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Podcast 438: The Three Treasures of TCM with RDT Herbs

Rehmannia Dean Thomas is a Taoist Tonic Herbalist in the 5000 year old Gate of Life lineage from China. Rehmannia focuses on Tonic herbs because they are generally considered safe and beneficial when used over prolonged periods of time.  His herbs are considered anti-aging and preventative, empowering the entire body mind and spirit.

In today’s episode, Rehmannia Dean Thomas joins Martin Pytela to discuss The Three Treasures of Chinese Traditional Medicine – Jing, Chi and Shen.

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MARTIN: Hi everyone. This is Martin Pytela from Life Enthusiast. And with me today, I have Rehmannia Dean Thomas, the founder of RDT Herbs, and my favorite traditional Chinese tonic herbs provider. Rehmannia, welcome to the show.

REHMANNIA: Thank you, Martin. Thanks for having me back. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you.

MARTIN: Yeah, I thought that would be really interesting for our listeners to understand your perspective of the ancient heritage. How is this concept even put together? I would like to go back to the roots of it. I’m sure you have studied it, good and hard, right?

REHMANNIA: Yes I have. I’ve always been very interested in Chinese culture. Been there a few times, very fascinating place. And they are one contiguous civilization, you know, we should find that impressive. They’ve gone back through their own dynasties, through their own civilization. The Chinese believe that what they call wild history goes back to about 20 or 30,000 BC. And the herbs that we use, the formulas that I’ve created and that you’re helping me get out there to the world, these herbs are thought to go back to that early era of human activity. Some of the early legends are where they saw what animals did. You know, the people who were living up in the Northern Manchurian region of China, kind of near Siberia and near North Korea up in there is where it started.

REHMANNIA: And people saw animals like a deer get a bone fracture, and then they would see the deer go chew on a bark of a tree. Now, in those days, if a deer got a bone fracture, it’s pretty much a gonner, right? Well, they watch this deer go to chew, chew on the bark of the tree and this bone heals up right away and they go, Hey! And then somebody in their clan gets a bone fracture or a bone problem. They go get the bark and did it, and then somewhere along the line, someone figured out how to cook that as tea and drink it. Which was a really important development in humanity. And their bone healed up quicker! And someone marked that on a piece of bamboo somewhere, but the Chinese wild history believes that goes back into about 20,000 BC. So the herbs that we are working with here have been, you know, empirically observed and used by umpteen billions of people over, you know, many, many eons. And and that is very important to me, because I do not like to work with a system of herbology or any healing modality that hasn’t been thoroughly, thoroughly documented with actual Materia Medicas and actual, long, empirical observation. We’ve got all that going for us here. And it’s a really valuable thing for us in the West today to learn about this.

MARTIN: Yeah. I’m thinking, as you’re saying these words, I’m thinking herbs are essentially concentrators, right. They grow in specific soil in a specific terroir in a specific climate and they concentrate into themselves, the stuff that they find in the soil.

REHMANNIA: Yeah.

MARTIN: It will have to mean that all the traditional knowledge that we have is extracted from the roots, from the soil. It is specific to that, like to give an example, right. If I eat a carrot that’s grown in Arizona, it’s gonna have in it the Arizona soil. If it’s grown in somewhere in Netherlands, it’s gonna be a very different carrot.

REHMANNIA: Right, right. That is why we go to the source for these herbs. And when we see this Material Medica that has developed over the thousand years, the places of biological origin of these herbs have been documented and preserved. And so it’s well known now that if we go to those actual places of biological origin to source the herbs from there, we will get the highest quality variety of that herb, because yes, you know, the soil and the atmospheric conditions and the weather are all unique to any specific area. So for instance, rhodiola which we have in my Awaken formula, which is a top adaptogen, this herb comes from Siberia, but it’s also found in the Eastern Himalayan mountains in the province of China.

REHMANNIA: And this herb has adapted to live in a very, very extreme environment. And the people who took it in the old days, they discovered it because of that. They said, how do you have this Rocky Tundra with nothing existing? And there’s this Christmas-tree-like plant coming out of it with flowers, you know, how? Where is this thing drawing up its power, its nutrients? And they recognized that if that plant could adapt in the wild, then it would help them. So the Siberian people took Rhodiola rosea to help them survive the harsh winters, because they had seen it in the plant’s ability to survive. And that’s partly how this whole thing developed. But when we look at the soil and specific regions, yes, we want to go there, and fortunately, in our lineage, the documenters of our herbs have determined, thoroughly the biological places of origin. And that is where we are sourcing, you know?

