Issue 35 | Face the Current

Issue 35

fAce the current Finding Clarity in the Moment

w i t h R e n ow n e d Yo g i J o n a h K e s t Living With the Land Ways of the World

Food Less Traveled Why it Matters

Man vs. Wild

Lessons of Resilience

Fuel for an inspired life.

Voices of Regeneration

Shaping the Future

fAce the current Issue 35

A PUBLICATION OF

TEAM Co-Editors in Chief Sasha Frate Ty Johnson Ainsley Schoppel Design Director Sema Garay Writers Lisa Guy Meghan Pearson Learn more at: www.thegrandreturn.com/about

JOIN THE MOVEMENT Face the Current is creating a ripple effect of positive change in the world by fuelling the relentless discovery, education, and exploration of current and emerging information and perspectives. Driven by creative minds, a deeprooted love of learning, and a great appreciation for our natural connection to the land and the food that sustains us, Face the Current is proudly uniting with others who are equally passionate about what they do. With a quickly growing team and a global community of incredible people who believe in living life to the fullest, Face the Current is encouraging and inspiring others to unearth their potential and reconnect with the bounties of our beautiful planet.

@facethecurrent @thegrandreturn

thegrandreturn.com @ecofarmfinder

ecofarmfinder.com AWARDED #1 BEST PRINT MAGAZINE AND #1 IN MAGAZINE INSERTS IN A 7 STATE REGION OF THE US WEST COAST! Cover Image Credits: • Front cover. Kyle Vollaers • Back cover: Daniel Kordan

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ADVERTISEMENT AND SPONSOR INQUIRIES hello@facethecurrent.com

OUR MISSION IS TO FACILITATE A RETURN TO A MORE CONNECTED AND SUSTAINABLE WAY OF LIVING. We’re utilizing the progressive opportunities of tech to take us back to our roots through the Eco Farm Finder global platform and revitalize the world’s oldest and most essential industry: agriculture. The platform is designed as the ideal location to connect with growers, producers, agriservice providers, and true farm to table, supporting land stewards and strengthening food systems from the ground up.

Learn more at ecofarmfinder.com

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table of CONTENTs

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08. The Height Of Humanity: Surveying Earth With Aerial Photographer, Tom Hegen 14. Living With The Land: Capturing The Nature Of Award-Winning Landscape Photographer, Daniel Kordan 24. How Agritourism Can Revitalize Modern Agriculture: Getting Radically Traditional with White Oak Pastures 30. Discover Sonoma’s Diverse Range Of Agriculture From The Heart Of Quivira’s Organic Vineyard & Farm

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36. Restoring Health Through Regenerative Agriculture With Plant-Based Chef And Farmer, Mollie Engelhart 42. Ark Crystal Increases Coherence: What This Means For Your Health 48. Illuminating Insights: Exploring Life’s Mysteries With Biophysicist, William Brown 52. Ancient Wisdom For The Modern World: Lessons In Harmonious Living

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60. Celebrating Self-Expression Through The Fusion Of Yoga And Dance With Okurut George FACE the CURRENT MAGAZINE

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66. Redefining The Sport With Resiliency: World Champion Rock Climber, Sasha Digiulian 72. Blooming In A New Direction: Local Flower Farms Are The Way To Grow 76. Finding Clarity In The Moment With Nike Yoga Teacher, Jonah Kest 80. The Mindset Of A Mountain Hero With Sport Climbing And Paragliding Champion, Will Gadd 84. Food Less Travelled 90. The Sizeable Health Benefits Of Nature’s Tiny World: A Microbial Exploration With Dr. Rodney Dietert 96. Home-Grown Flavor For Every Season: Rob Smith’s Expert Advice For Growing What You Eat 102. Fuelling The Temple: Mindful Eating Practices For Everyday Life 104. “Food Farmacy”: Nutritional Healing And Resetting Your Metabolism With Dr. Jim Bentz 108. Healing With Biofield Sciences: The Future Of Health With Dr. Shamini Jain www.thegrandreturn.com

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Letter from the Editors Issue 35

Nature’s cycles of growth and dormancy are never-ending and eternally captivating—life and beauty is always around the corner.

And here at Face the Current, we have begun the most exciting phase of our time with you.

FtC is now part of The Grand Return—an AgriFood Tech company built on 6

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a foundation of purposedriven media. This amazing partnership has allowed FtC to evolve from a mission of inspiring positive change in the world to one that gives you direct impact capabilities.

Now, we are supporting a greater effort to facilitate a return to a more connected and sustainable way of living, with actionable solutions for improving humanity and planetary health through the

revitalization of the world’s oldest and most essential industry—agriculture.

TGR’s newest platform, Eco Farm Finder, is transforming our food systems and regenerating our ecosystems. Global users can connect with direct and local sourcing from growers and producers to find services, agrotourism experiences, and true farm-to-table eateries.

With EFF, you can search and filter by products, practices, certifications, service types, experiences, locations, and more. Know your farmer, know your food.

In this issue of Face the Current, we are excited to give you a closer look at Quivira Vineyards, White Oak Pastures Farm, and Sow a Heart Farm.You’ll also get a unique view of our planet

with aerial photographer Tom Hegen; learn about the world of home-gardening with expert Rob Smith; explore the importance of local flower farming; dive into biofield sciences with Dr. Shamini Jain; and climb to new heights with sport climber and paragliding champion, Will Gadd, and world champion rock climber, Sasha DiGiulian.

Read these and more inspiring stories as we start this new but familiar journey together!

We are so glad you are here.

Ainsley, Sasha, and Ty www.thegrandreturn.com

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The Height of Humanity

Surveying Earth with Aerial Photographer, Tom Hegen Interview by Sasha Frate | Introduction by Ainsley Schoppel Tom Hegen is a German photographer specializing in aerial projects that document the effects of humanity on the Earth’s surface. By highlighting the complexity of the relationship between humans and our environment, Tom provides us with a unique angle of the locations from which we extract, refine, and consume resources. With solo exhibitions and group shows held all over the world, Tom’s work has been recognized by some of the most prestigious creative awards including The Red Dot Design Award, The International Photography Award, The Leica Oskar Barnack Award, and the German Design Award.

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Tom’s abstract perspectives are a stunning, educational, and thoughtprovoking display of nature’s bountiful beauty and the role we play in our often parasitic but ideally symbiotic relationship. Here, Tom shares with us his inspiration for landscape photography as a communication tool, the need for more conscious resource extraction processes, and what it looks like as global agricultural practices evolve in the face of climate change.

You have a unique approach to visual storytelling and you provide perspective on the relationship between humans and our environment. What led you to focus on this with your photography and work?

I studied visual communication in my bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Communication design basically transfers information by using visual tools like graphic design, infographics, illustrations, motion pictures, or photography. During my studies, I discovered my joy of photography as a medium to express stories and art. I started with classic landscape photography with vast landscape views, classic foreground, middle-background compositions, and chasing the perfect light in the early beginnings. But, soon I

realized that those sugar-coated shots do not represent their real environment. So, I began to question the term “landscape” in “landscape photography”. “Land” is a word of Germanic origin, and the roots of the suffix “scape” (German: “schaffen”) refers to the verb “shaping”. So, landscape in the sense of landscaping refers to an activity that modifies the visible features of an area. With

this background, I began to read the landscape that surrounded me in a new way. Consequently, I started seeing landscape photography as a way to document places influenced by humans rather than landscape photography as showing pure, unspoiled nature.

Today, I try to apply the principles of communication design to my photography. I document the impact of humans on our natural world through fine art aerial photography.

With my aerial photo projects, I aim to get the viewer’s attention to issues they probably would not pay attention to. In this way, I still kind of work as a communication designer, telling visual stories through my images.

Can you share examples, both positive and negative, of landscapes and scenes you’ve showcased on this complex relationship, as well as their impacts? www.thegrandreturn.com

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This is the real power of aerial photography: being able to see and understand the connections within a landscape.

In the last few years, I have been documenting many places where our relationship with nature isn’t for the best. For instance, brown coal mining in Germany is a topic that I’ve covered in two series and I also did two series about coal ash, which is stored in huge ponds after coal is burned. Those practices have a fairly negative impact on the environment in terms of affecting groundwater, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and also socio-critical aspects in terms of people and villages that have to be relocated.

But, I also witnessed very beautiful and harmonic ways in which humans interact with the environment.

Last year, I traveled to Senegal to document traditional ways of salt production. This intense labour work is done by entire families that mainly work with the forces of nature.

The saltworks on the shores of

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the Saloum river Delta resemble a remarkable testimony of the synergy between a natural environment and a style of human development that is still carried out in such primitive practices.

Aerial captures a broader view of a large area of landscape that often carries more weight when we observe and reflect on the ways in which a series of actions can have a wide-scale effect. What are a few examples of this that you have witnessed/ captured, and can you explain the cause and effect?

I just returned from a field trip to Borneo where I was working on a series about illegal gold mining along the rivers in the primal forests. On the ground, I heard loud noises of the pumps that suck and flush the sediments below the forest, but I couldn’t see much of those practices

that were hidden behind vegetation or in the vast landscape. The sheer scale of destruction only became visible from an elevated viewpoint.

Thousands of holes have been dug into the ground, and many square kilometers of forests vanished. Some of the rivers were also discoloured due to the washout of minerals in the ground. This is the real power of aerial photography: being able to see and understand the connections within a landscape.

You did a beautiful oyster farm series on the northwestern French Atlantic coast that revealed how a man-made landscape results as a consequence of the unique and complex bonds between human development and natural environments. Can you tell us a bit more about what you learned with this project?

We as a species have developed a way to adapt to almost every kind of environment on our planet. The Oyster Farm Series shows that we are even able to cultivate in areas that are only accessible for a few hours per day during low tide. From the air and only visible during low tide, these farms reveal sublime abstract elements like the notation of an otherworldly language; a man-made landscape as a consequence of the unique and complex bonds between human development and natural environments.

We as a species have developed a way to adapt to almost every kind of environment on our planet. The Oyster Farm Series shows that we are even able to cultivate in areas that are only accessible for a few hours per day during low tide. When the tide pulls out the water from the shore, the beaches reveal rows and rows of oyster beds. The difference between high and low tides of up to twelve meters makes the area perfect for oyster farming. The combination of a mild summer climate and the fresh seawater renewed by the tide several times a day makes it a perfect nursery. From the air and only visible during low tide, these farms reveal sublime abstract elements like the notation of an otherworldly language; a man-made landscape as a consequence of the unique and complex bonds between human development and natural environments.

The behind-the-scenes footage of your Spanish Farmland Series gives a quick glimpse into the changing landscape that can materialize in a relatively short amount of time. What is the story behind this particular series?

Due to permanent dry climatic conditions, a unique form of agriculture has developed in central Spain over the last centuries. In the area between Huesca and Madrid, the art of dry farming is practiced.

The fields are cultivated during the winter season when rainfall is just sufficient to grow crops. Harvesting takes place just before the summer heat dries out the ground. After the harvest and before rainfall, the soil is roughly plowed to maximize water absorption. It is then sealed with rollers to reduce evaporation. The fields are also surrounded by stone

walls and organized in terraces to minimize erosion. Dry farming is a sustainable method of agriculture, as the farmers use no additional irrigation other than rainfall.

These fields look like expressionist paintings when seen from above. The patterns of hills and terraces and the palette of earthy colours transform the area into a patchwork of organic plots, occasionally broken up by roads. Man thus becomes an abstract artist who shapes the Earth’s surface.

With the ongoing growing world population and the increasing demand for food, access to fresh water reserves will become more and more difficult in the coming years. This series deals with the question of how global agriculture will develop in the face of climate change.

Through your work, how has your growing understanding of www.thegrandreturn.com

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the various effects on our global environment influenced your own life/lifestyle over time?

With each project that I undertake, I also learn something new about the world we live in—that is a very fulfilling and inspiring part of my job.

However, I also understood that humans are a very dominant and selfish species. As a consequence, I try to be very grateful for what I have and value the resources that I consume.

Sometimes studying and reflecting as you are able to do with your unique perspectives for this type of observation can provide new insights and revelations for creative solutions.

Have you had any such insights or revelations from your work and collaborations?

for change, and the more information we have on a subject, the better we understand and make decisions. That information can come from scientists that provide data and facts, but it can also come from creative fields such as journalists, writers, or artists. My work might deliver visual evidence of what science has to say.

I see my work as a part of information-gathering in order to move towards a more sustainable future. Information is the foundation

In your TEDx talk, you discuss the ways in which aerial photography has given insights into how we as a species have

With the ongoing growing world population and the increasing demand for food, access to fresh water reserves will become more and more difficult in the coming years. This series deals with the question of how global agriculture will develop in the face of climate change.

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developed over time and how we entered the Anthropocene. Can you explain this a bit?

The Anthropocene is a proposed term by a group of renowned scientists that suggest that we should rename the current geological area from Holocene to Anthropocene— the epoch in which humans are the most important factor influencing our planet. Humans are the first species since the origin of life to change the global ecology all by themselves. Our strong influence on Earth is a long and old story. Even before we planted the first wheat field or made the first metal tools—before we created the first coins—Homo Sapiens had driven fifty percent of Earth’s large land mammals to extinction.

In my first book, HABITAT, I tell the story of human development from the Neolithic revolution, some 10,000 years ago. This has also been discussed as the starting point of the Anthropocene.

In your talk, you also speak to how a lot of modern technology has caused us to lose our sense of interconnectedness with ourselves, with one another, and with nature. How do you envision a return to this more connected way of living, despite knowing that modern technology remains a part of our world today?

I see my work as a part of information-gathering in order to move towards a more sustainable future. Information is the foundation for change, and the more information we have on a subject, the better we understand and make decisions. That information can come from scientists that provide data and facts, but it can also come from creative fields such as journalists, writers, or artists.

A step towards the right direction is to appreciate and value resources that we often take for granted. Part of this is also to ask and remind us where goods come from, and how, where, and by whom they may have been produced. It’s about a conscious interaction with our surroundings, whether it’s people or nature.

ymore info: www.tomhegen.com IG: @tomhegen.de www.thegrandreturn.com

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Living with the Land: Capturing the Nature of Award-Winning

Landscape Photographer, Daniel Kordan

By Sasha Frate | Introduction by Ainsley Schoppel Daniel Kordan grew up south of Moscow, in a breathtaking region dotted with lakes and brimming with pure, wild nature. It was here that Daniel spent ample time outdoors with his friends, swimming in the water and riding bikes together. As a child, Kordan attended an art school that focused on painting, mixed art, nature, and outdoor activities.

After he began university and studied quantum physics, Kordan realized his heart was elsewhere. The artistic magic of his youth was calling him back to nature, beckoning with an endless palette of colors and compositions. Kordan answered the call, and brought his camera.

Daniel started by guiding mountain climbing and hiking tour groups during the winter and summer. From there, he used his love of landscape photography to transition to guided photo workshops, and became Chief Editor of Continent Expedition magazine. He specialized in global travel and adventure articles, and has since been published in Digital SLR magazine, UK; Photography Week; National Geographic; Discovery; Photoworld China; and Digital Photo (Bauer Media). Kordan has also developed meaningful partnerships with clients such as Apple, S7 Airlines, RedBull, and HSBC. An official Nikon, Gitzo, and Lucroit ambassador, Kordan has won numerous awards including the 2013 Golden Turtle Nature Award; first place in the 2013 National Geographic Russia contest; first place in the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Best of Russia contest; and the Trierenberg Super Circuit award for Best Landscape Photographer.

Currently based in Bali, Indonesia, Daniel offers online masterclasses and workshops, and continues to travel in search of fresh and captivating landscapes. Face the Current was once again delighted to connect with Daniel and spark inspiration from his cultural immersion, experience with global biorhythms, new connections with nature’s panoply, and his heart’s desire to live with the land.

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Your work tends to call you to remote places around the world, and because of this, you also encounter a variety of cultures living with the land and practicing multi-generational traditions. Can you share an example or two where the cultures and practices were incredibly unique, and what inspired you about them?

One example of a unique culture and practice that deeply inspired me is the indigenous people of the Arctic region, such as the Inuit. I had the privilege of visiting communities

in Greenland and witnessing their close relationship with the land and their ancestral traditions. The Inuit rely on hunting and fishing for their sustenance, and their knowledge of the environment is passed down through generations.

I was fascinated by their ability to navigate the vast Arctic landscape using their traditional knowledge, and their respect for nature was evident in every aspect of their lives. Their harmonious coexistence with the land and their ability to adapt to the harsh conditions truly inspired me.

Another remarkable example is the

Maasai people in East Africa. I had the opportunity to spend time with them in Kenya and Tanzania. The Maasai have a strong connection to the land and their traditional way of life revolves around herding livestock. Their nomadic lifestyle and deep understanding of the local ecosystems amazed me. Despite facing modern challenges, the Maasai have managed to preserve their cultural heritage and maintain a sustainable relationship with their environment. Witnessing their resilience and the pride they take in their traditions left a lasting impression on me.

The Maasai have a strong connection to the land and their traditional way of life revolves around herding livestock. Their nomadic lifestyle and deep understanding of the local ecosystems amazed me.

Despite facing modern challenges, the Maasai have managed to preserve their cultural heritage and maintain a sustainable relationship with their environment. www.thegrandreturn.com www.thegrandreturn.com 15

“Today, the Nenets’ nomadic way of life is under threat from the effects of climate change, making the tundra increasingly unpredictable – and the discovery that the peninsula contains the largest gas reserves on the planet. Nenets herders move seasonally with their reindeer, traveling along ancient migration routes.” -Survival International, Org.

Where are some places that you have witnessed strong biorhythms of people with nature, where the community/tribe/people demonstrate true harmony and symbiosis with the surrounding landscapes? Can you share a bit about what the people and region are like?

One place that comes to mind is the West Mongolia region. The ethnic Kazakh people have inhabited this mountainous region for centuries, and their way of life is deeply intertwined with the natural surroundings. They have developed unique techniques for farming and animal husbandry in the challenging alpine environment. They have a strong sense of community and work collectively to ensure the sustainability of their land.

Witnessing their daily routines and observing the deep respect they have for the mountains and forests was truly inspiring. I can say the same for the Nenets people in the north of Russia, and the tribes of Indonesia. Living in harmony with nature is the key.

Currently, I am living in Indonesia and studying local tribes. These communities have a profound understanding of the rainforest ecosystem and live in harmony with the diverse plant and animal life. Their traditional knowledge and practices, such as medicinal plant usage and sustainable hunting methods, showcase their deep connection to the natural world. Experiencing their way of life and learning from their wisdom was a humbling and eye-opening experience.

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Spending time with the local farmers and fishermen allowed me to witness the dedication and passion they have for their craft. Beyond the beauty of the scenes, I was deeply touched by their strong sense of community and their reliance on each other. Fishing is not only a means of livelihood for them but also a way of preserving their cultural heritage and passing down traditions to future generations.

The fishing scenes in Asia (China) are truly depicted as art through your photography— not only for the craft of fishing itself but the tranquility and beauty of the scenes of these local farmers and fishermen. Were there any beautiful lessons or takeaways from spending time with them and their families?

The fishing scenes in China were indeed a captivating subject to photograph. Spending time with the local farmers and fishermen allowed me to witness the dedication and passion they have for their craft.

Beyond the beauty of the scenes, I was deeply touched by their strong sense of community and their reliance on each other. Fishing is not only a means of livelihood for them but also a way of preserving their cultural heritage and passing down traditions to future generations.

To be totally transparent with you, many scenes were actually staged, but preserving the traditions and passing their wisdom to generations is the key.

One of the beautiful lessons I learned from them is the importance of patience and resilience. Fishing can be a challenging and unpredictable endeavor, but these fishermen and farmers remain steadfast in their pursuit. Their deep connection with nature and the rhythm of the water taught me the value of embracing the present moment and finding peace in the simplicity of life.

You describe Hokkaido island as having a great combination of abundant wildlife, pristine landscapes, rich culture, and delicious cuisine. What are some of your favorite aspects of each of these things in Hokkaido that are unique to the region? www.thegrandreturn.com

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When it comes to wildlife, the island is known for its iconic red-crowned cranes. These majestic birds are a symbol of longevity and good fortune in Japanese culture, and observing their graceful dances in the snow-covered landscapes of Hokkaido is a sight to behold.

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Hokkaido truly is a remarkable place that encompasses diverse elements. When it comes to wildlife, the island is known for its iconic red-crowned cranes. These majestic birds are a symbol of longevity and good fortune in Japanese culture, and observing their graceful dances in the snow-covered landscapes of Hokkaido is a sight to behold.

Additionally, Hokkaido is home to an array of other wildlife such as foxes, deer, and eagles, making it a paradise for nature enthusiasts and wildlife photographers.

strong minimalist compositions. The island’s rugged coastline, with its dramatic cliffs and secluded beaches, also provides endless opportunities for exploration and inspiration.

In terms of landscapes, Hokkaido offers a unique blend of mountains, lakes, and vast flower fields. The iconic single trees of Biei are a photographer’s dream, and the vibrant colors of the fields during the blooming season create a surreal atmosphere—or in winter,strikingly

Lastly, Hokkaido’s cuisine is renowned for its freshness and unique flavors.

From mouthwatering seafood, such as sea urchin and crab, to hearty dishes like curry soup and grilled lamb, the island’s culinary offerings are a treat for the tastebuds. The combination of Hokkaido’s abundant wildlife, pristine

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Rich cultural traditions are prevalent in Hokkaido, particularly among the indigenous Ainu people. Their unique art, music, and spiritual practices offer a glimpse into their ancient way of life. Immersing oneself in the Ainu culture allows for a deeper appreciation of Hokkaido’s history and its connection to the land.

landscapes, rich culture, and delicious cuisine makes it a destination that truly captivates all the senses.

You’ve captured some of the most scenic flower fields and farms in the world, from Tuscany’s poppies to Japan’s cherry blossoms and the lavender fields of Provence.

Aside from the undeniable beauty of seeing the multitude of colorful blossoms in person, I think it’s the type of experience that could be worth the time and effort for people to have more often by buying their own bouquets and bundles! Just as you take the extra time and effort to connect to land and nature in more remote areas, can you explain why it’s worth going “the extra mile”?

The experience of being in the midst of blooming flower fields is indeed a breathtaking one. The vibrant colors and delicate petals create a sense of wonder and remind us of the beauty that nature can bestow upon us. While buying bouquets and bundles is a way to bring a piece of that beauty into our homes, I believe there is immense value in going the extra mile and experiencing these landscapes in person. Personally I’m not a big fan of cut flowers, rather, I like living flowers and even grow some in my backyard.

