The Power of Essential Oils with Jodi Cohen | Wellness Sherpa with Jenn Payeur

Welcome to the Wellness Sherpa Podcast, where we engage with passionate leaders, holistic thinkers, and disruptors who courageously share their personal journey, mission, and wisdom with you. Together, we create a safe space to empower you to live your best, most vital life. Thanks for being here. Hello, everyone. I am so excited to be here with the lovely Jodi Cohen. She is the creator of Vibrant Blue Oils and she has a new book out, which we will talk about later in the podcast. My name is Jen Payer. I'm your host of the Wellness Sherpa. And, Jodi, can you share a little bit about your background? I forgot until you just mentioned it that you went to Columbia. You've got an mba, so share a little bit about your background. And you were a reporter, right?

Yeah, I just kind of follow what seems interesting. You know, I was journalism, political science in college. I actually got an opportunity to work in the US Senate for Senator Ted Kennedy in the Health and Human Resources Committee after college. So that was my first job, and it was before the Internet, you know, So I was helping with hearings, and I was in charge of talking points for the senator, among other things. So they'd throw a big pile. We'd have a hearing or two hearings a week. Huge pile of research on my desk. And my job was to kind of look through it and figure out what was most important and give the senator talking points. Helpful for marketing and journalism. And then I went and worked on an environmental publication and won a couple awards and then went to Columbia and got a degree in journalism and business. And then, you know, Internet marketing suddenly took off. And I had a background in marketing, so I learned a lot, a lot of baptism by fire. But I think in a weird way, that prepared me for life because I. I feel like, you know, life is not like a flatline. It's a roller coaster, right? You know, things are really good, and then suddenly, you know, something, a car accident can happen, and suddenly you go from up here to down here. And I think the more you're able to stay in curiosity and be like, okay, this is not necessarily where I want to be. It's not something I know how to do. But I'm smart and I can figure this out. So let's just figure out. Let's trial and error. Like, does this help or does it hurt? If it helps, let's keep it. If it hurts, let's drop it, you know, and just kind of keep moving towards what is working and keep staying curious. Like, what is the root cause of this? You know, how do I not just put a band aid on a symptom, but actually alleviate the symptom.

Yeah. And you said something that I think is really important is you focus on what you want, not what you don't want.

Yes. Right.

And so, you know, that adds energy to what your creation is versus being stuck and stifled in what, you know, in the down. In the downturn, on the roller coaster. Because life brings us great things and life brings us situations that surprise us. And it Being able to move through the down cycle.

Right.

And not. They suck there.

Yeah.

By focusing on what we want.

Yes. I. Yeah, no, I. I completely agree. It's funny. I shared a story with you. One of my closest friends from college is going through a very unexpected experience. There was a car accident and her husband's quite injured, and I'm so struck. She posts every day on CaringBridge and it's always the most uplifting, you know, like, she really highlights the wins. And I was intrigued by that. So I did a little bit of research on hope. You know, like gratitude. We know when you can get into gratitude, it's almost like your brain can't multitask, so you can't be grateful and grumpy at the same time. The same thing, hope. When you get into kind of that space of hope, you're better able to access your cognitive function, your prefrontal cortex, you know, like when you're catastrophizing or mourning something that you lost, you. You're really stuck in fight or flight and you can't think clearly. When you're in a place of hope, you're better able to see potential. Like, okay, this was not on my bucket list, but what are my options now? You know, and then you can pick the best option and make that happen.

Yeah. That's so beautiful. And so such truth. Especially we've been in the last, you know, four years on our planet. So you were the, you know, working in Congress and doing all of this research and marketing. And so how the heck did you get into vibrant blue oils and essential oils?