MARTIN: Right. So you are talking to me about the three, is it called the…?

REHMANNIA: Treasures. Thee treasures.

MARTIN: Could you just dive into that a bit? Explain?

REHMANNIA: Okay. The three treasures… There’s a philosophy behind herbology that we do and this philosophy observes life. And as I just mentioned, when you talk about a plant’s ability to survive in the wild, these considerations have been taken into this philosophy about life. The Chinese and the Asians throughout in continent, in Japan and in a lot of Eastern, Siberian herbology and tradition, they believe that there are three primary energies of life and they are called the three treasures and our herbs tonify or support all three of those treasures. And so what I’m saying about the three of them, we have formulas that can go and support all of these. So when your viewers are listening to this and some of this resonates with them personally, we have formulas that can go to that treasure and tonify and build it up.

REHMANNIA: So the first treasure is called Jing, and this means your body’s physical mass and its capacity to reproduce. So it’s an epigenetic energy and it is like, we’re looking at the health of our children here. We’re going and really our great-grandchildren, how healthy are they going to be? Are they going to be able to adapt to this coming world that is changing now? And we’re now seeing the changes and we need to build our children to be more adaptable. And, this is called Jing. Jing is the measure of the survival of an organism it’s its strength and resilience as an organism and its ability to adapt to stress. It’s ability to age gracefully and the ancient Chinese masters who developed this stuff. They wanted to be climbing the mountains when they were a hundred years old. So they searched for herbs that tonified this Jing energy.

REHMANNIA: So they could always be up there. Now there are legends of these immortals who live in the mountains, who take the herbs that tonified Jing and there are legends of these old men and women carrying their bags full of herbs up through the mountains, and they’re ancient. And you see pictures like that, on old scroll paintings. That’s Jing and there are herbs. So over the thousands of years, these masters sought herbs to tonify Jing, for our longevity, our youth vitality and our sexual potency. And so there are two types of Jing herbs. There’s Yin Jing herbs, which is the restoring. You know, if you just feel burnt out, you just feel like you’ve overdone it. If you’re wiped out. You’ve been working too hard. You’re under stress. Yin Jing herbs will replenish you. Then there’s Yang Jing herbs, which is Yang means the outpouring of energy.

REHMANNIA: So Yang Jing herbs would be taken by athletes and stuff. So my Endurance formula is for athletic people. And they, in fact that formula has that herb. I mentioned that the deer ate, it’s called Eucommia bark, that’s the herb that the deer ate in the story I told earlier that healed its bone. So you find that it’s an excellent herb in athletes formulas, fantastic for anyone who wants to strengthen their structural framework, including the teeth, you know, as part of our structural framework. So these are Jing herbs. They’re considered the anti-aging herbs. So there you have Schisandra, Goji, Ho-shou-wu, Rehmannia, Astragalus, you know, many of the top famous herbs of all time are there. And they’re starting to get well known by us in the west now and well-respected herbs. And those are the Jing herbs. You will find those in my various formulas, Eternal Jing is a pure Jing tonic, both yin and yang Jing herbs put together to fortify and restore. It is a fantastic formula. As I said, Endurance is a great Yang Jing formula for athletes. Yeah. Allure is a beautiful Yin Jing formula. It’s a beauty formula, but it’s an anti-aging tonic.

MARTIN: I’m thinking here, I’m seeing a decline in Jing in our generation, right.

REHMANNIA: You are, right.

