The Exciting, Next-Level Future Of BodyWork, Fascia & Massage Therapy: Ketamine, Sound Therapy, Essential Oils, Trauma Release & Beyond With Donna Mills.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness podcast, Cuckoo, I have little conversations with your body while I'm working with it. We don't have a narrative in our world that teaches us to trust our body. In fact, our body has been cast into a narrative of sin. So I decided, okay, I'm going to raise this child to be the kind of person I want to see in the world. And in order to do that, I have to change myself. I started aligning to my integrity. You're already whole and holy. How can I help you if you don't claim yourself and find yourself and who you are essentially living in the box that you have access to crawl out of at any time.

Help, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. All right, folks. Well, you have no doubt heard me talk on other podcasts before and in some of the articles that I've written, not only about the importance of what I call maintaining young muscle by working out all the fascia and adhesion and cross linking that undoubtedly occurs, especially in us active individuals. But you may have also heard me talk about my own relatively epic and unique massages that I get once every 10 to, I would say 10 to 14 days or so. I get some kind of bodywork a couple times a month. And I swear by my morning foam rolling, you know, I hit the foam roller or the massage gun. I was told recently not to call it a gun because apparently that's not PC, my massage device, my pulsating massage device, or my lacrosse balls or whatever. I do that for about 10, sometimes even 15 minutes every morning. Just hit little spots that are sore. But man, I swear by the reboot that I get from getting a massage every couple of weeks. And I mean, if you're able to do that, it's just, it's a key to staying put together, together for life. We'll talk more about that on today's show. But my massages get pretty out there. I mean, we're talking like essential oils and carefully selected musical tracks specifically for healing the body via sound healing. A full on, I use a sound healing table called the bioacoustics table, where the sounds like coming up through my body rather than just into my ears. But then I also have the earphones in, so I'm kind of getting that left, right brain hemispheric activity from the music track. Underneath the bioacoustic table, I actually have this fancy electrical mat that pulses. It's like exercise for your cells. It's called A pulsed electromagnetic field table made by this company called Pulse Centers. They developed this out of the horse racing industry. And it just jams your entire body the whole time into this super duper enhanced state of relaxation and anti inflammation. And then even like carefully selected plant medicine compounds and supplements and even the relax compound, a ketamine for really allowing my muscles and my body to absolutely melt. So my massages are like this full body mind and spiritual reboot as a matter of fact. And I do have a special guest here who is well familiar with this. I finish my massages and typically have a journal that I'll go log in sometimes for a couple hours. I get evening massages, sometimes I'm up until 1am Journaling the things that I've thought about during my massages. And I also have a digital voice recorder that I place underneath the massage table that if thoughts come to me during the massage that I don't want to obviously stop the massage to write down. I can record them as I'm getting the massage, then play those back as I'm journaling or the next day as I want to go back through the things that came through my mind. And so one thing that I haven't talked about too much though is the actual therapist, which is a pretty important part of the massage. Not only the energy of that therapist, but their experience, the way they work. I mean that's a really, really important part of a massage. This is somebody touching you, putting hands on you, putting energy into you for hours sometimes. And even that needs to be taken into account. So I decided that what would be pretty cool would be to get my massage therapy wizard or wizard s, I guess I should say the person who I work with behind the scenes on all of this, who has worked with me to develop these really cool massage therapy protocol calls on today's show to take a deep dive into a really outside the box approach to massage therapy. Her name is Donna Mills. Say hello, Donna.

Hello.

So Donna is my massage therapist. She's one of the most unique and talented therapists who I've ever worked with. And she lives right out here, close to me, here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Specifically in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. Beautiful Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, just about 30 minutes from my house. Donna's company is called Human well, and I'll link to that. You can also go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comHumanWell to see what she does. And I'll also keep all the podcast show notes for everything Donna and I talk about from the crazy devices I use to any of the resources to her website. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com DonnaMills but Donna describes herself as a social healer, healing practitioner, a narrative disruptor, and a cultural change agent. She's more than just a massage therapist. She's very into human connection. She's into trauma release. And she's a real conscious thought leader for these changing times in terms of being someone who not only works with therapists but also works with individuals to train you how to have a deeper connection with self and also how, if you're a therapist, to really use your talents in a more deep and meaningful and connective way with your clients. And she even has trainings on her website where she walks therapists through how to do this and also has trainings on her website where she walks you through some of her unique techniques and tactics. Now, Donna's pretty cool also because she's working with me here at the local Greenfield Casa on some permaculture projects. We're introducing bees and honey and medicinal mushrooms and all sorts of new kind of sustainable egg concepts here at the Greenfield house. And Donna actually has a background in that too. And so she's helping me out along the way with that. So she's a real unicorn. I'm blessed to have been able to connect with her. So welcome to the podcast, Donna.

Thank you, Ben. Gosh, that was really lovely.

So what first attracted me to want to work with you was I was working with another massage therapist like three years ago. They had to move, so I had to put up the feelers because I like to have somebody come to my home. Like that's the most relaxed place for me to be. And I realized that if people are listening in, you might be like, well, you know, I'm not, you know, some dude who can just like have a massage therapist into my home or some somebody who has that ability. And you know, you don't have to have someone in your home to get a massage. But I like that personally. I like to be able to just like finish up family dinner. Donna comes over around 7 or 7:30. We're usually jamming by 7:45. Sometimes we don't finish till like 10:30pm Sometimes. But I like to just have somebody come over when my day's complet over. I like to wander again from the massage table just straight up to my bedroom with my journal rather than getting in a car and driving home. And so that just works for me. What attracted me to Donna initially was I was racing, and I was in, like, super hardcore deep tissue massage therapy. And somebody's like, there's this massage therapist. She's worked with the NFL. She's worked with athletes. She really knows her way around the body. She can do deep tissue. And so I thought, all right, well, I'll try her out. And it turns out that I learned a new appreciation for massage that goes way beyond just, like, beating you up with elbows and knees and doing the whole NFL athlete type of therapy on your body, which is what I've been used to. But that's what initially attracted me to Donna, and then I really got introduced to her unique form of therapy. So, Donna, tell me a little bit about. And this will obviously, rabbit hole, but as we were discussing before the podcast, rabbit holes are one of your favorite holes to go into and chase little rabbits. So tell me a little bit about how you came to be who you are in terms of developing your unique approach to massage therapy.

Ooh, that is a rabbit hole.

That's okay. We got time.

Okay.

We're sitting here at my kitchen table. We got time.

Yeah. Well, my initial path into massage therapy came about in 1998, and it was four years after my son was born. He was four. And I was a solo parent, and I didn't want to put my child in childcare and have somebody else raise him. So I needed to find a profession that I could do part time and make good money and raise my child. And massage was also something I was interested in. And when I got into massage school, I put my hands on people, and I realized I must have been 32 at that time. I realized, oh, oh, I'm good at this. It was like peanut butter and jelly came together and just fit right.

So that was almond butter and organic blueberry spread for all of our healthy listeners, obviously.

Yeah, yeah, obviously, I'm gonna let people make their own adjustments because I don't do peanut butter either. So that was in Seattle, and I actually took a training in essential oils and aromatherapy for spa treatments. My school had three postgraduate options. Oncology, working with people in cancer in the hospital, sports medicine, and then the essential oil therapy program. And I wanted to get on a cruise ship and go see the world, and so that's why I took the spa option. But it turns out that as a solo parent, that really wasn't a good plan for me, and I immediately ended up working.

