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Podcast 457: Shift and Empath

We have the pleasure of welcoming back Rehmannia Dean Thomas on the show today. Rehmannia is the owner and genius behind Super Tonic Herbs, formely known as ‘RDT Herbs’. Rehmannia has dedicated his life to educating the world on this timeless ancient wisdom of Taoist tonic herbal tradition.

Shift: A calming formula that increases your frequency and strengthens your connection to the divine. Helps to dissolve energy blockages and liberate the body from spiritual supression. Empower your mind, body and spirit.

Empath: A healer’s tea to replenish yin and vitality.  Protects the auric field from negativity. Avoid burnout from over-giving. A lovely anti-aging formula that restores life force energy to the kidney/adrenal meridian.

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MARTIN: Hey everyone, this is Martin Pytela, Life Enthusiast podcast. With me today, Rehmannia Dean Thomas, the founder and the formulator of what’s newly renamed Super Tonic Herbs. Rehmannia, welcome to the show.

REHMANNIA: Thanks, Martin. Thanks for having me, man.

MARTIN: I so enjoy the products that you’ve made. I have been sampling and I just buy another one or bring it from the warehouse <laugh> and just run with it. And I’m thinking, what do I want to do next? And the one that really, really, really caught my attention was Shift.

REHMANNIA: Oh yeah.

MARTIN: Because Shift happens.

REHMANNIA: <laugh> Yeah. That’s the one I take. In fact, I just had some, I got up and had Spirit Jing with some Shift in it. But yes, Shift is, you want me to go ahead on Shift? <Laugh>

MARTIN: Please just explain what led you to put it together and why it does what it does. I mean, I could talk about what it does to me, but maybe you can just broaden it out.

REHMANNIA: Well Shift is, in the ancient lineage of Herbology that I’m in, thank God I found this beautiful ancient <laugh> herbal system to become part of. There’s a whole class of herbs that are said to tonify the spirit. And this word is shin. Shin literally means spirit. So there are herbs that tonify shin. When we say tonify, we mean to tune the strings of an instrument into harmony. That was a Greek word created by Hippocrates, to tune the instrument of strings into harmony. Well, there is no way to tune the instrument into harmony without our spiritual peace of mind being there as well. And the ancient people knew this. And some of this is sort of a little lost on modern society. People think they need to just build up their body and their physicality and their sexual energy and all that, and they’re good. But if we’re not tuned in to the higher frequencies, whatever you want to call it, we’re missing the full gamut, in my opinion. I mean, somebody could argue with me, somebody could say yeah I’m just as happy as I need to be, and I don’t care about any of that stuff. <laugh> Okay, that’s fine.

MARTIN: Let me just riff into this. We all need to be warriors. We all need to be able to pick up the battle. But if we don’t know why? And for what cause? and what the final goal is, We’re lost. I mean, if I don’t have a guiding principle, I’m just flailing around.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. And I think, not to be presumptive, but I think a lot of people are going to wind up having a spiritual crisis later on in life, if they don’t recognize and unfold and let that exhibit itself in their lives. They’re going to go through some kind of crisis later on. Like, what am I doing? Why am I here? What is this? Right. Well, you know, it’s the belief. It’s the belief in your higher power, that’s Shin. Well, the Chinese found…  Ancient Chinese masters who lived in the mountains. They weren’t into medicine yet. They were into just being empowered and being able to climb that mountain at a hundred years old and being able to tune into the arcana. And so the Shin herbs became very important in their quest for perfection and for a total life or living.

REHMANNIA: And thank God we have these herbs classified. So when I created Shift, I went into the Chinese materia medica, looked at the top herbs for tonifying shin and put them together. We have Lingzhi mushroom, most often referred to as Reishi. Reishi is talked about a lot today because it’s known to help modulate the immune response. But what it is most famous for in ancient China was that it tonifies the spirit. So it’s called the herb of peacefulness, of a peaceful spirit. And so Lingzhi means spiritual plant. And its Japanese counterpart Reishi, which is the more common name, means spiritual mushroom or spirit mushroom. And is known to initiate benevolence in one’s life. Now, that sounds a little hocus-pocus, you know, it’s fine. But let me say this about my own experience.

REHMANNIA: In 1998, I discovered the Reishi mushroom. I was working with my teacher, Ron Teagarden. I had just met him, and I became his apprentice for eight years. When I was there, his parlor had these big funky looking mushrooms all over the place, man, they’re like stuck on his sculptures and shoulders and everything. They’re hanging on the picture frame on the top. And every place are these great big dried mushrooms, and I was fascinated by them. I said, what is that? He says, Reishi. Something just told me to take a lot of it. Now, at that time in my life, I had a lot of spiritual turmoil. I had anger, I had a lot of the stuff that young men have where you tend to have an angry thought before a positive thought. And you have to stop yourself and go, why’d I just have an angry thought about that?