MARTIN: This is a big deal. So I’m thinking those of you who are watching this, if you’re planning to have children, maybe you should do a couple of years of Endurance for the boys, right? <laugh>

REHMANNIA: Well, yeah you’re right, Martin. I see it everywhere. I’m not only seeing it in people, I’m seeing it in plants and other things. This is a lot of the damage from all the environment, the carcinogens that are out there and the carcinogens in our food and the hidden elements like, preservatives and things that we don’t really think about that really shouldn’t be there. When a preservative is there, it means the plant was vulnerable to, you know, and it was maybe picked unripe and all these things. So all these factors now are leading our society to be Jing deficient. The great masters of old would come and look at our society and go, wow. You know, I see it in a lot of young people in this area. They’re less adaptable to stress, less able to multitask their minds. Not as quick, not as agile, not as curious, not as creative, that’s all Jing. And we can give that back, you know. We can actually, you can have… My formulas taste great. You can have a child drink a little of this. I would say from, you know, seven years old and on to be safe. It could be very helpful for them in their growth. It is just overall a tonifier of their vitality at its root, which we believe is in the kidneys. Jing is held in the kidneys. <laugh>

MARTIN: I didn’t hear you clearly enough. The one that women should use for the…?

REHMANNIA: Allure, that’s a yin Jing formula. So that’s an anti-aging formula. It’s also a beauty formula. So we market it as a beauty formula. Another great yin Jing formula of mine is Empath, this is called a yin replenisher. We could talk about that for a while, because as the world warms up now, we will need more ability to keep moisture in our body, to be replenished. So yin moisturizing, yin means water. So, water herbs, not to cause  bloating, but more at a cellular level to prevent dehydration. Keep all of our body fluid strong. So Empath is a formula that I market to healers. Because healers can get drained of that yin energy because of giving out. But this is also a very critically important formula for our time. Now, as the planet is warming to make sure that we don’t get dehydrated, we maintain body’s ability to assimilate fluids and maintain them. So Empath is a really wonderful formula and that’s a Yin Jing formula.

MARTIN: Okay, great.

REHMANNIA: Now the second treasure is called Chi, and so now we’ve talked about the body itself. It’s visible mass and it’s capacity to reproduce itself through to another. Now Chi is the second treasure, chi we’ve heard that word, right? Chi is just simply energy. So Chi is the animation of our lives. You know, we’ve got this body, but what are we doing with it? We’re sitting up, we’re speaking, we’re talking, we’re breathing, we’re digesting food. You know, Chi is sunlight. That is what we call the original Chi. That’s the original energy that drives the life of all living organisms. And you know, one thing I love about the philosophy of the three treasures is not homo centric to humans, it applies to all life.  And when you understand the concept of the three treasures, how it works in nature.

REHMANNIA: You see plants that have Jing, you know, or not. So Chi is the driving force of evolution. That is the process of our lives from birth to death, and rebirth. And so chi is important because look again at what’s happening in our society, how much chi is in the food we’re eating? How much sunlight is in our diet? How much sunlight are people getting? We call this nutritive chi, we’re gathering nutritive Chi. Right? How much chi is in a ripe tomato picked off the vine? Heirloom tomato. That’s a bundle of sunlight, that’s what the chi that drew all those nutrients up from the soil, the upright Chi, we call it, the levitating factor. Well then how much chi is in a box of a pancake mix? We look at how much sunlight are you gathering to fuel the vitality of your life?

And again, we see people young and old in America in particular who are just dragging along. They’re just not getting enough chi to really feel that vibrance. They’re walking slow, they’re talking slow and thinking slow <laugh>.

MARTIN: I was thinking of this as you’re talking about Jing ?

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Jing .

MARTIN: There’s a difference between the two words Jing and yin. <Laugh>.

REHMANNIA: Well, a little bit. Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. Quite Chinese. Anyway, as you’re talking about Jing, I’m thinking, well, this is sort of a how well the automobile is built. Yeah. And when we’re talking about Chi, that’s sort of like, well, what’s in the gas tank?

REHMANNIA: Yes, exactly. Yep. The octane of that gas really affects the function in the motor and the short and the long term. The bad gas runs down your car, it burns out. <laugh>

MARTIN: And the other thing that I was contemplating was sunshine. The photons that arrive here on this planet, the plant actually takes it in, slows it down and turns it into something that actually is stored sunlight, right?

REHMANNIA: Yep. Chlorophyll. Uh-huh.

MARTIN: It’s actually light. That’s being stored inside the substance of the plants.