When we immerse ourselves in nature’s grand displays, we have the opportunity to connect on a deeper level with the land and its rhythms. Being surrounded by a sea of flowers or standing beneath a cherry blossom tree evokes a sense of awe and tranquility that can be difficult to replicate elsewhere. It allows us to pause, appreciate the present moment, and find inspiration in the simple elegance of nature.

When we immerse ourselves in nature’s grand displays, we have the opportunity to connect on a deeper level with the land and its rhythms.

Being surrounded by a sea of flowers or standing beneath a cherry blossom tree evokes a sense of awe and tranquility that can be difficult to replicate elsewhere. It allows us to pause, appreciate the present moment, and find inspiration in the simple elegance of nature. www.thegrandreturn.com

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Additionally, visiting these flower fields and farms often takes us to remote or lesser-known locations.

By venturing off the beaten path, we discover hidden gems and connect with communities that have a unique relationship with the land. It’s an opportunity to learn about different cultures, witness traditional practices, and gain a deeper understanding of the human-nature connection.

Dubai is an area you’ve visited on more than one occasion, and it is more known for its bustling cityscapes and dry deserts. It is unique in its own way for connecting people, as it has become a true hub and destination that draws international business and innovation. How would you describe the experience of Dubai based on your time spent there, and through your “lens” and visual storytelling

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perspectives?

diverse cultures and nationalities.

Dubai is indeed a fascinating city that offers a stark contrast to my more common travels in remote and natural landscapes. Through my lens and visual storytelling perspectives, I aimed to capture the unique blend of modernity and tradition that coexists in Dubai. The city’s impressive skyline, with its towering skyscrapers and architectural marvels, creates a futuristic backdrop that is captivating to photograph.

While Dubai may be known for its bustling cityscapes, I was fortunate enough to explore the vast sand dunes and witness the captivating play of light during sunrise and sunset. The desert landscapes offer a different kind of serenity and provide a contrasting perspective to the city’s fast-paced environment.

One aspect that struck me during my time in Dubai was the relentless pursuit of innovation and the spirit of ambition that permeates the city. It’s a place where dreams and aspirations are turned into reality. Dubai has transformed itself into a global hub for business, finance, and tourism, drawing people from all walks of life.

The energy and dynamism of the city are palpable, and it’s a melting pot of

Dubai, through my lens, becomes a symbol of human ambition and ingenuity, and a testament to the possibility of creating marvels even in the harshest of environments. I’m not a city person though; I feel much better among the jungles or glaciers.

But Dubai will always be a great meet-up place with wonderful people.

You’ve made a new home in Bali and describe the region as having a hidden culture. Can you reveal a few things about Bali’s hidden gems?

Bali is a place that holds a special place in my heart, and its hidden culture is one of its most enchanting aspects. While Bali is known for its beautiful beaches and vibrant tourist areas, there are hidden gems that offer a deeper glimpse into the island’s rich cultural heritage.

One of these hidden gems is the traditional village of Penglipuran. Located in the highlands of Bali, Penglipuran is a well-preserved village that provides a glimpse into the island’s ancient traditions and way of life. The village is known for its unique architectural style, with houses built in a uniform manner and adorned with intricate carvings. Walking through the village feels like stepping back in time, surrounded by lush greenery and the tranquility of rural Bali.

Another hidden gem is Tirta Gangga, a stunning water palace located in the eastern part of the island. Tirta Gangga translates to “Water of the Ganges” and is a sacred site for the Balinese people.

The palace is known for its elaborate water gardens, fountains, and pools, which are considered holy and used for religious ceremonies. Exploring Tirta Gangga allows visitors to immerse themselves in the spiritual and architectural beauty of Bali.

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Bali is also home to countless hidden temples, each with its own unique charm and significance. These temples, tucked away in lush forests or perched on cliffs overlooking the sea, offer a sense of tranquility and spiritual connection. Pura Lempuyang, with its iconic “Gateway to Heaven”, and Pura Ulun Danu Bratan, situated on the shores of a picturesque lake, are just a couple of examples of the hidden temple gems that Bali has to offer.

These hidden gems of Bali allow me to delve deeper into the island’s cultural fabric and capture the essence of its traditions and spirituality through my photography. Bali’s hidden culture reveals itself to those willing to venture off the beaten path, offering a truly authentic and enriching experience.

If you were to adopt a new “living with the land” way of life in one of these remote regions that you’ve visited, which would you choose and why?

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Choosing a new “living with the land” way of life is a difficult decision as each remote region I’ve visited has its own unique appeal. However, if I had to choose, I would lean towards adopting the lifestyle of the indigenous tribes in the Amazon rainforest.

The Amazon rainforest is a place of immense biodiversity and natural wonders. The indigenous tribes living in this region have a profound understanding of the land and have developed sustainable practices that have allowed them to coexist with the forest for centuries. Their deep connection to nature and their reliance on the resources it provides resonates with my own values.

By immersing myself in the Amazonian way of life, I would have the opportunity to learn from the indigenous tribes, acquire their traditional knowledge, and contribute to the preservation of this fragile ecosystem. Living with the land in the Amazon would allow me to deepen my understanding of the natural world and continue my mission of capturing and sharing its beauty through my photography. It would also offer a unique opportunity to document the rich cultural heritage of the tribes and raise awareness about the importance of protecting their way of life and the rainforest itself.

Besides, I admire the permaculture of Bali and in particular, the green school experience, near our house in Ubud. They don’t use monoculture but instead study plants to produce sustainable agriculture and do not overuse and deplete the land. My dream is to build a villa in Bali with a fruit and permaculture garden— of course with a beautiful view where I can enjoy misty sunrises and flaming sunsets with my camera.

ymore info: www.danielkordan.com IG: @danielkordan www.thegrandreturn.com

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How Agritourism Can Revitalize Modern Agriculture

Getting Radically Traditional with White Oak Pastures

By Ainsley Schoppel | Excerpts from interview by Ty Johnson Agrotourism is a self-explanatory venture: it’s the crossroads of agriculture and tourism—it’s the linkage of agricultural production and/or processing with tourism to attract visitors onto a farm, ranch, or other agricultural business for the purposes of entertainment and/or

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education that is a source of income for the business owner.

Agrotourism operations can be found throughout the U.S. and all over the world, ranging from seasonal operations to larger, year-round operations that offer numerous

consumer services. Examples of larger-scale agrotourism include dude ranches, demonstration farms, agricultural museums, petting and feeding zoos, living-history farms, winery tours and tastings, rural bed and breakfasts, and some multiproduce you-pick operations.

Seasonal agrotourism includes pumpkinpicking patches, corn mazes, hayrides, cutyour-own Christmas tree farms, and some smaller produce farms such as strawberry patches.

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In all its forms, agrotourism gives producers an opportunity to generate income in addition to their operation’s primary output, and it also serves as an avenue for direct marketing to consumers.

Agrotourism can also enhance the local tourism industry by increasing the overall volume of visitors to an area as well as their length of stay. Additionally, communities can potentially increase their local tax bases and new employment opportunities while educating the public, preserving agricultural lands, and developing business enterprises.

One agrotourism farm getting it right in every way is White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia.

White Oak Pastures is a sixgeneration farm of over five thousand acres that has been in the Harris family for over one hundred and fifty years. Captain James Edward Harris founded the family farm soon after the Civil War, working the land with sharecroppers and raising cows, hogs, and chickens. Early in the twentieth century, James’ son, Will Carter Harris, took over the farm

and increased production. Meat was delivered via a mule-drawn wagon three miles up a dirt road into the town of Bluffton where it was distributed to general stores and other locales. After World War II, Will Bell Harris took up his leadership of the farm during a time when science introduced chemical tools to farming, and the slaughtering process became centralized and distant from the pastures. As the century ended, White Oak Pastures only produced cattle for the industrial beef production industry.

Four Factors of Agrotourism: 1. Combines the essential elements of the tourism and agriculture industries.

2. Attracts members of the public to visit agricultural operations.

3. Designed to increase farm income.

4. Provides visitors with recreation, entertainment, and/or educational experiences.

However, a transition began in 1995 when Will Harris III made the conscious decision to return to a production system that is better for the animals, the consumers, and the environment. “The scientific advances that were funded by the WWII effort...led to food productions systems that were incredibly cheap in the short run,” Will explains. “In the longer term, they resulted in costs that we cannot bear.” Will reinstated the multi-species rotational grazing practices used by his forefathers, and he built abattoirs on the farm to keep the slaughtering process on their own land. Today, White Oak Pastures raises ten species of livestock; processes the animals on the farm;

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“Knowing your farmer is the best-case, and it is possible! More importantly, the consumer should know what production systems their farmer employs.”—Will Harris III

and markets the beef, poultry, lamb, eggs, rabbits, vegetables, leather products, pet chews, and tallow products directly to consumers— consumers who appreciate and return to the artisan, small-batch products.

“Knowing your farmer is the best-case, and it is possible! More importantly, the consumer should know what production systems their farmer employs.”—Will Harris III White Oak Pastures likes to say that they are Radically Traditional Farming, and part of returning to some traditional practices means embracing regenerative farming. For White Oak Pastures, that means being a zero-waste farm. After they sell the meats and poultry that are butchered on site—to consumers who are just as passionate about the animals, land, and community—the cattle hides are dried for pet chew rawhides or tanned and crafted into

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leather goods. The fat from the cattle is rendered down and fabricated into some of the purest tallow products available, and the inedible viscera is composted to become rich organic matter that is used to fertilize the farm’s soil. Butchering meat from animals raised in a regenerative manner using humane animal management practices requires over one hundred and fifty-five people working together on the farm to take care of the land and livestock.

White Oak Pastures also implements a grass-fed pastured program for their cattle, also giving up feeding grain, using hormone implants, and treating animals with antibiotics. The farm also completely stopped using chemical fertilizers and pesticides and raised 7000 laying hens as part of their pasture-laid egg production.

The chickens live, roost, and lay outside, and are never held in crates or cages. The farm’s holistic planned grazing methods use animal impact

A ground-breaking Life Cycle Assessment confirms that White Oak Pastures is storing more carbon in the soil than the pasture-raised cows emit during their lifetime.

to sequester carbon, control erosion, and increase organic matter in their soils. And, not only does White Oak Pastures acquire and transform former commodity row crop land into regenerated perennial pasture every year, they have also partnered to provide planned livestock grazing and regenerative land management on a neighbouring 2,400-acre solar farm.

Even though the production changes and farm additions at White Oak Pastures are for the betterment of the animals, consumers, and the environment, they come at a financial cost—one the farm is willing to bear if it means doing the right thing.

However, when asked if humanity can be united behind the collective

One way to increase the community’s understanding of day-to-day regenerative agricultural practices is by offering agrotourism experiences—and that is exactly what White Oak Pastures has done. The farm has four one-bedroom cabins nestled in longleaf pines, as well as a two-bedroom pond house that sits on a peninsula of a fifteen-acre pond, each of which can be rented for a cozy farm stay.

cause of regenerative agriculture, Will Harris III replied, “Sadly, I don’t know.

Food raised properly simply costs more than food that is produced industrially. I am unsure what percentage of us are willing to pay the higher costs, but it is far less than one hundred percent.” Harris notes that there is a minimum amount of societal participation required to sustain regenerative agricultural farms, though the market is still determining that number.

One way to increase the community’s understanding of dayto-day regenerative agricultural practices is by offering agrotourism experiences—and that is exactly what White Oak Pastures has done.

The farm has four one-bedroom cabins nestled in longleaf pines, as well as a two-bedroom pond house that sits on a peninsula of a fifteenacre pond, each of which can be rented for a cozy farm stay. And

since most cabins do not have TV or wi-fi, it’s a wonderful opportunity to unplug and disconnect from everyday life. Looking to stay city-side as you explore the farm during the day? White Oak Pastures also has three rentable houses in downtown Bluffton available to explore South Georgia. If you’re more of an RV camper, stay at White Oak’s Pasture’s RV Park, complete with all necessary hookups. And because White Oak Pastures is a working farm, you may be waking up to cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, or poultry roaming just outside your door!

During the day, you can hike and explore the farm, and even participate in workshops that are offered throughout the year. Some past workshops have included: pasture-raised poultry production; herbs for everyday health; beekeeping; butchering—a lost art; tallow; canning and preserving vegetables; leather

shoemaking; skull decorating; and soil health management.You can also participate in farm tours, and as one of the only farms in the United States to have both red meat and poultry abattoirs located on the premises, White Oak Pastures is a preeminent farm to learn about the process of butchering and its regenerative practices.You can also join farm tours that highlight their Certified Organic vegetable garden and pastured egg operation, as well as classes in soap making, hide tanning, seeding, and mushroom cultivation.

Another fascinating farm tour begins with an historical walk of Bluffton that culminates in the farm’s classroom space where visitors are taught about the transition of White Oak Pastures from an industrial cattle farm to the regenerative agriculture model it functions as today. The tour also includes a trip to the farm’s Makerspace where guests learn about www.thegrandreturn.com

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During the day, you can hike and explore the farm, and even participate in workshops that are offered throughout the year. Some past workshops have included: pastureraised poultry production; herbs for everyday health; beekeeping; butchering—a lost art; tallow; canning and preserving vegetables; leather shoemaking; skull decorating; and soil health management. You can also join farm tours that highlight their Certified Organic vegetable garden and pastured egg operation, as well as classes in soap making, hide tanning, seeding, and mushroom cultivation.

the leather workshop, tallow kitchen, and hide-barn pet chew operations.

And if trail rides are more your speed, White Oak Pastures offers a variety of equine and horsemanship packages to add to your visit or stay.

One trail ride includes a tour of the farm as you ride through the organic garden and pastures to view the grazing herds of cows, turkeys, hogs, sheep, goats, and even native wildlife.

You’ll then rest and recharge with a picnic in the pasture—a beautiful moment to honour any special occasion.

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Not wanting to leave the downtown core out of the farming picture, White Oak Pastures purchased the General Store and saved it from a vacancy of over fifty years.

With a full renovation in 2016, the historical integrity of the onehundred-and-seventy-five-year-old building was maintained and now serves as a welcoming location for Bluffton residents and visitors to find everyday necessity items and locally produced artisan goods. Looking for a souvenir or delicious reminder of your stay at the farm? Head to the General Store to find small-batch

products made in Georgia and across the South including jams, grits, milk, cheeses, fresh meats and poultry, pet chews, honey, leather and tallow goods, t-shirts, and ball caps.You can even grab a meal at The Farmer’s Table, the General Store’s restaurant, any time of the day. Located directly behind the store, you can sit outside and enjoy a fan-favourite Deep South Burger—house-made patty, lettuce, grilled onions, bell pepper, jalapenos, Sweet Grass Dairy Lil Moo Cheese, and house-made chipotle ranch—while taking in the sights of downtown Bluffton.

And, as yet another example of their drive to not only improve their town and their own farming practices, White Oak Pastures founded the non-profit Center for Agricultural Resilience (CFAR). This center was created to educate thought leaders on the environmental, economic, and social benefits of building resilient animal, plant, and human ecosystems that can nourish communities. It’s White Oak Pastures’ hope that agriculture can be rethought, and their own twentyfive-year-long production journey is a guide that they want to share.

The goal of CFAR is not to make resilient agriculture more scalable, but to make it more replicable. CFAR is not a “how-to” course to recreate White Oak Pastures’ model, because each farm, land, and community will vary across ecosystems. Their mission, however, is to inspire a rethinking by demonstrating what has been accomplished and scaled by real-world businesspeople with a realistic budget on a working farm.

It’s the hope of CFAR and White Oak Pastures that at least one resilient food production system will appear in every agricultural county in the U.S., hopefully inspiring a ripple-effect of change in the farming industry.

Donations to CFAR will be used to help bring leaders to Bluffton to participate in learning sessions! _________________ Purchase tickets for CFAR’s next Fundamentals Session: Nutrition Focus, September 11-13, 2023.

White Oak Pastures is a living, breathing farm that proves that farms aren’t just one thing, they can be everything. As a proud example of authentic American agriculture, the farm is reviving rural areas, using regenerative farming techniques, and embracing agrotourism to educate and entertain a public yearning for a more connected experience with the land. So, make your next trip one to White Oak Pastures—it’s truly a living reminder of the past as we work to feed our planet into the future.

ymore info: www.whiteoakpastures.com www.thecfar.org www.thegrandreturn.com

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Discover Sonoma’s Diverse Range of Agriculture from the Heart of Quivira’s Organic Vineyard & Farm

By Ainsley Schoppel | Excerpts from interview by Sasha Frate It’s no secret that wine is one of the oldest beverages known to humans—archeological samples and residues date back thousands of years across several cultures.

One of the oldest known complete wineries was discovered in a cave in Armenia, dating back to 4100 BC. This site contained a wine press, jars, fermentation vats, and even drinking vessels. The Mediterranean was also an ancient center of wine production between 6000 and 5000 BC, with wine-making technology only improving during its tenure with the ancient Greeks. In fact, ambrosia was the Greek Gods’ drink of choice as it was a sweet and magical wine thought to impart immortality. It was so revered at the time that it was prolific in classical Greek poetry. By the end of the Roman Empire, common cultivation techniques throughout Europe were established that we still use in the present day.

Today, the U.S is among the world’s best producers of wines, with regions in California, Washington State, and Oregon leading the way in number of top vineyards.

With breathtaking views of Mount St. Helena, organically farmed vineyards and gardens, a relaxing atmosphere in the heart of Dry Creek Valley, and a location only moments from downtown Healdsburg, Sonoma County’s Quivira Vineyards is one of these outstanding wineries.

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Georgia is generally considered to be the “cradle of wine” as archaeologists have found evidence of wine creation in the civilizations of the South Caucasus in 6000 BC.

Family owned since 1981, Quivira Vineyards believes in intentional winegrowing and a commitment to organic farming. Proprietors Pete and Terri Kight purchased Quivira in 2006 from its founders, Henry and Holly Wendt, after being captivated by the winery’s historical location at the confluence of Wine Creek and Dry Creek. They were also moved by Henry’s vision for better wine through improved vineyard management and the use of biodynamic and organic farming techniques. Since becoming the new owners, Pete and Terri have rallied the Quivira team around a strong sense of purpose and the guiding principles of the ways in which a sustainable, holistic approach to grape-growing can yield distinctive wines.

The winemaking style at Quivira emphasizes balance and transparency of terroir—the complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including soil, topography, and climate—utilizing low-input winemaking to produce wines that proudly showcase their varietals and origins. This task falls on Quivira’s winemaker, Hugh Chappelle.

With a prestigious resumé making

cool-climate Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the Sonoma Coast, Hugh brings critical experience to Quivira in developing a Zinfandel and Rhône program. After conducting research at UC Davis in Viticulture and Enology, Hugh operated in the Sierra foothills with these two varieties before working on the Sonoma Coast and in the Russian River Valley. Piqued by Quivira’s unique terroir, Hugh became winemaker in 2010 and uses his warm and cool-climate experience

to unconventionally deliver wines with bold varietal character that demonstrate balance and finesse.

With an extensive understanding of international benchmarks for fine wine, Hugh is thoughtfully committed to maximizing the vine’s potential and farms for the Quivira hallmarks of balance, freshness, and complexity.

It’s Quivira’s belief and focus that farming this way is the best thing for the quality of the wines as well as the surrounding community.

The winemaking style at Quivira emphasizes balance and transparency of terroir—the complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including soil, topography, and climate.

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While biological diversity is just one element of sustainability, Quivira believes it is an important and integral part of the greater whole.

The diverse range of agriculture in Sonoma County, including breweries, cider producers, cheese makers, artisan ranchers, olive oil producers, small farms, CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), farmers’ markets, and a vibrant culinary scene. ‘There truly is something for everyone—not just the wine drinker’ says Hugh.

With the location of the winery being critical to its appeal, it’s no wonder Sonoma County is home to many vineyards. “Sonoma County is incredibly diverse,” notes Chappelle.

“Its proximity to the Pacific Ocean buffers it much more from climate change than Napa Valley, and the climatic influence of the Petaluma Wind Gap gives the southern and southwest part of the county great potential cooler climate varieties.”

This geological advantage is evident in the diverse range of agriculture in Sonoma County, including breweries, cider producers, cheese makers, artisan ranchers, olive oil producers, small farms, CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), farmers’ markets, and a vibrant culinary scene. “There truly is something for everyone—not just the wine drinker,” says Hugh.

The creeks and riparian corridors— unique plant communities consisting

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of natural vegetation growing near a river, stream, lake, lagoon, or other natural body of water— provide tremendous diversity to the landscape. They are also home to coho salmon and steelhead trout during spawning season. Quivira is committed to integrating plants, animals, and microbes into their natural surroundings to create perfectly balanced self-regulating systems. This approach ensures the health and vitality of the vineyards and aligns Quivira’s farming practices with production of fine wines. One of the principles of sustainability is biological diversity—a commitment Quivira has made for many decades.

“This was a sustained, multi-year effort that continues to this day and was started almost thirty years ago,” Hugh explains. “Our founders, Holly and Harry Wendt, were avid outdoor lovers who were contacted by the Department of Fish and Game to

collaborate on helping restore native steelhead trout and coho salmon populations in Wine Creek, which runs through our property and feeds Dry Creek [and then] the Russian River.” Holly and Harry were keen to help, and when Pete and Terri took over, the collaboration continued, fuelled by Pete and Terri’s passion for the outdoors and land stewardship.

“This restoration involved reengineering parts of Wine Creek to better support spawning and survival of fish hatchlings,” continues Chappelle. “This work continued for about fifteen years, only wrapping up about ten years ago.” Quivira was the first Dry Creek winery to devote resources to creek restoration, and many neighbouring properties have followed suit—the restoration now spans fourteen miles down Dry Creek and serves as a model for public-private partnerships in ecological restorations.

Quivira also utilizes a fifty-fivekilowatt solar installation, has removed a half-acre of vines to make room for a five hundred cubic yard compost pile, and is innovating with water conservation. “The solar panels generate a significant portion of our power during the non-harvest months,” Chappelle remarks. In fact, it has supplied over half of Quivira’s energy needs since 2005. With the goal of being completely selfsustaining, Quivira limits off-farm inputs by composting winery pomace and estate livestock manure. “Our composting program began in 2000… and has actually grown and is now slightly larger than a half-acre,” Hugh continues. “Spent grape pomace, animal manure, estate organic matter from the gardens and landscaping, shredded vine prunings—all are incorporated.” When the compost is ready, it is then distributed

throughout the estate based on the exact needs of each area. “This makes a difference for us by simply being more self-sufficient and needing to bring less ‘in’ to the property,” he notes. “The more we can manage our soil health and fertility internally by managing our ecology, the better.

