Episode 52: Take care of your children's mother, your husband's wife | With Tamar Reiss, practitioner of Chinese medicine

00:00 Speaker 1 I’m sitting down for a conversation with Tamar, who meets dozens of women in her clinic every month, and I want to hear from her: Tamar, what must we not miss? What can we catch early? How do we take care of ourselves, and what should we watch for so we don’t slowly collapse under the weight of life? That’s Tamar’s shlichus. She’s a Chinese medicine practitioner who does far more than treat problems that have already developed. She helps women take preventive steps and become aware of so many things we can easily miss—but can also notice, take responsibility for, and live healthier, calmer, better lives. A reminder: if you liked this episode, don’t keep it to yourself. Pass it on to your sister, your mother, a neighbor, a friend—anyone who matters to you. My shlichus is to record; yours is to spread the word. To follow me on Instagram, search for Chani Moskowitz. To follow my status, book workshops and talks on life-changing tools from Chassidus, or learn about the “Health as a Way of Life” program, it’s all at 050-850-5770. The intro, and then we’ll get started. How do we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine, now continuing my shlichus in Karmei Gat, Israel. On this podcast, we’ll meet different women who will share their shlichus in a range of fields and, through it, help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in this world. Because living the lives we were created to live is as good as it gets. Shlichus as a Way of Life. We’re starting right now.

01:34 Speaker 1 Welcome to another episode of the Shlichus as a Way of Life podcast. I have a wonderful guest today. Hi, Tamar.

01:41 Speaker 2 Hi, hi.

01:42 Speaker 1 How are you?

01:43 Speaker 2 Boruch Hashem. It’s so good to see you.

01:45 Speaker 1 Yes, to meet in person.

01:47 Speaker 2 Wow.

01:47 Speaker 1 So, I didn’t invite Tamar here for no reason. I’ve been following you for a long time. “Following you” sounds funny, doesn’t it?

01:52 Speaker 2 Not scary at all.

01:53 Speaker 1 Following you and—

01:55 Speaker 2 Watching you.

01:55 Speaker 1 Oh, watching, right. I knew we’d do an episode together someday, and then somehow it just happened spontaneously, and pretty quickly. Boruch Hashem. My daughter Mussi asked me today who was coming on the podcast, because she saw me setting things up here. I told her, “A Chinese medicine practitioner.” So she said, “What, she’s coming all the way here from China?” So—

02:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:16 Speaker 1 Let’s jump straight in. I think the best way to explain what Chinese medicine is would be for you to tell me why, of all the things in the world, you decided to study it.

02:27 Speaker 2 Okay.

02:28 Speaker 1 And tell us about yourself. Yes.

02:29 Speaker 2 So first of all, nice to meet you. I’m Tamar Reis. I’m a Chinese medicine practitioner.

02:34 Speaker 1 Move a little closer.

02:35 Speaker 2 Yes. There. I practice Chinese medicine. I’m married and a mother of two. And I took a somewhat roundabout route to Chinese medicine. My father has been a Chinese medicine practitioner for over twenty years, so I pretty much grew up with it. At home, acupuncture was always one of the tools we used, so to speak—

02:55 Speaker 1 Needles in every corner.

02:56 Speaker 2 Needles in every corner. You don’t feel well? A headache? Needles. The whole cupboard was full of medicinal herbs. So it was very much part of my upbringing. But I was never particularly interested in how you actually treat people or how it works. My own connection to Chinese medicine began after I started studying a different method called Three-Dimensional Therapy.

03:23 Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

03:23 Speaker 2 I started when I was seventeen. I went to study this therapy, and it’s basically—

03:28 Speaker 1 What do you mean, at seventeen?

03:30 Speaker 2 At seventeen. In twelfth grade.

03:31 Speaker 1 In the middle of twelfth grade?

03:31 Speaker 2 Yes. Well, not the middle.

03:33 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:33 Speaker 2 Twelfth grade.

03:33 Speaker 1 You strike me as a very, very... student.