REHMANNIA: Yes. And all living beings are little storehouses of sunlight. But the origin of that sunlight we gathered is through plants. When we eat animals, animals ate the plants, they ate the plants too. Yes, and if an animal ate another animal that animal ate the plants and that original Chi comes up to our energy. The plant is taking in the sun and transmuting it into chlorophyll for our use. We have formulas that tonify Chi. When Chi is deficient in the body, a number of things happen. Like I said, sluggish energy. But with women, you can see a tendency to hold water as edema. And so women can tend to get bloated in the middle and have this pesky weight gain and they’re wondering why? And actually the high raw food diet does not necessarily fix that.

REHMANNIA: And I actually wrote a book about this called Raw Chi. It’s about how to transmute Chi into true energy. And so people who have a high, raw diet particularly women want to take these tonics along with it. My main Chi tonic is called Esencia. And that’s my formula that I market to women during their reproductive years, because women are the ones who need to warm the spleen. Women in general have what we call a yin constitution. And again, yin means water. So women can have a tendency to hold water in their bodies as bloating and edema. What happens when that occurs is that the water kind of dampens the splenic organs, that govern the digestive metabolism, and can slow down the metabolism and a woman can feel sluggish on energy.

REHMANNIA: A lot of things affecting menstrual cycle, the stool, the firmness of the stool, all of these are affected by this. So that formula of mine Esencia is an excellent formula for pretty much all women just to help assist Chi in it’s use in the body to build blood because the young women menstruate, right? So they have to rebuild blood. Blood is Chi. And men who are vegan and vegetarian do very well with this formula. Men can get Chi  stagnation too, in the form of bloating that goes out like this in the belly. That can also help them with that.

MARTIN: Would the Esencia work for that too?

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Esencia is a formula that tonifies the blood and Chi, and in our lineage, we believe that blood is the carrier of Chi. Chi is the mother of the blood and blood is the carrier, that carries the Chi to all the organs and the cells. We want that upright Chi flowing, warm hands and feet, light easy menstrual cycle for women. Good metabolism, good shape, good mental focus, clear skin. Chi stagnation for women and for young men can be acne breaking out. So, this formula Esencia is a wonderful tonic for women to take along with a healthy food diet or any diet, but we always recommend healthy food, right? That’s my primary Chi formula. The other one is also targeted to women, but it’s a kind of a combination of Chi and a bit of yang-jing it’s called Phoenix.

REHMANNIA: And that’s for women who are getting towards pre menopause and beyond just to support the hormones, upright Chi, the bones and energy, spirit. So that’s the second treasure that’s Chi.

Now the third treasure is the outcome. When Jing and Chi are tonified, we are abundant in the third treasure called Shen. Shen literally means spirit. The thing that I love about our lineage, which is essentially a Daoist lineage, it predates Daoism by about 2,700 years. But, it is essentially Daoist in it’s thought, is that a third of the emphasis, 33% of the emphasis that we place on health is on where are you at spiritually? Are you at peace? Are you in a loving state of mind? Are you know, in a giving state of mind, are you in a a state of abundance? That’s all called Shen. So the great masters, they found herbs that tonify Shen.

REHMANNIA: And I wouldn’t be interested in this herbal lineage otherwise. I’d like to tell people to have a healthy body and strong muscles and good sexual drive and all that stuff. But if it isn’t about attaining this peaceful warrior, then I wouldn’t really be interested. So the Shen herbs are really my favorite and they are the outcome. Well, they’re all fascinating, all the tonic herbs are super fascinating but the great Shen herb is Reishi mushroom. and it is known as a bridge between earth and heaven. there are ancient scroll paintings that show earth down here, and there’s Lao Tzu and Confucius. and they’ve got their students, you know, and there’s Quan Yin with her students. and then there’s this rock in this garden, and there’s a Reishi in the middle and there’s heaven, and there’s the emperor flying around up there on a dragon.

REHMANNIA: Right. They used to have to always appease the emperor by putting him into the art. You know, <laugh> to get good favor. So the reishi is said to be a bridge between the earthy realms and the celestial immortals of heaven. So there’s that reishi on the rock right there in the middle of the scroll painting. Reishi’s also called an herbal. it’s said to initiate benevolent cycles of health, when you take it, benevolence starts to show up, and it does. That’s what happened to me when I first discovered reishi in 1998, when I met my teacher and I started to take a lot of his reishi. It was about the seventh day or maybe sixth or seventh day. I woke up and I had had a transformation. Prior to that, I thought I was like possessed. I thought I was just a completely messed up guy and was struggling to get these angry thoughts out of my mind and get positive about life. And reishi was like.. whoosh, oh my God, it’s like everything’s changed, light and everything.

