Nutritional Awakening: Integrating 3D & 5D Approaches to Nourishment with Dr Deanna Minich

Hello and welcome to Mystic Dog Mama, the podcast for soul-led dog mamas. Where you'll discover how to best nourish your dog and yourself, mind, body, and soul. I'm your host, Dr. Alexia Mellor. Thank you so much for joining today. I'm wondering if you can relate to this. I used to think that all I had to do to keep Lucky healthy was pick the right food, follow the research, and stay in control. But the reality is, the deeper that I went into nutrition, the more tangled it became. Not just in terms of information overload, but emotionally, spiritually. It was like feeding Lucky opened a door to something else entirely. My guilt, my perfectionism, my grief, my longing to do it right, and my fear that I never could. And that's where this conversation with Dr. Deanna Minich begins. Dr. Deanna is a pioneer in functional medicine, But more than that, she's a mystic in the world of nutrition. She sees food not just as fuel or even medicine, but as a portal, a place where science meets soul, where nourishment becomes a form of remembering. In this episode, we talk about food as a bridge to nature, spirit, and the deeper layers of self. Feeding as a spiritual practice and how it can awaken shadow material like control, guilt, or even martyrdom. Food as a teacher, not something to master or to perfect. How we are constantly feeding our subtle energies, not just our physical bodies. The links between nutrition and perimenopause and menopause, and how food can support the shifting inner landscape. What it means to honor our pets' unique paths without trying to fix or control them. And how personal sovereignty and reverence can shift the way that we nourish ourselves and those we love. Dr. Deanna also shares a powerful mystical moment with her cat Leilani, one that beautifully echoes the truth many of us feel but rarely speak: our animals are not separate from our healing, they're part of it. If you've ever felt that feeding is more than a task, that it's a reflection, a relationship, a ritual, then this episode will speak directly to your soul. And if this does speak to your soul, we have just the thing for you. Summer invites expansion, joy, and connection, but for our dogs and ourselves, it can also bring heat, overwhelm, and restlessness. The Fetch Summer Almanac is your seasonal compass, rooted in traditional Chinese medicine and created through the lens of dog-guardian connection. This guide offers cooling foods, daily rituals, heart-centered practices, and space to reflect so both you and your dog can move through summer with more ease, rhythm, and presence. This isn't a how-to for doing more. It's a gentle invitation to do less, but with more intention, more listening, more softness, more joy. It's now available as a downloadable PDF, the first in our new Seasonal Living series. You can buy your copy and begin your Solstice Aligned journey today. The investment is only £7, and it's available on our online shop at learnfetch.com. I've left the link in the show notes. On that note, let's go.

Dr. Deanna Minich, thank you so much for joining me on the Mystic Bop— Mystic Talk Mama podcast today.

One of those days.

I am so thrilled that you're here with me.

Well, I'm excited for this conversation. I must say, I'm not sure where we're going to go, and that to me is just thrilling. I think we're very like-minded, so we'll find a lot of fertile ground to talk about.

Absolutely. And just to let the listeners know, I have been a fan of your work for a while now. I just love the way that you bring functional medicine to a different level of conversation and the marrying of mind, body, and spirit and thinking of food in just such a sacred way, I feel is really resonant for me. But in particular, you put a post on Instagram that I was like, oh my God, this is my soul person, my soul tribe. I feel like we need, we need to have this conversation around nutritional awakening and this paradigm shift that we are in and taking a whole different perspective on how we're thinking about nutrition and nourishment and food and all this good stuff. So I'm really excited to dive into some of this stuff today with you.

I am too. Gosh, where do we begin with that nutrition awakening, uh, conversation, right? Because it feels like there's something so ripe here and we all feel it, but maybe we can't define it. But, uh, yeah, I mean, me being in nutrition for a long time, I've started to see this emerging overall just as a pattern where people get really locked in to their paradigm. And so nutrition becomes another religion. Nutrition becomes another point of— it's almost like a springboard into polarity. It's kind of like, okay, and you see it all over social media too. Every time I'm on Instagram or Facebook, and I just felt it in such a way, and a lot of my posts on social media are like, I'm not thinking about them ahead of time. I just kind of observe. And then there's kind of like this sense. And then I'm like, okay, this is the message. And that post that you're referring to with Nutrition Awakening is one of those, because I kept seeing just so much polarity around nutrition. And I think people— polarity causes confusion for people. I mean, in some ways, people like it because it feels safe. But then on the other side, having a yes or no, a right or wrong, 1 or 0, right? It's either, either or, or, you know, it's on one side of that, it just in some ways it simplifies life, but we all know that life is not in that binary mode of existence. So yeah, expansion is needed during these times for sure.

It is. And I think what was standing out to me as well is that what you were referring to with the kind of 3D and 5D approaches and the need for integration, which I think is what you're— what was really powerful too in terms of what you're referring to is getting away from the kind of binary conversation and actually looking at how do we merge these two things. But it's a conversation that's happening in the wider sort of spiritual context. And I think that people are trying to navigate what does that actually look like in practice for me and sort of avoiding that spiritual bypassing that we see a lot. And I think food and nutrition, it is divisive, but it's also, as we were saying just before we started recording, it's something that can bring us together. Food unites us. And it's also something that's so practical, it's so tangible. We're dealing with it on a daily basis. And I think the way that you're offering a different way of thinking about what it means to nourish ourselves and how do we come into a different relationship with food and nourishment is such a way of opening the conversation. It's a portal into thinking about these things. And I wondered if you could touch on a little bit around that and your greater work around the mind-body-spirit connection and how food sits at such a kind of keystone within that.

