anxious and I think that I need to be really busy.
There's that hypervigilance all over again. It means that I haven't taken the time to ground my body and with pit to dominance also, it's the same kind of like overheating activity and aspect of the body. It needs balance and. Maybe instead of looking towards ayurveda's, a modality where you need to take every single herb and only the specific foods, why not just look for balance?
And I think that you and I would both agree when we think about building a perfect plate, we're seeing fiber. We're seeing phytochemicals and antioxidants that come from the earth. We're using herbs and spices as anti-inflammatory agents to bring balance into the body. We know great sources of good quality fats that we should probably all be consuming for our endrin system, our hormones, our mental function, our cognitive function as we age to prevent disease and high sources of protein.
Let's end the diet wars around, you know, uh, paleo versus vegan, or, I'm not
Dave: gonna say that tofu is good for you. Are you?
Mona: I'm not, but I'm gonna say if you're somebody who's vegan and you've tried to eat meat, and when you eat meat, you think about an animal dying, you, taking in that energy for your body is probably gonna do more damage than good.
So find other sources that are good. Good for you. I'm
Dave: therapy.
Mona: You have to figure out what works for you in your constitution, right? Even looking at your genetics, everybody should look at your genetics. Look at how your ancestors were eating. Mm-hmm. Go to a diet where you're eating more like them and foods that your great-grandmother would understand, and chances are your body will come back into balance if you're practicing all the other modalities that we've shared today, an understanding that we're so much more than just a physical body.
We have an emotional body and a spiritual body that's begging to be heard.
Dave: I'm still wishing my grandmother was Italian so I could eat pizza.
Mona: Me too. Yeah. Honestly. Yeah. I'm coming from like the lentils and veggies background.
Dave: It's funny you mention lentils. Uh, a lot of people do not do well on lentils.
Mona: No. Well, we're not cooking them properly. We're
Dave: not cooking them properly, and even if we are cooking them properly. Your ancestors ate lentils? Mine probably didn't. They were eating salmon or something. I don't know.
Mona: You got it
Dave: right.
Mona: My, my mom's Danish, so she Scandinavian. Okay. And if I look at my brother and I, my brother will thrive on like a meat and potato, good fat diet.
That's him Paleo, who? Magic me. I can kind of go both ways, but when I go to the ashram, like I said before, my body comes into balance. The weight falls off my body. I can digest lentils. And I also know that they're taking time to cook the lentils in pressure cookers, the lentils have soaked. Um, they're organic, they're not sprayed with pesticides.
There's a lot of things to consider.
Dave: Mm. Every time I've gone to an ashram, uh, every time I've gone to a meditation retreat that's vegetarian. All I do is fart. Yeah. I'm like, how am I supposed to meditate when I'm tipping sideways all the time? Do you have any advice for me?
Mona: Give it a few days. Go with some I It got worse.
Did it really? Well, it's probably not the diet for you then. Yeah, let's, let's go to that, but give yourself time. It's funny when there's new people at the Astro, we always know when new people come 'cause the bathrooms. Stink.
Dave: Uh, it's, it's totally true. Most people have wrecked digestion and I just tell people, you have to find the foods that are kryptonite for you.
Yeah. And that
if, well, if your shit stinks, you're probably doing it wrong. I mean, to be super blunt about it, I Aveta would agree with that. Right?
Mona: A hundred percent. Okay. Yeah.
Dave: Got it. And, and there might be different paths. And I've been a vegan, I've been a raw vegan, I've been a vegetarian. Um, I find if I'm going to be more vegetarian.
Or vegan, I think the Janes are onto something. Mm-hmm.
Mona: Yeah.
Dave: What's Ayurveda's perspective on Jainism? And for people listening, this says, don't eat roots and don't eat garlic and spicy peppers.
Mona: I think the difference is that we'll incorporate the foods that they cut out therapeutically. So in Ayurveda, we won't cook with garlic and onions every single day, but we'll invite them when we need to support our digestive fire, maybe work on imbalances or microbes that are out outta balance within the body.
Dave: Using the Allium family medically is so good. Eating garlic every day. Yeah. I think it's bad for you.
Mona: And then if you think about the people going back to this detox comment, um, aspect of like, your body's smelling, we're really not supposed to smell. Do you wear deodorant?