You want to raise a baby on a cruise ship?

Yeah. No, especially these days. I know. I just wanted to see the world, but yeah, so especially these days. Yeah, that baby's 26 now, about to be 27. So anyways, yeah, so I just immediately fell into working with athletes. They came to me. And when I left Seattle and moved back to San Diego, I started working with the Chargers. And I just found that as my career progressed, I continued to work with those people. But things started changing for me. I went through my own set of trauma. I lost my mother and my grandmother and my aunt all within three years from a genetic form of emphysema. That. That really started to change me because at 53 years old, I became the eldest woman in my family. And that was. It just took me into a deeper spiritual place about, okay, who am I? Who am I? And I started even with my son. You know, I didn't plan to have children, but I found myself with a child, raising my child by myself. And I decided one of the reasons I didn't want to have a child was because the world is struggling, and I don't know that I want to bring a child into a struggling world. And this was in 1998. And so I just decided, okay, I'm already here pregnant, so we're going to have this child. And I guess I always loved the be the change you want to be in the world, right? That's kind of cliche, but it's really be the change. So I decided, okay, I'm going to raise this child to be the kind of person I want to see in the world. And in order to do that, I have to change myself. I have to be that person. And that started the path to who I am today. And I have just constantly done self work from the moment I found myself pregnant at 28.

For you, when you say self work, what kind of things do you do for self work or did you do for self work?

I started aligning to my integrity. I just started aligning to my integrity. What felt integral to me in each and every step. Can I walk in integrity? So no matter what came into my life, whether it was a struggle or whether it was a blessing, I chose integrity. I chose truth. I chose to align to whatever I felt like God was. And I use the word God because it's comfortable for me. It's not a religious thing, but it's a deeply spiritual thing. I consider myself a Jesus loving pagan, you know, so church for me is the top of the mountain, next to the lake by the river. I do a lot of contemplation, a lot of listening. What it comes down to is we do A lot, and we talk a lot, and we don't yet have a narrative in our world where we are listening. And when we listen and we receive really cellularly, like, who am I cellularly? What are all these billions of magical things in my body doing? And what else can I connect to spiritually? That's same. What else is my cells connected to? That's not on this earth. Can I contemplate the idea of who I was before I even came into this flesh and let that advise who I am as flesh? Who was I? I don't even have to have that answer. I don't even have to have the answer. But knowing that at one point I was not flesh, and then I was, and at some point I won't be. And so just the idea of contemplating, wow, that blows my mind. That blows my mind. And that advises the person that I am. Who can I be on this planet that's even more vast than my human self? And that's what I bring to my clients. That's what I bring to the table when I put my hands on people. I have a belief in people, that people are already whole and holy. We are already whole and holy. We're trying to be this and do that, and it's like we already are. Accept it. Allow it. Allow.

Reminds me a little bit of Bruce Lipton's book Biology of Belief, where he outlines how your body has everything that it needs to heal. But in many cases, it is trauma. It is the cells being stuck in the. As many other physicians have talked about in cell danger response or spinning in sympathetic mode that keeps us from actually healing. But many people have the capability to heal within themselves. Dawson Church, in his book Bliss Brain, also talks about this. But you have to unlock some of that. And obviously there is a physical, there is a structural component. I mean, I can talk about positive emotions, being able to whatever, heal a bum shoulder till the cows come home. But if I do have rotator cuff adhesions and trigger points and all sorts of this, you know, gunky tissue in there, that needs to be worked on, like, that still needs to be worked on, but, man, when you put the two together, then it becomes really powerful. When you were working with, with like the, let's say, like, you know, the Chargers and some of these athletes back in the day, had you already tapped into that or were you still just like, basically like push hard on and make it go away?

Yeah, a bit of both. A bit of both. People are my favorite things on the planet. I love them. I love them. I just have such a deep love for people. Sometimes I want to shake them, but I still love them. I create these relationships like you and I have. My clients are not just my clients are my friends. And it's that relationship that I think started when I was working with the Chargers and some of those people. And, you know, I would go into their homes as well. They're having me in their home. They want somebody who's safe, who's personable, who's skilled at what they do. So I think it probably began at that time. My daughter was two when I started working with them. So that would have made my son 12. So for 12 years, you know, I, I did some teaching at some schools in San Diego. I taught massage. I love to teach the sciences. Kinesiology is my favorite thing to teach. Origin, insertion, action, antagonist, protagonist of the muscles. Those are my favorite. And that's one thing every therapist needs to know. Well, is remembering the muscles because all the muscles have different fiber directions. And when you're doing cross fiber friction and stuff like that, you want to, you know, you find something sinewy and taut and you want to widen it a little bit to kind of bring some more life back into it.

That, that and also something, you know, I was talking with you a couple weeks ago about some reading this book called the Trigger Point Therapy Manual. You know, this whole idea of marmot points or trigger points or areas that refer pain to other points, you know, like the back or underside of the shoulder, actually referring pain to the front of the shoulder. And so if you can dig into and work infraspinatus, all of a sudden it gets rid of biceps tendonitis on the front of the shoulder. And another one that I recently been tapping into due to some knee issues you and I have been working through is way up on the outside of the hip, right, right around the gluteus medius. If you have pain way down on the outside of your knee, you know, you can actually. And that's why I like this book. It shows you, here's the trigger point, here's the pain that it refers out to. But yeah, I think an understanding of that also. Correct me if I'm wrong, that's crucial as well for you to know, hey, Ben's big toe hurts. I'm going to work on way up on the syndesmosis in the shins to affect that. And so that's a pretty big component too, as well.

Yeah, absolutely. I tell clients all the time, 99% of the time, the pain is not the problem. The problem is elsewhere. If you're good going in and telling your therapist, hey, it hurts in my bicep, or, hey, it hurts in my deltoid. This is classic, like, rhomboid hypertonicities. And the rhomboids are usually pec things, because we do things in front of us. Nobody works with their hands behind them. Right. We all work. So all of our emotions, our energy, our movement is coming from the front of us forward. And so that brings the fascial layers in tighter, and then that pulls the shoulders forward and overstretches the rhomboids. And then the rhomboids are like the losing kid on the. Into the tug of war, right? They're just trying to pull back, but they're not as strong as the pecs because the pecs get used more. So, yeah, when somebody's like, oh, the pain in my back and my shoulders, the first thing I do is turn them face up. Like, I start my clients face up. Except for you, because you're a little tough like that Ben. But I'm a special unicorn. He's a special unicorn. Ben likes to start face down, and that's fine. I did get him to start face up one time.

I don't know why I like to start face down.

Right.

I feel way more dialed in during my massages. When I. When I step, maybe. I don't know, maybe I'm. I struggle with vulnerability. And when you go face up, you're more vulnerable. Right. More open.

True story. Because I've always started people face down because I want them to be comfortable. Especially when they're a new client, I'll let them start face down because they don't know me. And, yeah, there you are, laying face up and naked, wide open, nude. Right. You know, there's a few things from massage school that really stuck with me. Well, everything. But some really core components to how I work with people is my draping skills are on point because I do not want people. I remember my instructor even, you know, 25 years ago telling me, if you feel like your skill, you're draping as well, double check with the client to see if they feel. Does that feel comfortable to you? Because a breeze can come and it feels like you're not draped well, but you are. Right? Right.