When you look at your estate as a closed ecosystem, it makes so much more sense to have a diverse agricultural base, even if you have one primary crop like we do, which is grapes and wine.” They are also home to a beautiful and diverse garden— including peaches, pears, and an olive grove—that is open for guests to enjoy. Quivira even houses beehives for pollination and nine breeds of range chickens. And, although vines are self-pollinating, everything else on the estate relies on insect pollination—the key to closing the self-sustaining circuit on the property.

The chickens are fed from the garden waste and provide eggs for Quivira’s employees. All the preparation herbs and flowers are grown onproperty and the vineyard’s animals produce nutrient-rich manure. By using extensive cover cropping in the

Beehives in the garden encourage pollination of Quivira’s genetically diverse openpollinated produce varieties. www.thegrandreturn.com

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gardens and vineyards to support fertility and soil health, the farm is strengthened as it moves away from monoculture. Biodiversity attracts wild animals, birds, insects, and plants that are all integral to a healthy and sustainable farm. By following the lunar calendar, Quivira brings the right timing and balance to their vineyard applications to create healthier fruit. Instead of depleting resources from the vineyards, Quivira is becoming healthier and more hospitable with each passing year as nutrients are naturally replenished back into the soil. (Nourished grapes make better tasting wine!)

Even though Quivira is no longer Demeter-certified Biodynamic (a guarantee for consumers that products come from biodynamic agriculture), they still employ most of the same soil practices. “We no longer pack and bury cow horns nor pursue the more ‘mystical’ techniques just to check a box,” Chappelle clarifies. “We’ve retained what we’ve found to work over a ten-year period of being certified Biodynamic, and now hang our hat on CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) certification.” With a rigorous composting and cover crop rotation program specifically designed for each vineyard block, soil and plant

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analysis is paramount. “In short, we practice our own personal hybrid of Biodynamic and organic farming that we’ve developed and honed over the last twenty-three years,” shares Chappelle.

And this experience has led to some delicious wines—Quivira Vineyards is a leading producer of Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc, and Rhone varietals. In 2019, Quivira even appeared #31 on Wine Spectator’s list of Top 100 Wines of the World and secured #26 in 2020 with its Fig Tree Sauvignon Blanc, and #31 in 2019 with its Alder Grove Sauvignon Blanc.“Quivira is most famous for Sauvignon Blanc,” Chappelle notes, “and we might be so bold as to say nobody in California is currently making it better.” The Zinfandels are a classic, old-school, claret-style that

age beautifully, while the Southern Rhone red(s) comprise a unique portfolio based around Grenache.

“For the connoisseur, my top picks would be our Queue Collection Sauvignon Blanc fermented and aged exclusively in Acacia wood puncheons, our Anderson Ranch Zinfandel, and our distinctive and age-worthy GSM (Grenache-SyranMourvedre),” Chappelle offers. If you’re newer to wine, Hugh suggests a tasting beginning with Quivira’s Fig Tree Sauvignon Blanc to sample the extraordinary offerings of a Dry Creek Sauvignon Blanc, and then an elegant Grenache that is crafted like a Pinot Noir. And finally, finishing with the Black Boar Zinfandel will offer an experience of rich opulence with impeccable balance and finesse.

“A typical [tasting] experience is led by one of our highly trained hosts who is intimately familiar with our history, farming practices, and wines, and can adjust the tasting as needed to the interests and knowledge of the groups,” Chappelle explains. “We take great pride in being friendly and non-pretentious, yet at the same time very proud and passionate about our estate, farming practices, and wines.” Education is a key theme in Quivira tastings, and the information is presented in a fun and interactive way where facts are never simply recited to guests. It’s Quivira’s goal that guests leave the vineyard having learned something while discovering a new wine that they had previously never tried.

If you were hoping to visit Quivira, see their sustainability in action, and taste some delectable wines, you’re in luck. ‘We embrace the European version/idea of agrotourism and how it emphasizes all the connections that agriculture has to the community,’ says Chappelle. ‘As we get more detached from the land that sustains and nourishes us, agrotourism strives to re-establish that connection’.

In crafting all the wines at Quivira, Hugh uses a light touch with the raw materials. Though this may sound like a hands-off approach, it is far from it. Rather, any manipulation is intentionally and thoughtfully minimized to only those operations the wine truly needs. In fact, this method requires even more engagement through more frequent observation and tasting to know when to intervene. Hugh and Quivira also take great pride in the fact that all their wines are very low in sulfites—an additive of increasing concern for consumers. “For a

CCOF-certified organic wine, the upper limit is one hundred parts per million,” Chappelle clarifies. “All our estate wines routinely go into bottle at approximately half of that—fifty to fifty-five parts per million. They are fresh, clean, and built to reward significant further aging.”

If you were hoping to visit Quivira, see their sustainability in action, and taste some delectable wines, you’re in luck. “We embrace the European version/idea of agrotourism and how it emphasizes all the connections that agriculture has to the community,” says Chappelle. “As we get more detached from the land that sustains and nourishes us, agrotourism strives to re-establish that connection.”

Currently, Quivira offers tasting experiences, and over this secondhalf of 2023, they plan to re-start estate tours, both self-guided and staff-led. “Over time, we plan to add on-site and off-site vineyard tours which will dive deep into the geology

and terroir of our vineyard holdings as well as our farming practices,” Hugh states. And, for the hungry visitors, Quivira is currently investing heavily in their commercial kitchen and gearing up to expand estate culinary offerings including food and wine pairings, estate food products, and more regular food-wine events at the winery.

From creek to vineyard, garden to kitchen, and grape to bottle, Quivira Vineyards lives up to the standard they set for themselves of making intentional wines the natural way.

Biodiversity, ecological restoration, renewable energy, and a selfsustaining ecosystem all contribute to clean grape growing. And while it may not lead to immortality, the wine at Quivira Vineyards is unforgettably delicious.

ymore info: www.ecofarmfinder.com/quivira-vineyards

Hugh develops complexity in the wines by using a short list of techniques: blending, co-fermentation, phased harvesting, and oak and acacia wood barrel aging. www.thegrandreturn.com

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RestorING Health Through Regenerative Agriculture with Plant-Based Chef and Farmer, Mollie Engelhart Interview by Ty Johnson | Introduction by Ainsley Schoppel Having grown up on a twenty-seven acre organic farm in upstate New York, it’s no wonder that plant-based chef Mollie Engelhart has returned to farming in a big way.

After graduating from the CalArts film program, Mollie initially began her career in entertainment with Sony Music. She founded Majestic Studios, became a spoken-word recording artist, appeared on the HBO series, Def Poetry Jam, and featured in Sp!t—a groundbreaking documentary. But even with these accomplishments, Mollie felt her past pushing her in a compelling new direction.

Inspired by her upbringing and values of healthand-wellness-through-food, Mollie opened vegan restaurants KindKreme and Sage—the latter of which now has four locations in Southern California. Mollie also produced May I Be Frank, a documentary highlighting the bevy of transformations that are possible with healthy eating and positive thinking.

In spite of her success in the competitive food

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industry, Mollie realized she had become apathetic to the true environmental issues facing our planet, and the solutions they so desperately need. “I can remember exactly where I was,” Mollie recalls. “I was standing in my driveway in my little suburban neighborhood thinking I was doing all the things I should be doing to help the planet—I had a hybrid car, used my own reusable bags at the grocery store, ran a vegan restaurant, and sipped on oat milk lattes—and it hit me: I had become apathetic.” So, Mollie and her husband, Chef Elias Sosa, bought Sow a Heart farm and moved their family to live with the land. Sow a Heart—a regenerative farm committed to drawing more carbon out of the atmosphere than it puts in—now grows a variety of fruits and vegetables including citrus fruits, avocados, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapenos, kale, swiss chard, cabbage, and peppers. And to close the loop, all food waste from Mollie’s restaurants is returned to the farm, composted into soil, and used to nurture the next round of crops.

Now a part of Farmers Footprint—a coalition of farmers, educators, doctors, scientists, and business leaders aiming to expose the human and environmental impacts of chemical farming—Mollie is working with like-minded individuals to find a path forward through regenerative agricultural practices.

She also sits on the board of Kiss the Ground—a nonprofit that is raising awareness of regenerative agriculture as a viable solution to combat the climate, water, and health crisis—and contributed to their eponymous documentary and upcoming sequel, Common Ground.

With unparalleled experience and passion, Face the Current was thrilled to speak with Mollie about the importance of regenerative agriculture, our need for more small-scale farms, and why we must look at soil-health as a critical tool to redirect societal health.

Sow a Heart Farm was “built on love”! Why is the farm a perfect place to raise your family?

I believe soil health is profoundly connected to human health in both our immune systems and mental health. When you look at microbiology in soil and in the human gut, there is almost a seventypercent overlap, so it’s obvious that we were meant to live with healthy soil. There’s lots of new evidence that shows that mental health is linked with soil health. These are the reasons why I think it’s important to raise a family on a farm and be immersed in nature. www.thegrandreturn.com

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Regenerative agriculture is one of the most important pathways forward if not the most important pathway forward, as nothing can thrive in a sterile environment. We must reremember that our connection to nature is fundamental to the survival of the species. Not in a climate-change-fearmongering way, but in actuality we are meant to eat the food of the earth.

Can you give us deeper insight into your journey and evolution as a land steward? Was there a specific point, or an “a-ha moment”, when you realized how land stewardship could change today’s world?

In 2013 I watched a Graeme Sait TedTalk and I realized that regenerative agriculture was a powerful tool, and that most of what I’ve been taught about being an environmentalist was greenwashing.

The real work that needed to be done was humans working with nature and it was a misconception that humans were the problem. It’s

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our job to be the apex species and be the solution. I then spent years trying to acquire land and in 2018 I finally did!

Can you give us a bit more perspective on regenerative agriculture’s potential role in shaping an abundant future for coming generations?

Regenerative agriculture is one of the most important pathways forward if not the most important pathway forward, as nothing can thrive in a sterile environment.

We must re-remember that our connection to nature is fundamental

to the survival of the species. Not in a climate-change-fear-mongering way, but in actuality we are meant to eat the food of the earth. Healthy water and healthy soil equals healthy food and healthy humans.

Many environmentalists think we should move into cities and rewild much of the land. I think we need more custodians of Earth; taking on human health and soil health as fundamentally important for the future of the planet. I believe we need more farmers, not less, and more people giving their life to the earth.

The beginning of the end was the industrial revolution where people

I believe we need more farmers, not less, and more people giving their life to the earth. The beginning of the end was the industrial revolution where people left the family farm and moved to the city. We must go back to the earth. The thing about regenerative farming is that it takes more labor, so we need more small farms, more family farms, and more people seeing soil as common ground.

left the family farm and moved to the city. We must go back to the earth.

The thing about regenerative farming is that it takes more labor, so we need more small farms, more family farms, and more people seeing soil as common ground.

You mention being inspired by a desire to cultivate new ways of thinking about our food. When we see food as sacred, how does this change the way we interact with our environment?

When we take a moment to remember that we are all a part of the whole that is God and that we

are not outside of it, then everything is sacred. And the lie is that humanity is the problem on the planet. The truth is our disconnection from knowing our place is the problem. In all that I do, I hope to inspire people to re-remember that they are a part of the whole that is God. From that context, humanity will choose to operate in alignment with Mother Nature, enhancing her power and not taking away from it.

With so much of the food industry controlled by large factory-based operations, it is becoming increasingly important to #knowyourfarmer.

What are some benefits of knowing your farmer and the ways in which your food is grown/produced?

My trust in the government and bureaucratic institutions related to the government is waning. I don’t think the answer is “certified organic” or “USDA approved”. I think that the answer is living in community, supporting your community with what your endeavors are, and trusting each other. The only way this works for a “re-imagined” future is that we learn to trust each other. Even having a farm is cost prohibitive for most people, but if we can learn www.thegrandreturn.com

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to come together and trust each other, we could have a much more powerful relationship to our food and each other. I don’t know that we need bureaucratic and government agencies letting us know what we can and cannot trust. We have to learn to trust each other, find our tribe and be the ones we’ve been waiting for.

What does farm-to-table food mean to you?

Farm-to-table means that there’s no middleman or aggregator between the chef and the farmer. One hundred percent of the invoice that the restaurant pays goes to the farm.

Why do you and your family choose to consume a plantbased diet, and what are the benefits?

I do not believe that there is one diet for everyone. I do not believe that I can answer that question authentically. For me, I eat a vegetarian diet and it feels good for me. But my husband eats mostly vegetables and meat and that’s what feels good to him. The diet is not the

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answer. The benefit is eating whole foods in the form that God gave them to us from healthy soil. If you listen to your body and eat the foods your body desires in their whole form, the benefits will be that you are supporting your body. With all these diets such as vegan, paleo, glutenfree, keto—I don’t believe there’s one prescription for everybody. The answer is to take the toxins out of your environment and stop eating processed foods. “What” you’re eating is less important than “how” you’re eating.You want to eat clean, whole, and of the earth—the way you imagine it growing when you see the word, not refined into something that no longer resembles what it was.

From both the micro and macro perspectives, how important is soil health?

In my opinion, there’s almost nothing more important on the planet. From the human-health perspective, the environmental-health perspective, and the animal-health perspective, there’s nothing more important than soil. If I could make every person I know be

committed to soil health, I would. But since we can’t force other people, I can just choose to give my life to soil health and hope that it inspires others.

The relationship between humans and our natural world has been mentioned again and again throughout time. How can we appreciate and preserve life through our relationship with food and land, and why should everyone care?

I’m not sure that everybody needs to care. We can see that people don’t care. People value convenience over anything else, but it’s important for some people to lead the charge. Unfortunately, the current “environmentalists” are pushing an agenda that actually has nothing to do with cleaning up our environment and everything to do with the green industrial conflicts, selling of electric cars, solar panels, and other ways that governments can monetize the fear around the environment. I hope that enough of us learn to care about the actual environment and not fear

With all these diets such as vegan, paleo, gluten-free, keto—I don’t believe there’s one prescription for everybody. The answer is to take the toxins out of your environment and stop eating processed foods.

“What” you’re eating is less important than “how” you’re eating.

mongering and climate change.

In light of the pressures of climate change and population growth, there has never been a more urgent time to develop a sustainable relationship with our land. As a leading voice for the regenerative agriculture movement, do you believe we can unite humanity behind this collective cause?

I must take issue with the question. I don’t think that we are experiencing population growth. I believe we are in a population decline coming very soon. Many scientists speculate that

the average sperm count of a man by 2040 will be zero (Hagai, Levine et al. Temporal Trends in Sperm Count: A Systematic Review and Meta-Regression Analysis of Samples Collected Globally in the 20th and 21st Centuries. National Library of Medicine. March, 2023). If you look around in the developed world, it’s becoming progressively harder for people to procreate.

The question should not be about climate change, uniting humanity, and overpopulation, it should be more about the chemicals in our environment and the mass extinction we are causing by our overuse of these chemicals that are plainly in everything around us. From our

water to our food, cleaning products, hygiene products, pharmaceuticals, furniture, clothing—all are dipped in toxic chemicals that are leading to the inability of humans to procreate.

Regenerative agriculture can sequester carbon in mass quantities, yet we still obsess over carbon as if there’s no solution and ignore the massive amounts of chemicals that are making us infertile, sick, and societally unwell.

ymore info: www.sowaheart.com www.sageveganbistro.com www.ecofarmfinder.com/sow-a-heart-farm www.thegrandreturn.com

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ARK Crystal Increases Coherence

What This Means For Your Health

By Ty Johnson Advanced Resonance Kinetics (ARK) Crystal technology is the product of more than 30 years of research and development. While this particular product is one amazing example of work developed by world renowned physicist Nassim Haramein and his team, the research they’ve conducted is driving the progression of technological applications in some of today’s most critical fields, like personal wellness, agriculture and space exploration. Torus Tech has successfully utilized their Harmonic Flux Resonator (HFR) to indefinitely influence the quantum resonance of Ark Crystals in a way that allows them to retain a consistent vibrational spin engendered by the coherent field dynamic of the HFR. Ark Crystals are designed to restructure molecular alignment at its core, making water more bioavailable for consumption as well as aiding in the achievement of biological coherence. Now, what does this mean in English?!

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Understanding the Science If you ask the team over at Torus Tech, you’ll most likely get an answer like, “The ARK crystal is precision geometric quartz (PGQ), manufactured via hydrothermal synthesis over two and a half years. Each PGQ is then treated by the HFR, modulating it with a specific frequency designed to stimulate the piezoelectric axis of the crystal, coupling the crystal with certain modes of the quantum vacuum fluctuations, and formally classifying it as PGQmem (precision geometric quartz modulated electromagnetically). The ARK Crystal is precision engineered to specifically couple with the structure of the vacuum to harness that energy and allow our bodies to access that

energy, generating greater system coherence, vitality, and well-being.”

Let’s break this down.

Nassim Haramein and his team use crystalline quartz crystals with a tetrahedral molecular geometry matching that of the water molecule and the fundamental geometry of the quantum field. This allows for structural synchronicity or resonance to occur in a systematic way. Torus Tech points out, “It is perhaps no coincidence that 90% of the Earth’s crust is silica (such as quartz), and 71% of the surface is water. The dynamic energetic interaction of these two substances comprising most of the surface is one reason Earth is such a hospitable place for life to thrive.” The geological composition of our home planet not

only creates an energetic haven for humans to live, it also generates a unique access point into the unified space memory network and quantum field.

Water is able to express itself through a vast variety of beautiful life forms here on Earth, largely in part due to the composition of our planet.

We can thank the makeup of Earth, and its silica crust, for providing water with the right resources to act in a highly intelligent manner. Silica crystals become even more adept at increasing the information storing ability of water when they are treated with Torus Tech’s HFR. “The HFR, inside of a copper isolation chamber, produces a spinning superfluid plasma via a www.thegrandreturn.com

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rapidly rotating magnetic field (with a double torus topology),” shares Haramein’s team. Nassim and the team at Torus Tech have engineered the HFR to couple their silica ARK Crystals with a vibrational spin, naturally occurring in the quantum vacuum. As a result, these electromagnetically modulated crystals have an extremely impactful effect on one of our most important resources, water.

You might be thinking, “How can my water be smarter?” By coupling ARK Crystals with the vibrational fluctuations of the quantum vacuum, the crystals are able to serve as an access point into the spacememory network and the information stored in the quantum field. When water becomes potentiated (or structured) its capacity to hold information and energy increases, making it more bioavailable to plants.

Restructuring Water

Higher crop yields, increased nutrient density and decreased water consumption are some of the benefits that can be seen from an agricultural perspective. Biological systems respond drastically to their environment. The energy and quality levels of a plant’s water can be one of the most important determinants of overall success.

When water interacts with the harmonic resonance of an ARK Crystal, it gains a stronger point of access into the spacememory network, and restructures itself to store more energy/information. This highly intelligent (coherent) water is increasingly bioavailable to plants.

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Empirical investigations have already demonstrated major benefits to the biological system from the ARK crystal.

More specifically, a series of experiments on plant biology have and continue to be performed as an effort to validate the “modulatory ordering effects” (potentiation or improvement) of water when exposed to the ARK crystal. The team has produced both plant specimens and water samples displaying differences in several physical properties when compared to the control (plants and water that had not been affected by the ARK Crystal). There are major indications from a personal health standpoint, as water makes up a tremendous amount of the human composition.

Personal Wellness Since our bodies are hydrodynamic systems, wearing the ARK crystal is designed to increase connection with the vital energy of the quantum vacuum. With an increased ‘bandwidth’ to process the information stored in the unified spacememory network, the water inside of us is able to function on a more coherent axis. Highly structured water is easily absorbed by the cell, allowing for efficient and effective transportation of nutrients and waste through the body. ARK crystals come with a wearable pendant accessory, and they look pretty rad, too!

A Word from the Expert Our team spoke with biophysicist

William Brown of Torus Tech and the International Space Federation to get an insider’s take on what sets ARK apart from other wearable technologies out there today. He explains, “The ARK Crystal is the only wearable technology that has been engineered from first-principles science and unified physics to specifically couple with the energy of the quantum vacuum, maintaining a constitutive and indelible connection with the ubiquitous field of information and energy flow.

Utilizing the high precision geometric crystal resonator technology, the ARK Crystal connects with the natural biocrystalline

oscillators of the body via resonance, enabling the body to maintain and increase its own molecular coherence and highly coupled-states.

We believe these high-coherence states of the body are foundational to health and wellness, so maintaining and increasing these states have far-reaching benefits.” The team has taken its roots in theoretical physics into the realm of research and development to advance some of the most important technological implications of our near future.

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Along with personal health benefits, there are many macro scale improvements that could potentially result from the work of Torus Tech and the International Space Federation. Brown let’s us in on what the big deal is all about, “Being able to engineer materials with unique quantum states, like maximal molecular coherence, will enable remarkable technologies like room-temperature superconductors, spintronic memory storage devices, quantum computers, and will enable the understanding of how to boost and strengthen the coherent states of our bodies’ own cellular systems, which is a quintessential feature of health and wellness. These kinds of breakthrough technologies emerge from understanding matter and

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energy at the most fundamental levels, so concordant with being able to engineer and synthesize high coherence molecular systems will come the understanding and the means to engineer spacetime for extracting energy from the vacuum, controlling gravity, and extending healthy life-span. This will change our global civilization to the greatest extent imaginable and will enable humanity to truly thrive and prosper.”

It doesn’t get much more macro than that, well, for us humans anyway!

Curious how one’s personal perspective might shift from years of research into the connected universe through the lens of unified physics and the spacememory network? When asked how life

changes when we view ourselves and the universe from an energetic perspective, Brown unveiled, “When we understand that we are a part of a limitless and ubiquitous field of energy then conceptions of separation and isolation become no longer tenable to hold in one’s mind. It is understood that all things are a part of and connected via a fundamental field of information and energy flow, that there are no separate or isolated systems, and that the universe is an immensely complex network of entangled subsystems evolving unitarily towards higher and higher levels of coherence, integral interconnectedness, and organizational synergy. It is then understood that what you do to the environment and those around you,

you are doing to yourself, so selfless altruism becomes an operational imperative in one’s daily life.” This point of view offers unique insight into the way our understanding of the world shapes our mindset and approach to life.

