BYOU - Holistic healing with Jill Jones

Hello everyone and welcome by the BU Podcast. I'm so excited to share with you today Jill Joan. She is not only a yoga therapist, but she is also an herbalist. She knows Everything about plant-based medicine, and I'm so grateful to welcome you, Jill Jones.

Thank you, Danique. I'm so glad to be here. Um, I just, I am passionate about yoga and, uh, Ayurveda herbalism. They are an amazing healing duo. They were sister sciences when they came about in India, uh, 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. They were as much inspired by seers of the day as the Bible was in its day. So many of things, things are definitely God-given. They are, and they're so healing. We look at— I love herbalism first and foremost. Yoga has every— it's a sister, but I feel like herbalism is the very neatest science of all because we look at the trees and we just see beautiful foliage. But those trees, if they weren't there, we wouldn't be able to breathe. And likewise, they wouldn't be there if we didn't give them carbon dioxide. But I find it incredibly interesting that, you know, you look at the human lung.

Yeah.

And you see the very same structure that you do in the tree limbs. So to me, this is very indicative of how, you know, we come together like this with nature. So there's so many herbs that are so helpful without the side effects of our present-day medicine. I like guggul, for instance. Guggul is a It's spelled G-U-G-G-U-L, unlike our Google on the internet. And it is an amazing herb. It does a lot of things, but it helps to lower cholesterol. It can do it within a 6-month period of time, and there is really little to no side effects at all. And people recover from that very easily. They feel good. And the same is true with something like Arjuna. Arjuna was our prime character in the Bhagavad Gita, which I find really interesting. And Arjuna is one of those herbs, it does a lot of things. And that's the thing about herbs is that they don't do just one thing.

Mm-hmm.

They— we may prescribe it for a certain thing, but it does so much more. So you may get another healing effect. And that would be your other side. That would be a side effect. You'd get healing in another area. But Arjuna is a tree bark, and it is great for lowering blood pressure. And these are things that are so common in our world today.

Yeah.

And, of course, when we talk about those things, we talk about stress. So yoga. Yoga. This is where yoga comes in. Yoga has pranayama, which are breath practices, and we have meditation. So all these things are so helpful in bringing balance back to our bodies because balance is— in the old way of thinking, balance is health. Balance is equal to health.

Mm-hmm.

Today we treat symptoms in mainstream medicine, and believe me, There are some very good things about mainstream medicine. So I'm not— that it can work in tandem because some of the, you know, if we didn't have antibiotics, if we didn't have some of the steroids, although, you know, there are herbs that act like the steroidal kinds of things, you know.

Mm-hmm.

So all of those are in there. The thing that's really interesting about also about Ayurveda is that we treat according to doshas. The doshas, there are 3 of them. We have the Vata dosha, the Pitta dosha, and the Kapha dosha. And these people always wonder, well, how does this happen? You know, how does this come about? But it's actually, it is a numerical geometrical division. So it's based on something very scientific. So, and we are all proportions of each of those doshas, each of those characteristics, constitutions within us. So, you know, in Ayurveda, we try to treat the person according to the doshas. Like vata, the vata dosha is like air and ether.

Yeah.

And the pitta dosha is fire and water. And so if you have inflammation, you know, you could have a pitta imbalance or, you could just be a hot, a hot cookie, you know, somebody who has a high, you know, a temper, or easily, you know, has a temper that is quick. Kapha tends to be slow and, you know, tends to be wet. So the Kapha people usually are of the water and earth elements.

Mm-hmm.

So we treat according to that. And the dosha is known as an You know, something that is actually an out of balance. So if you translated it from Sanskrit. So we actually all have that, and we just try to bring everything into balance. That is the whole thing about, about the doshas. But there are many little, you know, more aspects about that.

Mhmm.

But With Ayurveda, it is such a good thing in today's diseases. Diabetes is on the rise in every country.

Yeah.