Yeah, because food punctuates our day. You know, just like you said, everybody on the planet is experiencing a connection with food. So if we take food and we back it on up and we see that food is a connection with the earth, it's a connection with elements, it's a connection with community, with nature, with life, you know, the bedrock of existence, life and love, you know, and really seeing our connection to food is very symbolic. Of our connection to everything else, including ourselves in a big way, ourselves. And what I saw when I was seeing people one-on-one, what I would often see is a lot of fear, a lot of distress around food about, oh my goodness, you know, I see maybe I shouldn't be eating this. I remember some time ago just even working with somebody who could only have 7 foods. She had constrained herself to like 7 foods that she didn't feel like she was reacting to. And really that became the universe of her food. And then that kind of opened up for me this whole concept of what I call dietary micro rotation, which simply means getting a lot of diversity and rotating, moving, and creating through food. And that, you know, for many people they say, I don't have time for a spiritual practice. I have to live in this physical reality. I have kids, I have responsibility, I have a job, I have more than one job. But food can really be a portal to a spiritual practice. We can treat it in a spiritual way, right? We don't want to have the stress response of food. We want food to be nourishing. And so it's kind of interesting because there are so many different directions upon which to go with food, right? It can be the subject of— that, that could be the fodder for our spiritual growth. I feel like for myself, I can just speak to me personally, that's where I really found my sense of spirituality. So just to kind of go back into my history a little bit, so your listeners have a little bit of like a foundation. So I grew up in the 1970s. So I'm 54. So when in the 1970s, I was like, as I was, I was born in 1970. So as my mom was raising me, I was the oldest. And she really got into this thing about health. And that really was like, kind of radical for the time. In fact, she was called a health nut. She was into Richard Simmons, Adele Davis, a lot of these early nutrition and fitness pioneers, right? So here I am, a kid in the 1970s, the age of Wonder Bread, going to school with my brown bread sandwiches and peanut butter and banana instead of peanut butter and jelly. And my mom would make things homemade. And but she was also into faith. I noticed that her connection to food was very much connected to a strong belief system. So I grew up Catholic. And so for me, growing up in that tradition and seeing them I would say I saw it in, in a little bit of a different light, but the mysticism, the ritual, the sacredness, the devotion, the compassion, the service. So my mom literally had, I would say, brought together these two things. And this happened when she was pregnant with my brother. And I think, again, as we were talking about before we came on, it's almost like you start to have different revelations when you have others in your lives about perhaps where you need to be going, whether it's a child, you're pregnant, whether it's a pet, you're fostering, whatever it is, like you start to see things in a different way. So as I was going through my life, I was always very— I was keeping nutrition at arm's distance because I didn't like the fact of it feeling so— I would say it just had a charge for me. And so as I progressed through high school, I, I had an eating disorder. So I would binge because we couldn't have sugar, we couldn't have candy, we couldn't have cake, we couldn't have a lot of like the mainstream stuff. We couldn't have Pop-Tarts, you know, we couldn't have like the— I have to— I go to Girl Scouts and I'd have to bring my own cooler. So there was a lot of like rejection of this initial health aspect. And then as I made my way into college and I was pre-med, I was into science.. And then I began to see that food is actually, it's science and it's spirituality. For my mom, it was, it was food and faith. And for me, it kind of became this different paradigm, more of the 3D, 5D that we spoke of, which was I got what my mom was saying. Yeah, ultra-processed food, not so good. We can see the science and see where there would be issues with that. However, the manner that we take things in, and I would also see people with orthorexia, like an obsession with healthy food, an obsession with healthy eating. And then I was thinking, well, that's not so good either to have analysis paralysis where you're eating healthy, but you're not actually having a healthy, beautiful, good, true, and beautiful relationship with food, right? So it was kind of like, how do you marry the matrix of those two things together of like, clearly there are certain things that may not be great for our health, but then how we approach them is another layer onto that. So I would say for myself, I found myself out of that eating disorder. I did go into studying nutrition, and, and I noticed that people that were studying nutrition as I was in graduate school, it's like we all had our hang-ups about food, and I could see like we were using food as a divining rod to personal growth. Like all in some way, we were all seeking and searching for that. It's kind of like when, you know, you probably have heard the old, I would say, philosophy or adage that people that go and study certain disciplines, whether it's psychology or philosophy, it's like they're searching for something, right? There's something in that for them. And I found that when I was studying nutrition in grad school, and then even further on with science. So anyway, I just wanted to give a little bit of a prequel to kind of our discussion because I think for me it's, it's very visceral. Like I, and even when I started coaching people very early on in my career and having one-on-ones with people and doing clinical practice, I was like the nutrition police. Like I, I really came at it from a point of structure and I saw that that worked really well for people and then other people it didn't work very well for.. And I soon came to realize, okay, you know what? Food is art. Nutrition is a spiritual practice. And how can I help people on either side, whether it's the people that want a lot of structure, they want the diet plan, they feel like they have to walk away with a shopping list, you know, how do I give them what they need? But then at the same time, also acknowledge that most of overeating is due to emotional reasons. You know, emotions are a big driver of behavior. Emotions are connected to hormones, to neurotransmitters, to belief systems, to values. Like, how do I bridge all of that? Because that wasn't in my nutrition training. My nutrition training was all numbers. It was all research. So that was kind of like an organic process to figure out, okay, how do you blend these two? So then I would say that I blended them both through what I would call the rainbow diet. It's not really even a diet, but it's an approach to life of color. Because I was thinking like you, you know, how do we start to create the common denominator of food and eating? What is it like? How can I connect with a person who is eating very different from me? And by the way, I have eaten in a way that was vegan, vegetarian. I was a vegetarian for 18 years. I like very much separated myself from people. Based on my eating. And then I look back at that like, oh my goodness, that was very— it was like my intention was very righteous. It wasn't that I was being spiritual about it, I was being righteous about it. So I really had to dismantle a lot of my nutritional views while I was studying nutrition and come into that place of nutritional sovereignty of like, okay, everybody has their own point of presence, where they enter into that relationship with food. And all paths are valid. And they're all sacred. And so really honoring that, because you can have some very enlightened people eating processed food. I mean, I know that that's a radical statement. But you know, I remember having a conversation with one of the very spiritual person who has written a number of books, I went to one of her workshops. And I remember talking with her about food and chakras. And she's like, you know what, you can eat cat food. It doesn't really matter what you eat. It's like, well, I don't know if we can go to that extreme either. But, you know, for some people, they, they are able to transmute and they have a different relationship with food. I get that. But, but for all of us in our physical bodies, there is an honoring of taking in a physical substance and alchemizing it through digestion, assimilation, metabolism, excretion, you know, it's truly philosophical, if you think of it, that we are becoming what we take in and then having the reverence for whatever that is. And my mom had always taught us to pray over food. And for me, I see that as, okay, setting an intention, like really connecting and giving thanks. The beauty of prayer is the gratitude aspect. So it's almost like you're adding nutrition to food when you're infusing that gratitude. So that's— so my path has been twisted, uh, in this way. I didn't just wake up like this, and I'm still working through that process because, um, you know, food is a great vehicle of growth for all of us, and why not leverage it? Because it's something we've got to do every day, so we might as well make the most out of it.