Backed by the Best Some of the biggest names in ‘Biohacking’ have taken to ARK Crystals, and are loving the experience. Dave Asprey himself, commonly recognized as a pioneer of the field, is one notable fan of Haramein’s work. He often wears his crystal when hosting Bulletproof Podcasts, has done unboxings and even publicly invited Haramein to be a guest on the show! Other

supporters have mentioned an overall increase in their state of wellness, slowing down of emotional responses to people and/or situations and improved mental and physical coherence.

Big Picture Operating on the forefront of modern physics and engineering, Haramein and his team are redefining our world, starting with empty space. When we give empty space the definition of a quantum vacuum (a substantive quantized medium filled with harmonic zero-point energy oscillations). What was once nothingness can now be seen as a vast sea of energetic oscillations.

Even more incredible is the fact

that many physicists believe these oscillations to be the source of all mass, form, and structure in our physical world. There is an entanglement present amongst this quantum energy, so that all of the unified spacememory network is systematically related. It is this unified spacememory network that connects all things, creating coherence, order, and systems intelligence.

ymore info: www.arkcrystals.com www.torustech.com www.spacefed.com www.resonancescience.org www.thegrandreturn.com

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By Ty Johnson

i lluminating Insights: Exploring Life’s

Mysteries with Biophysicist, William Brown In the vast expanse of knowledge that encompasses the fields of biophysics, cosmology, and human evolution, few individuals possess the depth of expertise and visionary outlook as biophysicist William Brown. Renowned for his groundbreaking work at Torus Tech, his contributions to the Resonance Science Foundation, and his affiliation with the International Space Federation, Brown has emerged as a respected authority in the scientific community.

Along with his impressive credentials, Brown has an extraordinarily unique perspective of life; one that transcends the traditional boundaries of scientific inquiry. Driven by a profound belief that every individual is intricately connected to the energetic and informational fabric of the universe, Brown explores the realms where science and spirituality converge. His insights have challenged conventional paradigms and are helping to shed light on the interconnectedness of all things.

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There is the “big picture” application, which is a direct utilization of the ubiquitous energy that permeates all space—what is known as zero-point energy fluctuations of the quantum vacuum. We are in a veritable sea of energy—this substantive nature of space is what causes the Lamb shift and the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron (just to give a few examples). So, we see its very real energetic effects in nature, and the next step now is to develop technology that can shape space in such a way that quantum energy is accessible—this is called spacetime engineering.

Once this limitless, clean energy is accessible by technological means, we can stop and reverse global damage.

Instead of pumping tremendous amounts of waste energy into the biosphere, destabilizing an inherently nonlinear system, we can use our nearly-free energy surplus to remove and sequester excessive waste products from pollution. We will also be able to stop many extractions of resources from many ecosystems and apply the nearly-free surplus energy to restoration. It will fundamentally alter all of human civilization.

As we embark on this intellectual journey, we will explore the true essence of life. Brown envisions individuals as more than just isolated beings, emphasizing participation in a dynamic, universal dance of energy and information. Through his research, he has explored the concept of a unified spacememory network, proposing that our individual experiences and memories are intricately woven into the fabric of the cosmos, creating a “web” of interconnectedness. By exploring Brown’s knowledge and perspectives, we hope to illuminate a deeper understanding of life’s entangled

mysteries.

From your perspective, as someone who is on the front lines of these groundbreaking studies and technologies, what do you perceive as the actions we can/should collectively take to optimize the energy and space that we live in? In other words, how do you envision the knowledge/information you’ve discovered being optimally incorporated into daily lives and/or local/global systems in an effort to improve individual experience(s) and/or planetary health?

Can the unified spacememory network explain how telepathic communication may be possible (if two or more people are simultaneously accessing or processing the same bit of info, or even if one individual releases information into the universal field which is then received by the other)? Perhaps certain thoughts are sending specific signals, and with practice, individuals can focus their intent/signaling, or even their receptive ability, just like we can practice/train other forms of sensory skills.

Yes, the unified spacememory network does explain how telepathic communication is possible and www.thegrandreturn.com

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There is also the kind of strong correlation (quantum entanglement) that occurs when two individuals are interacting closely and consistently.

Eventually, there will be so much classical and quantum exchange of information between them that the electromagnetic spatiotemporal patterns of their brains will synchronize.

how it is occurring all of the time. In a certain sense, your very mind is functioning via telepathic communication of information, because consciousness is not produced as an epiphenomenon of neuronal activity of the brain. The spatiotemporal electromagnetic activity of the brain is involved in reception and transmission of consciousness/thoughts with the intrinsically quantum entangled network of the Field—what I call the entanglement nexus of awareness.

From this, we know that electromagnetic activity in one person’s localized region will be spatially correlated with other regions of the Field, via the intrinsic quantum entanglement of the zeropoint energy density, and because the energy density is so great that it connects space in the multipleconnected Einstein-Rosen bridge

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network. So, information can be, and is, transmitted nonlocally all of the time.

There is also the kind of strong correlation (quantum entanglement) that occurs when two individuals are interacting closely and consistently.

Eventually, there will be so much classical and quantum exchange of information between them that the electromagnetic spatiotemporal patterns of their brains will synchronize, and their brains will form the same pattern of activity at the same time, such that they transmit/receive the same thought at the same time (this would be an example of strong, direct telepathic communication).

It happens all the time, but usually people are not aware enough to realize it, and because there is such a misconception about the way our

consciousness and minds work, it is disregarded because the presumption is that telepathic communication is not possible or is very rare. In fact, tele-empathic communication was around long before animals developed auditory communication;it is the basal form of communication between organisms.

How do you believe humans can/ will evolve as we understand and develop our relationships with individual and collective energy fields (like the biofield)?

As projects like Elon Musk’s Neuralink are taking a mechanical approach to human evolution, do you have an outlook or opinion on what may still be discovered about the natural evolutionary potential of humans, and how this path might be affected by mechanical interference? Further, just like

mercury fillings were an instant fix for cavities and were then linked to long term poisoning, could there be negative effects linked to the use of such invasive technologies/implants such as Neuralink, or even an opportunity cost of missing out on natural evolutionary advances of the brain no longer necessary due to changes made?

Humanity has a choice on which direction it wants to go with consciousness interface technologies and//or brain-machine interface technologies. Historically, humanity has not used any guiding principles or forethought in the development and implementation of technology, and controlling interests often choose options that promote centralized control and detrimental outcomes. A good example of this is the development of electrical energy transmission in the early 20th century. Electrical energy can be transmitted wirelessly (the discovery of electromagnetic waves in the late 1880s by Heinrich Hertz was via the wireless transmission of electrical power of distance). Nikola Tesla was building long-distance wireless energy transmission infrastructure. However, controlling special-interest groups realized that it would be much more beneficial to their narrow personal interests to sequester electrical energy distribution to wired transmission, and thus the entire countryside was strung up with wires.

Now, we have another opportunity to make a choice: do we want to go wireless, or start plugging wires into our brains?

We can develop consciousness interface technologies that work via the nonlocal quantum entanglement of the unified spacememory network—a much more natural form

of connectivity—in which connection to external devices is voluntary, intentional, and temporary. Or, we can choose invasive technologies that hardwire our brains and bodies. The latter option will significantly impede and reduce the full natural capabilities of our bodies, which are much greater than any technology we currently understand.

Making humans more machinelike is not an evolutionary advancement, but a severe restriction on what we are capable of evolving into.

There are some applications for brain-machine interface technologies.

For example, to restore mobility to paraplegics. However, even in that case/scenario, the benefits of direct hardwiring, like Elon’s Neuralink, are fleeting. There are already much better methodologies that are based on knowledge of how the brain and neuromuscular system actually work (via spatiotemporal electromagnetic patterns that are in feedback-feedforward circuits with discretized synaptic activity),versus the erroneous model of brain-as-computer, which is what Elon’s Neuralink predicated on (I presume he is an adherent of the neurocomputational model).

ymore info: www.novosciences.org www.resonancescience.org www.arkcrystals.com www.torustech.com www.spacefed.com www.thegrandreturn.com

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Ancient Wisdom for the Modern World Lessons in Harmonious Living

By Patricia Awyan Lehman

The ancients of Khemit—Egypt— understood that everything that we perceive originated from nothing or no-thing within the infinite potentials of the primordial waters of Nun. All experience is an illusion of consciousness experiencing itself through the perception of the expression of individuated aspects of itself.

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This deep knowing is expressed within the myths and legends of the pantheon of Egyptian Neteru (gods and goddesses) that ultimately portray a vast knowledge about the energetic structure of our cosmos and its universal laws. They were never intended to be perceived as gods as we understand the term today— they were meant

to be symbolic representations of impersonal principles operating throughout our perceived universe.

The Neteru were not static or linear principles, rather they were understood to be in constant transformation as they migrated through our perceptions of time and space.

Everything presented symbolically in ancient Khemit had at least seven different levels available for interpretation, depending on the observer’s level of awareness. These are the different lenses through which anyone can perceive reality. For example, if you perceive the world through your base chakra, you will see a world perceived as physical matter expressing through linear patterns of time. However, the alchemists who undertook years of discipline and secret ritual would also see at least seven layers of time and space bending and folding in cyclical patterns of perception. These levels can be associated with the Chak-Ras or inner suns. The goal is to bring the levels into harmonic resonance within the self, in order to achieve a greater depth of wisdom to navigate that which is experienced without.

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The ancients also had a higher awareness of and a deeper connection to nature. They had a much greater sensitivity to the patterns of its natural flow, and the underlying principles that govern the universe. They knew how to build their structures in resonance with the patterns of this flow, and harness these currents to enhance their agricultural processes as well as their own health and levels of consciousness.

Everything presented symbolically in ancient Khemit had at least seven different levels available for interpretation, depending on the observer’s level of awareness. These are the different lenses through which anyone can perceive reality.

For example, if you perceive the world through your base chakra, you will see a world perceived as physical matter expressing through linear patterns of time. However, the alchemists who undertook years of discipline and secret ritual would also see at least seven layers of time and space bending and folding in cyclical patterns of perception. These levels can be associated with the Chak-Ras or inner suns. The goal is to bring the levels into harmonic resonance within the self, in order to achieve a greater depth of wisdom to navigate that which is experienced without.

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Divinity was expressed to ancient Egyptians as the Neteru, whose mythologies provide universal knowledge of who we are and the ways in which we perceive reality through our physical senses. Their myths and imagery contain profound coded symbols that reflect many levels and depths of interpretation. It was the Hanuti, or priests of Amun, who later manipulated the retelling of the ancient stories to promote their own political agendas. Naturally, this occurs as humanity’s level of consciousness devolves through natural cycles. We begin to identify ourselves as our individual bodies, and lose our sense of connectedness to our outer world. In doing so, we make ourselves susceptible to agendas that instill fear and anger.

The ancients also had a higher awareness of and a deeper

connection to nature. They had a much greater sensitivity to the patterns of its natural flow, and the underlying principles that govern the universe. They knew how to build their structures in resonance with the patterns of this flow, and harness these currents to enhance their agricultural processes as well as their own health and levels of consciousness.

Once understood, this ancient knowledge is capable of generating an extraordinary shift in our perception of ourselves and our relationship to the rest of the universe. Our entire concept of what reality is would be shattered.

How did we stray so far from this innate knowing? How can a finite mind understand infinity?

When we grasp the concept of

It was understood that the cyclical flow of life was infinite, as reflected in the cycles of nature.

Their term for death was “westing”, likened to the path of the sun as it rises and sets, only to rise again and again.

nonlinearity, we open the gate to the infinite possibilities of the eternal heart-driven mind. When we can envision the symphony and dance of light, sound, color and shape that combine to award us the gift of life, we can become the magicians that weave these vibrations into exquisite living tapestries. In thinking of this higher concept of spirituality, it is important to note that it is not the same as religion. There is no word for religion before modern times, because the concept simply did not exist. Our concept of religion was created to control and tax the general public when people gathered together at the beginning of civilization. Indigenous knowledgeholder Abd’el Hakim Awyan taught that this systemization began in Egypt with the priests of Amun, whom he labeled as the Hanut. He

taught that the Hanut, known as “the undertakers”, controlled the people through the manipulation of their “KA”—their vital physical sense or “lifeforce”. Our modern phrase “in cahoots”—colluding or conspiring in secret—is most likely derived from the ancient Egyptian KA-Hanut. These priests also introduced the concept of a physical death and judgment.

Prior to this time, it was understood that the cyclical flow of life was infinite, as reflected in the cycles of nature. Their term for death was “westing”, likened to the path of the sun as it rises and sets, only to rise again and again.

The Hanut preached about judgment, proclaiming that the deceased’s heart would be weighed against a feather. If heavier than the feather, the deceased would be eaten by Ammit, the beastly “devourer of the dead”, and lost

forever. Even today, there remains the understanding that a heart without regrets—or being light-hearted—is beneficial for overall well-being.

The teachings of death and divine judgment are impactful in any childhood as they initiate control and spark fear through the introduction of agendas. The Hanut developed a system of separation and created boundaries within the temple structures and political organizations based on a tiered hierarchy. Prior to this, individuals shared the right to enter all areas of the temples to explore their relationship with the divine. Spirituality had once been enjoyed as a personal connection to the infinite fluidity of our environment on Earth and in the heavens above—the archetypal forces of nature that they called Neteru. www.thegrandreturn.com

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People are awakening globally, demanding their basic human rights be returned to them, and discovering their truths for themselves.

Everything outside ourselves is an illusion, and the golden chalice can only be found within.

When we transmute our fear and anger, we begin to rediscover senses and abilities we forgot we had. We step into our power with wisdom that maintains inner balance and vibrant health.

Understanding the significance of each Neter within the pantheon of ancient Egyptian Neteru can enrich our awareness and invoke the spirit of the universal force of nature that they represent.

Everything we sense as experience is a holographic reflection of what exists in the “space in between” our perception of physical form in this polarized, interactive expression of consciousness in a three-dimensional reality. The Neteru provide a map to understand the way in which consciousness experiences itself and unfolds in a great cosmic breath of perceived life.

As we enter into a new age of awareness, it may be time to question our core beliefs; our perception of reality, including everything we’ve

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been told as fact about who we are, where we have been, and where we are going.

Opening our hearts to our unlimited potentials and possibilities can release us from the prison of labels and programs that limit our thoughts in the matrix of our minds.

It is the exhalation and inhalation of self that marks our own Hero’s Journey into and out of separation consciousness. As individual aspects of one heart, we all long for the complete freedom to express ourselves and to return home to experience ultimate bliss within the unified heart of consciousness.

The indigenous elders of our world are in agreement that we are very rapidly moving out of a Dark

Age of conscious awareness and entering into another Golden Age of enlightenment. As the sun creeps up over the eastern horizon, it is shedding light in many areas where shadows once prevailed. The ancient Egyptians referred to this stage or age as Kheper, “the new dawn”, and it was symbolized by the winged scarab. People are awakening globally, demanding their basic human rights be returned to them, and discovering their truths for themselves.

Everything outside ourselves is an illusion, and the golden chalice can only be found within. When we transmute our fear and anger, we begin to rediscover senses and abilities we forgot we had. We step into our power with wisdom that maintains inner balance and vibrant health.

The incredible achievements of the ancient Egyptians have elicited speculation and inspired numerous theories. Much has been written to address the perfection of the Great Pyramids’ sacred geometric structural form and alignments on Earth and in the heavens. As a Hall of

Records, it contains universal codes and secrets, including large stone statues that are brilliantly crafted in almost perfect symmetry, appearing to be alive. How did the Ancient Egyptians quarry, transport, and erect blocks of stone weighing upwards of two hundred tons? When viewed from our

understanding of modern building practices, they are often considered to be impossible feats for human beings of that time to achieve. In fact, many people throughout history have chosen to believe that aliens or living gods fashioned the pyramids. www.thegrandreturn.com

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In a broader sense, much of humanity’s focus began to narrow with the advent of the written language, accelerated by the invention of the Gutenberg printing press.

Nature’s classroom was replaced by books and newspapers, and eventually televisions and computers. Our focus continues to narrow more readily today as we are mesmerized by our mobile phones, social media, and video games.

We are hypnotized by our electronic gadgets; travel and live in synthetic structures; overindulge in synthetic food and drinks; and treat the diseases these activities create with synthetic medicines. Our social culture has encouraged us to believe that this is the desired good life that will make us happy.

Perhaps we were the living gods?

Hakim was adamant in his belief that it was the ancient Egyptians who achieved these great physical wonders, because they had access to many more senses than we have today. They had a deep connection to nature, and recognized and felt its inherent currents. They knew how to harness these currents with implosive technologies that were in sync with the natural flow of environmental elements, thus creating a harmonic resonance that enhanced their wellbeing.

Our current explosive building technologies damage the earth along with its living organisms. How did we lose this ancient wisdom? How did our perception of reality transform?

Many experts note that the dominant hemisphere in our brains has slowly shifted from an intuitive, artistic and emotional right-brained perspective

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to an analytical, rational, and intellectual left-brained perspective.

As a result, we often do not even see what’s in front of our eyes.

“Inattention Blindness” research by psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons corroborates this and is featured in the 2010 book, The Invisible Gorilla. In the video of the experiment, six subjects passed a basketball and we were challenged to count the number of passes. Many subjects discovered they were so focused on counting that they failed to spot a person in a gorilla suit stroll through the experiment room, thump his chest, and walk off. This phenomenon is called “inattention blindness”, and many of us regularly experience it in our daily lives. When we focus so intently on the road in front of us, we often lose sight of and appreciation for the beautiful scenery that surrounds us.

However, a life that is lived out of harmony with universal laws will only weaken and destroy us and the environment we inhabit. We are kept in survival mode with fear-inducing agendas on our economic and global future. In addition to nondestructive forms of free energy, there are suppressed and/or forgotten ancient agricultural technologies that can provide enough abundance to feed and clothe every one of us. And yet, what if everything we think we are experiencing is an illusion of our own creation? Traditional science has focused its theories and research on a universal reality that is driven by matter. It all too often neglects to take into account that which exists in the “space in between” matter. Energy, light, and waveform are described as changes in terms that relate to matter as we view it in this current moment. What if our perception of matter transforms due to perceptual changes in our conscious awareness? In our quantum world, nothing can be accomplished without the approval of a very connected mass consciousness. When we accept ideas into our thought patterns,

Our threedimensional physical bodies receive signals through our senses, such as touch, sight, smell, and sound, which our brains interpret into information. This information can be stored and passed down in our DNA for centuries, and then activated through our experiences with many different types of symbols including written language, mathematics, sacred geometry, sounds, fragrance, and architecture.

even on a casual level, we allow for new possibilities to exist. We are bombarded by entertainment and fabricated news stories that are designed to frighten and corral us into mindsets that hold us hostage within their control mechanisms.

More importantly, the emotion of fear itself can immobilize and weaken us until we become completely ineffectual and destructive to ourselves and others. Where are you placing your attention?

Our three-dimensional physical bodies receive signals through our senses, such as touch, sight, smell, and sound, which our brains interpret into information. This information can be stored and passed down in our DNA for centuries, and then activated through our experiences with many different

types of symbols including written language, mathematics, sacred geometry, sounds, fragrance, and architecture. According to Hakim, we have additional senses that can be activated as we interact with powerful ancient sites. As we awaken these senses, we can also interact with the Akashic realm—an incredible universal field or matrix of infinite wisdom and knowledge.

When you understand the nature of consciousness and the universal mind, you will begin to realize the importance of where we focus our attention. Raising your level of awareness and opening your scope of vision will enable you to see and feel your own inner truths. Empowerment, peace, compassion, and positive expressions of love come as a result

of being in resonance with your natural environment. When we can transmute our inner polarity and utilize both hemispheres of our brain, marrying spirituality and science, we can begin to feel and trust in a universal energy that can be harnessed to maintain peace and prosperity.

This innate knowing comes from a direct connection to all that exists—a unity consciousness. This is what the ancients knew, and they left many clues to find this inner balance for ourselves. It all starts with a deeper observance of the laws and flow of our natural world, so take your first steps and begin.

ymore info:

www.thegrandreturn.com/team/patricia-awyan www.thegrandreturn.com

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CELEBRATING SELF-EXPRESSION THROUGH THE FUSION OF YOGA AND DANCE WITH OKURUT GEORGE By ty johnson

In this captivating interview with Okurut George, we get a glimpse into his experience and identity—one that is forged in the realms of yoga and dance. With more than a decade of practice, George dedicates much of his time to teaching the youth in his local community of Uganda.

George works with hundreds of kids, developing the mindset and skills to maintain inner peace. He has choreographed amazing children’s dance performances in partnership with Mission Uganda and other similarly aligned organizations. Dance

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and yoga are a core part of George’s identity, and he loves to share these incredible forms of self-expression with others.

Throughout this discussion, we delve into the power of self-expression, channeled through yoga and dance.

George shares his personal journey and highlights the transformative role these disciplines have played in his life and the lives of those he’s inspired.

We cover the wider implications of self-expression through yoga and dance, exploring how these practices

can foster inclusivity, build community, and transcend language and cultural barriers, enabling individuals from diverse backgrounds to connect and understand one another on a profoundly human level.

As we embark on this enlightening conversation with George, we explore the deep impact that yoga and dance can have on individuals and communities, and reveal the unspoken language of the heart and soul.

Can you tell us a little more about your personal journey, and what led you to discover dance and yoga?

My journey started with breakdancing in 2012 during my ordinary level vacation in Kampala. It’s from here that I started moving out and got some skills in breakdance. When the time came for me to return to school for advanced level of studies, my luck ran out; I could not further my education because my family didn’t have the money.

I branched off and opted to pursue a vocation skill training program at Kalongo Technical Institute where I attained certification in brick laying and concrete practice (BCP) Craft 1.

This would imply enrolling for craft II level certification but still the issue of money stood in my way. I resorted to petty onsite construction work as a builder and/or porter on a perday wage list. While I enjoyed my job

and forecasted a better future, I felt abused at times because of the long hours of work and two dollars per day (about ten-twelve dollars per week).

I pondered on my life and livelihood.

Being born in the turbulent times of LRA rebellion, I had lost some of my childhood friends to abduction and/ or death. My mum brought us to live in Kampala and tried to find a way to survive. I did odd jobs until I landed on a group of youth in their evening moments engaged in dance. I loved it and knew I could blend with it. The first week was a huddle as I tried to practice with them but as time went on, I started enjoying it. I realized it kept me busy and preoccupied, with fewer thoughts on my mind. It’s from here that I truly started enjoying my dance moves. Being a little naïve, I did not know that I experienced depression and anxiety at times, but through dance I overcame it.