Or draping meaning, like, how you're actually arranging the blankets and the sheets around. Around the body for privacy or for comfort for the client. That. That's something also, I've noticed because you and I will do like, well, sometimes we'll do like some pelvic ish work. Sometimes you get way up, like above my butt crack. Sometimes like that, like when I'm on my front side, down into like that hip region that leads, you know, straight down.

What do they call it?

What do the kids call it? Like, the treasure trail that goes down towards the gonads, you know, but, you know, I don't think I've ever had. Well, I mean, we're all adults here. I don't think I've ever had like my. My dick or my balls pop out or anything like that. But. But, you know, the first few times we worked together, I'm like, well, you know, you're very thorough because we go for like two and a half, three hours. Sometimes we hit those spots. But yeah, that's. That's one thing I hadn't thought about. And it's. That's another skill, you know, that whole. I didn't know that's what you called it. Draping. Yeah, but yeah, like, you'll just like with the blankets and it's like I actually have confidence now that. Not that I care anyways. Like, again, we're all adults when we're working, but you just feel better when you feel as those stuff's just like shielded and cradled down there in the right way.

I let people disrobe to their own comfort level, which means they can leave whatever piece of clothing on that they want. I prefer and appreciate people that trust me enough to be nude because I do do that half body drape. So when I'm, you know, working from the shoulder all the way to the heel, and it just opens that whole side of the body. So once.

I love that move that you do where you. Where it literally feels like it opens my entire body, like from the bottom, like the heel. You literally go all the way up to, like, the fingertip from the heel. But obviously you got to be draped the right way in order to get something like that to happen.

When I'm working, I'm not working on a leg and a shoulder. I'm working on a Ben and his body and. Or anybody else. Any other clients that I have, I'm working on them, and in a lot of ways, I'm working on them in ways that they're not even conscious of. Like you are. Because we have this relationship. We have this spiritual relationship between each other. We have different versions of our spirituality, but they blend. And you let me be me, and I let you be you. And I honor you, and you honor Me. And when I put my hands on people, I remind the body, like I talk to the flesh and I talk to the soul and the spirit of my client. And I remind them, like, hey, you're already whole and holy. How can I help you? Right. I'm not here to do the big push into the body anymore, and I'm not here to do the chargers massage anymore. I am here to do like a multi dimensional type of experience is what I'm right.

Which was different for me because I was used to having to push really hard on an area to get it to relax or to get pain to get away. But it's almost like if you work like a clockworker, like a master clock worker would work on a teeny tiny clock with little bits of precision. I find, and I've noticed that when done right, you actually don't have to go deep. You can go pretty light as long as the body is in the right place. I don't know if I'm describing this properly, but it's almost as though you're able to work more light and still get as good of results when obviously part of it, and we'll talk about this later, is all the different ways that we relax the body and some of the technologies and stuff that we use. But I think it's also the therapist actually knowing in a way. I don't know, explain it to me, like, what is it that makes it so you don't have to go as deep?

It's fascial work. So I think I told you recently, when we first started working together, your body was really taut. And I did have to kind of power through it. Remember when I told you, I told you, I'm like, I can't do what I do for you, for anybody else, because this is like three hours long. And it's everything. Like, when I'm done, I'm done. And that's it, I gotta go home, I gotta go to bed. But it's changing for me. Like, that was how we began. And I was like, oh, this guy, he's solid. I'm gonna have to work my derriere off, right? But things, you know, as I change spiritually, as I change physically, as I change my own evolution of me, I'm this planet. So does my work. And so it just builds upon itself. And the fascial work. What I'm doing right now is a lot of fascia, a lot of joint mobilization and a lot of listening.

Fascia being the layer that surrounds all of the muscles, not necessarily the muscles themselves, but like that spider webby layer that goes throughout the whole body. Who's the guy who has a book that just. It's one of the better books out there when it comes to fascia is Anatomy Trains.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anatomy Trains, I think, is the name of the book, but it just. It's a great treatise. I think any therapist should really. Anybody who wants to really wrap their heads around, I guess, pun intended in this case, that wrapping around all the muscles, you know, because I used to dissect cadavers at the University of Idaho, and it was. It was actually really cool. Even now when I field dress animals, you know, when I was teaching my kids how to. How to field dress, I think it's really cool how this fascia, you can just kind of like unwrap it and. And it's like this spider webby stuff that just, you know, when it's properly integrated and a healthy, hydrated body, it just kind of pulls away from the muscles.

Yeah.

And it's. You know, my wife described it when we were. I think we were field dressing as sheep. She thought it was like popping his zit. Right. It's like almost like this really cool feeling because everything just kind of like pulls away. And so when you're working fascia, as anyone will know if they have ever seen fascia, like, you don't have to work super deep as much as with precision and with alignment over the actual fascia direction and alignment itself.

Right. I describe it to my clients like this. You've got a six pack of hot dogs and some Saran Wrap.

Right?

And take the hot dogs out and you wrap each one of them individually. And then you take three of those that have been wrapped individually and you wrap them again together and then do that to the other three. So now you've got two bundles of three hot dogs, individually wrapped and then wrapped together. Now put that two together and wrap those. And that's how I would describe, like, if you took a cross section of the thigh and saw the way that you could take everything out of the body, Every single thing out of the body. The nervous system, the cardiovascular system, the lymphatic system, and all the organs and muscles and everything and have a place to put it right back. Because the fascia encompasses everything. It comes off of the bone to create the tendons. So it runs between the bone and the flesh. Sometimes when I'm working on people, I can feel that the top of the thigh muscles are fine. The quads are fine at the top But I can feel them stuck to the bone. So then I'm going, okay, I have to get into that space between the muscle and the bone in one way. I put my. Both my hands on. I'll put one hand on maybe your adductors and one on the abductors on the outside. And then I'll try to create some pressure and move the muscle very subtly away from the bone because I'm accessing the fascia, but I'm also talking to it in my body, my. In my head. And a little cuckoo. I have little conversations with your body while I'm working with it. And just ask it, don't you want to let go? How much more movement will you have if you let go? And so I'm doing more coaxing of the body than I'm actually doing massage these days. I mean, I know for you it feels like massage, because that's what I'm doing. I am still doing petrissage and the kneading and that type of stuff and moving your body. But I do a lot of jostling to loosen up the hips, the joints, and that tells me what else is going on. Like, I can sit at your big toe and know what you're. So as is doing.

Yeah.

Because of that connection.

Does my body talk back to you? Like, can. Like, what do you hear? What do you feel when you ask the body? Is it just like a. Is it almost like a sensing, like a knowing in your gut? It's a no or it's not. It's not like a voice inside your head, like a little tiny Ben saying.

Help me, help me. It's my toe.

It's more like, no.

Big Ben tells me that before we start. And then I go in, I'm like, what's.

I do give you a debrief before we started. Like, this hurts. This hurts. This one needs a little bit of tlc. Now go do your magic. And then sometimes you find areas that I don't even think about. So you just kind of like, when you ask my body, it's as though you get directed to the areas that need work or how to work on them in a very intuitive sense.

Very much. Yeah, very much. Like, you know, not to dog myself out, but I'm algebra. No, thank you. But the body, I know exquisitely.

Is that a skill you've had to develop? Or when you say you were back in the day taking your first massage and you just, like, knew, and it clicked for you that. That you were good at this and you should be doing that like, was that a natural skill, being able to listen to the body? Or have you had to like study that and develop it or use books and resources to learn how to do that?