Here in the United States, it's 11 to 12%. People don't even realize they have it. But one of the side effects or one of the— it's actually a disintegration of the whole metabolism. So other things happen like heart disease. Heart disease is really a part of that whole syndrome. And so, if you— with treating diabetes, it can actually be reversed in some situations. If it isn't too late, you know, some— if you catch it early stages, it could be reversed.

Mm-hmm.

And even if it can't be reversed, we can bring a lot more comfort, a lot more balance to those people suffering from that. Um, one of my other specialties is MS, multiple sclerosis. That's on the rise also, and that is where the myelin sheaths in the brain— it's the, uh, the fatty coating, as we say, on the nerves— and if that starts breaking down, then the messages that go from the brain into the body get really messed up.

Oh.

And so people become very dysfunctional. They can't You know, sometimes, you know, they become so immobile, they might have to even be in a wheelchair. So we wanna correct these. And many times we can bring enough balance back that they, that they're out of a wheelchair, that they feel better, that they find, you know, the joy of life again.

Yeah.

And that's what I love to do is I love to see people heal. You know, that's our God-given thing. You know, we weren't meant to be sick. We're meant to be healthy. And I just really believe that Ayurveda and yoga together can really help to do this. Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, they kind of are— they kind of cross barriers there. Sometimes it's known as chronic fatigue syndrome, sometimes fibromyalgia. But that is when people are really suffering from the fatigue of stress.

Mm-hmm.

They're not getting good sleep. They're not They have a lot of aches and pains. They're, you know, just trying to overcome things that they can't because their body's so out of balance. And with fibromyalgia, most of those people are not able to get a deep sleep, which we call the delta wave sleep. So if they can get that delta wave sleep, then the body can heal.

Right.

We do a lot of healing during sleep. So it's really important that they get that. Some of the herbs can really help you to stay asleep, go to sleep, and maintain that sleep. Because sometimes it's easy to fall asleep, but we don't always stay asleep. So I really love to see healing in that regard. And of course, the gentle movement from yoga can come in. And always these days, Mhmm. For a long time, they had people in, in the old, the olden days, they thought if a person was sick, they should sit. But actually, anytime the body has to keep moving or else the muscles atrophy. So it's, you know, it's so good to keep them moving. And even if it's only a very gentle movement that just brings circulation, you know, betters the circulation, then. You know, we're great. I also specialize in Parkinson's disease.

Oh, whoa.

Parkinson's disease is a terrible disease these days. So many people that have worked in industry or they've worked in areas where they were exposed to fertilizers or chemicals or those kind of things have a situation where it They're not getting enough dopamine. Now dopamine is our happy neurotransmitter. It's— if you have dopamine, you're just, you know, you're happy, you're smiling, you're, you know, you're ready to go. If this morning I'm full of dopamine. But if you don't get the dopamine, then your mobilization just pretty much stops.

Oh.

And so the person gets stuck. And if they don't, if they don't take the dopamine on time or something, then they can just become stuck. So, but, and there are a couple of herbs that will produce dopamine and, you know, and they're, they're very interchangeable with what is offered by mainstream medicine. But what we try to do is keep them, give them a very active kind of yoga that brings a lot of action to their bodies and to their brains. Because the more they stay active, the more they, you know, are circulating with people and interacting with people, then, you know, the brain stays healthier.

Okay.

So I'm also, joint disease is a big thing. These days in like rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis. We have a lot of problems with that. A lot of that comes back to our food, our overall diet of really, I think, the world population anymore. We see it here in America a lot. There's lots of fast foods. They're very high in fats and carbs, and they're not good fats, which of course You know, that creates a lot of problems for us.

Yeah.

And, you know, that is what the CDC, Centers for Disease Control, here in the United States has said, is that these are what are bringing on diabetes and many of the stress-related diseases. So, I— those are my specialty areas. I work with other areas too. I'm versed in them in yoga. I have a certificate in central nervous system diseases and of course my herbalism. And I'm getting ready to do my practicum as an herbalist and I will be professional. I will get my professional certificate. So I'm very excited about that.