03:35 Speaker 2 Right. So I had received treatment through this therapy myself. I’d always been someone who really liked listening to people. I knew that was my future, that was where I wanted to be. And because I’d experienced the treatment, I was really interested in how you could help people that way. I wanted to learn to do it too. So I started studying, with my parents’ encouragement, and kept it under wraps. The seminary didn’t allow us to take outside courses. I’d change out of my uniform in the bathroom—

04:04 Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

04:05 Speaker 2 And go—

04:05 Speaker 1 I’ve heard about that.

04:06 Speaker 2 To continue studying. They were evening classes. After I finished studying that therapy—which is a mental and emotional form of treatment based on neuroscience and Chinese medicine—we’d had a tiny introduction to the philosophy of Chinese medicine, and it really interested me. I told myself, “Okay, you can’t treat just the mind, just the spirit. You have to address the body too. If a woman comes to me, I want to know how to help her right then if she’s suffering from something.” So I went on to study Chinese medicine for another four years.

04:39 Speaker 1 Wow.

04:40 Speaker 2 And of course, since I’d grown up with it, you know—

04:42 Speaker 1 No, you must have already known a lot—

04:44 Speaker 2 It was easier. Yes.

04:45 Speaker 1 Had that background.

04:46 Speaker 2 Yes. I was more familiar with the practical side. I wasn’t afraid of needles. I knew about herbs and patients. I’d sit in my father’s clinic, wait for him, and watch everything going on. But it was fascinating to suddenly study the philosophical side of it, and of the whole system of medicine and all that.

05:06 Speaker 1 I’m curious: at such a young age, when, say, a woman comes to you, do you feel confident enough to tell her, “I can help you,” and to treat her? I don’t know, it really is young.

05:20 Speaker 2 One second. I want to adjust something.

05:23 Speaker 1 I mean, medical school, for example, takes seven years. Even if someone starts at, I don’t know, eighteen, it takes some time.

05:31 Speaker 2 Right.

05:32 Speaker 1 They might only start treating patients at your age.

05:34 Speaker 2 Right.

05:35 Speaker 1 So this happened very quickly, and I think it takes a lot of confidence. Maybe because you grew up with it, you felt—

05:42 Speaker 2 I think growing up with it made it more familiar to me. But those personal qualities involved in treating people—being there for someone else, having empathy, understanding what another person is feeling—I think I always felt I had those. My friends always found a listening ear with me. I was the one they came to talk to. I think I also went through various things in life that brought me to a more mature place emotionally. Of course, in the first few years I was less confident, like anyone starting out.

06:17 Speaker 1 Right, exactly.

06:17 Speaker 2 I think it’s good to always have a little uncertainty when you’re in—

06:21 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:21 Speaker 2 This field, because that’s what keeps you learning. And, you know, it helps you work without too much ego and really listen to the other person. Because ultimately, with every patient who comes to me, even today, I know the answers are within her. Usually, the answers aren’t with me. Once you understand that, there’s no room for... I don’t even know how to put it.

06:48 Speaker 1 Yes, it’s like—

06:48 Speaker 2 Being emotionally available.

06:49 Speaker 1 Rather than, “I’m the one with all the knowledge and power,” it’s “I’m helping you—”

06:53 Speaker 2 Yes.

06:54 Speaker 1 Bring out what’s within you.

06:54 Speaker 2 I have the tools and the knowledge. The strength is within you. Your own knowledge is within you, and I’m just here to help you get clearer about it.

07:04 Speaker 1 It sounds like coaching, but for the body.

07:06 Speaker 2 That too.

07:08 Speaker 1 Really.

07:08 Speaker 2 For the body and the mind. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

07:11 Speaker 1 Right, so—

07:11 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

07:12 Speaker 1 So maybe tell us in a few words what Chinese medicine is, for anyone who—

07:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

07:16 Speaker 1 Isn’t familiar with it.

07:16 Speaker 2 Chinese medicine is a form of natural medicine. It developed in China over two thousand years ago through the work of various physicians. It starts with the Yellow Emperor, who has a very well-known book. He was an emperor who simply didn’t want to die. He wanted to live forever, so he assembled a group of physicians to find the formula for living as well as possible and never dying—for becoming immortal. That’s how Chinese medicine developed. They studied the body and the energy flowing through it. They identified the meridians, the energy pathways, and the medicinal herbs. Little by little, Chinese medicine developed. As the years passed, more and more knowledge was added, right up to what we have today. Chinese medicine relies mainly on ancient writings, on books by physicians who were very well known in those periods. And it still works today.