And from there, my life became much more benevolent. And so reishi can do this as universal. You know, I actually believe if we can get reishi to everybody, we might be able to do a great thing for humanity. It also has a way of reconnecting us back into everything in the awe of humans. We need to do that. We need to reconnect with nature with our world and with each other.

Another great Shen herb is Asparagus root. This is the herb, the Daoist monks say, can make them fly and they take it. Now, I always say, please, don’t take some asparagus root and go try and fly.

REHMANNIA: <laugh> We’re not ready for that. Those masters are like, they’ve done a lot of work to get to that point, but a Spirit Poria, Albizzia flower, these are great herbs, so classified to tonify the spirit. So these are all found in my formula Shift. I take that formula myself, I just love it. It has an immediate effect. I don’t think it’s just psychosomatic. I mean, I just – after a few hours after taking it, I feel like whew, everything’s just fine. You know talking about taking stress off of your adrenals. So many people have spiritual stress about their loneliness or happiness of their lives on their heart, and this formula is fantastic for that.

MARTIN: Yeah. I’m contemplating what you’re saying. And I’m just reminded of the rise in tribalism. Especially in this nation lately, all of a sudden. I think as Americans are starting to lose their standard of living as the economy is being sucked out by the people who are controlling it, they have been sucking out the wealth out of it. And I don’t know where they’re transferring it to whether externally or into their own pockets, but I’m noticing more and more people are feeling threatened. And I think their fear perhaps is being expressed in a very tribalistic way as in “us versus them”. As opposed to we all are on this planet. This is one big team.

REHMANNIA: Actually, I’m glad you brought this up and it’s one of those subjects that maybe we probably sometimes don’t wanna broach, but I’m glad you brought this up in this context because the tonic herbs, they on a cosmic level, I mean, I believe sort of in cosmic timelines and evolution, I believe they could be showing up for us at this time as agents to help us fortify and maintain our peace, maintain our equilibrium, maintain our adaptability through these times of change. So that we maintain our connection to the higher self and to our own bodies, and step up another level in the integrity of the way we’re fortifying our bodies for the future and for future humanity. So I think that the tonic herbs are showing up for us for, at a time of evolution when an old way is being challenged.

REHMANNIA: And it was inevitable, you know, that we would grow out of just blind consumerism, blind consumption of the world’s resources and start thinking more in terms of like, well a lot of it like giving back now, you know, let’s start giving it all back. Let’s start reforesting everything, food forest all that. Well, when we take the tonic herbs along with a healthy diet, I believe these concepts really come in because we feel safer, we feel empowered and we feel like I can do that. Yeah! I wanna do something good. You know, I wanna help out be part of the cause … When people are unhealthy, they sit and worry and theyget mad. Right? And that’s a vacuum.

MARTIN: I would like to put forward that if you’re feeling fearful, if you’re feeling threatened, if you’re feeling like you would like to annihilate part of humanity because they’re just not to your liking, a cup of Shift might do you good.

REHMANNIA: Thank you. Ma’am <laugh> yeah, absolutely. I think so. You know, umm.

MARTIN: Speaking of which, you know these, these herbs just as a reminder, you need somewhere between half teaspoon or a little bit more in some hot water. I found that I’ve been using coconut milk with them, but any of the nut milks is fairly good.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Yeah. The mother earth is providing for us what we need and we can make it taste good, you know? Yeah, putting in some coconut milk, I usually use oat milk. But a nice hot drink of this or cold on ice with some nut milk. I do maple syrup. Um, the formulas tastes great. You know, the people are always a little pleasantly surprised about that.

MARTIN:<laugh> Yeah. I’ve actually tossed it into a smoothie, just you know, I’m using the Exsula Superfoods. And I just spike it with a spoonful of your herbs, whatever I feel like.

MARTIN : I now have five different ones here, but I did not bring a bottle of Shift.

REHMANNIA: <laugh> I’ll send you a special, you know, bottle of it for you.