Mm-hmm.

But I love helping people and I love to see them heal. You know, there are many things that are here, and it's when I work with you there, it's a very personalized way. I don't work with you as, okay, this is one patient, one patient, two patients. I work with you as an individual.

Yeah.

Danique, if you had issues, I would say, okay, well, we'll work through these things.

We will—

you will give me an individualized intake. I have a very lengthy sheet. You'll tell me all about how you feel, how about how you are Feeling, how your body functions, blah, blah, blah. And then I would create a protocol for you specifically on how we would help you to heal and find balance. And so, of course, in all this, not only the personalized care, but we would work on stress reduction, clarity, and enhance your immunity.

Mm-hmm.

So these are all parts of my protocols. Wow.

And how did you come up with healing the person? Is there a moment in your life?

Yes, there is. I lost both my parents to cancer when I was, when I was rather young. My children were very small, like they were 6 and 7, and my mom had uterine cancer. And it was a very big struggle for her. She was by herself, and finances were a big issue, and her insurance wasn't very good. She suffered immensely, both emotionally and as well as the physical portion of cancer. And I watched her go through it, and I watched her go through the chemotherapy, and, and I watched her go through radiation, and it just broke my heart. It just broke my heart. And I thought, there's got to be a better way than this. And, um, so I had come on to a book, uh, a story about, um, it's known as Essiac these days. Essiac is an herbal compound, uh, that a Canadian nurse found many years, uh, ago. And, um, she came on to it, but It was written more recently with that story behind it. Um, this woman, uh, this older woman had been in Canada. She— her husband was a geologist or some sort of person that worked in the fields. This is around the turn of the last century, like, you know, 1890s, 1900. And they were in around the Toronto area, and she knew she was becoming sick. She didn't feel well. But she was out there with him, you know, trucking around the fields with him and all that sort of thing. And she came upon a Chippewa Indian medicine man. And he could tell by looking at her that she was ill.

Yeah.

And she says, I, you know, I can help you. Or he said that to her. And So she said, well, like, what do you mean? Because she— this was very foreign to her, just like it is to us now. And she— so he gave her some details. He says, I can tell that you're out of balance. I can tell that you need certain things, and I can find those for you. I can give those to you. Well, she kind of blew that off and just, you know, a little later on, her husband and her went to Toronto, and she went in to see about cancer therapy. You know, the doctors gave her a diagnosis and everything, but they determined that it was going to be rather expensive. So they did not have the money. So they, they went back and they thought, well, what do we have to lose? Let's try the Indian medicine man. So he went back to her. He gave her this compound of herbs. She had breast cancer. She took it for like 6 months, and she was— what he did was he, uh, it had coalesced into a, um, like a little boil on, on her breast. He lanced it, and apparently whatever came out was like cottage cheese. He sewed her up. She lived many years later, and when she was in a nursing home Renee Casse found her, and, you know, she was taking care of her in her old age when she was getting a bath from Renee Casse. And Renee asked her, you know, what, what is that scar on your breast, if you don't mind my asking? And so the lady told her all about how the Chippewa medicine man had helped her and how it healed her from the— all of the cancers that she had. And, uh, so she got the compound from this woman and, uh, later took it into the medical system. She was in Canada also, so this would have been around Toronto, I'm assuming. Um, it's been many years since I read the book, but it's still out there and it's, it's very much easily found. I've made it for many people before I got back into Before I got into Ayurveda, because there's also many people suffer from the cancer and going into the later stages and everything. Like anything though, it's not a one-size-fits-all. There's everybody has to be treated as an individual. But Renee Kessay took that into and created her own little clinic. And her what she did to name it, she reversed her name. Her name was Kessay. So she reversed that to Essiac, and that's where that name comes from today. But it's still on the market. You can still find it. For a while, it was very suppressed here in the United States. It was called prairie tea. You could find it in different places, or you could buy the herbs yourself and compound them, which I have done. It's a very, you know, healing, very good, and it will heal other things. Again, because herbs heal many things, sometimes the healing— the side effects are healing of other things. I remember reading about one woman who had the cancer, and she was also diabetic. When she finished the treatment of the Essiac, she didn't have either. So the lady that had the original breast cancer in this story—

Mm-hmm.