08:16 Speaker 1 Tell me, we’re talking about China, and it sounds a little like the world of yoga and things like that. How does it actually work? How does it go hand in hand with Judaism? I mean, aren’t there contradictions, or things you do or don’t engage with?

08:33 Speaker 2 Yes, there are a lot of stereotypes about Eastern medicine. People are suspicious because there are various forms of idol worship and things like that. So they mistakenly think Chinese medicine might be some kind of religion, or something that isn’t really, uh—

08:51 Speaker 1 A bit mystical, too.

08:52 Speaker 2 Yes, a little out there.

08:53 Speaker 1 [unclear], and, uh—

08:55 Speaker 2 Energies and all that. Absolutely.

08:59 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:59 Speaker 2 So Chinese medicine isn’t a religion. It’s a way of life developed by those physicians, with various guidelines and recommendations about diet, a particular lifestyle, and also a kind of spiritual work. But that spiritual work isn’t connected to any particular deity or anything you have to believe in; each person connects to what they believe in. What they did was observe the universe and what happens in the world, and from that they drew conclusions about what happens inside our bodies. They drew a strong parallel between the macro—the world as a whole—and the micro, what happens in our bodies. If there’s cold in the world, there’s cold in the body; if there’s heat in the world, there’s heat in the body. That’s how they observed the world and drew conclusions about their health. It’s called the Dao—a way of life, not a religion or anything like that. And “if someone tells you there is wisdom among the nations, believe it.” A lot of things in Chinese medicine, incidentally, connect very strongly with concepts in Judaism and with things the Rambam taught us as well. There are many, many points of connection and parallels.

10:03 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:03 Speaker 2 They say that when wisdom comes down into the world, it usually comes down in several places—

10:08 Speaker 1 Interesting.

10:09 Speaker 2 Yes. So, yes, it’s medicine.

10:12 Speaker 1 You mentioned that when it’s hot outside, it’s hot inside. I wanted to tell you that’s why I didn’t put ice in your drink, because I saw you talking about not eating, uh—

10:20 Speaker 2 Right.

10:20 Speaker 1 Even though I’m addicted to ice in the summer.

10:22 Speaker 2 Yes.

10:23 Speaker 1 So how do you cool yourself down?

10:25 Speaker 2 Well, there are various ways—

10:28 Speaker 1 Maybe you should explain this whole thing about temperatures, because people don’t know about it.

10:34 Speaker 2 In Chinese medicine, there really are different ways of looking at nutrition. I mean, we don’t count calories. Even hearing about that makes me feel sick.

10:46 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:47 Speaker 2 We don’t restrict how much of a particular food you eat, or say, “Eat only protein,” or “Eat only carbohydrates,” or anything like that. In Chinese medicine, we look at the food itself and examine what it does in the body—how it works in the body. Some foods warm us from within; they have a warming energy. Cinnamon, for example, is a plant that warms us very strongly from within.

11:17 Speaker 1 So that warming is physical?

11:20 Speaker 2 Physical.

11:21 Speaker 1 Completely, I mean.

11:21 Speaker 2 Yes, physical. Everything starts as energy and then moves into matter. So when the energy warms up, we feel it physically, too. Oops. For example, if you eat mint and chew it for a moment, or drink something with mint in it, you’ll feel a kind of coolness spreading.

11:42 Speaker 1 Yes.

11:42 Speaker 2 In other words, every food has what’s called an energetic temperature. We also look at the color of fruits and vegetables. Each color is associated with a different element and a different system, and strengthens a particular organ. So that’s another thing we look at in nutrition. As for the temperature of food, in Chinese medicine the practice is to eat food that’s warm, or at most, say, at room temperature. They even make a point of giving food some brief heating. Because according to Chinese medicine, if I eat something cold, I exhaust my digestive system. My body is at a certain temperature—thirty-seven, thirty-six degrees, something like that. It varies a little from person to person. When I put something cold into my body, my digestive system has to work a little harder, first of all to warm the food—

12:38 Speaker 3 I remember the [unclear] we learned about in school.