MARTIN: I’m going to do that. Just, I mean, I seldom now suffer from feeling fearful. Like I’m fairly safe in knowing that I’m ready to meet my maker whenever I’m called.

REHMANNIA: I’m there too. <laugh>

MARTIN: But still I think it sounds good that I could be better grounded and better prepared to deal with it. Right.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. All of us can, at this time, there are elements that want us to be scared. There are people who feed off our fear in the media, in particular. And if when we take the tonic herbs, particularly like if you were to take for instance Endurance and Shift together. I think you could look at all that from the perspective, like sure, okay, you got your thing, man. You know, I’m not gonna worry about it. You know, <laugh>, you can spout off all you want. It’s okay. Uh, and yes, there are things to be concerned about. You know, it’s not about not about turning a blind eye to it all. It’s more about seeing it in a constructive way that doesn’t wipe out our adrenals with fear. That’s the key. We cannot let it get to our adrenals because that runs us down. When our adrenals get drained from fear, our life force, our creativity, our sexual potency and the vibrance of our life is diminished. And so it’s key to our own self sustenance to take the tonic herbs and diet that builds up our adrenal so that we can adapt to those stresses, spiritual, emotional, societal, to be able to say “you’re cool man. You’re alright. See you around.”

MARTIN: So is Shift the only one that addresses this?

REHMANNIA: No, many of my formulas have a lot of Shen in them. Three masters is a Shen tonic for sure. It’s primarily reishi mushroom with real pure amazing shilajit powder from the Altai mountains of Russia. Absolutely wonderful stuff. You know, pitch black. I know because I wrote a book on shilajit so I know how to find the right stuff. And maybe sometime we ought to have a brief discussion just on Shilajit for your viewers, because

MARTIN: Well this is a good time to put in three sentences about it.

REHMANNIA: Well, three sentences is the … The Shilajit is the humic remains of ancient rainforests. So basically it’s an entire ecosystem broken down into these very, very small molecules, the smallest molecules in nature called humic acids. So they become ensconced in the soil and they’re such small molecules that other plants can take them up as food. So plants eat humic acids for food. This is a pure humic acid formula. So it’s like Chi you know, completely like pounded into Jing in each of those humic acid molecules, when we take this, it’s thought that every single element is in Shilajit it’s the top

Rasayan in ayurvedic medicine. And Rasayan means the tonic herb superfood, and in India, the Sufis used it and they could like run through brick walls and stuff. And they, so they call it the conquer of mountains and destroyer of weakness.  I wrote a book on shilajit so that I could find out how in front of the perfect stuff, and this that I found is really pure and really beautiful.

MARTIN: Can you relate Shilajit to the Humic and Fulvic Acids that are also found all around the world, like in America too?

REHMANNIA: Yes. Yes. Okay. It, that’s an interesting question because, humic acids can exist in concentrations in places like peat bogs, and there’s a big open pit mine somewhere in Montana where, you know, they were searching for copper or gold and they found this massive layer of humic acids from an old rainforest that had swamped that had been there long ago. Um, but these are not complete. These can be used in agriculture, some people sell them as soil organisms and all that stuff. But Shilajit is unique in that it is only found in high mountain ranges above about 10,000 feet. And what happens in the spring is that the rock strata expand a bit in the warmer sun and causes cracks and fissures. And out of those fissures, this black tarry stuff comes out and the monkeys and animals and the mountain goats would go up there to eat it, and still do.

REHMANNIA: Uh, and then eventually people found this and ate it and called it shilajit. But it’s unique to the high mountains. What happened then? It means it’s the humic remains of ancient, ancient, ancient primeval rainforest from way back when the Indian subcontinent and the Asian subcontinent collided, and those mountains were pushed up. There had been a rainforest there, and the rainforest was mulched in like in a veggie wrap <laugh> into the mountains and up, and now in the high mountains, this pure, humic remains that have been there for maybe millions of years, seep out. So it’s a more concentrated and pure. It’s very rare on earth, there isn’t much. And when we’re on that subject, I would love to say to people, there are Shilajit products out there like resins. And if you’re going to get this stuff, use only a little bit, like on the end of your pinky is all you need for a day and revere it because there’s not much of it in the world. So don’t think you need to Bogart, to take more, to get more, to make you more powerful that your body can’t even probably absorb that much, it’s so potent.