I would say it's more me. It's me listening to life, it's me listening to God, it's me listening to nature, it's me picking up. So I lost my sense of smell in this a couple years ago with a traumatic event and not a physical event, it's a psychosomatic. So I lost my sense of smell and I started asking God, the world, universe, whatever, for another, okay, if I cannot smell, I have to be able to pick up on things in other ways. And what came to me naturally was vibration. So my housemaid is a sommelier. She pairs wine with food. And so there's always wine at our house. And so as I'm smelling it, I'm not smelling it with my olfactory, but I'm picking up the vibes. Like the other day I was drinking, I don't know, some red and I could pick up walnuts. Well, I said, it smells like walnut skin. And my housemate turned around and looked at me and she goes, you are able to pick up on intricacies that other people don't pick up. And you don't even have a sense of smell. And I said, it's the vibrational way. Like we're not taught. We don't have a narrative in our world that teaches us to trust our body. In fact, our body has been cast into the narrative of sin, you know, the evil flesh. And I was like, are you joking? It's the most amazing thing we have. Have. It's the most amazing thing we have. And it's full of all kinds of information cells. Think about what we pack people away behind cells, right? So what's in our cells? What can we open in our cells to access spiritually? What can we open in our cells to access physically, mentally, emotionally? All the different intelligences. And for me it's a knowing, I can't explain it, right? Like I have courses that I teach people. They're not like a self help, but who are you actually? Who are you? Not this story of who they've told you you are, but who actually are you? After 2020, everything kind of unraveled and we get to create what's our narrative for ourselves. We don't have to listen to narratives of society, media, government, whatever. I'm here to ask you, who are you?

Right?

Who are you?

Right?

Like who are you? And that's incorporated into my work, I do with people. And so on the table, off the table, it doesn't matter. I have mentorship programs that I offer to people and in that I teach them different. Intelligence. There's a somatic intelligence. What can you learn and know from your body?

You do those like, like online via Skype or zoom call.

Yeah, Zoom platform called Sutra. Okay. And I teach them to move emotions through their body by unlocking what's in their self. We can't deny the truth, but we can face it. As we're doing self healing, it's imperative that we go to the core of who we are. Because if we don't know who we are, then how do we go out there and treat other people? Well, like the whole thing about the golden rule, like treat others as you want to be treated yourself. But we don't even know how to treat ourselves. Well.

Right.

We have stories in this world that say, you know, like Army, Navy, Marines, be all you can be. Right? Right. Or Nike, just go do it. But then we end up in church to be told that we're sinners. And it's like, well, which one is it? It feels like gaslighting to me. And I'm here for a new narrative of who we are as humans. I know God. I know who I am as a godly person. I use my own plant medicine. I've been to God and had conversations with God and I know why I'm here on this planet. I'm here to change the narratives of who we are as humans.

Yeah, it sounds to me like this idea. So for me as a Christian, this idea of original sin or of us really being prone to struggles, to pitfalls, to temptations, is certainly one that resonates. But you are correct in that sometimes that can morph into this idea that I am broken, my body is broken. I am not capable of self healing. My body is not something that is a miraculous creation of God and is instead just this broken clump of cells and tissues. What am I to do? But if you have a belief that you are created as this magical collection of cells capable of engaging in self healing when in the right set and setting, when guided by someone like you, who's able to actually facilitate that process, then a belief that, that you might not be perfect in terms of being like God is certainly that's not something that I would profess. But at the same time, I have an amazing body. I'll just say that my body is capable of self healing. Everybody's body, everybody's Mind. Everybody's spirit is built in a really cool and unique way. But, yeah, being able to facilitate that via something like work with a massage therapist who actually has that type of philosophy that you have have, I think is important because, yeah, equipping the body to self heal, I think is a really important component of this work. It doesn't simply end on the table. Right. It should continue in between sessions. You know, just in the same way that something like plant medicine, really, the four to six hours you might spend on psilocybin or something like that, that's not where a lot of the magic happens. That's where it initiates. And you kind of get. Get some of that rocket fuel that you need for the integration and the journaling and the post process afterwards. But, yeah, it's the same with massage therapy. It's like you work on me and then I'm sitting with that journaling, meditating, letting my body absorb what you've done to it for a good two weeks before we meet again. And then we meet again, and it just continues to get better. Every time you had mentioned, for example, when you're working on my toe, you know, it's telling you what my psoas is doing. And, you know, I'll occasionally just throw little things in here as we go, just based on experiences I've had with you. But, like, I had some. Some really significant toe issues. And there was one night where you just literally, you know, I had toe swelling and toe pain, and I thought it was bursitis and whatever, but you just, like, jammed on my toe for, like, 20 minutes. Was that all fascial work, or do you do stuff where you're. Because it literally felt like someone had done surgery on my toe when you finished and the pain was just gone. But what did you do in a situation like that? I never actually asked you after, like, ever, what you actually did.

1. I'm patient with the body. I don't force it into doing anything. I'm coaxing it and, okay, are you ready to release now? And then it will, like, all of a sudden remember that when your toe just went kapow, it would pop. And I was like, thank you.

I know. And I say, I didn't tell my wife this, but it was like an orgasm, basically. Oh, my gosh. That was as good as an orgasm. With that.

I'm gonna be on the fence with Jess.

When that toe popped, I just.

So one thing I'm doing is so I realized it was in your joint. It was. It was in the joint. And so I hold the toe from the bottom with. I'm left handed, so I hold it with my right hand and then with the left hand I hold the toe at the joint. That is okay. So I'll hold up close to the foot where the toe is, and then I will go to the other side of the joint. And then I'm just slowly mobilizing it. I'm just. So what was happening in there is that you had a bunch of collagen buildup in there. Like crepitus. It's called crepitus. It's like when you're, you start standing up or when your knees pop and that kind of stuff through aging. And so I just slowly mobilized your toe in a way and did the fascia stuff. So I'll work on the fascia from the, like where the toenail is and I'll say, oh yeah, okay. The fascia stuck on the toenail.

So it's that small that. So the fascia is going to pretty much be everywhere.

Everywhere. Every. There's. There's no place fascia isn't.

Wow.