So necessity is the mother of invention. Right. And I was the mom of two. My first child was super easy, so I just assumed. I was this great mom. Had another one 22 months later. Not easy. And, you know, it's really. Society is so interesting, you know, when you're the mother of that kid who does those things, there's a lot of judgment, there's a lot of criticism, there's a lot of guilt, a lot of shame. So super motivated to help him regulate better you know, and there was one parenting class that I took where we like, look at my nose. And he was so just. He was all over the place. And we were at a birthday party and a friend of mine noticed that his personality changed after he ate something. And she said, you know, it's funny, my brother was on Ritalin his whole life, and it turned out he was just allergic to weird foods. You should take him to a nutritionist. And I thought, that's so easy. I can so do that to him. To a nutritionist. Took him off soy, corn and dairy. And the next day he could look at our nose. And he had an entirely different. He was so able to regulate. And I'm like, how did I not know this? Like, how have I been banging my head against the wall taking every parenting class? You know, I had all these oh songs. It was ridiculous. And I'm like, it was the food. Like, what? Everyone should know this. And so I went back and got a degree in nutritional therapy, was trying to help other moms, and started playing with oils because, like, my son, you know, there were a lot of kids that wouldn't really kale, but they'd never say no to mom rubbing their feet. And so I was just playing with, like, let's make it as easy as possible. What can we do?

Okay.

And you know, one of those roller coaster bumps. His dad suffered from bipolar, and we hit such a low that I actually feared he might die on my watch. And I had to move him to a residential treatment facility. Another new vocabulary word. And once I knew he was safe and it wasn't my job to keep him safe, it was literally like I, you know, crossed the finish line for a 10 year marathon. And I just, I was so exhausted because I had been living in kind of that chronic fight or flight. And now that the danger had passed, I was out of gas. And so the kids were five and seven, I would, you know, get up with them, make them breakfast, check their homework, pack their lunch, drop them at school, come back home, set the alarm for 10 minutes before pickup and just sleep all day. Which wasn't sustainable because I suddenly, single mom, full time job, you know, class, parent, all those overachiever things. And I knew it was my adrenal glands. So I started, you know, taking glandulars and trying to support them. And it wasn't, it wasn't hurting, but it wasn't helping enough. And so I started going upstream and thinking like, well, what's going on? And I also am a yoga practitioner. And so I knew Enough about my vagus nerve. And I was really diving into that. Like, was an early mentor, you know, he would talk about gagging yourself with a tongue depressor, splashing your face with freezing water. Hated it, dreaded it, but it worked. And I'm like, okay, clearly this is helping, but this is not necessarily the way I want to get there. So. So I started doing as much research as I could and came upon some research about vagus nerve stimulation and specifically a stimulation device that was inserted behind the earlobe where the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is cranial nerve number 10. Your body, your autonomic nervous system controls your automatic functions, your breathing, your heart rate, all the things you do without thinking about it. It also is designed to keep you safe. So if there is a danger, you know, the proverbial lion that chases you down the street. I have never seen a lion chase anyone down the street, but I have turned on the news and seen news of a school shooting and immediately went into that danger response. Oh, my God, could that happen to my kid? And suddenly, even though it's someone in a different state on the other side of the country, I am perceiving danger. And my body is allocating resources towards survival, which means the sympathetic branch of your nervous system is allocating blood flow to your arms and your legs so you can flee. And kind of changing your focus focus to only, you know, either fighting back or fleeing. So you're not actually able to access your cognitive function and problem solve clearly. And then it is, you know, if anyone who's walked a dog, I have little dogs, they like to bark at big dogs because they think they're big dog. And then we keep moving, and they shake. You know, they're barking at the big dog. They're in fight or flight. They're ready to fight. You know, we walk away, they're safe, they shake, they shift back into parasympathetic safety. Or we don't do that. We turn on the TV and see something scary. We look at our phone and see an upsetting text. We interact with our teenager who's on that hormonal roller coaster. We just keep stacking the stresses on, and we're never regulating. So it is our vagus nerve. Cranial nerve number 10, which is the gut brain axis, starts at the back of the head, splits, is most accessible here, winds through every organ of digestion and detoxification. That is our gear shift. Stimulating the vagus nerve helps us shift from danger to safety. So I was just figuring out, how do I Do this in a way that's actually sustainable. And when I saw the research on stimulation, I had this kind of light bulb moment of wait a minute. Oils are stimulatory. We call them hot. Oregano, thyme, peppermint, rosemary, clove. So it's like, I wonder if you could use a stimulatory oil to stimulate your vagus nerve topically. So, so I started kind of testing, you know, combinations, and this is where I got into combinations. So clove is very hot and it also has like medium sized molecules. So if you would take it, it works the best and it has the most healing constituents. But this is our parasympathetic blend. It's clove and lime. So by combining clove with medium molecules and lime, which has really small molecules, the reason soils are uplifting is because they're so small and so they act quickly and then adding in. You asked me about diluting fractionated coconut oil. The oils you dilute with can kind of change the efficacy. So fractionated coconut oil is really light. So if you put this on, it's very fast acting. Something like castor oil is thicker and is more of a time release blend. So basically necessity was the mother of invention. I was just experimenting. I had oils in my house because I was using them in my practice. So that was, it was kind of like, what, you know, you come home late and you have to make dinner. What's in the fridge?