100%. Thank you for sharing that. That's so— that's so insightful and so helpful and something that I think a lot of people can actually relate to. I know I certainly can with the whole eating disorder issue and looking at the way in which I tried to control. I also, like you, was raised by a mom who was very health conscious, and I wasn't allowed the stuff at school that everybody else had. And, and I was already a third culture kid. My parents are both British and I was being raised in the States, and I already felt different enough. And then it was like, well, here we go, I've got like this other thing that separates me, you know. Like, but look, but again, they are, they are cultural nods. And I think one of the things that I see to kind of bring a different mirroring to this conversation too. When people start to get into looking at nutrition for their dogs, I know for me it brought up all of those same old triggers of control, of not good enough, of needing to know every— I mean, I was like the spreadsheet queen when it first came to figuring out Lucky's diet. And not in a healthy way, not in a healthy way at all. It was, it was coming from the shadow. It wasn't— the intention was love. But there was no love going into that. It was completely fear. And I remember I was reflecting on this just the other day. At one point I was doing some batch cooking, new in my journey of making Lucky's food. And I had, I think I had like 20, I was trying to do like a month's prep and I had 20 containers set up and my mom came into the kitchen and said something to me and I snapped at her because I was in the midst of counting and figuring out like where, you know, going through how'd I put this particular ingredient in everything. I lost track of what I was doing and the fear that came up for me of like, oh my God, I can't remember. Did I put the calcium in that one pot? And what that brought up in terms of it recognizing— I didn't at the time, but on reflection, it wasn't about the food at all. Wasn't about the food at all. It was all the good girl thing and not being good enough and all that kind of stuff. But that desire— we were talking about animals being gateways to it for us, like portals into So much growth. Feeling like I was doing a loving act for Lucky brought up all— and this is what the curandero told me. I didn't think of it this way when he told me before Lucky came into my life, dogs are healers for you. Pay attention to them as they cross your path. I was thinking, oh, rainbows, glitter, unicorns, like, oh, this is gonna be so great having a little dog. And in reality, I mean, it is that and all of the stuff that I had not dealt with. Or needed to deal with in a different way. And it came through the feeding. And I think a lot of people who are on this journey with their dogs, it is the food and the feeding that brings up all of this stuff for them. And they carry a lot of guilt and a lot of shame that has in reality nothing to do with feeding the dog and everything to do with feeding the dog at the same time.

And it may also have something to do with your ability to mother and nurture and heal, right? To me, as you're talking, what I'm getting is it's very much about the heart chakra. And so any kind of wounds, mother wounds, or feeling like we weren't mothered or taken care of in the ways that we wanted to be, then these might surface as we start to tend and care for a pet. You know, I, I have my own. As I was mentioning to you, I have a cat. Her name is Leilani, and, uh, I had a very mystical meeting with Leilani. She's from Hawaii. She's actually from Kauai. But I live on the mainland of the United States. And usually Hawaii gets run over with a lot of cats because they just proliferate and they're not fixed and it's an island. So, so yeah, Leilani came into my life as a kitten. And I had had cats before, but Leilani was different. Even my husband said, you know, there's something about this cat. And I even worked with animal communicators because there was just something about her. She was very, like, mesmerizing. She didn't act like a cat. I almost felt like, what is she exactly? And she came in with a lot of gut issues, like ever since she was a kitten, you know, bloated belly. Her stool patterns were off, very irregular compared to all the other cats that we had. And at the time, you know, we had two other cats living with her. So I started wondering and I started going into like her food, because for me, like, that was the first thing, like, what am I feeding her? She has a bloated belly. Well, and also I took her into the vet. Does she have parasites? You know, what does she have going on? Like, here's a stool sample. Let's check her out. So fast forward, you know, she is— she'll be 7. No, she'll be 8 in July. And she has taught me a lot because I soon came to realize that it is about the food, but it's not about the food. You know, I do think sometimes animals also can take things on from us. I don't know if that's exactly what was going on with me and Leilani, because, you know, she had it from the moment we got her. So I don't think it was something in that way. But I do think that sometimes all of that worrying and You know, they kind of feel that and they take that on, right? So then I started to let go a little bit, still keep her on track with her diet, because if I did change her diet, she would have a lot of gastric issues, a lot of diarrhea, and even sometimes bleeding. So I had to really be conscientious about that. But the way I started to relate to Leilani was not as like a mother-child. It was like peer-to-peer. And the moment I think I started to do that, it changed all of the worry, all of the fear. And I realized, you know, this is a really very astute cat presence before me. Like, it's not like I have to take care of her. Maybe she's taking care of me. You know, one time we had a cat sitter come over because we were gone and she sat with Leilani and I didn't really know this woman very well. But at the end of it, she, she connected with me. And she said, oh my goodness, Leilani, I just felt like she was tending to me. Like, this woman did Reiki and energy healing. So I thought, oh, this is like the perfect person to be with Leilani. And this woman actually felt like Leilani was a healer. And I feel that with her. And I feel like if we see our pets as partners, right, I mean, obviously we need to tend to them because they're not, you know, they're not feral. So they're homebound and we need to feed them. But I do think that there is something about the construct mentally of how we see an animal. Sometimes I don't even say pet, because it's like, Leilani is Leilani. Is she really my pet? Or am I her pet? You know, what's really going on there? So she is a being that lives with us. And so that has helped a lot in terms of our dynamic and how I relate to her. And yeah, so anyway, I'll just chime in on that piece, because that is something that I have learned and grown through in every cat that I've ever had. And we've also had a dog. You learn through them, like, goodness, like they are portals of spiritual growth. And yeah, so I, and that's why I love connecting to animal communicators many times, because they can kind of give a window in to what you're not perhaps seeing. So that's also, especially if they're not seeing the animal.