Stretch it, make it last because there isn’t much and be thankful for what you have <laugh> but yeah, my Shilajit used is a beautiful, a pure, black Altai Shilajit. Um, and it is mixed 50% with Reishi. Reishi is also one of the top immune modulating herbs. So these two together, I mean I had that epiphany in about 2008. I said: “Oh my God if you put Shilajit and Reishi together.” And then right then I happened to hear about ORMUS at the same time. ORMUS is probably another discussion. Although I humbly admit that I’m not an afficionado on ORMUS all I know is that it is thought to be somewhat, it exists at the threshold between energy and matter, and I call it a dedication device.

REHMANNIA: So it’s found within the Latices of silica structures of you know, silica structures that form crystals and it is found there. And it is something like the dedication device that forms the crystal and latices, that starts to create what we see as life, it’s found there. And so these ancient urns were found in Chinese and Egyptian tombs from the same era, about 3,500 BC. And they found urns where they had been taking gold and smelting it into a white dust and the emperors and pharaohs were taking it. And that was the ORMUS. Then when the library at Alexandria burned whatever that information of alchemy was lost. And, uh I think that information’s all in the Vatican basement now, but um…

MARTIN: Uh, well you know interestingly I have been in on the ORMUS story since 1996, when David Hudson came out, with his lectures.

REHMANNIA: Yeah.

MARTIN: And then I met a fellow who had a full living recollection of having worked with king David as his master Alchemist. And they were talking about how they were actually using the urine of nuns, female urine. To collect that so that they would have the urea because they needed to get that to create the high pH menstruum to extract this. And when the conversation was about streets paved with gold? They were paved with the crystalline gold with the ORMUS version.

MARTIN: Not the yellow metal, but the glassy crystal.

REHMANNIA: Wow.

MARTIN: And what’s interesting…

REHMANNIA: Probably, I immediately thought of the crown, the original crown on the pyramid.

MARTIN: Yeah and what was interesting is of course they were, they taught us, because this fellow completely recalled it, they taught us, what’s now known as the wet method concentration. Where you can take Dead Dea salt because the essence of the Dead Sea and with sodium hydroxide we can raise the pH and with the pH, we precipitate this snow out of this dissolved salt and this snow contains the ORMUS. So anyway, back in 1996 to about 2001 or 2, I made a lot of it. I extracted it by the buckets. Normally they tell you take a teaspoon, I was taking 12 teaspoons.

REHMANNIA: <laughing>

MARTIN: And what’s interesting. It changes you, right. It’s like you were talking about personality change.

REHMANNIA: Yeah.

MARTIN : When you are on a high ORMUS dose, you are, well, I’ll say it this way… ORMUS for me, is the connection between the spiritual non-material and physical.

REHMANNIA: Yes. Yes.

MARTIN: With the ORMUS present in the body, you’re able to express in the physical world that, which is in the world of the spirit or the soul.

REHMANNIA: I agree. It is a bridge.

MARTIN: Yeah. Bridge, good word.

REHMANNIA: I call it a dedication device between energy and matter.

MARTIN: Transmitter to me, but…

REHMANNIA: There you go, yeah.

MARTIN: Anyway, so when I was doing that, these high doses, it was giving me all kinds of Sidhis, powers that are usually reserved only for people who do lifetime of meditation.

REHMANNIA: Mm-hmm

MARTIN: I was hearing people’s thoughts, I was well aware. Like I knew that the phone was going to ring and I knew who was going to be on it and, or persons telling me their address. And I could be telling them their address because I already heard the thought before their lips would move. Right.

REHMANNIA: Yes. Yeah.

MARTIN: But it had a side effect, it was essentially pushing me off wanting to just give up the physical world, just quit. I just wanted to pick up my walking stick and a bowl and head for the Himalayas.

REHMANNIA :<laugh>. Yeah. Right.

MARTIN: Which.. At that point I had a wife, two teenage daughters and a business, and I thought you didn’t pick that life. You became a householder, you’re going to have to carry this ball across the line. Right.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Yeah.

MARTIN: So I cut back on the ORMUS.