So even our it bands are a form of fascia. It's just a thicker fascia than like the soft stuff you might find under the skin on your face. Just, you know, we just think like, maybe toes are just something to kind of brush over a little bit. But our toes help us with our balance. Without any toes, we wouldn't be walking the way that we walk. And so, so it's important. And those joints are important too. Like when I'm going through the body, I'm going through every single joint because that is where we move. It's, it's, you know, it's all of our ways that we move. And so toe joints, finger joints, sometimes like, I can feel the fascia right now on my own thumb going, oh, yeah, I could push that back. Like, like women will go in. People will go in. I don't want to make it. Only women. People will go in and get manicures and they'll push your cuticle back. Well, I'm doing that while I'm massaging because that cuticle is a fascial connection and, and it is that intricate. And I mean, when I get up to your quads or your glutes or your back or something, it's not that intricate. But there are places that, like when I'm working in the groin area and I'm working on the psoas and the iliopsoas as they come together and go Deeper into the groin and to the top of your adductors. Like, you know, the way I see fascia is it's like a spiderweb, right? So if you have a spider web in the shape of a dinner plate and you want to affect the entire abdomen outside ring of the dinner plate, all you have to do is stick your finger right in the middle and wiggle it around. Right. The whole rest of the spider web is going to move the middle of the. Now apply that to the body. The middle of the body is the groin. I do a lot of pelvic bowl work for people because we've had a world where sexuality has been impure. And so we have a lot that we hold in our second chakra area in our groin and our pelvic bowl. There's, you know, there. I have so many clients that are working through trauma that have to do with their hips and male, female. And so the reason I feel like if I could start in the groin and work my way down to the legs or even up to the top, that's my ideal working. Because now I'm actually accessing the core problem. I don't know that problem's the word, but the core space, that middle. And so typically I start people face up and I start at their feet and I just open because doing working on their feet is going to tell me a lot, like, is it reflexology? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I'm hitting. I do know reflexology. So I'm using those points, but I'm using those points to access information. I have a friend who I was doing a little bit of massage on the other day, just sitting next to him and massaging his arms. And he said to me, when you're touching me, you're accessing information, aren't you? This is the way that you access information in the world is through your touch. And I said, yes, yes. Sensing is my thing. Vibrations, touch, feel, and it's. So I started talking about those intelligence, the somatic intelligence, what our body tells us, intellectual intelligence, what we've learned. But there's a spiritual intelligence of knowing. That's something you can't explain. It's like where faith comes in. It's where prayer comes in. It's where the relationship between you and God come in. That's a lot of my work is it's a knowing. And I can't teach a knowing to people, but I can teach them who they are so that they can access their own knowing. So when I do mentorship with Other therapists and try and teach them what I know. I teach them who they are. I don't. I don't actually teach them who they are. I facilitate their own coming to themselves. And that's it. I mean, really, that's the truth.

So you can take someone who's basically already been trained in Massachusetts therapy and teach them how to take these same tactics that you do in terms of some of the more intricate work as far as knowing the client's body, asking yourself questions about the body, and then understanding how to actually incorporate what I guess would be some of the more emotional or trauma release components of that. Because that's also something I wanted to ask you about Another time. You were working on the outside of my right leg, and I began to get really intense and vivid in imagery of experiences I'd had in childhood. And this has been replicated multiple times. Memories will come up that I had completely suppressed, or emotions will come up and I'll start laughing or smiling or crying with my face down there in the pad. Like, I've had tears coming out of my eyes for like 10, 15 minutes at a time sometimes. What's going on there?

Everything we've ever experienced, lives in ourselves, everything. And so when I'm doing this work and I'm hitting X, Y or Z spot on your body, and it's triggering that memory, which then triggers that emotion, that's an opportunity for it to release. Ooh, See, I have full body chills right now when that happens. I know I'm on point because that's how God talks to me. My entire body gets cold. So, yeah, the emotions that are held inside of us, this is why we don't heal, because we don't stand in witness to our experiences. We are not our experiences, but they are embedded in us until we come to them and then say, thank you. You, I can release you now. I can release you. When I work with clients in trauma, first thing I do is I open a box over there and I say, I want you to put energetically all of your trauma in that box. You can write it down. If you want to write it down. Put it on paper, put it in the box. Everything that's ever happened to you that has been traumatic, put it in that box over there and there's the lid. So the choice here, when you're working with me, is you can get in the box and put the lid on and keep it, or you can recognize the distance between you and your experiences and recognize that you're not your experience experiences you can release it. There is a way to move through trauma, but you have to understand that you're not that story. If you've made that story of whatever's happened to you, your identity. Like, you know, here's my rape, here's my this, here's my that. This is, you know, here's my father. Left, right. I grew up without a father. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever your story is, whatever it is, if you don't claim yourself and find yourself and who you are, claim yourself, then you're going to just. You're essentially living in the box that you have access to crawl out of at any time.

Yeah.

It's a you job.

Yeah. And I think you need to be in the right state too, because I can work on those same areas with the foam roller or lacrosse ball or muscle stick or any other medieval torture device that I've got in all my wicker baskets downstairs. I don't get that state when I'm working on myself. But then when I'm with you, and I would imagine that that just that deep state of relaxation and release that I'm in allows for that to happen in a much different way than I'm. Than I'm able to get to when I'm. When I'm foam rolling or something like that. But that was another big light bulb moment for me, was I actually didn't kind of believe you initially when you said that you could do things like trauma early. But then when I started to experience that and still do experience it, like without fail. I haven't had a massage session with you ever where something hasn't come up that I need to go work through afterwards, later on that I wouldn't have known was even wrapped up inside me still, or something that was holding on to. Unless really we'd gotten to the point where the area of the body where that was being stored, you know, kind of like another book. Your Body Keeps the score.

Love it.

Right. That's an amazing book to wrap your head around this a little bit more if anybody out there wants. Wants to go out and read it. And again, I'll link to all of resources or books I mentioned if you go toBen Greenfield Fitness.com DonnaMills but this idea that you can actually release that stuff and work through it and get rid of it through something like someone else's hands on you who's using that intuitive approach you use, asking yourself, where are you needed? Or what's the body need? And then go into that area you don't know what's going to come up for me, all you know is that area is holding something and then it comes out for me. We finish up. I'm able to go journal with that, integrate with it, work through it. Sometimes the next couple of days I'm making phone calls to people, writing emails, or realizing there's a conversation I need to have with someone who I haven't had yet. And I mean, you hear some of that when I'm talking to my voice recorder. That's another thing, that's very important things of the trust relationship. And I would encourage anybody who's working with a therapist, once you find the right therapist at that point, understand that, you know, it's like, I know you, Donna. You're not going to go out and let, like here, you're not gonna go to Twitter, right, And tweet, oh, here's what Ben said during his massage. Like, you gotta have that trusting relationship. There's confidentiality between anything you say on the table to your recorder or to your therapist. Like, that's just, you know, it's, you know, what's the phrase? What, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas type of thing, you know, and. And so, you know, if you have that type of openness and trust with your therapist, which I think is also important, important like it may be having the same person who works on you each time, and every time that happens, that that's that same person, you get a greater level of comfort. And for me, I'm just, I'm open and loosey goosey now when we do these massages. And what I mean by that is like, emotionally, I'm emotionally vulnerable because I know I'm in a safe space. In the same way that if you were to do like a plant medicine journey, for example, with a facilitator, you'd want to be in a very safe space. If you feel, feel as though you're not, or you feel as though the door might open and somebody might rush in and you got to take care of something, or that therapist has had, let's say, a bad day and you can kind of like feel some crappy energy coming off of them, or you feel as though if you were to talk about something there on the table, that they might judge you, right? Or that they're kind of worrying about what you might say. If you can, can set all that aside and be in a really open place. I think that the type of trauma release that you can experience by a good therapist releasing some of this stuff that's in your fascia it can be really profound. That's why when I introduced you for this episode, I said it was like a full body, mind, and spiritual reboot for me, because I'm letting not just the body go, but the mind and the spirit go as well. And that's something that I've certainly found getting into some brass tacks now. We obviously mix a lot of cool things in to the entire experience, and some of them. It's kind of funny, we were talking about it before we even recorded today. Like, there's some stuff we do where you and I haven't even fully explored all the technologies in terms of like, just sat down, had a discussion about them. But one would be very simple. The actual oils being used. Right. That's important, isn't it? You and I actually haven't talked that much about oils. I know some practitioners are very, very picky about sesame versus coconut. Not versus. I mean, and that. And correct me if I'm wrong, but that's because different oils have different types of friction.