Right?

Like you're dealing with this. What do I have in my house that I can play with? So I started playing with this and it worked incredibly well. So well that a lot of my friends in the nutritional community were like, oh my God, can we try that? And they were all reporting these incredible results. And I was getting better every day and I kind of got my brain back. And I was like, okay, this is so weird. I don't even know why it works, but let's just figure it out, let's see if it's out there. And I was really surprised that no one was really kind of formulating and blending oils to support, you know, nervous system regulation, brain health, body health. And so that's when, you know, the marketing background kicked in. And I was like, huh, I wonder. This seems to help. No one seems to be doing this. Maybe I can put this out there.

And so what year was that that you started that?

2012.

And so that was your first product for the ver?

I, I trained with the Nutritional Therapy association and they had their annual conference in March of 2013. And so you Know, that was actually my background, like focus groups, marketing. I'm like, let's just see. You know, they're going to be like 400 people at the conference. We'll make 100 test kits. We'll, we'll have. It was like $200 to have a booth. We'll just see how it goes. We sold out in the first hour and everyone was kind of, you know, I've heard about oils. I've been interested in oils. And because I was trained in the nutritional therapy system, I was really, it was very obvious to me where there were holes, you know, like, no one needs a different vitamin B. There are a bunch of good brands, but, you know, stimulating the vagus nerve, important. You know, helping people move, lymph important, Enhancing sleep important. There were all these kind of blind spots. It's like, you know, there's that certain part of your back that you can never scratch your zipper. Like you need help in those areas. So I was trying to really fill the holes in the blind spots.

Okay. And so that's awesome. So you started filling in these holes and now you have a new idea coming in, a new blend that we were talking about a little bit ago. Yeah, about that and how that one came about.

Well, you know, it's funny, like, all the blends are really, it's, it's always necessity is the mother of invention, you know, um, all the bedrooms in my house are the top floor. There are three bedrooms. But my son had such histamine reactions and mast cell activation things. He was down the hall and his breathing would wake me up or his like coughing and sneezing. And so one night in the middle of the night, I'm like, this is ridiculous. I, I'm fixing this. So I went into my office, you know, made my kind of half asleep blend, wrote it down, went up, put it on his feet. Didn't even wake him up. Worked immediately. I'm like, all right, keeping, you know, obviously I test things afterwards and research them more. But that was our histamine balance blend. You know, I wasn't sleeping because he wasn't breathing. So I'm like, let's fix this. Most recently, so, you know, I, I was stimulating my vagus nerve and I'm. I run hot. Like, I've always been kind of anxious, panic attacky. And so that really, it was like, you know, oh, I'm having an anxiety moment. I'm gonna use this, you know, like election day. I think I probably used it every five seconds and it would help. It would totally Help. It was like popping in Advil when, you know, it's that time of month. The cramp would go away, the anxiety would go away, but then the next day I'd be back. I was great at kind of band aiding the symptom, but never really addressing the root cause, which caused me to kind of look deeper. And we're both very dear friends with Dr. Christine Schaffner, who works with chronically ill patients and finds that in most of them, it's that the vagus nerve is. Is misfiring or not firing. And she did a lot of work. She was very focused on lymphatic drainage and especially around the neck. You know, she works with Dr. Marco Ruggiero and she has her wonderful lymph flow cleme. And what she was finding that she shared with me is that, you know, the. The neck is a really fascinating and kind of, I think, underlooked area of the body. It's really what connects the head to the body. It's really the highway through which all healing nutrients and oxygen must flow to get to the brain, and all waste must drain to get out of the brain and leave the body. And so if there is any congestion, think of like road work, right? If the main highway is under construction, as opposed to having five lanes, there's like one all of a sudden slows down and it doesn't leave. And she was really talking about brain drainage and how, you know, your glymphatic system, which is basically your waste management system of your brain, the brain shrinks by 60%. It's almost like a car wash at night. And then what's the exit route? Where did the toxins drain? Down the neck. And if they don't drain down the neck, you know, the brain is the hydraulic system. It gets backed up, toxins stay in the brain.