12:40 Speaker 2 Exactly, and then to extract the energy from it. So by the time it manages to extract that energy, it’s already tired. That’s why, if I eat something at a temperature relatively close to my body temperature, and the food has been heated briefly, giving it a little vitality, so to speak, it’s easier for my body and digestive system to get the full energy, and... so to speak—

13:05 Speaker 3 But take fruit, for example. You can’t—do you heat grapes? No.

13:10 Speaker 2 So, look. There are fruits that, according to Chinese medicine, actually are better warmed, cooked, sautéed, put in the oven, or something like that. In summer, after all, we’re hot. And it’s amazing to see that all the summer fruits have a cooling energy. They help treat excess heat in the body. But generally, even if I eat fruit whole—as what’s called raw food—I’ll make sure not to eat it straight from the fridge. I’ll wait until it reaches room temperature and then eat it. That way I benefit from its coolness, its cooling energy. It helps with the heat in my body in the summer, but I’m still not exhausting my digestive system.

14:00 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s fascinating.

14:01 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s maybe—

14:02 Speaker 3 What you’re saying is interesting, too: the foods that grow in each season. These days it’s probably a bit more complicated, because we have—

14:10 Speaker 2 Imports.

14:10 Speaker 3 Yes, in most seasons we have everything all the time. There are still things like apricots, which have their season, but you can find most vegetables all the time, and fruits too, so—

14:20 Speaker 2 Right.

14:21 Speaker 3 You have to know.

14:22 Speaker 2 And that’s why you have to understand what does me good and what doesn’t do me as much good.

14:25 Speaker 3 Yes.

14:26 Speaker 2 That’s what I always say, and it’s always interesting to see when I do an assessment. When a woman comes to my clinic and I—

14:35 Speaker 3 How do you assess her?

14:35 Speaker 2 Ask her questions.

14:36 Speaker 3 In what ways?

14:38 Speaker 2 An assessment in Chinese medicine happens in various—how should I put it—

14:47 Speaker 3 From different angles.

14:48 Speaker 2 In different ways, from different angles. Just by looking at you, I can already learn about you. The way we sit, for example.

14:57 Speaker 3 Actually, wow. No, I’ve been for Chinese medicine treatments a few times.

15:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

15:02 Speaker 3 What I know about is the tongue—

15:04 Speaker 2 And the pulse.

15:05 Speaker 3 “Stick out your tongue,” and then they check your pulse here. Right.

15:08 Speaker 2 Right.

15:10 Speaker 3 That’s it. But what else is there?

15:11 Speaker 2 Those really are the main tools for checking the state of the body: the tongue and the pulse. There’s also looking at the patient’s face—for example, looking at your lips, your coloring, whether your skin is dry or moist, whether you have blemishes, whether you have a lot of hair or very little. Every detail like that. Your voice—is it strong? Is it weak or hoarse? Each of those things teaches me about your constitution, your overall energy, and the level of energy in your body. And of course, there’s a more in-depth set of questions about every system in your body and about your lifestyle. What do you eat? How do you sleep? How many bowel movements do you have a day? When do you go to sl—

15:55 Speaker 3 Yes, I remember going to a Chinese med—what do you call it? A Chinese medicine practitioner.

15:59 Speaker 2 A Chinese medicine practitioner.

16:00 Speaker 3 You’re careful not to say “doctor.”

16:02 Speaker 2 Yes, because that’s—

16:03 Speaker 3 And I’d gone there for something else entirely; I don’t remember what. I think I was very weak after COVID. Then she asked me, “How are your bowel movements?” And I was like, “What?” I didn’t understand the connection. But wow, no, she managed to find out everything, and—

16:15 Speaker 2 Yes, right down to the consistency and smell, and exactly when it happens. Every little detail teaches us about our bodies. And of course, there are questions about our periods. How often do you get your period? Do you have pain or not? Do you have blood clots or not? How many days of bleeding? How many days is your cycle? I mean, every tiny detail teaches us about our bodies. So some women come for the first time, and it’s the first time anyone has ever asked them these questions.