Right.

But you use oil.

I do, yeah. Yeah.

If you had to choose any oil on the face of the planet as like your carrier oil, which would you choose? Which you think is the best for massage therapy?

The oil I use because you have your own and you mix your own oil. So I don't even know what you use, what I use on you, but the oils I mix at home. I know you have that bottle from Banyan's, and I love Banyans.

It's Banyan botanicals, but I forget what they put in it. Yeah, I order it from Banyan just because I know a lot of massage therapists use that. It's just their daily massage oil. It's the one you can order from bulk on their website. And it's a sesame oil, sunflower oil, refined coconut oil blend. And then they have like Tulsi and lemon and a few other massage oils in there. And then what I do with that is I have this really, really great essential oil guy named Dr. Nick. He's been on the podcast before, and he has essential oil wizardry down in Ashland. And I will take a few of his choice oils. The two that I use that we've been using of late. Mixed into that bottle from Banyan's is he has one called Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. I put about 10 drops of that into the bottle of Banyan. And then he has another one that is. It's called something like Icy Blue or Icy Hot. It's basically like a little Bit more of like, like a topical muscle anti inflammatory oil. Yeah, exactly. I put about 20 drops of that in there. So I just basically dress up like a really good standard massage oil with a few extra essential oils. That's the one that we've been using at home.

I use sesame. So I make a blend at home and I use sesame oil, sunflower oil, and grapeseed seed. And then if I can find apricot kernel oil. I like that.

Yeah, I've heard that's another really good.

I stopped using coconut oil because Ayurvedically, it's a drying oil and the sesame is more moisturizing. So that's why banyans, because they're an Ayurvedic based company, uses sesame oil. And so, and, and I learned that, you know, years ago, I don't know, 10 years ago or something like that. So yeah, I'll use sesame and then sunflower and grapeseed or apricot kernel oil. I try not to use almond because almonds, almonds are Cherokee because they use a lot of water and then you have to ship a bunch of bees into. So I try to stay away from almonds if I can.

No, no Crisco, no vegetable. Your skin is a mouth. I said that before. So. And that is important. Like, you want to go with super high quality. So yeah, I recommend people just like, if you don't know, just like go get like the Banning botanical mechanical stuff, then you can add a few of your own little mixes to that. And again, I like the doctor and Dr. Nick's really cool if you, if you contact through his website and be like, hey, I heard you on the Ben Grieffield podcast and put together a massage blend. What do you have lately? Because he's always rotating his blends. Just ask him, be like, what do you have lately? And then I diffuse his oils as well. So aromatherapy is another part of this. So I have is a very small mini fan set up behind my essential oil diffuser that blows that, that diffuser towards kind of like where my head is located on the massage table. And for that, again, it kind of rotates, but I like something that's a little bit more, I guess, arguably almost like psychedelic in terms of shifting you into altered states of consciousness. And I think what we're using right now for that is frankincense.

Yeah.

Another one from Dr. Nix, but frankincense, lavender, you know, rose, bergamot, anything that's very relaxing. Yeah, I like better than like a, like a peppermint or a lemon or Something that's a little bit more clean or stimulating. I find that to be really good. Like I diffuse peppermint often and lemon often and even a little bit of black pepper sometimes in my office. But then for the massage I'll use the other ones. So, so the oils are important, right? So a little bit of oil in the body, but then also the aromatherapy component. I think that making sure that the scents are really good too. And arguably you could also use incense sticks. But I like to use the essential, like a small essential oil diffuser with the mini, just this cheap ass mini fan from Amazon that I put behind it that kind of blows it towards the head. Another component I think is important is these tables that we use. So I mentioned the pulsed electromagnetic field table. Now here's why I think that I get a really good connection to some of like the trauma release stuff that you do. And also even the anti inflammatory and the full body effects. The massage that one would be looking for is this pulsed electromagnetic field table can be set from 0 to 9.9 Hz with 0 being donk, donk, donk. That's what you'd use on like acute inflammation when you're just like say using the coils that attach to the table and wrapping them around one joint. And then nine, nine is like dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. It's very kind of like intense, energetic frequency. Usually when we get, when we get our massages, I choose about 7.8 Hz on the frequency which is the Schumann resonance very good full body frequency. The same that the earth emits. Well, the earth emits, you know, zero all the way up to 100 hertz, but 7.8, it's kind of like that healing Schumann resonance frequency. So I put that at 7.8 hertz and that's basically blasting myself full body because it literally is a full max that we put on top of the actual massage table itself. And I actually ordered the full kit from Pulse Centers. So that's what that massage table is from too. Like they sent me the mat that goes on top of the table, then the table, then there's a chair that I sit on in my den that will also plug into that same unit. And so I can do that when I'm reading or whatever. The whole massage table, I just ordered the whole kit from this company called Pulse Centers. I've interviewed them on my podcast. And so that works out pretty well because it also opens and closes the cell membrane and allows for better clearance of metabolic byproducts. Toxic waste products, et cetera, out of the cell. And then I've found that for anything that would be plant medicine or psychedelic or microdose based, it also seems to like double the efficacy of any of those compounds, I think, because of the increased blood flow to the brain that occurs when you get this pemf. And so that's one mat that I'm laying on when we're doing this massage. But the other one, and this is one we introduced a few months ago, which is super cool. It's the bioacoustic table that I got from a company called Biomat. And I put that. Or not a table, it's a mat, Right. I put that mat on top of the PEMF mat. So I can still feel all the pulsed electromagnetic field frequencies, but in the sound table with that does. It'll take any track that I play. And I have, I have about, oh, like I would say six different Spotify playlists. Sometimes at night, if I'm really well rested, you've noticed this, I'm sure, like, I'll choose a playlist that's more energetic because I just want my massage to really be almost like this, this riveting, energetic, inspiring type of soundtrack. And that'll just send my mind to all sorts of crazy places in terms of inspiration for business or personal development. Development. And then sometimes I want like, totally check out and almost like be in a half sleep, half wake state during our massages. And that's when I'll choose like a track from Michael Tyrell's, you know, Sound Healing Frequencies or something that's more developed by like Johns Hopkins for. For Psychedelic Research and Healing or something that's very classical or kind of like, you know, typical spa, you know, soundscape type of stuff. Stuff. But again, it's not just through the ears because even though you can plug a set of headphones into this sound mat and play it into your ears also, it literally. It's hard to describe, but it plays the sound through your whole body and it's super cool. You can also watch a movie while you're lying this thing and literally, like watch the movie through your body. But man. Because the vibration from that is literally vibrating my whole body. Do you feel that much when you're working? Like, can you feel the. The actual music?

Oh, yeah.

Through that tape. It's pretty cool.

Yeah. Especially like when I lift your shoulder. Because there's speakers under that part.

Yeah.

That come out. Yeah, Your shoulders. And Yeah. I was thinking while you were talking about when we were talking about the essential oil therapy, I started thinking about the molecular makeup of the oils. Right. Like where the energy, the kinetic energy is actually happening in these oils. The same thing with the table, the same thing with the music. What you're doing is you're accessing molecular healing and then we add what I do in there and it just is a multidimensional experience like you said. And I think that I was also realizing that I'm feeling those essential oils. I have the oils in my hands that I'm using on your body for nearly three hours and I'm in the space of the pem Matt and working. So I even, even though I'm tired at the end, I'm not exhausted. Like I have a 30 minute drive home.