It's in play. Right, Exactly.

And So she and Dr. Ruggiero were actually taking sonogram photos and finding that congested lymph was pressing into the vagus nerve and compromising function. You know, I just flew home. I changed my flight to leave earlier. So I was in the middle seat between two linebackers. I couldn't even read a book. There's no room. So the lymph is pressing on the vagus nerve, bathing it literally in toxins, so it's not able to function. So I started thinking, okay, this is what I'm missing. I'm going to start draining my lymph, working with Kelly Kennedy, figuring out the clavicles, then the neck, the sequence of opening lymph nodes to allow for drainage. And that helps. That made a difference. I went from, like, you know, level five down to, like, level four, and I'm like, this is helping, but there's more to the story, right? And Kelly always talks about how you have, like, arm puffs as opposed to arm hits. And I'm like, I am limp training all the time, and I'm still puffy. Like, what am I missing? And then I met some people who focus on fascia, like Deanna Hansen, who were telling me, here's the deal. The fascia encases the lymph, and if it's kind of rigid and restricted, like, you know, all of us, we brace for impact, right? Something happens, we go fetal position. We're protecting our heart and our core organs. My dog was just attacked by a raccoon, and he did that. They bit him on the back, but not the organs. So we were lucky. He's fine, but, you know, because he protected himself. And we do that as humans, but. But then we stay stuck there. We're stuck in that restriction. So you have to start addressing the fascia and releasing the fascia. Deanna Hansen's block therapy is amazing. She even has do with a towel. But that was a game changer. You know, releasing the fascia and then also realizing the role of the heart. And I started playing with the heart and opening. Actually, Kelly. I think it was Kelly and Christine Ax asked me to create a heart blend and a fascia blend. And so just opening the heart, bringing the heart into coherence. And then I stumbled on incredibly interesting research that we were talking about. Heart app, which does the most comprehensive research on kind of how the heart communicates with the brain. Roland McCrady, the research director, was sharing that. You know, it's not just We're. We're trying to perceive danger, and we're actually using our five senses, but we're also getting signals from the body, specifically from the heart. And. And if you grew up in an environment like, you know, I'm. I'm Jewish, we were loud. There was a lot of screaming in my house. And so that was my baseline that people are, like, screaming and kind of dysregulated. And so that's what I feel is normal. And so sometimes I fix this. But, you know, if everyone was kind of calm and mellow, like, I didn't feel safe, because that wasn't familiar. And so what he's saying is, you need to change. You. You can't use talk therapy to change your Baseline, you need to create coherence in your body, which is what your formulas do from the inside out. And so using heart and fascia, I've been able to do that kind of from the outside in. And then there was something. There was kind of a combination of stressful experiences that hit at once. And all of a sudden I'm like, I exercise every day. I'm outrageously productive. I rarely scroll. And I'm like, I don't really feel like going to the gym today. I kind of don't really feel like doing it. Like, the lack of motivation, the apathy. I'm like, what is wrong with me is this depression? And then someone told me about dorsal vagal state. So your vagus nerve has kind of. There's a vagal ladder. This woman, Deborah Lane, I believe. You know, you go from kind of ventral vagal, which is the healthy one, where you're feeling safe, you can connect with people you feel social, to kind of sympathetic, dominant, where your stress response is overactive, fight or flight. And if that kicks in for too long, you go into dorsal vagal, which is the freeze response. Right. You know, if you can't fight back or flee, you go for bile. And, you know, that happens to a lot of women when, you know you're being assaulted or to children in violent situations, you just kind of play dead. And so that's what was happening to me. And I was like, oh, oh, oh. Now I. Now I know what's going on. I guess I get to learn some new things. And one of the things that I realized is that the limbic system, which is kind of the emotional center of your brain, which is always looking for threats. You know, it's the amygdala that's kind of the threat perception. So you're walking, you know, through the woods, and you think you see a snake. Before you can even register, you're jumping back. And then your prefrontal cortex is kind of like the check and balance. It looks, and it's like, no, no, that's a stick. You're good. But. But what can happen is your amygdala gets maladaptive. It's called amygdala hijack. And you start reacting to everything as if it's a threat. And these are people who have, like, multiple chemical sensitivities. You know, can't eat anything but two foods. Everything is a danger. And so you need to kind of reset the. The baseline for your limbic system. And in researching that, I realized that, you know, your limbic system is Most accessible through your sense of smell, your olfactory system. You know, smell is critical to survival. You smell food, you smell water, you smell predator odor. And remembering, like, correlating smell with either safety or danger is critical to survival. And this is why so many of us have. You smell like fresh cut grass. And you're like, oh, this reminds me of summer camp. Right. Use well raspberry or blackberries. And you're like, oh, this reminds me of my friend's cabin when I was in fifth grade. You know, it transports you immediately, and that's because you. You need that for survival.