While in Jinja, I reconnected with my dad who was never comfortable with my need to dance. He thought I hadn’t attained skills that would help me make ends meet, and according to him, I spent a lot of useless time on dance. I was on and off the streets till I made the decision to come settle with my mum back in Kampala. It’s from here that I discovered yoga.

As luck would have it, I met Biibo Tag who helped mentor me in yoga.

I also met a Swedish lady working on her documentary film in Kitgum that had some background in Lindy Hop. Knowing that I loved yoga, she told me she was going to give me something that would change my life.

She showed me a video of Frankie Manning, a famous African American Lindy Hop dancer and a video about Herräng Dance Camp, a Lindy Hop Event in a very small village called Herräng in Sweden.

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How has this outlet of selfexpression improved your personal health and well-being?

First of all, I had a car accident when I was young. Through yoga training, I managed to align my body while releasing the impact of stress caused by the traumatic experience. Through dance, I have been able to express my innermost feelings and gain confidence. The most visible impact of my expression through this art and the community around me has been the continued support I got that has enabled a number of children to get the opportunity to go back to school. Many children have earned a future and have reasons to dance more because they have hope for an education.

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In my community, many know me as a yoga teacher and refer to me as Musomesa—a local dialect word that means “teacher”. I urge those who look up to me to be self-disciplined and respect all people around them regardless of their background. I choose to be myself and to never pretend. Positive attitudes and strong minds give us a reason to rise even more.

Can you describe how it feels to possess such powerful tools as dance and yoga, and to enjoy the gift of sharing them with others?

Dance and yoga is part of me and that is what I am known for. When I am dancing or doing yoga it gives me happiness and I feel complete. And even through dance, I feel happier in

my community because I have seen a united force of people working for a common good.

I can attest to the fact that an outreach to a group of mothers helped them know more about their body, health, and well-being through yoga.

From the experience and feedback I got from working with various women’s groups, I realized there were other souls out there that needed healing, so I started working inside prison services. It was my ultimate goal to help them battle any aspect of depression, stress, and anxiety through yoga.

Finding stillness in motion is truly an art. How do you

teach youth in environments sometimes perceived as negative (like child prisons and war-torn regions) to hold hope in peace and love?

Children in all these communities have experienced at least one form of violence that has exposed them to trauma. In slums and prison, it’s even worse and support services are seriously lacking. In my outreach camps, I teach them how to refocus their lives while taking a deep breath. Breathing is so natural and heartwarming, I did the same in my troubled times and using my lived experience, many have found their pathway to recovery. While Covid-19 took a toll on the entire world, in the slums of Nsambya, located in the outskirt of Kampala city, many

families carried the burden of dealing with the virus; they did not know what to do given children remained at home. My yoga training session came in handy as a formal way of teaching children about basic survival tactics using dance as a pathway to recovery and happy living.

With my knowledge and my friends, we brought all the children together under the Heart of Dance African Rhythms dance group. Two hundred children in the last three have gained so much knowledge about themselves and how they can love each other. The community came closer together, and now fifty children have gotten scholarships to further their studies. With this, their dreams, professional goals, and aspirations are close at heart.

Inspired by our actions, many parents/guardians are now freely sending in their children to help transform their lifelong dreams. I am so happy that they can now hold hope in peace and love coming from our meditation and yoga sessions— especially my deliberate lessons on how to find inner and outer peace.

Are there any specific examples when you’ve experienced the kindling of a flame, or have been inspired by your students? How does this make you feel?

The time when I felt the flame burning in me was at the peak of Covid when I went on a dancing spree with the children. While the world had come to a standstill, we held the children together in the www.thegrandreturn.com

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slums to retain their peace as a community through dance and yoga.

In the subsequent month, I got a call from the American embassy and they wanted me to make a choreography with my children to perform Lindy Hop and hip hop for the celebration of two hundred and forty-five years of independence. They gave me all the songs and I had four weeks to do four songs, but, due to Covid regulations, they reduced the time from four weeks to one and half

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weeks. That was a bit challenging, but my students inspired me!

As the New Encyclopedia beautifully explains, “In Africa, dance is a means of marking life experiences, encouraging abundant crops, honoring kings and queens, celebrating weddings, marking rites of passage, and other ceremonial occasions. Dance is also done purely for enjoyment. Ritual

dance, including many dances utilizing masks, is a way of achieving communication with the gods.” Can you elaborate on the important role of dance from your own personal experiences?

In my own experience, dance is self-expression. In my tribe, we have over sixteen dances: Larakaraka, a courtship dance; Otole, a war dance; and Bwola, a dance for royals, for

example. It’s an expression and mode of communication that units masses regardless of age, sex, and religion.

As a warrior of peace and love, how do you approach each and every day?

I look at peace and love from a different angle. A human being is a single unit in society and the world.

To approach peace in my everyday life situation, I have always thought of finding “inner peace” as part of my wider role and responsibility in society. Making peace with yourself simply means respecting the peace and spaces of other people. It might be tough, but with meditation, you will always win. Think before you act and your day will flow. Every day I make sure I share my love with the children because they are angels. They have innocent souls and with their smiles every day, I can share more joy with other people.

How can communities and people around the world turn to dance as a way to resolve conflicts?

Dance brings everybody together and doesn’t segregate. To me, dance can be one way to solve conflicts, especially in social dancing—we connect to each other.You might dance with someone you might not know, or someone you might hate, but we still connect to each other through the dance. I do believe that everyone knows how to dance but some are just shy and they need to be led to do it. Then we shall have peaceful communities and everyone will be able to face their own fears, be strong, and transform their own lives and communities.

ymore info: FB: george.okurut www.okurutgeorge.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp1IcUXJlck www.thegrandreturn.com

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Redefining the Sport with Resiliency World Champion Rock Climber, Sasha DiGiulian

by Penelope Jean Hayes Professional rock climber Sasha DiGiulian is a World Champion, undefeated Pan American Champion, and three-time U.S. National Champion. Outdoors, DiGiulian is the first North American woman and third woman ever to climb the grade 9a, 5.14d, one of the hardest sport climbs achieved by a female. DiGiulian studied nonfiction writing and business, and graduated from Columbia University in New York City. In addition to climbing, DiGiulian writes a column for Outside Magazine, and she has also been published in National Geographic, Rock and Ice, SELF, Seventeen, and CRAVE. Sasha believes that the power of sport can connect communities and ultimately play a positive role in affecting change in the world we share. She uses her platform for advocacy and conservation efforts to protect public lands, native communities, and the environment, and to promote the importance of eco-tourism and sustainability.

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Some of my best performances in climbing have been when I’ve found that balance between caring a lot about pushing myself, but also letting go, being on the wall and letting my subconscious do the work. That flow state is what we all strive to find in optimal performance.

Your last name (if read and not pronounced) says you gotta, “DiG!” Where did your inner drive and gumption initially come from?

I’ve never heard that before. I love it. I think that my drive from an early age came from being ruthlessly competitive with my older brother, Charlie. He was better than me at just about everything…except climbing.

Climbing provides an interesting dichotomy. On its face, it’s just you and the rock, but it’s also a team sport. It’s about being ultra-present, and yet also meditative; or at least contemplative.The goal is

holding on, yet is it an exercise in letting go?

Yes; some of my best performances in climbing have been when I’ve found that balance between caring a lot about pushing myself, but also letting go, being on the wall and letting my subconscious do the work. That flow state is what we all strive to find in optimal performance. And, climbing is a partner sport as well. When I’m climbing a wall, it’s me and my partner—there’s an immense amount of trust and communication that goes into this dynamic. But then, when I take the lead, it’s me, the rock, and the sequences in front of me.

Letting go is also learned through a different kind of

challenge.You underwent double reconstruction hip surgery, learned to walk again, and to eventually climb again.

Certainly, you are an inspiration.

As a result of this leg of your journey, what is your message to share with others who might be struggling to get back up again?

Taking nine months off of climbing and undergoing five surgeries—two of which were open hip surgeries that were each approximately tenhours long in which my pelvic bone was broken into four separate pieces and then held together by steel screws—was something I had no experience going into. I had never had surgery before, and I had never taken that amount of time www.thegrandreturn.com

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off of climbing in the twenty-plus years that I have been a part of this sport. But, I controlled what I could control, and wavvvvs open to the experience. I knew it was going to be extremely mentally and physically challenging, and I had to be okay with this. But, I also showed up to every physical therapy appointment and did everything my team told me to do in order to catalyze my recovery. I became really clean with my nutrition, and focused my efforts on the variables that I could control in order to maximize the efficacy of my recovery, and reduce my time off from doing what I love. I also leaned into finding new purposes in life, leaned into my support system, and worked on finding kindness to myself in the stillness, which was a really foreign concept. Typically, if I’m not at least moderately active every day,

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my brain feels like it’s “melting”. I had many days of total inability to move during this process.

Your outer and inner strength is a true wonder.To pick one song that speaks to you today, what would your anthem be—what gets you pumped up?

I am a really big Taylor Swift fan. I listen to a lot of different genres of music by a myriad of artists, but I would say that if I were to choose one anthem right now, it may be “Anti-Hero”—it’s just really speaking to me. I’ve cut against the grain in many ways in my sport: I’ve faced criticism for being too feminine and for being career-oriented while also an athlete. I’ve been called a “sellout” for signing with big companies when I became Adidas’ first outdoor athlete in North America when I

was eighteen. I’ve also faced simple critiques for wearing makeup and jewelry, going to red carpet galas, even making room for college amidst my professional athletic career (that was “new” in my sport to do). As I’ve grown up in the limelight of the climbing world, I’ve certainly made mistakes, but I’ve learned a lot about myself and who I am, what I stand for, and what I don’t stand for. I feel confident in my ethos and what guides me, and I feel grateful for the community I have built. I hope that my career has inspired the generation of young girls and boys that have followed to feel comfortable in her, his, and their skin, too. I wasn’t always comfortable in my own skin, but I always tried to be. Now, I am comfortable and proud of who I am, and I am excited to continue to grow, learn, and become better.

I turn internally for my career, though—while recognition is incredibly fueling and makes me feel extrinsically appreciated, my main goals, motivation, and passion are fueled by my intrinsic desires to be the best I can be and by my curiosity to continue to grow and find out what that looks like. www.thegrandreturn.com

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Well said. And, congratulations on being featured by Oprah on Super Soul Sunday’s “Breathing Space”. What a milestone! We hear about the “Oprah Effect,” what has this meant to you and for your career?

Hearing Oprah say my name certainly had a profound impact on my confidence, (haha)! But climbing has been growing into this more mainstream space and it just makes me excited to see the sport gain more traction and become more inclusive. I turn internally for my career, though—while recognition is incredibly fueling and makes me feel extrinsically appreciated, my main goals, motivation, and passion are

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fueled by my intrinsic desires to be the best I can be and by my curiosity to continue to grow and find out what that looks like.

Speaking of growth…plantbased, mushroom-rich, datekissed, greens, and nutrient rich—we’re lovin’ your SEND protein and energy bars.

What’s the next business (or distribution) goal for the brand?

I am so proud of launching SEND Bars just over one year ago. The response has been really incredible, and my next goals in the business are to expand our line of products, reach more specialty retailers, and eventually have the brand capacity

to exist in larger grocers as well. We are a premium bar company made of all whole food and a product that has filled the void of what I could not find on the market. I started making my own bars over ten years ago, and I actually secured the name Send Bars in 2012 because it was always an aspiration of mine to launch this company. But I do believe there’s timing to life, and I am glad that it is now! I had the time and space in my life to really thoroughly build out the concept and the team during my hip surgeries.

Whether or not tied to climbing (pun intended), what are three dream-maker experiences on your bucket list?

That’s a lofty question. I have so many dreams and aspirations: from my climbing career, to my book Take the Lead which comes out September 26, 2023, to my company. I would love to do a climb on every continent. I do also have this big, audacious goal to establish a first ascent on a particular mountain that I’m not going to announce right now. I dream about growing Send Bars to be available internationally, and I would love to be a better activist for the climate.

Yes, let’s talk about your advocacy projects in protecting public lands. What can each reader of Face the Current do to help the mission?

I think that protecting public lands and advocating for climate policy can be approached at the individual as well as local level. Recently, I had the privilege to be on a panel with Madame Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as Colorado Representative Brittany Petterson to discuss this topic. And I would say that we can all do our part to work towards being better stewards in our personal lives, but also reaching out to our local officials, educating ourselves on what is going on with policy, and using our platforms to stand behind what we believe in—that’s a good start.

ymore info: www.sashadigiulian.com IG: @sashadigiulian www.thegrandreturn.com

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Blooming in a New Direction

Local Flower Farms are the Way to Grow

By Ainsley Schoppel We’ve all attended luxurious, formal events where carefully arranged centerpieces of floral perfection adorned every table. Or what about a stroll through the floral department of our local grocery store near Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day? A literal showcase of plentiful bouquets in various sizes, colours, and complementary flower combinations is at our fingertips.

And it’s no wonder: we often turn to flowers as a symbol of celebration or as a gifted gesture to show love, thanks, congratulations, and sympathy. No matter the purpose in the cut-flower market, each selected bloom in a centerpiece or bouquet brims with intention, vibrancy, and botanic crispness that implies it was freshly harvested for our very own special occasions.

But was it?

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If not locally sourced, most roses used for weddings worldwide are from Ecuador.

Chances are, the answer is “no”.

In fact, most flowers sold in the United States come from the Netherlands, Colombia, Ecuador, and Kenya. Because South America’s climate and soil conditions are ideal for commercial flower production, Colombia has become the dominant producer of U.S. cut flowers, with roses, carnations, spray chrysanthemums, and Alstroemeria leading the way. Ecuador exports large quantities of roses, delphiniums, asters, baby’s breath, and mixed bouquets. Together, Columbia and Ecuador account for approximately ninety percent of all roses, ninetyeight percent of all carnations,

and ninety-five percent of all chrysanthemums sold in the U.S. last year. With a consistent floral exportation of over five billion dollars, the Netherlands is also a dominant power in the industry: it’s the world’s largest commercial producer of tulips and is the most successful global grower of peonies.

Given the delicacy of most floral species, it’s no easy feat to move shipments from one continent to another. Cut flowers must be transported using a “cold-chain”—a series of refrigerated facilities on farms, trucks, planes, and boats. The cold temperatures are necessary to put the flowers into a dormant state

to preserve freshness. With a supply chain of farmers, wholesalers, airlines, cargo ships, floral traders, florists, and supermarkets, flowers can be transported from farm to shop within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. But, like so much of life, time is critical: for every extra day lost to travel delays, flowers lose fifteen percent of their value.

The world’s largest importer of flowers in 2021 was the U.S. with twenty-one percent of the world’s imports.The next closest country was Germany with just over fifteen percent.

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Traditional floristry produces up to 100,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year.

Unsurprisingly, a supply chain like this is unkind to the environment.

Depending on where the flowers are grown, pesticides and harsh fertilizers may have been used to grow the crop. If they were grown in a greenhouse under little regulation, massive amounts of water are needed to sustain the contained ecosystem and only contaminated water returns to the surrounding earth. And once the flowers are grown and cut, they are almost always packaged. Floral packaging often includes green floral foam that has been shown to contribute to the world’s microplastic pollution. And finally—after being driven, shipped, and flown—bouquets are commonly wrapped in plastic or cellophane sleeves, with most ending up in landfills.

Taking a closer look at the American

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flower industry, seventy-five percent of domestic cut flowers are grown in California, with an additional small percentage grown in Florida, Washington, Hawaii, and other states.

However, even with ideal growing conditions and a long history of quality fresh flower production, many domestic farms are struggling to keep up with international suppliers and achieve sales that would contribute to business growth and expansion. A major contributing factor is higher land, energy, and labor costs than offshore competitors.

But, even if domestic flower farms can’t compete on a global scale, they still offer numerous regional benefits.

Flowers play such an important role in ecosystems as they attract pollinators, and some even provide natural medicinal alternatives. Some

flowers, such as lupines, work as nitrogen fixers, and some, such as sunflowers, use phytoremediation to clean our soil, water, and air.

Flowers have a positive effect on the ecosystems of surrounding landscapes, meaning flower farms can be a form of agriculture that gives back to the land.

Phytoremediation is the use of plants and soil microbes to reduce the concentration or toxic effects of environmental contaminants. It is widely accepted as a cost-effective environmental restoration technology.

As we collectively become more aware of the significance of eating locally and supporting local meat, dairy, and produce farms, it’s important to remember that local flower farms are a critical aid to our environment as well. And let’s not forget that they can be just plain fun! In fact, many regional flower farms offer “You Pick” or “Cut Your Own” experiences, as well as farm tours, local floral deliveries, and even weekly subscriptions to receive a fresh and beautiful addition to your home. Other farms offer more in-depth experiences through various workshops that include making tea blends and tinctures, distilling plants to extract essential oils, and even fabricating seasonal wreaths for your home.

By putting in a little effort and making a few habitual changes, we can absolutely give the floral industry a local re-focus and help breathe life into farms that are doing so much for the environment and our enjoyment of nature’s beauty. The power is in our wallets, so explore your local farms, learn about their offerings, and start to make regional flower shopping part of your routine.Your vases are waiting.

ymore info: Find a flower farm near you at www.ecofarmfinder.com

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Finding Clarity in the Moment with

Nike Yoga Teacher, Jonah Kest Interview by Ty Johnson In a world often dominated by the fastpaced demands and concerns of modern life, we can sometimes forget to appreciate the present moment. As our minds constantly race, juggling countless thoughts and responsibilities, the ability to tap into our inner intuition can feel increasingly challenging.Yet, for thousands of years, humanity has held knowledge of the perfect tool for navigating the chaos of existence— yoga.

Rooted in ancient traditions, yoga emerged as a powerful practice for cultivating mindfulness, stillness, and self-awareness.

The origins of yoga can be traced back over 5,000 years to the Indus Valley civilization in ancient India. Initially, yoga served as a comprehensive system for harmonizing

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the body, mind, and spirit. As we quiet the mind through yoga, we create space for our intuition to rise to the surface. Intuition, often referred to as our “sixth sense”, is the ability to tap into a deep wellspring of knowledge that resides within us, beyond the realms of logic and analysis. It is through the practice of yoga that we learn to trust and listen to this intuitive voice, allowing the present moment to guide us.

Today, the benefits of yoga captivate millions across the globe, as scientific studies continue to shed light on the transformative power of the practice.

Researchers have shown that regular yoga can reduce stress, improve mental well-being, increase emotional resilience, and enhance cognitive function. In an effort to learn more about the path and practice, we’ve connected with Nike Yoga Teacher and multi-generational yogi, Jonah Kest.

Image Credit: Garrett King

You were born into a yoga legacy. How has your upbringing developed your practice and guided your path?

Being brought up in a yoga family really gave me a strong foundation to carry the practice into my life to help overcome any doubt along the way. I learned that yoga was not just about asana.

Gratitude and meditation were two of the strongest and most consistent practices we did daily as a family.

My father would always remind me, “Mind matters most!” This means that a strong mind, through meditation, must be paramount.

Finally, the glue that holds together

any consistent spiritual practice is humility. I learned through example that the hard work never ends and we are not promised another day or a bout of luck. Treat others the same way you would like to be treated, do your practice, and be of service. I work toward living this way daily.

What are some of the greatest benefits you’ve experienced and/ or witnessed from partaking in daily yoga and meditation?

Clarity and greater presence.

Meditation prepares you for anything that may arise. Meditation doesn’t mean to be in a state that’s free of adversity, but rather to be in that state and remain calm and balanced.

Equanimity is the greatest gift one can give themselves.

How important is your diet when it comes to maintaining your lifestyle and practice? Can you shed light on any home gardening experiences, or maybe an amazing agritourism experience you may have had?

You are what you eat! If we have learned anything these last few years it is how important self-sustainability is. Growing your own food is real wealth. I remember living with my grandparents in Australia and working on their farm—something about putting your hands in the soil and seeing where your food comes from gives you greater appreciation. www.thegrandreturn.com

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My travels have taught me to be gracious with local communities and their families. Food-sharing is a spiritual practice. Gathering together and breaking bread—or whatever the land has provided—is one of the greatest gifts. I recognize how much love is translated through food and it is never lost on me when someone cooks and shares their family and feast in my presence; a true blessing.

My travels have taught me to be gracious with local communities and their families. Food-sharing is a spiritual practice. Gathering together and breaking bread—or whatever the land has provided—is one of the greatest gifts. I recognize how much love is translated through food and it is never lost on me when someone cooks and shares their family and feast in my presence; a true blessing.

Your early interests included basketball, boxing, and track.

What major similarities and differences have you found to exist between yoga and other sports/physical activities?

I love this question because yoga was never meant to take over your life and limit you from other physical forms of fitness.

My early interests, I see now, were just teaching me the power of moving your body every day. As long as

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you’re breathing, you can call it yoga!

It’s all around us.

The more you practice, it just makes everything else in your life easier.

Since 2020, you have released a wide-spread selection of inspirational music, including some of my personal favorites:“Give Thanks”, “Peaceful Man”, and “Hey Mama”. How has your own evolution led you to use music as an outlet to practice and share your truth?

Growing up in Detroit and surrounded by hip hop culture, I’ve always had a love for music. In 2020, I had my little brother, Nate Kest, move in with me and he set up his music studio in the basement. One night we decided to experiment putting some mantras over hip hop beats. They were super catchy and fun! It sparked a passion in me and

I saw it as an opportunity to create elevating conscious hip hop. I never looked back and since then have released tons of high-vibe tunes that are used in yoga spaces around the world. I’m grateful to the musicians who have shared their expertise with me!

As a Nike Yoga Teacher, what does “Just do it” mean to you?

For me, “Just do it” means “don’t think, just do”.Your intuition never lies and you should learn to trust it more often.

Taking action is the hardest step.

Yoga is not just a passive practice, it’s about self-discovery and building your own reality. In order to do so, you must create the world you want to live in!

Trust yourself.You’re the most intelligent teacher you’ll ever meet.

Your yoga classes are available

on Netflix and through your website (jonahkestyoga.com). ou also provide a plethora of in-person yoga teacher training and retreats. Do you have a preference of modalities, and what are some of the differences you’ve noticed between inperson and virtual teachings/ practices?

The online platform over the last few years presented an incredible tool to bring more people together when we couldn’t physically be next to one another. It taught me that connection is unlimited and I believe we will continue to see otherworldly relationships unfold by way of technology. The platforms I have been invited on to to share my craft are incredible!