Lived many years Um, passed, uh, that and lived into old age of her 80s.

Wow. What an impressive story.

Yeah.

And that made you like, okay, now I wanna heal people.

I wanna do more. I wanna do more. Yeah.

Wow. And how did you find out about all those herbs? How do you know this? Have you— can you explain me more about Sure. How do you know that that is working?

Got you. Well, back in when my kids were young, and I had— I have a bachelor's degree, which I got before them, in journalism.

I—

when they were young, and I didn't have a whole lot more money than just to keep going, I found an herbalist program. And this was called a Correspondence program. This was before the advent of the internet. That's— it tells you how old I am. Um, but I did a correspondence course with this naturopathic doctor out of Mountain Home, Arkansas, and, uh, she covered all of the body systems. She, you know, we learned to create salves, we learned to make cough medicine, we learned to make tinctures and, uh, decoctions and all that sort of thing. And so I, you know, I did that, and that was in the mid-'90s. And so fast forward, uh, to this past 5 years. So this probably around 2018, 2019, I had gotten into yoga and I had gotten into the yoga therapy because when I, when I did 200-hour teacher training, we had a guest teacher come to our class and she she was a yoga therapist or studying to be a yoga therapist at that time. And she was talking about how, uh, Krishnamacharya, who was one of the early yogis that came to this country and wanted to share yoga with the U.S., uh, and how he was healing people. He would just— he would go as a, as a sort of a physician-type thing to people, and he would basically heal them, not only with the yoga but with Ayurveda and all of the sister sciences involved. And I thought, oh, that sounds so cool. I would just love to do that, you know. So after I finished my 200-hour teacher training, I found a yoga therapy class online. That's breathingdeeply.com.

Mm-hmm.

And I got my yoga, my foundations yoga therapy from them. And so I was getting ready to do something with that. And then I ran onto KP Kalsa. with his International Integrative Educational Institute. And he is a brainiac, I'm telling you. He's been practicing herbalism for 50 years. He teaches— his classes are so interesting. I just, you know, it's—

Yeah.

The information just keeps coming. And I thought, you know, I love this. I want to combine this. I want to, I want to do these things so that I can help people find their balance. So that's, that's where I, I am today, and I'm just ready to move forward with helping people, especially with diabetes, because it is so— it's so much sweeping, uh, our world, and every country is having their problems with it. And so let me help you. Let me help you find your balance again.

Yeah.

If maybe we can reverse it, and even if we can't, we can help you find better comfort.

Beautiful. So if someone works for you, they suffer with diabetes, how does this process go? What can they expect?

Well, we would— so much of our bad health is lack of good trace minerals. So we find herbs. There are some, there are herbs especially that are great for helping diabetes. One of them is called shilajit, and that is a Sanskrit word. And shilajit is basically a kind of form of earth. And it just, it brings nutrients back. But there's also things like Gymnema sylvestre. There are, you know, there are other— we've got several herbs that are very good. I don't have them here with me.

And then you talk to them online, or is it in person?

Or we talk— well, either way, I will work with people online. Yeah. And we will discuss, you know, the situation. They would give me this intake and They would, uh, so we would— I would know a great deal about their body history and how they function and whatnot. Uh, and then yes, I could work with them online for that. Uh, something more complicated, I would want to work in person.

Yeah.

If there's a, you know, a body alignment issue, or there are things that, you know, would be a little bit more, uh, maybe an in-person kind of, uh, Protocol.

And in which area are you?

I'm in, I'm in the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area.

Okay. Okay.

Awesome. And I do, I will travel to my clients if they need me around here. If, or they can come to my home. And, but I will work online too with many things.

Yeah. Amazing.

Wow.