So it transports you to a sense of safety, right?

Yes. Or danger.

Familiar. Safety is familiar.

Smell is amazing for either safety cues or danger cues. Okay. You know, like, it's. It's interesting. A friend of mine was telling me she had a creepy experience next to someone on a plane who kept trying to, like, fondle her. And she was in an airport, and she sensed him and she. She smelled him. Like, you remember, like your car, you know, like frat boys. She somehow smelled him and turned around and saw him. So smell is powerful. Yeah, it's crazy.

Our strongest scent.

Yes.

In our body.

Yes. And so you can use that, especially with oils that are high in constituents of sesquiterpenes like sandalwood, Melissa, frankincense, and. And really help to kind of bring your limbic system online. But the. The point that I really want to make that really surprised me is I. I didn't know there was more to the story. You know, I thought, oh, I'm doing this one thing. That's right. And I realized that it's kind of a multifaceted approach. And I keep learning, you know, we were saying, like your first child, there's so much you don't know. And then by bring the second one home, you're like, I got the breastfeeding thing. I know how to do the diapers. Like, it just keeps getting easier when you rinse and repeat. And so I keep adding kind of to the arsenal. Got it.

So, you know, I love what you're talking about, Jodi, because, you know, I think health and coming back to that homeostasis or that coherence, it's not just one thing. And in our society for the last 40, 50 years, we've been treating just that one thing. Right. And not treating the whole. And we were talking earlier, what we love about plants is plants are working on those unseen levels, Right. Emotional level, the belief systems, it's working in these other levels. And so essential oils and even the plant stem cells work on those other levels, and they help us keep evolving in our understanding. Right. Of illness. So when illness appears or we're in that fight or flight, I think, you know, my experience is the plant has the intelligence to go and start to figure it out. Right. And it's subtle awareness sometimes that comes to us or those moments in the middle of the night where you're like, okay, something is. Something isn't holding the way I want it to, and so let me go deeper and see what else is there. And I love that, that you keep evolving in your understanding and knowledge and then being able to apply it to your company and how you help others.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that.

No, go ahead.

No, I was just.

It.

It's funny this. My book came out in.

I was just gonna mention your book.

