Podcast 347: Plants and Life

Scott: Welcome! This is a Life Enthusiast Online Radio and TV network, we are restoring vitality to you and the planet! I’m your co-host, Scott Paton, on location in Western Turkey. And I’m very, very excited to introduce to you my guest, Ayla Seyhun!

Ayla: Hello!

Scott: We met just yesterday as a matter of fact, and today she taught 30 people about plants and nutrition, in Turkish. I was there for a couple of hours with somebody translating so that I can understand a little bit about what was being taught. Everybody was absolutely riveted on what it was that you were teaching them today! It was very exciting to see!

Ayla: I was excited too because people generally think that they know a lot about herbs and plants, and when they understand that what they have learned so far is all wrong, they can be shocked, but then they begin to understand, and they become happy because there is someone telling them the truth.

Scott: I agree!  One  of the things we want to talk about is  the philosophy of plants, which I just think is amazing. But before we get into that, this area is full of trees. There are trees everywhere around us, and it is November right now, so this is the harvest time. Let’s talk a little bit about olives because, in Canada and the United States, olive oil is this magnificent super oil that you’re supposed to be using. Unfortunately, I think there’s something missing between when it comes off the tree, and when it makes it to the store shelves in North America.

Ayla: Normally, in November, in autumn time, trees are sleeping, but harvesting is still going on, so the trees cannot sleep. So usually, when people collect olives, they beat the trees with sticks in order to make olives fall down. And I asked the woman once: “if you were beaten by your husband, would you serve him?” The olives have to be taken care of, you have to be kind to them, and they have to be harvested in time, so the trees can sleep, they can rest, they can feel better. The trees have a magnificent program in them, and according to this program, they can survive against any disease, it is like an immune program of the sort, and it also works as antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal protection. But, in order to transport these benefits from the olive tree to our body, we must not spoil the carrier. Let’s say if we want to take a program from a computer and take it to another computer, we are using a clean CD, and if the CD was cracked or had a scratch, it doesn’t run in your computer, right? It’s not good. And it is like looking at a broken mirror., Iif you are looking at the broken mirror, your face will be scattered. So if you do such harm to olive trees and then you expect the health benefits, it’s impossible.

Scott: So in North America, and Europe to a certain degree, we basically just run machines over plants. We crush them, heat them up to high temperatures, and then throw them on the shelf. They will sit there and do nothing for years, and then we are supposed to buy them, eat them and be healthy.

Ayla: No, it is impossible! Sustainable production is different than the consumer side of it. For a family, one olive tree is enough, you can pick the olives one by one, you can put them in a glass jar, without crushing them, you don’t need to add any vinegar or water, just a spoon of olive oil, close the jar and you can keep it for four years! Just yesterday I opened a jar of olives that were collected from that tree four years ago.

Scott: So you don’t have to worry about it spoiling?

Ayla: No, no, no. When you do it right, you also don’t have to worry about your health, because it can give you what you need.

Scott: Right. Okay. So, this is Turkey, you have all these olive trees here. How would we get it to North America for example?

Ayla: They travel from here to there, because it is a low carbon food. I believe sustainability is something different. The olive trees here get their minerals, vitamins, whatever, from the soil here. And when I send the trees abroad to the States, the compost would have to go there too, so my minerals and vitamins will go there, and the soil here will be poor, while the soil there will be rich.

Scott: So what you’re really saying is we should grow everything locally.

Ayla: Yes, and consume locally. Because having something coming from far away, to me, it is as if my arm is so long that I don’t know what I touch. It can be good fruit, or it can be a mess, you cannot control it. And also when you consume locally, you have the possibility to meet the farmers and their families, you can see what they need, what their children need, if they do it ethically, or spoiling things if they are using fertilizers or chemicals or not, you can see it. But when it’s coming from abroad, or even here in Turkey from a different city, you can’t really know how it is grown.

Scott: Yeah, you can’t know. So know your farmer! I think it’s unrealistic to expect us to do all the production ourselves, but if you know someone who is really good at olive oil making, then you want to buy from them.