REHMANNIA: Why can’t I be positive? And you have to slap yourself in the face. Come on, be positive. Right? And that’s the way I was. I even thought I was possessed by demons at times in my life. And I was searching. Oh man. I mean, and the raw food diet helped me. The green juicing diet helped me. All of the religions I read, and I tried to finish every one of those religious books like the Dhammpada, or the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, New Testament. I would close the cover and go, I feel better, I feel clean, cleansed. And then little by little, that stuff would come back. Well, here I was looking at this mushroom in Ron’s office, in his parlor, and I said, I got to take this. So I started taking 15 capsules a day, which was a little higher than the recommended dose, which I think was nine to twelve.

REHMANNIA: I took 15. On the fifth day, I woke up, and this was not a psychosomatic thing. I woke up and the light in my room was different. It was like infused with more vibrance. It’s hard to say what it was. It was like the light had more life in it. It was like God was in my room or something in the light, you know? And there were, it was almost like these little strings of light that I associated with fungal mycelia. Now that I’ve studied mycelia, I was sort of like, intrinsically being myceliated back into the all, you might put it. I know this sounds a little..

MARTIN: Yeah. Connecting to the universe through all the fight. Yeah.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. And I woke up and I literally sat up and said, the oppression is gone. And it was! It’s funny, it was like taking off an old gray shirt. I didn’t have to battle anything, you know? And right then I met a wonderful Chinese woman and I had a 15 year relationship with. My life was stable. It really has been very peaceful and empowered ever since.

MARTIN: I have a clear memory of waking up to the brighter, better lit world. And I attained it through yoga practice.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Uh-huh.

MARTIN: Which is interesting. And later I’ve come to associate it with the release of pregnenolone, a hormone that helps you appreciate your surroundings, the world, art.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. And just the wisdom of life.

MARTIN: There’s a physiological thing that the western mind can come up with, right? Like, we can analyze us, this awakening and this enlightenment moment.

REHMANNIA: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

MARTIN: We can do it from..

REHMANNIA: Physiologically place it among the pituitary hormones. The hormones can change in their relationships to each other, like in a split second. And sometimes something triggers that. We see that in psychotropic mushrooms and mind altering drugs and things. And to make it clear, reishi mushroom is not psychotropic or mind altering in any way. What it does is it triggers whatever you were just mentioning, the pituitary hormones and other glands in the brain to just suddenly bang! You’re just seeing kind of a bigger picture. We can’t see the biggest, we don’t know what God is still, but it’s somehow like we kind of give into all, you know? And it’s a beautiful, beautiful experience. For anyone who feels like, kind of afraid of that, don’t worry, <laugh> it’s all good, man.

MARTIN: So for that experience, you would need to take some DMT. Pardon me. Dimethyltryptamine.

REHMANNIA: Don’t do it.

MARTIN: That’s a hard trip.

REHMANNIA: That can bring demons in, you know? But Reishi is very renowned as a benevolent, and we call it the mushroom of benevolence. It just doesn’t seem to go wrong. And I think I can say this with confidence that everyone I’ve ever seen take it, and I’ve helped young people who felt really lost, suddenly just find themselves. It’s like this trigger to your higher self. It doesn’t change the way you see, the way you’re envisioning everything. It’s just kind of a plug into the divinity of life. I wish all people could take a little Reishi in their lives, and I think our whole civilization would change very quickly for the better. Well, Reishi is the primary herb in my Shift formula. Before I leave Reishi, I just want to say that there are names for it.

REHMANNIA: It’s said to be a bridge between earth and heaven. And there’s pictures of scroll paintings that show Earth down here with Lao Tzu and his disciples, and Quan Yin and her disciples. And they’re walking through the woods and drinking tea. And then there’s this rock escarpment and there’s a Reishi and then up here, there’s the master immortals flying around on dragons. And so, it’s thought to be this bridge between earth and heaven, that is just the most amazing explanation of it. That’s what I felt that morning when I woke up, and my life has never gone back to that. We can’t get a one-all, it’s kind of like, it’s good to maintain, you know? But Shift can really help us break out of a bad situation that we’re in, where we’re in a rut.

REHMANNIA: We’re in a spiritual rut, spiritual heartbreak. We have a sense of not knowing what we’re doing in our lives. Like this sense of being lost. This can really help. And maybe someone who is on substance abuse could, could find help through this. And so the other herbs in the formula, albizia flower, is said to help a person overcome heartbreak, anxiety, and stress. Spirit Poria is said to liberate the spirit of psychic and spiritual gobbly goop, but yet keep you grounded in your Dao. Daoism is the root of our philosophy, which means to stay grounded in your life on this Earth, not try to fly away and escape. So that’s the whole idea of the Shift formula is to stay grounded in your life, but yet walk into that life with a sense of peaceful empowerment.