Mm-hmm.

No, 100%. So that's, thank you. Yeah.

It is. Well, I, I wonder, was there something in particular that triggered that moment for you where you started to look at Leilani as a peer?

When I realized I couldn't fix what was going on with her gut, you know, here I am like in functional medicine, like I have helped people to work on their guts, like human beings. And then I was like, why can I not figure this out with Leilani? I mean, vet visits, which would just stress her out, right? I mean, holistic vets, allopathic vets, animal communicators. Nobody really had what was the solution, right? And it was just painful for her. So then it was almost like a moment of surrender. It was kind of like, you know what, loving detachment. This is not you know, perhaps Leilani's journey is not one that needs so much. You know, maybe she's just independent, looking after herself in her own way. And this is her path. And I need to be part of that path, not force the path, or try to control it. But for a while, it was all about the food. And I have to say, and we had another cat too, his name was Charlie Brown. And he came into our lives a little bit later. So he was an older cat. But, you know, he had a, you know, he became overweight. And for me, I was always like, oh my goodness, like, what is it with me and the cats and like their food? Why can I not get this right when I can get— I can help people, but I'm not helping the cat. And so anyway, it's just caused me to kind of step back and realize, you know, I'm not the one in control. Like, maybe Leilani is in control of her own path here. And, you know, obviously, I'm here to help her. And we have such a good connection. Like, I'm, you know, as you know, as you live with an animal, it's almost like you start to sync up. And so you, you begin to just kind of relinquish a bit of like, the human imprint and start to merge into what you were talking about before around systems. It's like, no, we're part of an ecosystem. It's not human and animal. It's like we are part of nature and, um, let's share in that together.

I love that. No, it's— and I think you brought up a really important point with that too that I think a lot of us struggle with is that healing doesn't equal fixing. I think we often have that idea that that's, that's what we're meant to do. And if we don't fix it, there's— we've failed, you know, and carry the guilt of that.

Yes. And that is the people pleaser archetype, the wanting to be validated, the martyr archetype. And I even had that when I was seeing people one on one, clients. And it was a burden in some ways. It was a burden to bear because I felt like I had to fix it rather than later when I realized, no, I'm holding space. I'm holding space for whatever needs to arise. And I need to take that same approach with Leilani. I need to hold space, not force my— what I think is best. You know, Leilani will let me know. And I just, I need to hold space and be attentive. So I think for me, you know, the clinical sphere and what I was doing with functional medicine, all the elimination diets I've ever had people on, all of the, you know, all of that. What I have learned from that process is, again, it's, it's about showing up and being present. And as one of my teachers, Shar Sundance, would say, be the hollow bone, right? In the shamanic, more of the nature-based tradition is, you know, you're not forcing and giving. It's a very young approach to do it in that way. And that's what we're used to. Because people go to a doctor, or they go to some kind of practitioner of some type, they expect something in return, right? One of the biggest things that we can be giving an animal or a person is our presence, our sense of holding that space for whatever sacredness is about to arise. So I would apply the same to food, right? So it's not the sense of control. So perhaps we just have to like almost zoom out of our imprints and how we're living. Like, are we looking to impose control And how can we balance that with a little bit of surrender? Because it's hard not to have some element of ego or control because we are human, and that's just part of our existence. So rather than fight that, just embrace it. And then also to feel out how can we bring in a little bit more yin, a little bit more of the feminine, the listening, the receptivity, the surrender into the what-if, right? I was listening— I just have to tell you, this is kind of, um, ironic. I was just listening— I have this thing about listening to near-death experiences. Like, in my free time, I listen to NDEs. Anyway, I was listening to this woman.