I very much prefer the intimacy that is felt with in-person retreats and trainings. Nothing can beat looking into another’s eyes. I am able to bring so much more passion and emotion to the practice face-to-face.

You teach that “the path is the practice”. What is your best advice for anyone who might be facing resistance in accepting and seeing beauty in the present moment?

My best advice is to keep going. It is hard to constantly see the beauty around us. Unwavering acceptance is the inner-working of a master.

Life will present you with different people and circumstances to reveal where you’re not free. Life itself is the practice and we always have the

ability to begin again. Keep going!

You’re bound to be successful.

You speak of children as the future, the omnipresence of love and of the power of peace. What are some of the most important actions which you envision humanity can collectively take in order to shape a brighter future for all?

I think about this a lot.

Overwhelmingly, the answer is generosity. Generosity is incredibly reliable. When we give our time and resources to others, the ripple effect is always moving in a positive direction. In order for humanity to move some of these huge obstacles in front of us, we must realize that we can only make a dent together. Give as much as you can all of the time.

Yoga is not just a passive practice, it’s about self-discovery and building your own reality. In order to do so, you must create the world you want to live in! ymore info: www.jonahkestyoga.com IG: @kestyoga www.thegrandreturn.com

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The Mindset of a Mountain Hero with Sport Climbing and Paragliding Champion, Will Gadd

By Ty Johnson | Introduction by Ainsley SchoppeL National Geographic’s 2015 Adventurer of the year, Will Gadd, isn’t fearless—he notices the power of our planet, respects it, and explores it in extreme ways. Born in Canada, Gadd is a prominent Canadian ice climber, mixed climber, and paraglider pilot. He has held the paragliding world distance record—with a flight of 423 km—won the US and Canadian Paragliding Nationals, flew over the Grand Canyon, climbed icebergs off the coast of Labrador, won three gold medals at the X Games, and ice climbed in underground mines in Sweden. He has also become the first person to execute a one-day solo ascent of the tallest mountain in the Canadian Rockies, Mount Robson.

When not high above the ground, Will has hosted a Discovery Channel docuseries, Fearless Planet, in which he educated viewers about Earth’s geology and the ways in which some natural structures are created.

Recently, Gadd was named a Mountain Hero as part of the UN Environment’s partnership with the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation. This initiative selects extraordinary athletes from around the world who dedicate their time to raising awareness of environmental issues, particularly mountain protection efforts, where early indicators of the effects of climate change are already apparent.

Through his chat with FtC, we get a glimpse into what it takes to be an extreme athlete as Gadd shares his mountain philosophy; the ways in which different environments inspire him; and why we need to think about others, vote, and act now to help redirect climate change.

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Beneath the Ice | Credit: Christian Pondella (Red Bull Content Pool)

One of the most important mountain skills is to notice what is going on around you instead of just moving through life.

The same is true in any meaningful environment, whether it’s opening a new business or making key life decisions. We need to listen to the world and search for the most solid reality we can— not make it up.

Kilimanjaro | Credit: Christian Pondella (Red Bull Content Pool)

You were born into a lifestyle full of adventure and outdoor sports. How have your early days exploring the mountains and backpacking with your family helped to shape your perspective of nature and life?

All the time outdoors as a kid made me, not surprisingly, really comfortable outdoors, and also gave me a base-understanding of how the mountains work. I find a lot of people are strong technical climbers or skiers, but to succeed in genuine exploration you also have to be comfortable living in wild places, and know how to not get killed. A lot of the time, the climbing is the easy part of exploration.

You mention that your daughter is already doing all the stuff you did as a kid. Why do you believe that engaging in outdoor activities is so important for youth development, and what

are some benefits?

Not every kid needs high-stimulus, super engaging activities, but for kids who do, the mountains or something similar are really important; like oxygen. To a kid, so much of the world is arbitrary. The mountains are solid: listen, learn, grow. A lot more kids would benefit from mountain time than are getting it.

Throughout your career, you have established the hardest mixed ice climbing lines in the world, kayaked down dozens of first ascents across North America, and set the world distance record for paragliding— twice! How do you embrace or dance with these extreme moments of fear?

I listen to my fear, and work through what’s causing it and why. My fear is the primary reason I’m still alive, honestly. If I’m afraid in the mountains, it’s a very serious sign

that something is amiss and I need to unpack it right away. Fearless people or those who “overcome” or ignore their fears tend to die fast in the mountains.

You touch on the “Power of Noticing”, and the importance of awareness and observation in the sport of climbing. Can this approach be carried over into everyday life for all people, and what do you see as the takeaways of doing so?

Yes. One of the most important mountain skills is to notice what is going on around you instead of just moving through life. The same is true in any meaningful environment, whether it’s opening a new business or making key life decisions. We need to listen to the world and search for the most solid reality we can—not make it up. Again, those who search for what is rather than what they think is tend to live longer. www.thegrandreturn.com

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Along with climbing mountains, you spend a great deal of time in the air and on water (paragliding and kayaking). Is there any one specific activity that you would recommend or insist everyone try at least once, and why?

All these activities are somewhat more dangerous than normal life, but if they fire you up then absolutely do them! I love to bike, hike, climb, ski, fly, paddle—after a while all these sports start to fit together. I love that feeling of understanding how the air relates to the water for example, and moving cleanly through each physical zone. The world is a cool place, and these sports are just tools to learn about the world, and ourselves, really.

You represent the United Nations through your work as a Mountain Hero. In addition to the focussed issue around

climate change, we are currently facing an environmental health crisis that impacts all life. When we look at soil degradation, air and water pollutants, food scarcity, nutrient density, food systems, and healthcare systems, there is obvious room for improvement. Why is it important that we are aware of this holistic picture, and how our actions impact the world?

There is only one earth, and as a species we are now at a point where we can really affect our planet’s future. There is no plan B—we’ve got to make this one work, for all of us.

And the earth doesn’t need us; we need it. So, it’s time to make individual choices on how we operate on Earth, but even more importantly than that it’s time to make global choices. This is possible; we’ve done it before with the ozone hole and certain chemicals,

and now it’s urgent we do so again.

Vote. Engage. That’s what we now need.

In your open letter about hard mountain truths, you mention rationality, evaluation and management of risk, the joy of experience, and the reality of death. How can these same variables/principles be considered when we think about the holistic relationship between mankind and our Mother Earth?

I tend to think in terms of consequences, good and bad. If we’re wrong and Earth is fine with continued carbon inputs then we don’t lose much, we just get a cleaner planet and a brighter future. If we’re right about increased temperature— and the overwhelming data says we are at this point—then we can’t live with the consequences of doing nothing.

There is only one earth, and as a species we are now at a point where we can really affect our planet’s future. There is no plan B—we’ve got to make this one work, for all of us. And the earth doesn’t need us; we need it. So, it’s time to make individual choices on how we operate on Earth, but even more importantly than that it’s time to make global choices. This is possible; we’ve done it before with the ozone hole and certain chemicals, and now it’s urgent we do so again. Vote. Engage. That’s what we now need.

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Credit: Christian Pondella (Red Bull Illume)

If we are able to consider our highest selves, embodying a spirit not limited by our individual lives, can we agree that each and every day we are collectively fighting a battle between life and death, not only for ourselves, but for every future child that will hope to one day live the very experiences that make your life worth living?

The real tragedy of climate change is that it’s going to be harder on the lower income people globally. Richer countries can turn up the AC and harden their infrastructures to some extent, but poorer countries can’t. This is a massive human tragedy waiting to happen, and I do not want to stand by and watch it happen. Fight.

Beneath the Ice | Credit: Christian Pondella (Red Bull Content Pool)

You often speak of the joy which climbing brings you, and also of the uncomfortability that it has presented you with (through fear or other forms of resistance). Can you speak to the importance of finding joy in difficult moments, and of the importance of both recognizing and working with resistance?

As I get older and see more death and trauma in the mountains, those experiences shape my future actions.

I cannot pretend that mountains can be made safe; that’s a ridiculous idea.

Once we know that we’re just specks in the universe then we can operate from that position of clarity, and try to survive each day. The dissonance between the great joy we feel in the mountains and the perpetual loss is just tough to experience, but it is necessary to feel this in order to have a clear understanding of mountain life.

Going back to the power of noticing: see the mountains for what they are, not what we want them to be.

Ireland | Credit: John Price (Red Bull Content Pool)

ymore info: www.willgadd.com IG: @realwillgadd Niagra Falls | Credit: Greg Mionske (Red Bull Content Pool)

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FOOD LESS TRAVELLED

By Lisa Guy, Naturopath

Nowadays, we enjoy a wide variety of produce from all over the world without being limited by seasonal availability. Actual seasonality in food production is sadly becoming a thing of the past as consumers expect all types of produce and exotic ingredients to be available all year round. This consumer demand has caused significant changes to the ways in which we store and transport our food. Unfortunately, this comes at a cost to the environment, quality, taste, and nutritional value of our fruits and vegetables. To meet this demand, our food is now transported further than ever before, by air, ship and road, and this sector of transportation is now a major contributor to increased greenhouse emissions, depletion

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of natural resources, and global warming. Transporting food by air creates carbon emissions ten times that of road transportation, and fifty percent more than transportation by sea (1). Airfreight is specifically and most commonly used to transport high-value and perishable foods like out-of-season berries. It’s estimated that in the U.S., fresh produce typically travels over 1,500 miles from the farm to your plate (2).

So, unless you buy produce from local

farms or farmers’ markets, you have no way of knowing when your food was harvested and how far it has travelled.

In fact, those shiny red apples in the grocery store may have been stored for up to a year before being displayed for sale. Because of this, one of the biggest concerns with transported produce is degradation and nutrient loss before it reaches shelves. Produce enzymes start the decomposition process and fruits and vegetables begin losing nutrients within twentyfour hours of being harvested. o, the more time they spend on a vehicle and in storage, the greater the loss of important vitamins and other nutrients. Simply put, locally grown foods are typically more nutritious than those found in supermarkets.

Vine-ripened and organic produce that is grown closest to where you live is always the freshest, healthiest, and most nutritious choice. So, as enticing as those pricey out-of-season berries might be, you should hold off until summer when you can buy delicious, fresh berries ripened from a local farm.

According to a study published by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, local produce that is left to fully ripen on the vine contains higher nutrient values compared to produce picked before it’s ripe (3). And as a bonus, locally grown fresh, vine-ripened produce also tastes better!

The time it takes for produce grown in the southern hemisphere to reach consumers for winter consumption in the U.S. ranges from a few days when transported by air, up to a few weeks when it is sent by ship. When it reaches the supermarket, fruits and vegetables may then spend up to a few days on display before being purchased by the consumer, who will then often store them for up to a week before eating. Therefore, imported fresh fruits and vegetables may not be consumed for a substantial length of time following harvest, during which time nutrient degradation has occurred.

So, is time the only factor working against harvested produce? Actually, no. Fruits and vegetables lose valuable

nutrients due to light exposure and changes in temperature during extended periods of travel. If produce is not transported in a temperaturecontrolled environment, temperature fluctuations can lead to moisture loss, accelerated food ripening, spoilage, and significant degradation of nutrients and quality.Vitamin C, carotenoids, and B vitamins— specifically B1, B6, and folic acid—are quite sensitive to heat and light, and are prone to degradation during processing, storage, and transportation.

A Montclair state study found that vitamin C levels in imported broccoli were half that of locally harvested broccoli (4).Vitamin C supports healthy immune function, and has potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties which help reduce the risk of chronic disease.

Vitamin C losses in vegetables stored at 39°F for seven days ranged from fifteen percent for green peas to seventy-seven percent for green beans.

However, refrigeration slows the deterioration of vitamin C. Broccoli stored at 32°F experienced no loss in vitamin C after seven days, but showed a fifty-six percent loss when stored at 68°F (5). With extended storage, certain vegetables become droopy, woody, and tough, and may start to smell unpleasant. If fruits are stored for long periods, they can lose their aroma and flavour. Some types of fruits like apples and stone fruit will go “floury” and lose their juiciness if they’re not stored at a cool temperature.

Other produce, such as pears and apples, can be stored for up to twelve months under controlled-atmosphere conditions. Berries and perishable produce are stored under refrigerated conditions, and may be stored for eight to ten days, while less perishable foods like pumpkins, apples, grapes, and pears are commonly stored for eight to ten weeks (7).

Vitamin C, carotenoids, and B vitamins— specifically B1, B6, and folic acid—are quite sensitive to heat and light, and are prone to degradation during processing, storage, and transportation.

A Montclair state study found that vitamin C levels in imported broccoli were half that of locally harvested broccoli. www.thegrandreturn.com

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Spinach is known as a rich source of folate and carotenoids, which are important nutrients needed for red blood cell production, healthy eyesight, and for the prevention of neural tube defects in growing babies.

If your spinach has been shipped across the country in a warm truck, a lot of its nutrient content might have disappeared by the time it reaches your plate. Penn State researchers found that spinach stored at cooler temperatures retained more folate

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and carotenoids for a longer period of time. Spinach kept at fridge temperature retained fifty-three percent of its folate levels after eight days, and when it was kept at higher temperatures its levels dropped by forty-seven percent in just four days.

(6) As temperatures increased, the loss of carotenoids occurred at a faster rate as well.

Aside from nutrient value and flavour loss, shipping food over great distances can also contribute to food waste as it increases the risk of produce being damaged and spoiled. To help it handle the trip to the grocery store, non-local produce is often harvested before it is fully ripe. Rough handling, stacking, and vibration can all damage fruits and vegetables during transport, particularly delicate fruits like berries and grapes that can easily get crushed or bruised.

POST-HARVEST TREATMENTS In addition to chemical pesticides used to grow non-organic produce, there are a host of different postharvest chemicals and gaseous treatments that are used on produce on the field, added to washing water, and used during transport and storage. These chemicals help

minimize the risk of microbial growth and contamination, and preserve quality and extend shelf-life of fresh produce. Unlike processed foods, there are no labels on fresh foods that tell you what chemicals have been used on the fruits and vegetables we buy.

During storage and transportation, produce may be treated with a variety of substances including disinfectants (e.g. chlorine or hydrogen peroxide) that reduce the risk of contamination from bacteria and other pathogens.

Listeria, salmonella, and e.coli are common pathogens that contribute to outbreaks of foodborne illness in fresh produce. Some produce may be treated with antimicrobial solutions including citric acid and essential oils to extend the shelflife of produce and reduce spoilage.

Growth retardants (e.g. maleic hydrazide) are often applied pre-

harvest to stored produce such as potatoes, carrots, and onions to inhibit sprouting and growth.

Irradiation is an effective post-harvest treatment for controlling insect infestation and for killing off molds, yeasts, and bacteria, which cause food spoilage in produce like potatoes, onions, mangoes, and strawberries.

To prevent damage from insects and other pests, some produce may be treated with pesticides before or during transportation. Fruits, especially imported fruits, are often sprayed with fungicides (e.g. sulphur dioxide, sodium orthophenylphenate, and thiabendazole) which are used to control mold and insects, and prevent end rot on citrus fruits.

Sulfuryl fluoride is a fumigant applied to stored crops after harvest, which leaves significant amounts of fluoride on treated foods. To improve the appearance and texture of produce, some fruits and vegetables like www.thegrandreturn.com

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apples, citrus fruits, tomatoes, and cucumbers may be coated with wax or a similar substance during transportation. Synthetic plant hormones (kinetins, gibberellins, and auxins) are used to regulate the aging process and delay ripening of produce like tomatoes, bananas, green leafy vegetables, and citrus fruits.

Ethylene gas is a ripening agent that is commercially used on fruits to hasten the ripening process once they have been transported and have reached their destination.

When buying imported fruits and vegetables, it is also important to find out how well-regulated pesticides and other post-harvest chemicals are in the country of origin.You may come to discover that the fruits and vegetables you typically buy from the grocery store have been sprayed with harmful chemicals that are banned in the U.S.

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EAT IN-SEASON, REGIONALLY, AND LOCALLY There are so many benefits to buying locally grown, organic, in-season produce, direct from organic farms or farmers’ markets. Buying local organic produce is better for your health as you will be getting fruits and vegetables at their peak freshness and height of nutrient availability. They will also be free from pesticides and other chemicals, and you will know where your food came from, when it was picked, how far it has travelled, and what has been sprayed on them.

Shopping directly from farms and at your local farmers’ markets is also better for the environment as it reduces greenhouse emissions associated with food production and transportation. And, as a bonus, it also supports your local farmers and keeps your money in the community!

On a smaller scale, you can start your own backyard veggie and herb garden, or you could join a community garden. Growing your own produce will cut your food miles—the distance a food has travelled from farm to plate—and give you more control over the chemicals and pesticides that are sprayed on your food. Evaluating food miles is a great way for consumers to make the connection between long distance food transportation and increasing global carbon emissions.

Higher food miles consume larger amounts of energy which contributes to climate change. One study found that conventionally sourced food uses up to seventeen percent more fuel and carbon dioxide than locally sourced food (8).

Eating seasonally and regionally also encourages a more varied diet.

When we eat a variety of fruits

and vegetables, we are exposed to a wider range of essential vitamins, minerals, and other important nutrients that our bodies need for optimal health. Purchasing local produce also forces you to get more creative in the kitchen, and it’s a great way to broaden your cooking repertoire and experiment with new recipes using seasonal produce you may not have tried before. Ordering a weekly box of organic produce from

your local co-op is another great way to get fresh nutritious produce delivered straight to your door.

No matter how you slice it, locally farmed, organic produce is better for us and our planet. And while it may seem daunting to completely eliminate all out-of-season and nonlocal fruits and vegetables from our shopping carts and fridges, we can all take small steps, one at a time, toward a more healthful, delicious,

REFERENCES: (1)

Sustain & Elm Farm Research Centre, 2001. Eating Oil: Food in a Changing Climate.

(2)

Pirog, Rich. 2002. How Far Do Your Fruit and Vegetables Travel?

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

(3)

Kathleen Frith. Is Local Food More Nutritious? The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Jan. 1, 2007.

(4)

Shahla M Wunderlich, et al. Nutritional quality of organic, conventional, and seasonally grown broccoli using vitamin C as a marker. Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2008 Feb;59(1):34-45.

and planet-friendly way of nourishing our bodies. So, start today! Find a farm or farmers’ market close to you, and discover how simple and delicious it can be to fill your plate and fuel your body locally.

ymore info: www.artofhealing.com.au www.thegrandreturn.com/team/lisa-guy

(5)

Diane M. Barrett, Maximizing the Nutritional Benefits of Fruits and Vegetables, University of California, Davis, p. 40-44.

(6)

Luke Laborde, Srilatha Pandrangi Retention of Folate, Carotenoids, and Other Quality Characteristics in Commercially Packaged Fresh Spinach. Journal of Food Science. Dec 2004. 69(9):C702 - C707.

(7)

Diane M. Barrett, Maximizing the Nutritional Benefits of Fruits and Vegetables, University of California, Davis, p. 40-44.

(8)

Rich Pirog, Timothy Van Pelt, Kamyar Enshayan, and Ellen Cook. Food, Fuel, and Freeways: An Iowa perspective on how far food travels, fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions. Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Iowa State University. June 2001

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The Sizeable Health Benefits of Nature’s Tiny World

A Microbial Exploration with Dr. Rodney Dietert

By Ainsley Schoppel Excerpts from Interview by Sasha Frate Rodney Dietert, Ph.D. is an internationally known author, lecturer, scientist, media personality, and educator with peer-reviewed papers published in more than seventy scientific journals ranging from environmental health and pediatric medicine publications to nutrition, metabolism, immune, neurological, and reproductive journals.

Currently Professor Emeritus in the Cornell University Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Rodney has more than three-hundred publications including two-hundred

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papers and book chapters, with most addressing environmental risk factors, developmental immunotoxicity, and programming of later-life noncommunicable diseases.

With a specifically focused career in the microbial sciences, Dietert is perhaps one of the foremost experts in the world on the microscopic world around—and inside—us, and the myriad ways that we can adjust our lives to let it serve us better.

In fact, we’ve heard time and again

that whether we live in an urban or rural area, spending time “in nature” is beneficial to our health.

However, not all green spaces are created equal. When it comes to parks and green spaces in cities, it pays to know about the dirt beneath your feet. “You may not be aware,” informs Dietert, “but to meet EPA standards on heavy metals like lead, [planners] will mix very, very low heavy-metal contaminated soil with highly contaminated soil.” In doing so, planners and builders offload their contaminated fill and will test just

below the acceptable threshold for heavy metal safety. In turn, this soil is spread on athletic fields and in community parks. And so, while you think you may be having a healthy outing with your family, you’ve been exposed to significant levels of waste management heavy metals. So, does this mean we avoid all parks and athletic fields? Of course not.

“You really need to pick and choose what you consider [to be] nature,” Dietert explains. “Be a little bit more particular about it because simply [strolling] in your local urban area park may not [offer] the benefits you think it [does].”

True nature offers a bounty of benefits to humans, including those

associated with growing your own fruits and vegetables. “You don’t have to be a large-scale grower to do a few things that are useful for yourself and for your children,” Dietert reminds us. “Just keep in mind that you want to have your time with the microbial sources that will support your body.” Whether it’s a planter box of beans and tomatoes, potted herbs, or an in-ground plot of cucumbers and squash, all gardening time is valuable, thanks to important bacteria and microbes. Do you feel more relaxed and peaceful during and after a session in your garden? That’s not your imagination. Mycobacterium vaccae, found in soil, boosts serotonin production in the brain! Serotonin is colloquially known as the “feel good”

chemical, and when it is at a normal level within your body, you feel more focused, emotionally stable, happier, and calmer. Low serotonin levels are associated with depressive feelings.

“If you’re not gardening and you’re not getting your hands and feet in soil, you’re more anxious and your serotonin production is not where it should be,” explains Dietert. “Maybe your available fresh foods and other things are restricted. All of this goes into damaging the microbiome and restricting it. That is a prescription for increased disease down the road—and not necessarily way down the road! That’s not a good public management plan by any stretch of the imagination.”

Do you feel more relaxed and peaceful during and after a session in your garden? That’s not your imagination. Mycobacterium vaccae, found in soil, boosts serotonin production in the brain!

Serotonin is colloquially known as the “feel good” chemical, and when it is at a normal level within your body, you feel more focused, emotionally stable, happier, and calmer. Low serotonin levels are associated with depressive feelings.