Ayla: Yes, if you can trust them. Because olive oil is not only food, it’s also a medicine. For that, we use the best oil we can, because people will use it on their skin, or they will swallow it. Here, for example, they make soap, olive oil soaps, and normally they boil it for hours, so the olive oil has lost all of its benefits. It is still a good soap, but to expect good results from the soap as a moisturizer, it is not going to happen…

Scott: …because the olive oil is now dead.

Ayla: Yes. We should always use something fresh. Whatever oil you have in your country near your house is the best for you because you are living there.

Scott: Right! Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about your philosophy of plants. As I said earlier, in North America we basically plant fields and fields and fields of wheat for example, and then we get these machines that just mow it all down, and we don’t really think about the wheat, we don’t really think about our plants, it’s just we go to the store, we just grab a bunch of stuff, we throw it in a pot, we boil it, we eat it, and we are done with it. We are not really thinking that much about it.

Ayla: But you have to think about it because whatever you eat becomes your body, your cells! When you eat the tomatoes, the next month the nutrients from those tomatoes can be used in your brain cells, so you have to be careful about what you are eating. Unfortunately around the world, the topsoil is polluted, depleted. We used to have 96 elements in it, but now the topsoil has only 16 or 15 elements! And with 16 elements we think that our bodies can be healthy, but it is impossible, we need all 96! We need gold, we need silver. we need selenium, we need them all in order to be healthy, and have healthy cells. If our body was a house made of bricks, missing bricks are a problem. So even if a product is natural or organic, all these minerals are lacking. So the first thing you have to think of is the roots. When the roots go deep, like in nettles, they can collect all the minerals you need, and give you vitality. You have to go and find the plant food with roots that go really deep. I know capers are one of them…

Scott: Dandelions is the one I keep thinking of!

Ayla: Yes! And you have to understand that if dandelions come into your garden, it means that they want to protect you, they want to heal you. We have a biological connection with the herbs, we are not isolated, we are not separated. You can imagine that the plants have little laboratories inside them, and they can analyze what they need and where they can take it from. For example, lavender fields, huge lavender fields, if lavender plants are in need of copper, the fields have to have biodiversity. There has to be for example a pine tree, so the lavender can take copper from the pine tree, or the dandelion, or the oregano. But with human beings and their big consumer economies…

Scott: We want monoculture.

Ayla: Yes, and that is not good for the plants, then we don’t have what we need, we don’t have health, and we are going to the doctors and take medicine. We are spoiled.

Scott: So Ayla, you have a very interesting philosophy about medicine and the plants, that I want to bring up at this point because in North America, we just basically say: “here is a plant, eat it” or “here is a balm, put it on your sore and you’re done.” But you take a totally different approach to that because we don’t think of plants as having any intelligence, which is crazy because we see them doing all sorts of amazing things.

Ayla: They can produce their own energy! We can’t! It is so simple!

Scott: Yes. So, how do you approach plants when it comes to health issues?

Ayla: People often want to know, for example, what is dandelion good for, or what is nettle good for. I tell them: “plants are more intelligent than you.” If you touch the plant, it’s like an ultrasonic machine, it can find out what you need. For example, you have a headache, maybe your blood pressure is high, or you have a cardiovascular problem, you may not have an idea, you just know you have a headache. But the plant will know that you have a cardiovascular problem, and it will provide you with the molecules, the elements, the nutrients you need in order to be cured. And it will give you the medicine, or whatever you name it, that is good for you. But for this to work, you have to trust the plant. You have to believe in them, and you have to trust the universe, too, because we are all connected with each other, humans, animals, and plants, that we can cooperate and communicate, you are not more intelligent than the plants. I don’t know why people think so, it’s a mistake, but you have to trust and just touch the plant with the belief that it can heal you. The plant will do the best it can.

Scott: Wonderful! Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy day! If there is one tip or suggestion you would like to leave everybody with, what would it be?

Ayla: Trust the plant. And trust people, too. Thank you!

Scott: Thank you, Ayla! This is Scott Patton for the Life Enthusiast Online Radio and TV Network, coming to you from the West coast of Turkey. See you next time everybody! Bye-bye!

Author: Scott Paton