Yeah.

And. Or 45 minute drive home, whatever. I don't know.

And conveniently my guest room is right next to the massage table. So occasionally you've crashed in that.

That's right, yeah. The Donna room now. Thank you. So, yeah, I mean after the massage I leave and I usually don't put any music on. I'm just kind of of in my chill space. Like you go and journal and I go and journal in my mind and have conversations. God. Or just kind of chill on the way home.

Yeah.

And especially if like, you know, I noticed the other, the last time we did the massage and I used the Zyn spray. Boy, that just felt like, I don't know, it felt like the best massage we've ever done together. The last one. And, and I was like, oh gosh, is it just going to continue to get better and better? This is badass.

I've wondered that before because I will ingest certain compounds prior to our therapy. And one that I'll use to open up the third eye is this Zen spray. I get it from Dr. John Lawrence in Sarasota. I've interviewed him about it. But it's a blend of different essential oils like peppermint and rosemary and cinnamon and a lot of these mentally stimulating oils along with hoppe, which is an Amazonian herb a lot of times used pre ceremony to activate the third eye in the pineal gland. And it's very good for, for before meditation, before yoga, before it's a little bit stimulating and I have some pretty strong blends like I gave you one last time. And yeah, it shoots you to the moon for about five or 10 minutes when you first do a few sprays up your nostrils. But then once you settle down, you're in a very cool space and I wonder if that's one of the reasons our last massage or so, because we both had kind of the same stuff circulating through our bloodstream. Now the other thing that I'll use, you know, I'll start off about five or 10 minutes before we do the massage with a few huffs of those Zen sprays. And then I use ketamine, which I wouldn't want you on because it's an anesthetic, right? It literally is. It's something that is used in medicine as a painkiller, often delivered via iv. Very common now used as an antidepressant or as something that people use for trauma or work. Very, very good. Allowing you to tap into memories of past experiences, including traumatic memories, which is probably another reason that I've been so tuned into trauma that you release. But then, of course, because it causes a full body relaxation effect, the combination of ketamine and bodywork is profound because my muscles are. They're goo, right? My entire body. Just basically, if I were to get up and walk during a massage therapy sessions, I'd be very wobbly because. And you've probably seen this, you know, when I get up from the table, I can be kind of wobbly because that Ketamine, you know, like. And I'll do 300 to 400 milligrams, sometimes intranasal. So I once I did a suppository, which is very interesting. Usually just like an oral troche that I dissolve under my tongue. And so as the massage is going, it's just kind of like slow bleeding into my system during the entire massage. But. But what's interesting is that A, it relaxes my entire body. And I feel like you're able to just like get in a lot better when I've got that stuff in my system. B, it really allows me to tap into past emotions and memories and trauma a lot more readily. And then I think probably the other thing that I like about it is when you have the right soundtrack on, there is a pretty intense. Some people even call this the kitchen when they get too deep into this. But it's this mind body dissociation where if I've. If I've got the sweet spot and the right amount in my system, then when you're working on me, I. Sometimes I lose track of where my body's at in space. Like, you'll be working on me and I'll be on the table, but it'll feel sometimes like I'm hanging upside down on an inversion table or like I'm. Like I'm in a completely different, different position than I'm actually in, which sounds like it would be stressful and weird, but it's actually a very, very cool experience because it really is a feeling as though my entire body is fully relaxed. Like I have this mind, body or brain body dissociation. And you have to be careful with ketamine. It can cause things like long term use. It can cause urinary tract infections or urinary tract inflammation as it's released from the body. It's can have some amount of neurotoxicity when used in hefty doses too regularly. About the only time I use it now is when I get a massage. So about every 10 to 14 days I'm getting some ketamine into my system when we do a massage. And man, it is a game changer, I think, to have that ketamine in the system when you combine it with the sound therapy and that PEMF mat and the aromatherapy and the essential oils and. And then the only other tip that I would give to people is that for the journaling component and kind of some of the breakthrough that I get, I find that sometimes the ketamine can almost be directed in a plant intelligence sort of way, as though, you know, when you have certain other compounds in your system, your brain will kind of ask yourself the questions that it needs to be asked and get the answers that you're seeking if you microdose prior to the ketamine. And so most of the time, if I'm able to, I'll have a very, very light dinner before our massages. Typically something more vegetable or fruit based or something like fish if it's going to be a meat, nothing too heavy. I eat very, very light before these massages and then I will take about. Typically for me, you know, microdoses vary from person to person. But the two compounds that I like to use are either a very, very small amount of a wachuma, which is kind of like a San Pedro cactus type of extract, or a very, very small amount. For me, that's about 0.2 to 0.4 grams of psilocybin. And I find that when I do that in combination with the ketamine, those two compounds together, that's like a sweet spot for the massage. And then when I finish, I'll always do something to protect the brain. For me, you should. Usually when we finish, I do curcumin, I do water, and then a form of magnesium called magnesium glycinate, which is very, very good at kind of like repairing the Brain after you've kind of like pushed your. Like, push, for example, that much ketamine into your system, and I wake up the next morning feeling on top of the world. You know, sometimes a little groggy for up late doing the massage, or if I've had a lot of stuff released into my system during massage, or a lot of things I've had to work through where I'm up journaling till 2 or 3, 3am Because I get up at like 5am Right. Sometimes on our massage nights, I'll sleep two hours, get up and start work. But you know, that combination of compounds, particularly San Pedro or psilocybin, combined with the ketamine and then all these oils and the table and the music and the aromatherapy. I mean, it sounds like a lot to do to get a massage. But if you consider that you want that two to three hours, sometimes first three and a half hours that you're on the table to be as meaningful and profound and impactful as possible, I mean, that's the way I string it all together. It's pretty amazing.

You know, we don't have to have all the stuff that we do, but we do. I mean, I can do a similar thing for Caleb as I do for.

You, my neighbor Caleb, who you also go to.

Yeah.

I hope he listens to this so that he knows all that. I don't think I've even given him the full meal deal. Download about everything he could do if he's worked with you. No, right?

No.

Knowing Caleb, he's gonna be like, okay, so where do I get the mat? Where do you get the table? Every time I show Caleb some new device when he comes to the house, seems like two weeks later he has it.

He's got one. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting because I. The first time I worked on him, he just. He just stopped. I mean, it's just. It's. It's kind to my heart. I appreciate the feedback. I'm a very humble person. I know that I'm good at what I do, and I am. I practice a lot of grace and gratitude and thank you. And really receiving it, like we don't, as people, receive feedback very well. And even being humble, I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not good at. And that's because I've done all this self work and chosen truth, chosen integrity, chosen ethics. And so, yeah, it was just really sweet of him. He just said that was the most exquisite experience I've had. Thank you. And it was like Right. And I just, you know, put my hands together and my little thank you in gratitude. Just really take it in the essence of here's what God has given me to give to other people.

Yeah.

It's not mine to keep. Everything that God has given to me, wisdom, whatever skills, it's mine to share.

Yeah.

Not to keep it.

Yeah.

I'm not a possessive person.

Yeah.

And so we could. I've done massages with other people where, where they, they've had some psilocybin and that's it. And still had equally as profound. You know, it's, it's the work, it's the physical work, it's the spiritual work, it's the plant medicine work. And I mean, really, Ben, I'm planning on traveling to California and doing some training with Matthew that we talked to a while ago. And because I. This is the work I think is impactful for trauma.