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It’s important to remember that the microbes in our bodies, homes, and gardens are only a small piece of the microbial picture. “Microbes are the network—they’re the actual global internet. Microbes in our gut have ‘kissing cousins’ that are in the most extreme

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conditions on Earth,” Dietert explains. “They are in high elevations, they’re growing on the International Space Station, they’re at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, they’re in the Dead Sea, they’re under Antarctic glaciers eating away at rocks—they’re extremophile

bacteria that live in our gut and every place on Earth.”

Connecting with the natural microbes in our own backyard connects us to a vast and ancient network and is critical to our physical and mental health.

But what happens when our society adopts an obsession with purity, and we intentionally kill off good bacteria and microbes on a daily basis? While it’s true that killing harmful viruses and pathogens is helpful in maintaining good health, being over-protective and preventing exposure to everything is not. With an abundance of hand sanitizers and chemical sprays now readily available in almost every pharmacy, grocery, and home goods store, we need to evaluate our obsession with purity. Has it been effective and beneficial to our health? Not all the time. “MRSA is an antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus,” says Dietert. “I’m all about maintaining a balanced immune system and optimizing colonization resistance.” One way to strengthen an immune system is to expose it to day-to-day bacteria and microbes.

Our bodies will then be more capable of adapting and evolving as we face future pathogens. Knowing that this is part of life, Dietert’s concerns lie in society’s unwillingness to increase overall health and wellness to create a strong immune system. “There are [always] other pathogens, so why wouldn’t you do things to help people’s overall health?

I’m not seeing that.”

Taking a closer look at the elements required to maintain a healthy body, it is a well-documented fact that excessive sugar, especially processed sugar, is very damaging to our systems. “Sugar is really not helpful,” Dietert notes. “It’s a big red flag in so many ways. We’ve been conditioned so that our taste buds are requiring it. And some of the artificial [replacement] sugars are not that safe.” Increased sugar intake skews the body’s metabolic profile and can even shift hormonal levels.

The microbes within the gut become biased to sugar digestion and become less efficient at digesting other foods.

In turn, this generates inflammation.

“Inflammation is a good immune defense—it’s needed. But it needs to be of a certain kind, and it needs to shut off when it’s done the job,” says Dietert. “It doesn’t happen when you get this misprogramming through the gut barrier and then activation. That’s the big problem with sugar—it quickly skews your microbiome in a bad way.”

Inflammation can be painful, and in extreme cases, debilitating. And when we are in chronic or severe pain, it is natural to turn to painrelieving medications to help us function during the day and sleep well at night. NSAIDs (Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug) play an important role in terms of over-thecounter pain management and fever reduction. However, when they are over-used, they can end up doing more harm than good. “If NSAIDs are taken on a chronic basis, it’s going to damage your microbiome,” Dietert explains. “Microbiologists can tell what NSAID you are taking if you take it on a regular basis, because of the damage profile [it exhibits].” While this might sound dire, this isn’t the green-light to panic and purge your medicine cabinet!

The occasional NSAID will not be a problem for your body. However, what we do need to be especially cautious of is the use of NSAIDs with other medications and food additives. “If you pair food emulsifiers with NSAIDS and antacids, you’re going to have a challenge in keeping a healthy microbiome,” notes Dietert. “No new drugs should be produced unless they’re safe for the microbiome.” So, what’s the solution to balancing pain management and a healthy microbiome? A more holistic

approach says Dietert. “We’ve got a lot of herbs, plant derivatives, tinctures, extracts, and the like, that can do a lot of good in terms of physiology without wiping out parts of the microbiome.”

Continuing with holistic microbiomehealthy options, it’s obviously important to evaluate our diet.

“Diet is the garden of microbes that you grow in your gut, and they can control your neurochemistry and brain function,” observes Dietert. “If I ate a diet of pizza every day in every way, and then I [decide] to eat a lot of kale, that’s not going to go well because I have grown microbes that use pizza as an energy source. They are the predominant population, and they can affect my neurochemistry.”

When a drastic dietary shift like this is attempted, the results can be painful. In fact, Dietert even argues that our collective gut issues should be seen as a food-product driven drug addiction. “It’s not that different, really. Sugar-using microbes will make it painful if we try to get off sugar.

A lot of people that have trouble changing their diet need to do so in concert with probiotics; they have to get rid of the bully microbes that are forcing them to eat an unhealthy diet and making it painful for them to change.” In other words, the right microbes added into our gut can help the already existing ones to function in a healthier way. In fact, Dietert has first-had experience with probiotic benefits: “I put out my fire with the probiotics that work for me. It actually helped to avoid complications that I used to experience for about thirty years, when I discovered some useful microbial solutions.”

And, unlike other medications with heavy side effects, probiotics are an excellent microbial alternative to add to your diet through yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, pickles, kombucha, miso, kimchi, tempeh, sourdough bread, and even some cheeses. Other www.thegrandreturn.com

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Unlike other medications with heavy side effects, probiotics are an excellent microbial alternative to add to your diet through yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, pickles, kombucha, miso, kimchi, tempeh, sourdough bread, and even some cheeses.

Other anti-inflammatory seasonings like turmeric can be a healing dietary addition, as well.

anti-inflammatory seasonings like turmeric can be a healing dietary addition, as well. “The thing is, try them,” Dietert urges. “People need to try them and see if they really are beneficial. It’s not necessarily one size fits all, but there is a menu that can be tried.”

Quite encouragingly, we are seeing science lead the way with the power of microbes and their various applications through healthcare, as well. “There are some heroic things that can be done,” says Dietert. “There’s fecal microbiota transplantation, for instance.You have to have the right donor and metagenomic formulas. [The doctors] decide what metabolic profile they want in a certain area of the gut and then they select the bacteria that will provide that.” And since over eleven percent of the population of the U.S. has diabetes, it’s very exciting to see microbes become part of a possible solution—even if it hasn’t hit human-stage testing yet. “You can actually reverse insulin resistance

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sensitivity by using a type of immune cell called macrophages that are part of the inflammatory problem,” notes Dietert. He explains that alternative maturation states of these particular cells are grown in culture and then generated to a new phase that does not promote inflammation and does not contribute to insulin resistance.

The body is then flooded with these new cells and reverse-engineered back through the microbiome.

“Macrophages can alter the entire metabolism from an immune change.

It may not be easily practical in humans, but it shows you that it’s a systemic biology issue.You don’t really separate the gut barrier, the microbes, and the immune system— they’re flowing information back and forth and we need to be managing across the whole system,” Dietert concludes.

Looking at the system beginning at birth, Dietert thinks that a higher priority needs to be placed on the “seed and feed” of infants. “If mom has to have a Cesarean, even last

minute, then [a stock can be taken of the bacteria] the baby would be seeded with [had it been born vaginally], and then it can be installed.

It’s not quite a hundred percent the same, but it’s real close—it’s close enough to be beneficial to the baby,” Dietert explains. This practice can help to ensure that the microbiome develops, and the immune system matures along a healthy trajectory.

There is also evidence that every round of antibiotics a baby is prescribed during the first year of life statistically increases the risk of allergic diseases and asthma by age seven. “It’s not just one round that will do it, but the second round has an incremental increase in risk. The microbiome has been depleted at a critical stage of immune development,” comments Dietert.

“The baby is already biased for allergic diseases if you don’t have the microbiome in place and maturing.

There is a cost to that.” It’s not to say that antibiotics shouldn’t ever be used, however, as Dietert argues

While it’s not necessarily difficult to get outside, experience soil exposure, find some animals to socialize with, and increase the amount of exercise in our lives, Dietert recommends doing so in small steps. “Don’t do a marathon when you have never done one before,” he states. “You can’t avoid all stressors, but you can become more resilient, and that’s what we want to do. We want to help people construct their future lifecourse in a way that they enjoy it more, they feel like they are contributing, their societal and nature interactions are rich, and they benefit from the microbial networks supporting them. for a more comprehensive intervention that allows for the baby to develop appropriately.

Another interesting scientific endeavor is the acquisition of microbes from Indigenous populations. It has been discovered that these microbes, primarily on the skin and in the gut, are extinct in Western countries. Evaluations of the epidemiology of these populations have revealed clues as to how we lost those microbes and have arrived at disease states common to Westerners.

Ultimately, Dietert wants to spread the message that small lifestyle changes can do great things in terms of the microbes around us. “You can do so much in terms of health!

[We can all] benefit by doing a few simple things in terms of lifestyle practices that will ensure your kids get a real chance in terms of immune balance,” he encourages. But should we be focusing on perfection? Probably

not. “It’s an ecological management system,” Dietert explains. “It’s like building a healthy coral reef. If you’re one step away from killing a coral reef, it won’t take much to get there.

But, if you’ve got a remarkably robust system, then a boat passing overhead with a little oil spill will probably not destroy it. The reef will have some resiliency, and we need to operate the same way.” And even if we’re faced with health challenges, Dietert advises evaluating quality of life and doing whatever we can to make healthy choices that can increase our enjoyment. “It’s about what happened during the decades of your life,” comments Dietert. “It can be so much different; it can be so much better.”

And while it’s not necessarily difficult to get outside, experience soil exposure, find some animals to socialize with, and increase the amount of exercise in our lives, Dietert recommends doing so in small steps. “Don’t do a marathon

when you have never done one before,” he states. “You can’t avoid all stressors, but you can become more resilient, and that’s what we want to do. We want to help people construct their future life-course in a way that they enjoy it more, they feel like they are contributing, their societal and nature interactions are rich, and they benefit from the microbial networks supporting them.”

Rodney’s advice to his students rings true as a general reminder for a life well-lived: “Whatever you do, do what brings you joy. Do what helps you thrive and then all your work and everything else will flow from that.

Just recognize how you get there.”

And with some education, lifestyle changes, and a return to nature’s bountiful offerings, it’s the microbial world that is helping to get us there.

ymore info: www.rodneydietert.com www.thegrandreturn.com

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Home-Grown Flavor for Every Season

Rob Smith’s Expert Advice for Growing What You Eat

Interview by Sasha Frate | Introduction by Ainsley SchoppeL Based near Sheffield, UK, Rob Smith is a passionate fruit and vegetable gardener and columnist for several national gardening magazines. He has also made television and radio appearances, sharing gardening advice from sowing and planting to pickling and preserving crops. With Video Grow Guides on his prolific website, Rob also shares seasonal and plant-specific advice for both new and experienced gardeners. With month-by-month steps to show you what you should be doing for your indoor and outdoor plants, Rob ensures you’ll be ready to grow and harvest your crops at the right time. And, with delicious fruits and vegetables at your fingertips, Rob also provides free downloadable recipe cards to help you savor all your hard work. A true guru of all things home-garden, Face the Current was thrilled to speak with Rob about choosing the best fruit and vegetable varieties, including heirloom options; the importance of knowing when to harvest; learning about and experimenting with crop preservation methods; and how to find the balance between helpful and harmful garden insects.

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From your inspirational childhood helping your granddad to where you are today, how did your passion for gardening and devotion to sharing your experience with others evolve?

To be honest, I think I’ve always been interested in how people grow differently and share experiences.

From multi-sowing beetroot seeds in modules and growing peas closely together in a tray to plant out as bare root plants, there are so many ways to grow— it just depends on what works for you. I think when you grow on an allotment or community garden, it allows you to just have a chat about what you are doing, then this leads to sharing knowledge over the garden fence.

Running your whole growing operation is a feat in itself that demands a lot of time. What led you to want to take the extra time to share with others all of your efforts, tips, and garden advice?

I love to see people succeed in gardening as there’s nothing worse than spending all season growing something for it to fail—that’s why I always like to share nuggets of information that can help people get the most from what they grow. In return, I learn so much back from people, especially on social media— when you share an idea, you get so much back from the gardening community.

For people interested in growing more of their own food but concerned about the time involved, what are some of your tips for experiencing this lifestyle while making it doable for those who don’t have a lot of spare time?

Consider gardening with a friend or family member—this makes the whole experience more social and

enjoyable. After all, you want to enjoy your time with nature, growing organic, sustainable food; it shouldn’t feel like a job and you shouldn’t dread tending your plants. If you want to garden alone and have little time, consider easy-to-grow plants that take little care, such as fruit trees and perennial vegetables–they are planted once and will crop for decades. Grow what you eat, not what you think you should be growing. The idea is to grow-to-eat, so if you love spicy food, grow a selection of chillies on the windowsill.You need to enjoy what and how you grow, and that will

encourage you to grow more.

Some of your self-descriptors include “kitchen gardener” with a “love garden lifestyle”.

What do you consider a kitchen gardener to be, and how would you describe this “love garden” lifestyle?

To me, a kitchen gardener is someone who predominantly grows food for consumption, with a few flowers thrown in there for good measure.

I’m inspired by the old Victorian walled gardens of yesteryear, where vegetables and fruit were beautifully www.thegrandreturn.com

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To me, a kitchen gardener is someone who predominantly grows food for consumption, with a few flowers thrown in there for good measure. I’m inspired by the old Victorian walled gardens of yesteryear, where vegetables and fruit were beautifully grown together with flowering plants, not the giant monocultures we see today where there are fields upon fields of the same crop.

grown together with flowering plants, not the giant monocultures we see today where there are fields upon fields of the same crop. To me that goes hand-in-hand with the garden lifestyle, because I love to be outside!

No matter the weather, you will find me doing something in the garden and connecting with nature, from leaving old bits of string outside for birds to use as nest material in spring, to making sure I leave the spent sunflower heads in the ground in autumn for the birds and squirrels to eat. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll also find me barbequing in the garden every night during the summer, and enjoying a glass or two of wine while planning what I need to do the next day. It’s all about loving and living in your space.

This notion of “grow your own” food has become increasingly important even in the simple

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sense of how our food systems have made us lose touch with where our food comes from, and how it was grown. When in control of your own garden and food, you can even impact the nutrient density of your food, harvesting, consuming, and preserving it at its pique ripeness while caring for the soil throughout the entire process.

What are some of your tips for this aspect?

Harvesting your crops at the right time is key to getting the most from them. Take sweetcorn for example: if harvested and not eaten quickly, most will start to turn starchy and lose their sweetness, showing how vital it is to harvest and eat or cook your crops as quickly as possible. The same goes for fresh peas: they are as sweet as sugar when you pick them, but become bland and starchy a day

or two later.

In addition to nutrient density improving from growing your own food and/or sourcing from local farms, the ability to access more heirloom varieties is also a plus! What are some heirlooms you grow and what do you love about them compared to their “mainstream” counterparts?

Flavours, colours, and shapes all play a part in what I grow in the garden, so what’s not to love about some of the amazingly coloured tomatoes and carrots, or the flavour of some squash and pumpkins? Honeyboat squash are a particular favourite of mine, as they taste and have the texture of a sweet potato, yet are easier to grow and crop more for us here in the UK. Plus, I love the fact you can bake them and eat the skin like a baked potato! Tomatoes

are another favourite of mine, with so many small breeders specializing in heirloom varieties that will blow your socks off! Gargamel is a great tomato with a beautiful flavour, plus it looks amazing with its orange and black-flecked skin, bursting with anthocyanin and flavour. Rosella is a smaller, brown/purple-skinned cherry tomato that has a compact habit, making it easier to grow in a small greenhouse. It has a deep, rich flavour that’s almost like blackberries!

nature, rather than trying to bend it to your will or steamroller over everything you don’t like.

Speaking of variety, you have such an incredible array of colors, shapes, and sizes of so many different foods! What was your process for curating such a wide variety, and do you tend to keep growing the same selection each year?

Bugs are often thought of as pests, and in fact many can be in the garden!

You welcome beneficial insects into your garden with your handcrafted insect hotel, using things such as sticks, twigs and leaves, cracked plant pots, bits of wood with holes drilled in them, canes, pine cones, bee bricks, and a bee bar. Can you share how this works and helps in the garden?

Bug hotels are just a fancy way of saying you provide an environment for insects to find shelter and breed, plus somewhere for them to feed, stay out of the elements and stay away from predators. By encouraging as many insects to the garden as possible, your mini ecosystem will find its own balance, so you won’t be overrun with aphids as you’ve provided an environment to encourage predatory insects like ladybirds and hoverflies. It’s all about finding balance and working with

I love to grow as many different colours and flavours as I can, after all you eat with your eyes and I want people to leave my garden and my table, thinking, “That looked as good as it tasted.” There are the odd things I like to grow each year, such as the Honeybot squash and the jumbo cloved Elephant garlic, but everything else is up for change if I find something I think looks or

tastes better than what I grew last year. If something doesn’t grow well for me, I’ll give it a second chance if I really want to try it, but if not, I’ll try something different. There are so many varieties of vegetables out there to grow, you couldn’t get through them all in a hundred years!

You write for several national gardening magazines and have featured on TV! What are some of your favorite topics to write and speak about?

I love to talk about growing what you eat.

You shouldn’t feel you need to grow certain crops just because someone else is, or the fact you’ve read you should. If you only like strawberries, grow strawberries; after all, there are hundreds of varieties you could try.

I also like to let people know you don’t have to do it all at once, especially if you’re new to gardening. Start with a small patch, get it cultivated and have veg growing before you start weeding the next patch, otherwise you’ll spend weeks clearing an entire plot without any return, which in turn is disheartening and encourages you to give up. Break your space into different patches and move from one to the next, and if you don’t have the time, you don’t need to grow in them all, just throw some wildflower seeds on the areas you aren’t using and allow nature to use that patch.

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my dehydrator—it’s working twenty-four hours a day in the summer, drying fruits and veg to store through the winter and I wouldn’t be without it.

While it varies depending on the climate and region one lives in, for those living with cold winters like

preserve foods.The convenience of the supermarket carrying non-seasonal foods year round has facilitated this transition away from such an important practice. If more people were to readopt this practice, perhaps even sourcing straight from growers and farmers, what would you recommend as some of the top foods to harvest or buy in-season and preserve in bulk?

Tomatoes have to be number one for flavour: they can be canned, turned into soup, sauces, dried, or stored in oil, all giving you a flavour explosion and reminder of summer, even in the depths of winter.

Fruit is great to preserve, be it as a jam, jelly, sauce or juice—they all work well and are bursting with goodness.

When it comes to preserving, I would say I wouldn’t be without

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yours in the UK, you offer advice on how to keep growing food even in winter months. What are some of your go-to things to grow year round?

You don’t need a greenhouse to grow year round, but it does help!

Outside I love to grow brassicas, and if you’re clever about which varieties you grow, you can harvest almost every day of the year. I’m a huge fan of perennial kales, these larger plants aren’t just less affected by insects, they crop three-hundred and sixty-

By encouraging as many insects to the garden as possible, your mini eco-system will find its own balance, so you won’t be overrun with aphids as you’ve provided an environment to encourage predatory insects like ladybirds and hoverflies. It’s all about finding balance and working with nature, rather than trying to bend it to your will or steamroller over everything you don’t like. five days a year and last for years; Daubenton’s is my favourite. Oriental leaves and mustard leaves can be a struggle to grow in the height of summer, but early or later in the year they come into their own and will keep cropping for months, even if they get frozen solid they bounce back and are delicious added to soups or winter salads.You really need to look at what grows when, as there are huge variations between varieties and where/when they will grow. If in doubt, ask friends, neighbours, or local Facebook groups what will grow in your area.

You do a wonderful job of being really responsive to those who follow you for advice; a true testament to your dedication to sharing your passion and wisdom! Do you currently have, or do you plan to offer any virtual or in-person courses, workshops, or “camps”?

I would love to run courses for people to learn about gardening and growing their own food, however I have so many projects on the go, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Plus, I find the more you talk about gardening, the less time you actually have to appreciate your growing space and spend time gardening. It’s all about the work/life balance. That said, I do have a couple of top-secret and very exciting projects under way, so watch this space for updates!

ymore info: www.robsallotment.com IG: @robsallotment www.thegrandreturn.com

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Fuelling the Temple Mindful Eating Practices for Everyday Life

By Meghan Pearson Mindfulness is simply the awareness of the present moment—it’s living in the here and now. It is paying attention, on purpose, to life as it happens.

When we practice mindfulness, we are able to escape the “monkey mind”—the constant droning on and on of the ego or the thought process; the part of us that lives in the past and/or obsesses about the future.

Mindfulness is valuable in dayto-day life to help us be more aware of the bliss in every single moment,, and it is also a useful tool in connecting to and nourishing our physical body.

Fostering awareness around our meals and the food we consume allows us to more fully appreciate what we put on our plate while also helping us to cultivate a more compassionate and accepting view of our body temple.

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Here are some easy ways to begin being more present with your food: 1.

Buy local. Hit your neighborhood farmers’ market and get to know the providers in your area. Learning where your food comes from and how it is cultivated is the first step in re-creating your relationship with food!

2.

Eat in a calming environment. Sit down at your dining room table, on the patio, or roll out a picnic blanket at the park. Light some candles, and use the nice china! Try to avoid eating at your desk, in your car, or in front of the TV.

3.

Give gratitude. Take a moment before you dig in to appreciate the plate in front of you. Be thankful that you are able to nourish yourself and honor the food and all the vitality and strength it will afford you. Send gratitude to mother nature, the farmers, and all the cogs in the wheel of life that brought that food to your table.

4.

Savor. Before you take a bite, take in all the colors of your meal and really smell the delights that lay before you. Allow the aromas of your meal to penetrate your nose;your awareness. With each bite, notice the tastes and textures, and perhaps even note the different flavor combinations as they hit different spots on your tongue.

5.

Chew your food! Digestion begins in the mouth and the more you can liquify your food, the less taxing it is on your body to assimilate.

6.

Take your time. Eating slowly will not only help your stomach realize when it is full and help you avoid that uncomfortable “too full” feeling, but it will also act as a true meditation.

7.

After you complete your meal, take the time to tidy up. If you hand-wash your dishes, really notice the water temperature, enjoy the feeling of the soap suds on your skin, and continue to stay in gratitude for the gift of nourishment your meal provided.

It may take some time, but soon these mindful eating practices will become second-nature and you will find yourself enjoying your meals, snacks, and culinary indulgences in the most connected, thankful, and pleasurable way. Bon appetit!

ymore info: www.thegrandreturn.com/team/meghan-pearson www.meghanpearson.ca www.thegrandreturn.com

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“FOOD FARMACY”

Nutritional Healing and Resetting your Metabolism with Dr. Jim Bentz Interview By Sasha Frate | Introduction by Ainsley Schoppel Dr. Jim Bentz is the top practitioner and trainer for Neurological Integration System (NIS) in the United States, teaching healthcare practitioners the principles of Functional Neurology. Dr. Bentz has utilized NIS—a system that incorporates ancient eastern medicine practices with current neuroscience to promote self-healing through the detection and correction of signaling disruption in the nervous system—as his primary modality since 1997. Here, we will learn more about Dr. Bentz’s role as a health practitioner and the ways in which he is educating his clients on nutrition, food systems, and the benefits of connecting with local farms.