This—

she was a younger woman, probably in her early 30s, and she just had an NDE, like, um, that was very present for her and like top of mind because it had just happened in early 2024. So she was telling a very detailed account, and one of the things that she mentioned, which I thought was really interesting to bring into this conversation, was that she was vegetarian And when she had her NDE, and she had her life review, and she saw the things that happened that were, you know, seen as like, love-oriented, and then the things that she did that maybe weren't as having as much love behind them, she was thinking, hey, where is the fact that I've been a vegetarian for so long? And she realized that that didn't come up in her NDE or her life review, like she didn't get a pat on the back for doing that.. And one of the things that she walked away from that NDE with, which really stuck in my mind, because I've always had this feeling after I stopped being a vegetarian, was that all of life is love, and that life begets life. And I even learned that from my shamanic teacher of where, you know, really paying respects to an animal, paying respects to all life, actually, because a plant is life. And so anyway, it was just a beautiful NDE because she really spoke to this whole thing about how people get really wedged into dietary patterns, feeling like it's the be-all end-all, and that it's better when, you know, maybe it's, it's not better for everybody in that way. And what is your true intention going into it? And I really, I have a lot of empathy because I feel that so many people want to do the right thing. Right? Again, more of a 3D model of like, what is the right thing? And I kind of feel like in the 21st century, nutrition has dismantled the right thing, because now we have personalized nutrition, right? So what you need will be different than what I need. And our needs might be different day to day. So it's less predictable, and siloed, and in a box than we originally thought it would be. I would say, like back in the 20th century when I was doing my graduate work, it was kind of like things were— seemed more definitive. But now, because of science and the emergence into this whole expansive terrain of genetics, epigenetics, goodness, so many different things, toxic load, you know, there are countless things we could say that really go into creating our personalized needs. And really connecting to our intuition, right, and how important that is. And I think in the future, energetically, we'll have metrics to help us along the way where we will be assessing not just the calories, the micronutrients, the phytonutrients of food, but also the properties of subtle energy. So what I mean by that would be like bio photons, like the actual— well, not to get too sciency, but like oxidative bursts and light within food, right? Because we know that everything living has light due to the mitochondria. Also, just even the, the quantum aspects of food as well. So, you know, food feeds us on so many levels. And so what we don't acknowledge is feeding our subtle body, feeding our emotions, feeding our sense of aesthetics and art and soul and how all of that plays in.

I love that. I mean, it's so relevant to the conversations that we're having in the dog sphere as well as, again, like I was saying, we're attempting to control the dog's food just as much. And you see this push towards like vegan dog foods, for example. And we actually just did a podcast recording, my friend and colleague Stacy Renfree and I, on how do we deal with feeding a carnivore through a lens of compassion? How do we have compassion in this sphere? How do we both recognize their biological needs and honor them and still feel like we are somehow creating, contributing to the greater good? And what do those systems look like? And again, to your point, there isn't one way of doing this, but one of the big questions that came up for us when we were sort of thinking about this is when does— when do we sort of move beyond biology and instead what the decisions that we're making are actually pushing an ideology onto another being? Like, what does it mean to project our morals onto another being? And there isn't one way to answer this, right? I think everyone kind of finds their own way with it, but I think that these sorts changes that we're seeing and how we, to your point of we are going into a realm of needing different metrics for understanding what nourishment looks like. And we see even like in this sort of spreadsheet-obsessed way of formulating dog foods, I have no idea when I'm recommending to you the 2 ounces of beef liver to put in your dog's food, how many milligrams of zinc that particular piece of dog liver or beef liver has. And I also don't know how much of that is going to be uptaken by the dog's body. Like, but we are, we are lulled into this illusion that we can actually control to that level. And something I love about the way that you talk about food, and you were just starting to do that there, but the, where you've talked about how I feel like when you're referring to the, the rainbow of foods, and how it's connected to our chakra systems, and the kind of the resonance of it. So again, to that quantum space that you're speaking of, but there's also this sense of wisdom that I feel is embedded both in the food and then honoring the wisdom of the body. And then that relationship, that almost like a dance that happens between the body and the food, how important, and I think we are moving towards that, slowly but surely, I think we are moving towards in the dog space. I think we are getting more to that point. But I wondered if you could talk about that a little bit and how, how that's shaping the way that you think that almost like the 5D nutrition, the sort of Wellness 3.0 movement is taking place in the human realm.