REHMANNIA: And all of the herbs, asparagus root, and everything in this formula are the top Shin herbs in our lineage. I’m really proud of it. Before going away, I can also give a recent example where about a little over a year ago, I found that my whole company had basically been taken from me by my partner. And I was pretty much destitute. I was living in a place where I wasn’t happy. And I went into a spiritual vortex. I really, really went into a meltdown. And then I woke up, I thought well, all I have is a big bag of Shift <laugh>. So I started to, I took a big heaping spoonful of it, which you don’t need. You only really need about a level teaspoon, because it’s a concentrate.

REHMANNIA: But I took like double that much in a cup of hot water. And I went for a run, went for a jog. And I remember about an hour later, I just went, wait a minute. It’s literally, I saw those strings of light again. And the world was, I was liberated from a company, an old company that I was no longer spiritually connected to. I didn’t have any interest in it anymore. And that’s why my partner walked away from me. And I went, oh my God, I’m actually free! And I started this new line, my new Super Tonic Herbs line. So sometimes these spiritual crises are… The Chinese say every problem is an opportunity. It could be an opportunity. And Shift can really be the tool to help us see the bigger picture, and it’s a wonderful thing. I couldn’t say enough for this beautiful formula.

MARTIN: Yeah. That’s my impression of it. Whenever I take it, whatever problems I’m facing, I’m able to face them with a broader perspective. Like when you try to focus on something and see it up close, it can become overwhelming because the size of it is just filling your field of vision. But this thing seems to be able to push it away and allow the greater perspective of what this is. And you are describing it with your realization that the door that was opened or closed behind you, allowed you to step into a different room.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. And the thing is, once you go into that new room in your life, you know it’s there. It’s no longer a mystery. You don’t have to keep using some key to unlock it. It’s opened up for you.

MARTIN: Yeah. Great. So there’s the Shift. What would you use it with?

REHMANNIA: Well, I’d like to talk about another formula of mine called Empath. Because it’s a wonderful combination with Shift. Empath is an aptly named formula for healers, people who are empathic and who others come to for help. Healers, there are a lot of us, there are a lot more healers out there than we realize. On every block of every street, there’s somebody that you could go to for some kind of therapy and some kind of help. That person is giving their life force to you when you are in those circumstances where you need their help. If they’re putting their hands on you, a Reiki practitioner, acupressurist, massage practitioner, or even if they’re working at a psychic level to help you get your direction. They’re using an energy that is associated with the cosmic chi.

REHMANNIA: And this energy enters into the solar plexus, and it is a finite form of energy that we hold. Well, the energy itself is infinite, but we hold a small amount of it for the sake of giving to others. And when we work in the healing profession, sometimes if we’re dealing with people who come to us with lots of spiritual gobbly goo, now lots of like, oh my God. And what they’re doing is they’re asking us or begging us to come down into their abyss to see how awful it is for them so that somebody will empathize with them. Somebody will see what they’re going through. And if we do that on an emotional level, if they grab us emotionally and draw us into that vortex, and this is all inadvertent, they don’t mean to harm us. They can wind up draining that energy that we’re trying to draw from the cosmos to help others.

REHMANNIA: And we can wind up feeling drained. And this usually manifests as a feeling of a pain in the lower back. So when this happens, when someone is coming to you, oh my God help me out of my misery, and they’re getting to you emotionally, you start feeling it pulling your lower back, it means that they’re sucking more of the cosmic energy and causing you to be drained, and you need to replenish that. So what happened was, a long, long time ago in China, during a particular dynasty, I believe it was the Tang Dynasty or the Han Dynasty, they integrated acupressure into the Chinese medical system. So what the authorities did there was they trained, they had about a hundred thousand practitioners train in exactly the same method of acupressure, and then distributed to the hinterlands to do it all in the very same way.

REHMANNIA: That’s why, because the Chinese are so organized, they want everything done according to organization. Now, in time, a lot of these practitioners started replying back saying, I’m getting burnt out. I’m burnt out on the job. Something’s burning me out. And so the Chinese medical authorities recognized that this energy needs to be replenished. And they found herbs that replenish. This we call yin-jing, jing is our life force. Yin means the taking in and holding and a vessel to give to others in the future. Or sometime when you need it, you’re holding this energy. So they found herbs that refill the wellspring, particularly the herb called dendrobium. It’s the dendrobium flower. It’s the pod that won’t park down in the water. This tendrils, and the string, this we call a yin replenisher.