So 2020. And I'm. And it's funny because it's still. I still stand by this. But I keep learning, like, there's more to the story. Like, I've made a couple new blends since this came out because I'm realizing, you know, and I think that that's wonderful for, like our friend group. We just keep learning more and. And how it can be easier. Like I was telling you, once I kind of integrated these five things at once, I actually had an appointment that was kind of important on the east side. And there are only two bridges you can take. And I went the way that's normally faster, but for some reason, traffic was stopped. There must have been an accident or something. And 15 minutes in, I'm like, I'm going to miss this appointment. And the old me would have been spiraling and maybe pulling dangerous traffic moves to try to find another way to get there and stressing myself out. And I was so regulated and able to think, like, I bet I can reschedule it. Like, I was basically parked, you know, should have been driving, but parked. Let me see if I can fix that. Figured out how to reschedule it while I was not moving in the car, you know, 45 more minutes, they finally route us this weird way home. So anyway, it was an hour and a half adventure of going nowhere. And the old me would have been beside myself. And it was so fascinating to experience myself. Like, it's not ideal, but I wasn't losing my mind. And I'm like, I didn't know I could feel this way. How. Like, this is so much better, you know? Well, why didn't I know this earlier?

Yeah, so you didn't go into fight or flight.

Right.

You didn't go into the old patterning. And that's where essential oils are really beautiful because they shift us, they shift the patterning, they shift the grooves that we have, the muscle memory, if you will. And so subtle, you know, you don't wake up the next day and say, oh, all of that is gone. But you start to feel different and you start to yourself different. And then one day you go, wow, I didn't freak out, I didn't. A panic attack. I was able to regulate, make a different decision and everything's fine.

Yes. It makes life so much easier because, you know, the reality is there are always going to be bumps in the road. Like, you have no idea when you walk out your door, you know, the people you encounter, what's happening in their lives and kind of what their mindset is or when you turn on the news, what you're going to see. But you can always kind of regulate your own response, right?

Yeah. I wish I would have had some of your products with me in Costa Rica because I'm not afraid of much, but spiders as big as my hand freaked me out a little bit. And we would go back to our rooms late at night and a couple of people had spiders as big as my hand in their rooms. And I just kept working with my energy. But I found myself like, when I was leaving Costa Rica, which was this beautiful, magical experience, it's like, wow, my nervous system's a little bit shot because every night walking back to my room, like, am I going to have the spider tonight? And our beautiful friend Deanna actually had a tarantula crawl up her back while we were eating lunch. So I have more work to do on that. But it would have been great to have some of your products with me to just calm my nervous system down and say, it's going to be okay. It's just fighter and everything's okay. So, so your book, the title of your book, how can people find it?

It's everywhere that books are sold. Essential oils to boost the brain and heal the body. You know, Barnes Noble, Amazon, all those great places. Okay, bonus. If you go to boostyourbrain.com backslash gift, you can get a free complimentary, like some guides and checklists in printable form.

Awesome. So that's on your website. And let's talk about your education. So you've got some master classes also available if folks want to learn more. Where can they find those and where can they find more information about you?

Yeah, Vibrant blue oils dot com. They can find Everything. We're on all this social media, including Tick Tock. My daughter's friend put me on Tick Tock. So at Vibrant Blue Oils is our hashtag amazing. Yeah.

Thank you so much. What's your legacy, Jody? What do you want to leave behind when you. When you peace on out of this life? What's your legacy?

I think it's this idea of emotional regulation. I'm an avid reader. I love biographies. And when I go through dark times, I kind of look for inspiration and hope by reading biographies of other people who have really navigated tough times. So I go back to Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And my favorite quote from the book is, between the stimulation and the response, there's a space. And in that space lies our power to choose our response. And in our response lies our growth and our freedom. And I have now trained myself. I used to be. You know, I'm a Scorpio, so there's a part of me that's like, you send me a nasty text, like. And I don't. I don't respond. I. I'm aware of, like, wow, that. That was, you know, a little hostile or whatever it is. And then I just regulate. I use my parasympathetic oil. I walk in nature, you know, I ingest one of your remedies, and I regulate my nervous system, and I don't respond. And, you know, it's this idea that the world's been crazy, it might get crazier. We cannot control what's happening outside of us, but we always have control over our own response, and that's incredible power.

Thank you. That's a beautiful way to end. Thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge, and I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.

I know I can't.