Like Matthew is the guy who want to do more like combination plan medicine.

He teaches, he does DMT ceremonies and so I want to go down and learn the DMT ceremonies and so I have to go down there and do that work myself. He says, I'm not going to do a session with you. And then all of a sudden you're a practitioner, you have to come and do your work. And that's it. It's like, show up and do your work. And that's what the invitation on this planet is right now. It's like we have moved to a different era and the time now is, you know, I explained to people the time before Jesus, before, before we were agrari, we were nomadic people and we were in our bodies and we had to learn about the earth because we had to stay alive. Don't get eaten by a saber toothed tiger. Don't eat that mushroom. Eat this mushroom. Don't you know. So we were very much in tune with our body as nomadic hunter gatherer people. And then we went to this and we had fire, right. It was like the era of fire. And then we go into this last 20, 20 years using our minds to build and to create. Look at everything we've done in 20, 10 years of humanity. And now we've got to this point where we're moving into this new era not of the body and not of the mind, but of the soul. Of the soul, Right. Of the spirit, of who are we as spiritual beings? Because we are and we are. So it's time on this planet to remember, remember what's in ourselves. Right. Remind ourselves of who we are as spiritual Beings. And the best way to do that is to. To circle back around and connect it to the body.

Yeah.

And let your mind go for a minute. Let your mind go like I've been singing the Beatles, let it be all year long. I'm just like, whisper words of wisdom. Let it be. If you can't let things go, just let them be. Yeah, right. Stop living in the past and live right now in the present. Don't future as much as you can. Try not to future. And really, I have conversations with weird things. Like, the past in the past is like, hey, don't Donna, can you tell everybody just to leave me where I belong? I'm not the present. Leave me in the past. I mean, come back and learn what you need to learn, but don't drag me along to the present. That's just baggage we don't need.

Yeah, Not a lot of people are gonna have like a Donna in their back pocket. I was recently talking to this dude in Toronto who had hurt heard about the special flavor of unique massage therapy that I get. He happened to have some really good, like, fascial and trauma work therapists. And it wound up like he put something epic together. He had like five friends. He had five massage therapists over. They all did a meditation session and breathwork session prior. And then they all did ketamine. They all. They didn't have the PMF table, but they had sound healing tables. They did sound healing. They had a whole group do it. He said it was like one of the most profound, transformative experiences that he's ever had. And they are now doing it together. Now everybody I've talked to who has started to weave into their bodywork, the type of stuff that I'm doing, they're like, holy cow, this is a game changer. I mentioned your website@BenGreenfieldFitness.com HumanWell is where I'll direct people to correct me if I'm wrong. You will get on the phone or do do a class or you have classes available on your site where you'll train therapists how to do this type of stuff that you do. And then you also work with individuals who are not massage therapists to do some of, like, the more distance type of work, like trauma release, things like that. And so that's all on your website. And so a massage therapist, if they're already a licensed or certified massage therapist, they can go to yourself. They can learn from you how to take what they know about the body and then apply some of your unique flavor to it. And get trained so that they can then go out and work with the crazy Ben Greenfields of the world. And so it's that simple. People can just go to your website and it's all there as far as like their options for how to work with you. Okay.

Yep.

All right, got it. Do you have like pre recorded classes or is it all like one on one work right now?

Oh, I don't have, have any pre recorded right now. I'm doing some mentorship stuff. But out of your kindness I'm going to start developing that thinkific programs on thinkific.

Thinkific being like a course that allows. So eventually what you want to have is like a, like a video course or something that a therapist could take to be able to just learn all your stuff. But right now they could learn it from you one on one.

Yeah, they could. And really I prefer that because what, what happens for me is in the moment. Like I can, I have some foundational stories and teachings, I guess that would be called trainings that is universal that people could access. But a lot of times what happens for me is I guess what somebody would call channeling in the moment. Like I'm, I am very present. I live in the present right now. Somebody else, if I could house sit for them in two weeks and I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing in two weeks. I can't, I can't answer that for them. I don't know, I might have clients. I mean it's an out of town type of thing and I usually know what's happening in my life at two week intervals. I have mentorship on the website and I have private. I like to call it mentorship because the way I like people could call it coaching, life coaching type of stuff, but I like to call it mentorship because the way I see the work I do with people is I'm not here to do your work for you. I'm not the therapist you can come to to get all the answers because the answers are inside of you. So that whole like, you know, it's an inside job cliche, it's, this is the truth, it's an inside job. The job's here, but you don't have to do it alone. I will. It's like we're going to take off, we're going to go hiking together. You got your backpack full of your stuff, your trauma, your whatever you need to take care of. And I have my backpack full of my medicine work. The things that I can offer and the things That I do. And we're going to go hiking, but I'm never going to pick your pack up and I'm also never going to leave you on the trail by yourself. Right? So that's my two things. If you're ready to do the work for you, I will work with you. Most people, I want to do an interview with them because I don't know, I don't know that you're ready for this kind of work. And it's not a haughty thing or a hierarchical type of thing. It's. It's a who are you and where are you right now? Because I'm not pulling any punches. I'm real and raw. I'm not, I'm not pulling any punches here. And I'm not here to baby anybody. I'm kind. I'm kind and that includes the truth. I'm not nice. Nice is like blowing smoke on people's skirts and I don't do that. I'm here for truth.

Nice person.

No, I'm a kind person.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna link to that in the show notes so that people can get a hold of you because I would love for there to be more, more therapists out doing the type of things that you're doing and also even beginning to teach people, you know, how to, how to take some of the info from this podcast, like, you know, what tables do you use, what oils do you use, what, what medicines are available and, and begin to really weave together more meaningful and, and really like fully integrated form. Because this is like, to me, this is like the future, next level, exciting flavor of, of massage and deep tissue work that I think a lot of people haven't experienced it. And, and man, once you do like, like, it's, it's like Christmas for me. The days I'm gonna get my massage, I'm thinking about it in the morning, I'm like, yes, I get to get overset and plan in and get on my journal and my voice recorder, everything. And so, first of all, Donna, I want to thank you not only for being you and for being in my life, but also for your time and be able to sit here and share this with people and also have the stuff available on your website that you have to be able to allow for other people to know about this. And, and so I want to thank you for that. I'm just super grateful to have you in my life. And I also want to tell anybody who's listening in, like, if you guys have your own stuff to add, things that you found have really, I guess, upgraded your massage or your own tips to add or resources that you think Donna or I might want to take a deeper dive into. Whether it's things that help massages be even better or oils you found or compounds or techniques or music tracks or anything like that. You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com DonnaMills just like it sounds, D O N N A M I L L S and leave your comments, leave your questions, leave your feedback over there. And also let me know if any of you try to kind of like, put together the type of massage that Donna and I have described to you on this show. With the right therapist, you found the right person. I'd love to hear your. Your own stories as well. So, Donna, thank you so much for coming on the show today, for sharing this with everybody. I'm super excited. Just, like, open you up to the world and your, your unique approach because you're a unicorn. Not in the sense that you're a big ugly horse that poops in the street with a horn coming out your head, but you're like, you know, you're a unicorn. You're a special person. I'm just, I'm stoked to be able to introduce you to my audience. So thank you.

Well, Ben, thank you. Like, right back at you. All that and more. All right.

All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Donna Mills signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben then recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.