REHMANNIA: Just cut back some. <Laugh>. Yeah, yeah. Our precipitation method is the same as what you did. And our provider uses these salts that he gets mined from about 10 miles under Bolivia somewhere. Then it goes through that precipitation process you’ve mentioned. Yeah, but he tells me that it’s so potent that you don’t need much of it in there. It’s almost on a homeopathic sort of elements, you know?

MARTIN: Yeah. Once you concentrate it, you just need a few grains, just the same way as you spoke of Shilajit, it’s the sort of quantity that’s in ours it’s enough. Yeah.

REHMANNI: I was just really thrilled when I thought of the idea of putting Reishi, Shilajit and ORMUS together in 2007. It was an epiphany. And to me that’s still today, I guess it’s… all my formulas are my faves, you know, they’re all my babies and I’ve got more coming by the way. But that one just keeps standing out. If you wanted one thing to give to everybody on earth, you know, that’s probably it.

MARTIN: The Three Masters.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative>

MARTIN: Okay.

REHMANNIA: The only thing about it is it tastes bitter. It’s the one of my formulas that tastes bitter. When you properly, uh, it can taste kind of like coffee. You might put maybe like a quarter teaspoon in a cup of water, It tastes kind of like a nice amount of coffee. So no younger people would like it that way, but people have finicky taste. Uh, that’s the one that they might have a little more trouble with.

MARTIN: Exactly my experience. That’s the one I picked and I mixed it and I thought: Hmm, this is gonna take a little bit of honey to manage.

REHMANNIA: Yeah, yeah. Uh huh. We used to serve it at raw evolution in Los Angeles, and they served it straight, and I was like “Really straight?” And then I had a cup and they were diluting it just right. They were probably like I said, using about a third of a teaspoon in hot water. And I came to like, what? This is, this is perfect. You can really develop a taste for it, same way you do with coffee. First time I ever had coffee, I thought it was awful. You know?

MARTIN : So make it weaker. Don’t go for a full half spoon go only third spoon.

REHMANNIA: Well, if you’re, if you’re a connoisseur and you like it and you’re up for it. Half a teaspoon is excellent. Um, but if you wanna work your way up.

MARTIN: It’s intense. It’s intense.

REHMANNIA: Yeah.

MARTIN :<laugh> you get used to it, but it’s intense to start.

REHMANNIA: So those are the three treasures, the three primary energies of life and the herbs that, you know, that tonify them. It’s a fascinating philosophy of how life lives and functions and how evolution works. And those masters over those years found herbs that directly, what we call tonify. The word tonify means to tune the strings of an instrument into harmony. It’s an old Greek word, I love that word, because we’re attempting to tune the strings of our instrument to be in harmony between the body and it’s energy and the spirit. That is the ultimate goal and the ultimate capacity of the tonic herbs for anyone to achieve that with a little bit of research and interest in it to achieve a sense of balance of body, mind and spirit. And you can’t rush it, you know, you got to give it time, but it’s actually that process is miraculously wonderful. Because as soon as you start feeling that energy emerging, you already know it. And each day you feel like you’re getting a little closer or closer to your wholeness, and that’s a beautiful trek beyond.

MARTIN: What a beautiful note I would like to end on. So there are these three sides to it. It’s a wheel. There are spokes in it and you cannot really be without one or the other.

REHMANNIA: We need all the spokes. All the spokes need to be strong.

MARTIN: Yeah. It’s like that automobile that we mentioned earlier. Pick the wheel that is the most important one. They’re all important. If you’re missing a wheel, you’re not going anywhere.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. You can’t get in, without a carburetor and drive off <laugh> you know? Yeah.

MARTIN: So I’m looking forward to our next encounter whenever that may be, but for now thank you, Rehmannia.

REHMANNIA: Thank you. Thank you.

MARTIN: This is helpful, and enlightening and educational.

REHMANNIA: Absolutely. I appreciate your interest in my work and helping get it out there to the world and you, yourself, your work, you know we’re like minds. You know a lot of what I’m talking about already, that’s why I like talking with you.

MARTIN: Yes. Thank you. Yeah. Faking it… you know, you need to put in your 10,000 hours because if you don’t, you just haven’t yet. Anyway. Thank you. This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast. Find us online or give us a call. Thank you very much.