Yeah. Wow. You said that really beautifully. This dance, as you referred to it, right, of the food in our bodies. The 3D aspect to me feels like it's very individual-centric. So it just, it's about me. It's, it's kind of like what's good for me and what does that food impart for me. And what you're describing is something collaborative and it's something unifying and it shows the interrelationship of life. And one of the examples of this, to just to go further with your example, is if we think of all of the talk about the gut microbiome right now, it's huge. I just read a paper this weekend that said that there's no disease that you can't trace to some change in the gut microbiome. I don't know if that's true. That feels like a large statement, but it was in a scientific publication. And, you know, we talk a lot about our gut microbiomes, right? We're starting to talk about animal microbiomes. But what we don't talk about is, well, what about the microbiome of the food? How do all the little microorganisms on that apple interact and start to change? We just talk about fiber. We just think, oh, the fiber from the apple is feeding my microbiome and I'm getting soluble fiber, I'm getting pectin, I'm getting short-chain fatty acids. But we don't feel out that that apple actually has its own microbiome that is interacting with our universe. Of microbiota, right? And how do those things look? Like maybe in the future we scan a food and we get the whole population of like microbiota and how beautiful that would be that this thing is living. It's not just living in terms of its physical matter, but it's got probably microorganisms that outnumber its own cells, just like our gut microbiome outnumbers our own physical cells, but yet we don't talk about that. And there are different organizations and groups that are exploring that. And so to me, it signifies that we don't see food on the same playing level. It's, it's a step down. It's again, us and what we can get from the food, which is one part of it. And that is a relevant piece because obviously we're living in a body that we have to tend to. So that makes sense. However, if we do think more expansively about the food, about the shape of the food, taking in the color of the food, looking at seasonally, like if we just go back to like traditional medicine systems and look at the connection with nature, the honoring, the reverence, the— I wouldn't— I guess the word is like maybe connection to the seasons and how they would see foods during that season as part of nature's intelligence, trusting in nature's intelligence, right? And so when we are connecting to that deeply, I feel like, okay, now we harmonize. I had a very interesting question this morning, was doing some teaching, and the person was asking me, and it was, you know, it was a functional medicine kind of course, but he was asking like, what really controls us? Like, is it the planetary rhythm? Is it the circadian rhythm? Is it consciousness? You know, all these different things. And I think if we can understand those things a little bit better, to see that we are a micro within the bigger macro, then it feels like we can start to expand our thinking around food, eating, and our food choices. And one of the biggest things I do feel is, well, actually two things just to put out there for you, for us to discuss potentially. And that is truly eating in season for whichever location you're at. So often I see with people that they kind of have their way of eating at home, and then when they travel, they try to bring the way of eating from home because it feels safe into wherever they're going. And perhaps they have allergies and restrictions and they need to do that. That makes sense. And I, I do that to some degree as well. I also feel like back to that microorganism concept that wherever we go, truly having an experience of that place and how essential that is. So when in Rome, eat like the Romans, right? Different places, they even smell differently. I mean, I'm sure you had that experience being in the UK. I used to live in Europe, very different. And like the smells are different. I don't know, just like you get that sense that the microorganisms vary. So how do we tune into that wherever we are is kind of like this crosstalk, this constant crosstalk and partnership. I really feel like that is, that's essential. Like, so eating seasonally and eating locally, I think, would be two places that we move into more of that 5D and realize the all-connection, all-embraced aspects of, of eating in the realm of consciousness, like how everything is all connected. So anyway, I'm just putting that out there too, because we're starting to see some scientific publications on how when we don't eat seasonally, and specifically these are more in animal studies because it's hard to corral people's lives in this way. But when we're not eating seasonally, at least in preclinical studies, we start to change things like our metabolism and we start, we start to change certain genes, turning them on, turning them off in ways that aren't as beneficial. So I do think that eating seasonally, you know, perhaps lunar rhythm is also really important, looking at the cycles of the moon because of hormonal fluctuations. So, and even, you know, I think every month, depending on where we're located, you know, looking at the connection to food, looking at the land and what the land is growing. So anyway, I feel like that's also really essential to be looking at by way of our relationship with food in the greater planet and even cosmos. You know, the sun, sun flares, geomagnetic fields, You know, all of these things we're still so ignorant to, but these things do in some way impact us. They impact our heart rate variability. They can impact things like our cognitive health, our cardiovascular health. So anyway, all through food and rhythms, rhythms of nature. Absolutely.

And, and I don't know if you've seen this, but I— because I'm in perimenopause and a lot of my listeners are in perimenopause, and it's like the conversation that we're just talking about not only this veil being lifted on a spiritual level, a very physical level, and seeing the, seeing the ways that our bodies respond differently than they used to respond like 10 years before, for example. And I've noticed I am much more sensitive to the solar flares. I never ever paid attention to that before in a practical way. I mean, because I'm into the esoteric, of course I was interested in those sorts of things, but like actually physically recognizing, Oh my gosh, this is having a very literal impact. And the gift of that for me is that it is that awakening of if I'm feeling this, what else am I actually in resonance with and experiencing that I'm just not aware of? And so then that's an invitation, right? To get curious about what else is going on. Like how are, how does sound impact our bodies, impact our food? How are the plants Speaking to us, all of that kind of stuff. And I think it's, it's part of the missing piece that I think we're so desperately seeking when we, when we have that drive, like something's missing, right? Like we're, we're, we're desperately seeking Susan, right? Like there's like that, that feeling of like, ah, I'm, I'm missing something. And I think that's part of it. And I wondered if you had any thoughts on that.

Well, especially through the perimenopause, right? Because you're going through a major transition and the way I've see it in terms of chakras would be you're moving from the physical base chakra system, so the root, the sacral, the solar plexus, all very earthy. It's about your work in the world, it's about your relationships in the world. It's, um, but now you're moving through this space going up into the heart, hence the hot flashes, right? Hence the night sweats, the heat rising, and you're moving into a very I would say non-physical time of life where the physical will start to subside. The veil of hormones comes down. So now you've actually— you've got your real self without the overlay of estrogen and progesterone changing your behavior and changing the bouts of activity and the spurts that you might have. And then, as you mentioned, whether it's the solar flares, the full moons, whatever, you know, everything is impacting us. We're not separate from nature. We are nature. So when you go through that perimenopausal time, it's like recalibrating. It is reestablishing your new norm and the next half of your life, really, if you think of it. And I've been thinking about that for myself just in terms of when you do come over to that other side, you know, it's kind of like a little bit of a near-death experience because you are letting go of your— you're going through a tunnel, you're going through this this portal of opening up into a realm that is very different from the first half of one's life, which is all very outward, right? It's all very— whether it's having children, having pets, having, having, right? And it's externalizing. And now we are going on the inside. So if we didn't tend to the inside and we didn't keep those adrenals in check, you know, we didn't tend to food in certain ways, we didn't tend to our sleep. Now it might be a little bit more rocky as we make our way through this portal where we're going completely inside without that protective overlay of endogenous hormones initially. I mean, I actually see menopause as a very spiritual time of life. Like, it could be the best time of a person's life because they move into this elderhood, they move into this this wisdom that maybe have— maybe it was obscured by hormones, right? So it's kind of like now everything, the dust has settled, and you get to see yourself for who you really are at that junction and who you want to create yourself into being through your more wise intuitive self. Because by that time you have a lot of life experience, right? So Intuition is even more pronounced. You get feelings about people, you get feelings about situations. You may have had that before, no doubt, but now it's really amplified because again, the hormones aren't doing the, the dialogue inside. Everything has cleared, the dust has settled. So now you're like, oh, this is what I— who I am. So it's actually really beautiful. It can be a very beautiful time of life, but a little bit tumultuous initially just because it's anytime you recalibrate.