And do you have, where can people find you if they search for you? Okay. I need help with my diabetes. Um, so they can find you on BeYou. And where are you also available? Where can they book you as well? On BeYou. And can they find you?

And I have my own personal website, which is https:// infinityhealingyogatherapy.com.

Awesome. I will drop it in the description box below. So thank you very much for sharing. Also for where you are based so people know where they can find you if they want to have personal services in person. Um, and what is something that people can do right away to improve their holistic health? What would you like to share?

Watch what you're eating. Eat lots of leafy green vegetables. Eat, you know, lots of fruits and vegetables. Cut back on— don't eat fast food. Go for nice lean proteins, beef, chicken, fish. That's what we really want to see. And You know, drink a lot of water, really hydrate yourself. Make sure that you're getting exercise. Exercise is, and movement is imperative to your health. You cannot be sedentary and without having problems from being sedentary.

I need to move way more.

I need to go out.

Yeah, a good one. And about a lot of vegetables. Can you share, is there something specific why you think like, okay, this is a really good one?

There are some, and you know, there will be, you will see studies out there that cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, those ones are bad for certain things. Sometimes I have run onto diabetes, you know, diabetics that say they don't eat the cruciferous vegetables. Well, there might be something specific about their chemistry that Uh, they were told not to do that, and I, I honor that. Um, I— but I think the, the cruciferous vegetables like that, the, um, the broccoli, the cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, I think those are all good. But if you can't— if those are out of the picture for you, then, um, eat, uh, a lot of spinach. Um, a lot of, uh, you know, leafy green vegetables, because those have folic acid, and we Absolutely need folic acid in our diet.

Hmm.

You know, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, those all fall into their own category, the nightshades. So you want to, you know, as long as the nightshades don't bother you, eat them, you know, and enjoy them. Sweet potatoes, yams, those are both good, you know. But, uh, and the more starchy ones like potatoes, uh, potatoes, carrots, they all— those tend to be a little bit more starchy. But, um, those are good because the carrot— carrots have the, um, beta-carotene in them. So yeah, so any of those vegetables, um, as long as your body tolerates them, are all good.

Yeah, awesome. And about the yoga pose, so if we want to work on our yoga, what is the most important yoga pose we need to practice?

Okay. I would say that, and again, it comes down to an individual thing. I do teach individual yoga classes. So if you are not— if you just want yoga classes, I can do that too. I do that according to age, according to your own physical needs. For seniors, of course, I do slower, you know, a little bit less. Sometimes we use a chair. You know, we want to make it safe. But we, you know, getting movement in and, and like for seniors and actually anyone, we have one series of movement called the Joint Freeing Series. And that's really just to, you know, make the joints move and just bring gentle movement into the, into your body.

Yeah. And for the people who are sitting behind the computer all day. Yeah.

They need to be doing stuff where they're, they're getting gentle backbends.

Yeah.

Okay. Because we do hunch over. So, yeah. So, like, in—

Okay. Awesome. Yeah.

In yoga, if you know yoga terminology, you do the upward dog or the cobra.

Yeah.

You'd be arching, you know, making a nice gentle arching of your back. And Camel. Camel is good for those things too. And just stretching the muscles that are here in the shoulders so that you're getting it, you know, and just gentle neck movement. It's good to get up, you know, every hour. I don't know about you, but if you have a fitness watch, it will— you have a little thing that says, get up now, get up now.

Get up now. Yeah.

Yeah, it's good to get up. It's Good to give your body some, you know, gentle exercise so that you can move forward and, uh, feel better for your day.

Yeah.

And end up with less stress at the end of the day.

Oh, awesome. Awesome. Okay, cool. So I need to grab my watch.

Yeah. Okay.

Awesome. So thank you so much for this. Uh, interview with you. Thank you so much for sharing your insight. Thank you so much for sharing your story, and I cannot wait, uh, to see you help so many people worldwide and healing people from diabetes. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And if you would love to book Jill, uh, check out the description box below, and, um, we would love to see you soon. Soon. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jenny.

Ciao ciao.