Tell us a bit about your personal story growing up and how it shaped your desire to pursue becoming a health practitioner.

I was fortunate to grow up in a health-conscious family. My dad was a dentist, and he had read Weston Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration early in his career. Price was a dentist, and in the 1930s he visited indigenous tribes around the world. He found that all these tribes had excellent dental and physical health as long as they ate their traditional diets. He was also able to study related indigenous tribes who were exposed to processed

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I began practicing in 1985, and early on I was frustrated by the fact that patients often had to return for care of their spinal problems because the adjustments I was making didn’t hold. In 1997 I attended my first Neurological Integration System seminar with Dr. Allan Phillips. This was a game changer for me. Without manipulation, Dr. Phillips was able to resolve my own chronic low back pain with NIS that weekend. This is because NIS allows a practitioner to get feedback directly from the brain to identify the underlying cause of a symptom. Symptoms are often the result of a disruption of neurological signaling between organs, muscles, joints, and nerves. NIS allows me to accurately identify these signaling disruptions, and prompt the brain to restore signaling and restore normal function. Since there is no intervention or force involved, NIS is a very safe and effective way of bringing the body back to optimal function. NIS has also allowed me to expand my practice beyond musculoskeletal symptoms to include immune, neurological, and organ dysfunction.

What is your experience/ observation with the role of nutrition and the level of education that the majority of medical practitioners have, at least in the U.S. and Canada?

foods by missionaries and traders.

When they abandoned traditional diets for processed foods containing white flour and sugar, their dental caries (cavities) rate went from almost zero to 60-95% within a very short time. They also suffered more heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer than those who adhered to traditional diets.

My mother was also very healthconscious. As kids, we never had soda and rarely had desserts. She cooked

almost all of our meals from scratch, and we never had fast food. I knew at an early age that I wanted to be a healthcare practitioner, and I chose chiropractic as it was most aligned with my belief that the body was able to heal itself.

What led to the shift in your practice from your chiropractic background into NIS? Why did you choose this application for treating people?

My nutritional training in Chiropractic College consisted of only one course and was sadly lacking in much substance. Much of it was based on the “Food Pyramid” which we now understand is not a good guide to eating for optimal health. In discussions with medical doctors, I realized that their training in nutrition is equally poor. Modern medical practice is focused primarily on pharmaceutical and surgical intervention, and I’ve found that very little emphasis is placed on the relationship between diet and health. www.thegrandreturn.com

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meats, fruits, and vegetables without the use of toxic pesticides and other chemicals. Because they are local, the items are much fresher than foods shipped thousands of miles. In meeting many of these growers and ranchers in person, I’m impressed with the passion and commitment they have to producing high quality food. Consuming as much fresh, locally grown food with low toxicity and high nutritional content is one of the best ways to improve health. I often remind people that the way in which we spend our food dollars is one of the most important choices we can make. This quote from Wendall Barry sums it up well: “People are fed by the food industry which pays no attention to health, and treated by the health industry which pays no attention to food.”

What if we were to coin a new concept of “food farmacy”? How might you describe the meaning of this?

What are you commonly seeing in the majority of your patients that has led you to want to educate on lifestyle and diet?

One of the most common things I hear when I ask patients about their diet is that most of them believe they are eating a healthy diet. When I ask for more details about what they are actually eating, I find that they are often eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), with lots of processed foods, grains, sugar and unhealthy fats.

This tells me that the food industry has been very successful in their attempts to convince people that

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their products are healthy when in reality they are contributing to the rising levels of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases that have become “normalized” in our society.

You regularly share information about sourcing food from local/regional farms with your clientele and broader audience What inspired you to start doing this?

We’re fortunate to live in an area with lots of growers and ranchers committed to producing high quality

I like this concept. We’ve become so indoctrinated with the idea that there is a pill for every ill, and we’ve forgotten the healing power of real food. I believe it’s so important to get this fundamentally right in our lives. Pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements won’t correct the problems caused by poor dietary choices.

Extending on this concept of food as medicine, you’ve not only advocated for sourcing straight from the farms, but you also educate about growth practices including the use of glyphosate and chemical usage, as well as the benefits of grass fed and pasture-raised animals. Can you share a bit more about this?

The agricultural industry has become more and more reliant on pesticides and other chemicals to increase yields and profits for crops like corn,

soy, and wheat. These, along with industrial oils like canola, soy,,and corn oil, are the primary ingredients for most of the processed food that fills supermarket shelves. These chemicals are devastating our health.

Glyphosate (Roundup) is a known carcinogen, and almost three hundred million pounds of it was applied to food crops last year. Most meat that is industrially raised is loaded with steroids and antibiotics due to the crowded and inhumane conditions in which it’s raised. There’s a huge difference in toxicity and nutritional value between industrially raised meat, eggs, and milk from animals raised on grass and pastures without chemical inputs.

You created a seven-week

Metabolic Reset Program to facilitate some of these lifestyle changes and habits through guided learning and practices that also helps people achieve metabolic flexibility. Why was it important to you to offer this type of program, and what do you see as the most valuable takeaways for those who participate?

I created the Metabolic Reset Program as a way to help people adapt to a healthier way of eating.

Because of the way many people have eaten for much of their life, their bodies have shifted their metabolism (how they convert food to energy) in a way that perpetuates their cravings for the foods they

consume which are high in sugar and other simple carbohydrates like flour, grains, potatoes etc. They lose the ability to burn fat which then is stored in tissues rather than burned as fuel. This becomes a vicious circle as metabolic flexibility is decreased.

This not only leads to weight gain, but can also result in diabetes, heart disease, and inflammatory conditions like arthritis. Helping people shift their metabolism has a wide range of benefits including weight loss, decreased inflammation, increased energy, improved hormonal balance, and detoxification, to name just a few.

ymore info: www.fidalgoislandhealthcenter.com

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Healing with Biofield Sciences

The Future of Health with Dr. Shamini Jain Interview by Sasha Frate, Introduction by Ainsley Schoppel As a clinical psychologist, scientist, and founder and CEO of the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (CHI)—a non-profit collaborative accelerator that connects scientists, health practitioners, innovators, and social entrepreneurs to advance the science and practice of healing—Dr. Shamini Jain is on the forefront of a necessary revolution in science, medicine, and healing. Trained in neuroscience at Columbia University and in clinical psychology and psychoneuroimmunology at University of California, San Diego, Dr. Jain now serves as adjunct faculty in Psychiatry at UC, San Diego, where she is an active member of the Center for Integrative Medicine’s Research Committee.

In this discussion, Face the Current and Dr. Jain explores biofield connections, how to foster healing effects, the importance of reconditioning, our imaginal capacity, and the role of sound in healing.

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By regulating our breathing, as well as our attention, we can foster healing effects by enhancing our parasympathetic nervous system activity, and regulating our immune system. Beyond our physiology though, indigenous systems understood that these practices work by connecting us to a larger spiritual whole through feeling and sensing “energy”—or the biofield. Connecting with the biofield means deepening our subtle awareness.

Photo Credit: Christina Bresson

Our biofield is a field of vital life-energy that helps connect us with our environment, and Indigenous medical systems around the world have all embraced using biofields for health and healing. By fostering a connection with the biofield through yoga, breathing, sound, and meditation, we can foster a connection with mind, body, and spirit. What do you recommend people do to use their biofields to heal themselves and others?

There are so many ways to connect with our biofields. The data shows us that whether we engage in timehonored biofield based self-healing practices like Tai chi, qigong, yoga,

or various forms of meditation, they all have similar effects on our autonomic nervous systems. As I discuss in my book, Healing Ourselves: Biofield Science and the Future of Health, by regulating our breathing, as well as our attention, we can foster healing effects by enhancing our parasympathetic nervous system activity, and regulating our immune system. Beyond our physiology though, indigenous systems understood that these practices work by connecting us to a larger spiritual whole through feeling and sensing “energy”—or the biofield.

Connecting with the biofield means deepening our subtle awareness.

To powerfully connect with our

biofields, we simply need to bring ourselves to the here and now, and draw our attention to the sensations inside and outside of our body. The beautiful thing about this is that we can actually do it at any time. We can do it formally, using mind-bodyspirit practices, or we can deepen our biofield connection when we’re outside in nature.

We can also develop our biofield connection as we engage in a creative activity, including art. I am a huge fan of singing and vocal empowerment, which I teach in my workshops. I’ve found that inner soundmaking is a very powerful way to connect and cohere our biofields, both individually and collectively. The ancients knew www.thegrandreturn.com

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The ancients knew this well—they described sound as consciousness itself. When we engage in inner soundmaking, whether it’s singing, toning, or mantra practice, we are not only engaging the breath and the vagus nerve for physiological healing, we are also expanding our awareness to feel and express emotions while opening our consciousness to connect more deeply in the spiritual realm. And, the best part is all of us can do this because we all have a beautiful voice to explore our inner dimensionality!

Image from album cover of Kaliyuga Blues | Captured by Matthew Heller

this well—they described sound as consciousness itself. When we engage in inner soundmaking, whether it’s singing, toning, or mantra practice, we are not only engaging the breath and the vagus nerve for physiological healing, we are also expanding our awareness to feel and express emotions while opening our consciousness to connect more deeply in the spiritual realm. And, the best part is all of us can do this because we all have a beautiful voice to explore our inner dimensionality!

I think the future of biofield science and healing is rooted in a collective realization that our biofields provide a powerful gateway into healing—one that we can access ourselves. While

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we can sometimes greatly benefit from seeing another person to help connect and cohere our biofields to augment healing, this is truly something we can do for ourselves as well. As we each deepen our own subtle awareness, we really access the Healer within. There are wonderful healing schools in so many forms of biofield healing, including Pranic Healing, Healing Touch, Reiki, Laying on of Hands, Energy Psychology and more, that can deepen our practice and allow us to skillfully work with the biofield to heal others. But the first step is developing our own awareness so that we can also skillfully heal ourselves. When our fields are full, we can better serve

others. I discuss a comprehensive path that deepens our everyday connection with our biofields for selfhealing in the third part of my book, which is called the Healing Keys.

You are clearly passionate about the role of sound and the voice for healing, and we understand you are also a singer who has performed several styles ranging from classical western to heavy metal. Besides having your own debut album coming out this year, you also integrate artists within your nonprofit, the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (CHI). What role does creativity and art play in healing?

The role of creative expression is grossly overlooked in healing. Despite data showing us that everyday creativity can uplevel our mood, and that creative expression—whether it is music, dance, visual arts, writing, etc.—can improve mental and physical health down to changing markers of cell aging and improving cardiovascular function. The arts are often viewed as simply entertainment, and even worse, many people do not recognize the artist within or consider themselves creative.Yet, simply by being alive, we are each creative. The creative force is within each of us, waiting to be expressed, and is closely tied to healing.

What I have learned from following my own creative journey is that it leads me to fulfilling experiences that I never knew were possible. It allows for deeper healing possibilities for myself and also others, because it allows what is often unexpressed to become alive and expressed.

Allowing creativity to be expressed through us takes vulnerability, which is healing in and of itself. My debut album, Kaliyuga Blues, has been a humbling journey, and it’s been fun to engage in the songwriting process. It’s something I never knew was possible for me to do, but I just gave in to it instead of telling myself I couldn’t do it. It’s been fun to witness how these seven songs have taken shape: each reflects the experience of a chakra, which was not planned, but it just emerged that way! The album also reflects different styles that are close to my heart, including rock, electronica, Indian mantra, and folk.

We should be releasing the album sometime this fall on streaming platforms, and I’ll certainly share on my social media at @drshaminijain when it’s out.

Beyond my personal experience with art, our nonprofit, the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, brings together the wisdom of artists

along with scientists and healing practitioners. Each of these brings a needed perspective and experience to healing, and when we are able to bring these perspectives and experiences together through art, real magic can happen.

Currently, our nonprofit CHI is partnering with an incredible film director and producer, Christina Bresson, on a documentary called The Energy that Heals. The film will not only enlighten the public on the actual research behind the biofield and healing, it will also inspire with real-world experiences and wisdom from patient, practitioner, and spiritual indigenous wisdom holders on the realities of healing. Film is able to touch the hearts and minds of the public in a way that scientific reports simply cannot do.

The reality of healing must be known and accessible to all. In order for us to realize our own capacity to heal, it’s important that we are all “on the same page” with the scientific, practical, and spiritual underpinnings of healing.

We’re thrilled to be working on this film, which will showcase the incredible community of healing practitioners, scientists, and patients who are showing us the possibilities and meaning of healing in everyday lives.

It’s great that you are engaging the arts in the healing as well as the scientific communication process - and engaging spiritual perspectives as well. You often speak about healing from the spiritual perspective and have

mentioned that when we “move beyond the conditioned egoic mind to a deeper sense of connection” we can access a source of healing.Through this connection, we can then channel compassion and enable others to augment their own healing.

It sounds advanced, and yet quite simple. Because the egoic mind is so well conditioned and reinforced in modern society, how do you suggest people decondition or recondition and access this deeper sense of connection as a more frequent state?

Photo Credit: Christina Bresson

My favorite way to come out of myself is to Simply Be In Nature.

When I’m in nature, I am surrounded by so many biofields that naturally bring me out of my conditioned, overactive mind. I can take a moment to listen to and feel the wind, the trees, the birds, the creek.

I can listen to what Nature has to say to me. I can energetically ground myself and connect with the larger whole of the Earth that nurtures and supports us. Coming back into a relationship with the Earth is probably the most powerful way of re-conditioning ourselves. www.thegrandreturn.com

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Another favorite way to “recondition” has to do with balancing the thinking mind with the present moment, as well as what I like to call the imaginal capacity. We currently live in a world where we are bombarded with “information”, and as a result, our brains and minds are overstimulated and constantly active. Because of this lack of peace between moments, our energy is often depleted and we feel lifeless—we are constantly on “output” in a way that separates our minds from our bodies and environment. This is why mindfulness practices that also rely on a sense of bodily awareness are so powerful.

Literally bringing our attention to the here and now through our bodily awareness, without judgment, is a way to liberate ourselves from the machinations of the conditioned mind—because now we can more fully observe it without identifying with it.

There is also much energy to be gained when we allow ourselves to dive into the imaginal realm and allow ourselves to receive information, or be in “input.” This is even beyond imagination or “fantasy” in the way that we currently think about it.

The imaginal realms are actually as real as the conditioned mind realms. They are parts of ourselves that are sometimes lodged in the subconscious that may influence

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our thinking or behavior without us realizing it, often binding our energy in subconscious patterns that lie in our fields.

To go into the imaginal realms means we can choose to liberate ourselves from the energy bound in the subconscious, and even access what Jung called the collective unconscious.

Engaging in creativity is a powerful way to connect with the imaginal.

When we engage in creative acts we liberate our energy and we can allow for parts of ourselves, such as the inner child, to fully express themselves. This can be incredibly healing. We also get new information that we may not have gotten before.

This is also where we can more fully access intuition, guidance, and the embodiment of aspects of divinity, bringing those more deeply into our everyday lives. Consider that forms of tantric meditation, including mantra meditation, are ways to connect with deities in realms beyond the conditioned mind, to bring those vibrations more fully into our being and enhance our spiritual and service experience. Balancing the imaginal with the thinking mind can be a powerful way to re-calibrate our Being.

There are many ways to connect with the imaginal realm, including engaging in everyday creativity, engaging in guided imagery practices, and even journaling after dreaming. All of the information from the imaginal realms, when made conscious, can greatly liberate our energy, deepen our healing, and help us feel more connected.

You describe our “inner reserves of wellness” as our “independent WELLth”. What are the ways in which people can “store up” on their reserves?

What’s exciting is that the data is clear that we experience WELLth in many dimensions, and they all connect with each other to further our WELLth in other dimensions. So, when we take stock of where we are mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and interpersonally, we can learn what areas we might want to shore up on more. Once we augment our WELLth in one dimension, we may notice improvements in WELLth in other dimensions as well.

For example, if my physical WELLth is strong because I eat well and move my body, it will also positively impact my mental and emotional WELLth. This means there are multiple ways—directly or indirectly—that we can improve our WELLth in any dimension. I actually have a free quiz where people can get a sense of where they are on their confidence with accessing WELLth across dimensions, with some helpful advice on how to augment WELLth in each dimension.That quiz can be accessed here: www.shaminijain.com/wellth-quiz

Scientifically, we have explored this mostly on the behavioral level, where we recognize that when we don’t feel connected, our health suffers. The data is clear that loneliness is more powerful than smoking in terms of shortening our life.

But when we look deeply at neurobiology from a spiritual perspective, we realize that because we truly aren’t separate, we experience what others experience, down to our neural firing. In my TEDx Berkeley talk, I describe neurobiology where we not only feel another person’s physical pain, but social pain as well.

You mention fostering spiritual wellness in addition to physical, emotional, and interpersonal dimensions. What is meant by this concept of wellness in the spiritual dimension? How is it attained?

Spiritual Wellness is actually related to the process of reconditioning, which we talked about earlier. The first step is to recognize that we are more than our conditioned minds, and even more than our subconscious. Then, we go beyond that.

To me, Spiritual Wellness is the heart of healing; it is coming into contact with the Divinity that is within and between all of us. It brings to us an awe and reverence for life itself, and the connectivity between us.

We can deepen our spiritual wellness in many ways. Coming into nature, engaging in spiritual practices like

prayer and meditation, and engaging in service are powerful ways to augment spiritual wellness. When we also live according to our values, and express virtues such as gratitude and forgiveness, we can more deeply access spiritual wellness. We can also ask Spirit for help when we need it, which augments our capacity to connect in the spiritual realm and serve with more grace and ease.

Can you speak to our ability to “heal each other?” What does it mean for the “neurobiology of interconnection to help us realize how we are biologically wired to heal each other”?

As I shared in my recent TEDx Berkeley talk, connection is one of our most powerful healers.

We truly are biologically wired to connect and heal. Scientifically, we have explored this mostly on the behavioral level, where we recognize

that when we don’t feel connected, our health suffers. The data is clear that loneliness is more powerful than smoking in terms of shortening our life.

But when we look deeply at neurobiology from a spiritual perspective, we realize that because we truly aren’t separate, we experience what others experience, down to our neural firing. In my TEDx Berkeley talk, I describe neurobiology where we not only feel another person’s physical pain, but social pain as well. Currently in science, we’re comfortable (to some degree) talking about interconnection when it comes to brain-to-brain communication. But when we deepen our subtle awareness and spiritual WELLth, and we recognize that we are all connected through biofields, we can actually access these biofields to more deeply connect with each other and foster healing. www.thegrandreturn.com

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In that TEDx Berkeley talk, I discussed the data behind connective healing with biofields, and it raised some controversy with TED because biofield science is still not considered mainstream. They chose to flag and release my TEDx talk with a new title, all without telling me, saying my talk was based on my own “personal research.” This was untrue. I had actually given them over twenty-nine peer-reviewed, published references, including papers published in prestigious journals like Science, to back up every scientific statement I made. But outlets like TED are still suppressing the scientific reality of whole-person-healing.

Thankfully, healers have known about the reality of healing interconnectedness for millenia.

Deepening interconnection through biofields is what so many healers do

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when they engage in healing, whether in person, or at a distance. This is absolutely a spiritual practice. As you know, I share all this peer-reviewed, published data on healing and interconnection through biofields in my book, Healing Ourselves. The data is real and shows us the possibilities and truths of interconnectedness even beyond these “bio-body-suits,” as the late Dr. Willam Tiller liked to say.

You describe medical professors (and much of our medical system) and outlets like TED and Wikipedia to be steeped in a particular worldview that has dominated science and medicine for well over a century, to the point that they are ignoring data on healing realities. Why and how do you believe we went through a regression and

disconnect in medicine, and why has it been so challenging to revive whole systems medical approaches and make them more accessible to people for healing?

I am a psychologist, so I tend to see things through the psychological lens. For me, this is ultimately a story about belonging, as well as the tendency for the human mind to see in dualities.

When the hard sciences began to advance through empirical approaches, empirical approaches and thinking were adopted by what have been called the softer sciences, such as psychology. It was great to apply analytical thinking and cause-andeffect exploration to the workings of the mind. We have learned a great deal that way.

But in our zeal for psychology to be seen as a legitimate science, we decided that unless we could reduce everything to plausible biological mechanisms, there was nothing in the psyche worth exploring. The psyche, however, translates to “spirit.”

The spirit is beyond mere biological mechanisms to explain its existence.

As a postdoctoral fellow, I remember sitting in a meeting at UCLA with junior faculty in psychoneuroimmunology who were complaining that we still had the psyche in psychoneuroimmunology.

They felt that even having the word “psyche” would delegitimize them in front of their colleagues in neuroscience and immunology, and they wanted to get rid of that word.

It was very saddening for me as a postdoctoral fellow to hear this, but I understood that the tendency of the human heart is to want to belong.

These junior faculty members felt they could not be taken seriously if they talked about the role of the

psyche in mind-body connection, because the focus was just on elucidating molecular and cellular processes and pathways of change.

They felt they couldn’t be part of the “cool group” of “legitimate” scientists if they used this word, “psyche.”

Ultimately, they were longing for belonging, for legitimacy, and for their work to be seen and honored. This is one of the reasons we created our nonprofit, the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (CHI for short): to have a safe space for communities of scientists, healing practitioners, educators, and artists to talk about the truth of what they are discovering about healing, synergize with their discoveries, and share it with others.

Because of our need for belonging, and our hesitancy to embrace multiple perspectives (that both measurable biological pathways and less measurable, psychological, and energetic processes are important in healing [and one does not have to

reduce to the other]), we decided that if we had a hammer (empiricism and materialism), everything was a nail (the world was only material and explainable through empirical inquiry). However, it remains to be seen whether the psyche, spirit, or even the biofield can be explained solely through biological mechanisms and pathways. This is an age-old conundrum that we often call “the hard problem” in consciousness circles, or simply the “mind-body problem,” dating to the writings of Aristotle and others. Biological changes are simply ripple effects of the healing process. Healing itself is still a great mystery. I believe we have to sit with that mystery to learn from it; only then may we gain insight into how it truly works.

ymore info: www.shaminijain.com IG, FB, LinkedIn: @drshaminijain www.thegrandreturn.com

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A publication of The Grand Return www.thegrandreturn.com