Well, and I think too, because culturally we don't necessarily honor our elders and we don't honor the crone. And I think especially for women, there's a fear around stepping into that phase of life when our value has been upon our youth, upon everything that is predicated upon the hormonal veil, right? And all that. So it is a bit frightening as well. And I think To me, I see part of what's going on with this greater paradigm shift is that we are being asked to reclaim that, to step into it, and to discover what that looks like in the 21st century. What does it mean to be an elder in the 21st century, particularly in our culture where we don't necessarily have models for that?

Very true. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's where a lot of the centenarian cultures, we see that elders are revered and that there is this sense of having the elder as the wise one in the community to inform everybody, right? So, I mean, I think even our relationship with food changes when we go through menopause, because if we look at, you know, you could look at the Blue Zones and say, oh, well, they eat certain things and they have green tea and they have lots of plants. And, you know, I think that there are all of those things, you know, again, that's a very 3D approach of like, what is. And I do also feel that when we go through menopause, we have a different relationship with our bodies. We are going to have a different sense of appetite, different sense of satiety. We may actually not need to eat so much. We may need to eat more of certain things like whether it's protein, because we need to be attentive to things like our musculoskeletal system. So our relationship with food is up for reevaluation during that premenopausal time. So again, if if our relationship with food in our 20s and 30s was a certain way where we felt disconnected, that might come up to be looking at and to be part of that recalibration, right? Which is just all par for the course, really. And so that would be an opportunity to again, bring in more presence to food, to see food in a more spiritual, enlightened way. I mean, um, you know, I mean, just to really— again, I, I've already mentioned this, but just to impress upon people listening again of the philosophical act of eating, of taking life and integrating that life into your being, is a pretty phenomenal one. Um, so it's kind of like this, um, you know, it just feels like it's so alchemical. It feels like it's very transformative. And so having more presence and perhaps through perimenopause, being more attentive as to which foods now suit your body, because without the veil of hormones, there might be certain things that come up now. I, I know that for, well, for myself, one of the things I noticed was premenopausally, I had more issues with foods in terms of being more reactive. Like there were certain things that I couldn't tolerate so well. And so I kind of navigated them. But I notice now, and this may not be everybody's experience, they may have the reverse, but I feel that now without all the estrogen that I normally would have had, I, even though that tends to set people up for more inflammation, I actually feel like I can be much more expansive with my foods. Like, I don't feel like I have the same heightened, uh, response But you know, that's just now, that's just, that's just where I am right now. And you know, that can all change. But, um, I do feel like our bodies change in relationship to food. And maybe that is because— it's funny I'm coming into this again— but the gut microbiome, that does change through menopause. So we may digest, metabolize, and produce certain metabolites that may change our overall systemic function based on that meal. So it's not like, you know, the microbiome is everything, but it may be a sensor of the system change. And it's something that we can kind of rock from the aspect of like, oh, I can understand I've got these microorganisms that are producing certain things and then that can lead to inflammation. Like it helps us to rationalize the system effect because the gut is connected to the brain, the gut is connected to muscle, the gut is connected to bone. Right? But that's just a certain paradigm. It's just a portal in.