Dave: No, I haven't worn deodorant in years.
I don't need to.
Mona: I don't need to wear deodorant. Yeah, I use a crystal. You're gonna have to go through the stitch.
Dave: I didn't need even use a crystal. I got nothing.
Mona: You don't eat it.
Dave: Yeah.
Mona: So for people who just notice you have a lot of body odor, your urine smells, your bio smells, your breath smells, use your also signs to tune in.
Maybe genetically you're a poor detoxifier, but maybe you also have what Ayurveda calls accumulation. You've accumulated too many toxins. Too many toxic foods, too many toxic drinks, toxic chemicals from your environment. We digest with all of our senses. Not only what we eat, what we watch, what we listen to, what we smell, you take it all in.
So if you're at this point of accumulation, maybe it's time to look into proper detoxification, which can come through. Food can come through using an infrared sauna, using some binders. I like that. If binders, if they're under, um, supervision
Dave: like charcoal.
Mona: It's like hair cool, um, detoxification, but also, uh, working out, moving your body sweating every single day and like wiping the sweat off of you when it comes out instead of allowing it to dry so that it reabsorbs also.
And then strategically, like some herbs and stuff like that, which are incredibly beneficial. Our liver loves herbs and it's so resilient. It can heal itself really, but we have to take out the triggers that are causing us harm.
Dave: My urine is so clean that I could just drink it,
Mona: drink it. Have
you ever, it's a thing.
It's in your world. It is a thing.
Dave: Well, in your world, you're Ayurvedic man. You guys invented drinking urine. I was gonna ask you about it, and yes, for the record. Uh, many years ago, I did try drinking my urine. I found it to be unpleasant and I didn't notice any difference. But later and now, people will make fun of this as they have a medical doctor with, oh.
35 years of experience in detoxing patients showed me how to do urine injection therapy.
Mona: No way.
Dave: Where if you're freaking out about this, like, like, don't worry. Um, what he did is you expose yourself to something you're allergic to. So if the antigens are present in your urine and then they inject it after it's sterilized through a sterile filter with lidocaine into the muscle.
So your own immune system senses your antigens and it creates antigens to your antigens.
Mona: Yeah. And
Dave: he was saying, Dave, I had a guy who was anaphylactic to cats and after eight treatments he couldn't get any immune reaction unless he slept with a cap blanket on his head.
Mona: Wow.
Dave: So I did a few sessions of that and I think it did help with some of my allergies.
Um, I'm not recommending this for everyone. I'm just saying this is actually a medical thing and it derived from Ayurvedic going, oh, maybe there's some signaling compounds that we now can measure. So, have you tried it?
Mona: I haven't tried it, but what you're making me think of is another modalities approaching it in the same way, but through vibration and sound.
And this is what homeopathic medicine is, right? Like taking and literally microdosing the things that you're allergic to until your body, again builds up resilience to it. We also didn't used to have so many issues, right? Like we didn't have these. Sane allergies that we have today. We didn't have little kids that were allergic to almost everything, and now they're so prevalent and I don't think that Ayurveda could have imagined the toxicity of the world that we live in today.
Yeah. So this is why I think we need to look at like the. The foundation of the practices and go back to those things and really modify them in accordance to what we need. And really just do an audit of your home or the place that you, where you spend the most time and detoxify, take out the phalates that are causing your hormones to go completely out of whack.
Take out the chemicals that are in the furniture that you're using. Take out, there's so many things, right? Like it's a toxic world full of a lot of toxic things.
Dave: Uh, we know 5,000 years ago in Ayurveda, they weren't really worried about BPA. Mm-hmm. So they didn't have an Ayurvedic protocol, but the basic ways of thinking about it are still there.
Mona: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Plastics, Hey
Dave: Mona, you're. Perspective on bringing Ayurveda into the modern world and using it for high performance. It's super cool. You've proven at the highest levels with guys like Will Smith and just lots and lots of other clients and you share a lot of cool info online. Uh, so thank you for being a guest on the show, guys.
Mona sharma.com, MONA, Sharma, you can spell that probably. And uh, I will see you with the Biohacking Conference and thanks for your work.
Mona: I can't wait. Thanks for having me. It's a joy.
Dave: See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.