REHMANNIA: So it’s called the healer’s herb. So healers in China eventually developed a formula called healers tea. Which consists of dendrobium, licorice root, schizandra and goji. That’s all, goji berries. It’s just four herbs. It’s very similar, and it’s called healer’s tea. So today in China, when you walk into an acupressure clinic, you will see a cauldron of tea cooking, and you will smell a distinctive taste, aroma. And if people don’t see that tea cooking, they won’t go in there. And the practitioners have to drink a cup of this after every session as part of their job requirements. This is healers tea. Now it works really well. Now going back to a story of my own. In 2004 I was working for Ron Teagarden at his elixir bar. And I didn’t know how to protect myself. And people were coming in and they were starting to drain me.

REHMANNIA: Lots of homeless type people. And this one woman who had terrible problems with her mom and her dad, and they were unloading all this on me. And after a few months, I’m a really strong guy and I grew up doing construction work in concrete, and so I’m pretty tough. But after a few months, I was going home and I could not go up my stairs one night. I just literally could barely. And my girlfriend at the time had to help me get up the stairs and sit down. And she said, what’s wrong? And I said, oh just my life was zapped. So I went back to work the next day and went to my teacher, Ron Teagarden and said, sir you got to take me off the elixir bar. He goes, why? I said, I’m getting burned out.

REHMANNIA: He goes, are you drinking your healers tea? And I said, no. He goes, get down there and have some healers tea. And I went down and drank some of this. We had the Healers tea formula at the bar, but I was brand new with him, and I didn’t know about it yet. I drank this stuff. And I’m telling you, within 15 minutes, I was like, whew. And I have never, now I can go out and do a hundred consults in a day at a festival or something. And it’s catching up with me now in my life. I can’t do that so much anymore. But yeah, I was literally revived by this formula. And I recognize then that there’s also a technique I developed by saying, draw up the response to your frontal cortex and respond from your frontal cortex from your intellect to their needs.

REHMANNIA: And you can respond just as compassionately from here. But don’t let them get to your lower back and start drawing your responses from your energetic base in your solar plexus. You will get drained. But my formula Empath, what I did was I took the common healer’s tea blend of those four herbs, and I modernized it by adding in herbs to protect the healer’s auric field. Particularly Reishi mushroom, polygala called the will strengthener, a very important herb for what we call a shin stabilizer or a spirit stabilizing herb. It’s used in formulas for helping people get off of addictive substances and to quit things that are not good for them. And then I added Ophiopogon and Rehmannia, herbs that nourish yin, jing, to modernize and amplify the formula. And it kind of spread its spectrum to replenish the healers energy. Not only the vessel of their healing, but also protect their energy field as well.

REHMANNIA: This formula Empath is a wonderful formula for anyone who feels burnt out. A secretary who’s overworked, auto mechanics, you ever noticed how your auto mechanic, people will come in, oh my God my family’s going on a vacation tomorrow and we just found out! And the auto mechanic’s like, okay I’ll stay late. All these people could benefit from this. I give it to monks. I give it to the main Lama at a monastery, a Shaolin monastery in Santa Fe.

MARTIN: I’m thinking of parents, of young children, <laugh>. They have this draining, overwhelming demand on them, right?

REHMANNIA: Yes, yes, yes, indeed. In fact, it’s a wonderful union replenisher for parents and for women after birthing.

MARTIN: Great. So that tells us, right? Empath for those of us who feel drained by too much demand from others upon us.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. There are tools to help us where we can continue helping them.

MARTIN: Right on. Rehmannia, you’re just so delightful. And the formulas are impeccably made. I’ve now tested probably 75% of it on myself. And I’ve yet to find something that I didn’t like. <laugh>. I mean, some of it is strong tasting. But the effects are potent.

REHMANNIA: Yeah. Like for instance, 3 Masters. I mean, you only need about a half a teaspoon of that stuff cause it’s intense.

MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah. That thing definitely kicked me.

REHMANNIA: Well, one reason why my products are, I get universal comments like that about their potency is because they’re made fresh. We buy everything in small batches. So all of our powdered extracts we get them within a few weeks after they’ve been made. And this is very unusual in the marketplace, as you probably know.

MARTIN: Yeah. Some stuff sits around for two, three years before it’s touched.

REHMANNIA: Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

MARTIN: Alright. Thank you very much. This is Rehmannia Dean Thomas of RDT Herbs or Super Tonic Herbs and Martin Pytela for Life -Enthusiast.com. You can find me at the website or call me at (866) 543-3388. Thank you. Thank you for being here today.