Absolutely. Well, and it's funny because as, so talking about perimenopause and menopause, I'm reflecting back too on something that we just brought up around the experience of being younger with eating disorders and having such a disordered relationship to my body and to food. And I remember, I wish I could remember the name of the book, but I was given a book that was about overcoming your eating disorder through better relationship. And it's something that ironically, maybe not so ironically because everything is connected, but it's a lot about how I talk to pet parents about having a relationship with their dog and their dog's food and how so much of, because every being, not just every human, every being is individual. And so when you start to observe of what's going on with your dog, in this case, you get to understand their patterns and their relationship. And I realized that when I was in the state of being in a really dysregulated relationship to food, I was in a dysregulated relationship to my own body, and I couldn't hear what I needed and wanted. And so I remember this book talking about, in a sense, it was a permission slip that if you feel, and for somebody who had the bulimic tendencies, the binging tendencies, this was very frightening for me where it was, if you just feel like eating chocolate chip cookies all day, you just eat chocolate chip cookies all day. And I thought, there's no, no, no, no, no, no, I can't do that. But it was encouraging just doing that until you'll hit that point where you feel sick from it and your body's like, enough. And then you'll start craving something like broccoli. And it was less about what you were eating and more about developing, rekindling a relationship with your body and starting to hear it, starting to hear the microbiome speaking up of like, for God's sake, enough of the cookies. Like, we need something else. Like, we need a different fuel. But I think that's such a key. And to me, that speaks to what you're describing as well of coming into a 5D relationship with food. How do we actually start to hear our bodies, feel our bodies? What is the wisdom that's coming through even an experience like that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I know this book that you're referring to, this kind of chocolate chip cookie thing of just eat the food and then you'll get to rock bottom, kind of the dark night of the soul, and then you'll pick yourself up. And, you know, I think that that may happen for some people.. And they may need support along the way, right? Because that could kind of, that could manifest in a variety of different ways depending on the person and where they're at. I think one of the things that has helped me with teaching and being in that space of, because I started to do more workshops with women on emotional eating. And what I noticed was that the more that a woman could understand her emotional state and just really identify where she was at, the more she was in touch with what you're referring to, like that self-regulation aspect. And some of these eating workshops that I would, would have, the women would be around in a circle and we would start, you know, I just remember one time I was asking the women to check in, like, how do you feel right now? That was kind of like, hello, introductions. Let's go around and say your name and just say how you feel right now. It was really interesting because the first 3 women all said words that related to their mind. Like, you know, they would close their eyes, you know, the one woman would say, I'm concentrating. The other one would say, I'm focused. The other one, I forget the exact word, but it was like these. And then I had to stop the circle and I said, I made an observation and I'm noting that a lot of us are up here. You know, we're concentrating, we're focused, we're thoughtful. How do we feel? Right. And so being in that space and then I had an activity called laddering where we take a food like chocolate chip cookie. Somebody would have to volunteer their biggest craving, like what food is haunting them and plaguing them. Typically it would be things like bread, pasta, you know, kind of squishy, comforting carbs, or it would be the sweet foods, or sometimes it would even be savory foods like pretzels and crackers and chips. Some people, I remember I had peanut butter, one woman had ice cream. You know, there were all these different things. So somebody would volunteer one of their cravings. And then I did this whole exercise called laddering where the person closes their eyes and then I repeat their craving to them. And we do this quickly and they say the first thing that comes out. So let's just go with the ice cream one. No, actually, let's do the potato chip one, because this woman that I had years ago, an entrepreneur in her 40s, and she was craving potato chips, but she didn't know she was— had this thing for potato chips. So I said, let's just do this little activity. This was not in a group. This was one-on-one. She closed her eyes. I said potato chips, and she would say things like crunchy, salty, snack. And then finally, by the 8th time I said it, she started crying. She couldn't even say the word. She started crying. And she relayed to me that she had an experience when she was growing up. She was the only child. And when she was between 8 and 12, her parents would leave her home with a bag of chips and dip in front of the television while they went out, whether they were working or And so she felt very alone. So she did not even realize until that very moment that potato chips had become like her best friend. So she had this revelation. So we stopped the exercise because that was just like a couple of seconds. So it shows that sometimes we have really strong emotional memories to foods that are fulfilling something about what we're longing for in our lives, right? So with the chocolate chip cookie thing, I think one strategy would be just to continue. It's almost like you get the body sick in a way of that food. But I do think that the other piece of it is looking at what do those chocolate chip cookies represent to the person? Is it a need for sweetness? Why is it chocolate chip cookies? Why isn't it a brownie? So I always like to ask those questions, like, what is it about that food? That food is your teacher. What is it teaching you? What are you connecting to it? So I wanted to mention that because I had so many fun groups teaching on this emotional eating and eating our emotions, eating foods with emotion connections and family and friends. You know, just again, it kind of symbolizes something that we could be missing in our lives and wanting. So we're insatiably eating that food because it's like it's a substitute for the real thing.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's huge. And I think that's, that's so perfect of kind of bringing together as well the way that food invites us to know ourselves at such a deep level. There's so much wisdom not only embedded within the kind of chemical compounds of the food or even, you know, the quantum— at the quantum level, but also like what is that representing to us? To us and how does that become such a teacher for us and allow us to do that deep shadow work that I think is such an integral part of this, this human experience.

Yeah, absolutely. You said it well. Yeah. So all sides is, you know, food allows us to really venture into that terrain and to heal.

Yeah. I love that. I could literally talk to you all day long. I love this. Thank you so much, Dr. Deanna. If people want to learn more about your work, your courses, your books, where can they find you?

I would say my website is probably the best place. So DeannaMinich.com. And when you go on there, there is a downloads page, there is a blog page, and then all of my social media stuff is there. I'm usually a little bit more— so where you saw that post that was on Instagram, I'm a little bit more edgy on Instagram. I'm a little bit more nutritional on Facebook. And then I have a Facebook group for experiences that sometimes I bring in. So that's called Nourish Your Whole Self Community.

So people can join that too.

Wonderful.

I will leave all those links in the show notes. I wanted to ask you one last question before I let you go. And it's a question that I ask all of my guests. And I wondered if you would like to reflect on this, maybe specifically with Leilani or your animals in general. And that is, what do you feel like she has taught you about what it means to be human?

I think to bring forth, uh, what I had mentioned, to let go of control. Like, it's not about me. She's not about me, you know. Um, she's teaching me to, um, to be patient and to be of service in ways that I hadn't thought about being of service. So yeah, she's a great teacher. All of my cats have taught me different things, and Leilani is definitely the one that has— it's— she's come in at a perfect time of my life to help me with that aspect of surrender, especially in this menopausal time of life where it's like, okay, I need to go within. So she's— she definitely has and continues to help me with that. So she's an awesome kitty.

Oh, I love that. I love that so much. Dr. Deanna, thank you so much. I'm so grateful for your time, your presence, your wisdom.

Thank you. Oh, so appreciated.

Thank you for connecting.

Thank you so much for joining me for this beautiful conversation with Dr. Deanna Minich. To learn more about Dr. Deanna, her work, and her books, please visit her website, deannaminich.com. I've left this link in the show notes. If this conversation left you feeling inspired and seen, come join us in our Fetch First Light Facebook group, a community of like-hearted dog guardians sharing our experiences of nourishing our dogs and ourselves, mind, body, and soul. If you're not familiar with Fetch, it is Stacy Renfries and my signature framework that supports you in becoming your dog's health advocate. Through the pillars of optimal health: fresh food, energetics, targeted approaches, curiosity, and holistic health. We help you cut through the noise and ditch the overwhelm. No more Googling symptoms at 2 AM, no more supplement graveyards, and no more feeling like you have to do all of this all on your own. We would love to see you there. You can learn more on our website, learnfetch.com. Again, I've left this link in the show notes. All right, until next time.