16:42 Speaker 3 Yes, exactly, exactly.

16:43 Speaker 2 It’s the first time that—

16:44 Speaker 3 Hang on, let me think about my body for a second.

16:45 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s the first time you suddenly say to yourself, “Wait, when did I last go to the bathroom? When am I going to the bathroom?” Like, “I don’t know. I hadn’t noticed at all.” So it always moves me to see—

16:55 Speaker 3 Wow.

16:55 Speaker 2 —someone suddenly stop and pay attention to herself and what’s happening with her body. And then it becomes something they explore, and suddenly they’re interested in it. And that’s so important, because ultimately it’s our health.

17:07 Speaker 3 Wow. So if someone wants to come in for something one-off—“Just stick a needle in the right spot”—it doesn’t really work like that. Even the assessment itself is quite an opening process.

17:19 Speaker 2 Right. It also really depends on why she came to my clinic. For example, someone called me today because her friend had given birth, and she wanted to give her a treatment as a gift—something restorative for after the birth. So I gave her the details, and then she said, “Do you also do an assessment? I’d really like her to have the assessment and maybe continue with a course of treatment.” I told her, “Look, the full assessment takes time. It’s a substantial part of the first appointment.” I always say that beforehand, too, so they won’t be disappointed that a large part of the introductory appointment is spent getting to know them and understanding who they are. But if it’s a treatment here and there for a shoulder pain, or something that’s seized up, and she comes in only once in a while, I’m not going to sit there and ask her about everything going on in her life. The treatment will be a little shorter. I’ll rely mainly on her pulse, her tongue, and the things she tells me quickly, so I can help her right then, if it’s urgent. But of course, if someone comes for an ongoing process and really wants to get to a better place, I need to understand her. I need to get to know her to truly treat the root of the issue. So it really, really depends. I go with the flow, as they say. I don’t force anyone.

18:29 Speaker 3 I’m interested in—

18:30 Speaker 2 —doing the whole process...

18:32 Speaker 3 I imagine that usually people come to you—I mean, maybe because you talk about it, they do—but a woman doesn’t usually just come in and say, “I want a 10,000-kilometer tune-up, to upgrade my lifestyle.” Usually they come because something hurts, right? Because something is bothering them. “I have migraines, I have...” Obviously there are endless problems people come to you with.

18:53 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:55 Speaker 3 And then they get to the point of, “Wait, I need this.” You bring people to the root of the problem, and they realize that’s what they really came for, even though they came in for something completely different.

19:07 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Look, it varies a lot. Let’s put it this way: a large percentage of the women who come to the clinic come because they already don’t feel well. Part of what I hope to do is teach women to come a moment earlier—to take care of themselves as part of their regular routine.

19:25 Speaker 3 Oh, you once had some kind of—

19:28 Speaker 2 I have a project called—

19:29 Speaker 3 Oh, tell me the name.

19:29 Speaker 2 —“Getting Ahead with Healing.”

19:31 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes.

19:33 Speaker 2 It’s something that—

19:34 Speaker 3 That caught my eye, because I really thought, “Wow, this is what every woman needs.”

19:39 Speaker 2 Right.

19:39 Speaker 3 To get ahead of the problem with healing.

19:41 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

19:42 Speaker 3 Especially as women, baruch Hashem, with pregnancies and births.

19:45 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

19:46 Speaker 3 And who doesn’t need that? Who won’t reach the point where she collapses if she doesn’t take care of herself?

19:51 Speaker 2 Absolutely, absolutely. And it happens. All of us, at some point, experience some kind of imbalance. But once I understand the idea of preventive care, and how I can help myself day to day and take care of myself—whether through nutrition or even a maintenance treatment once in a while... I go for acupuncture too, even when nothing hurts and everything is fine.

20:10 Speaker 3 Do you do acupuncture on yourself too?

20:11 Speaker 2 Sometimes, but it’s more enjoyable to go to someone else. Arriving and letting yourself be cared for is part of the experience. That’s a very, very important part of the treatment.

20:19 Speaker 3 You mean lying there peacefully while someone takes care of me.

20:20 Speaker 2 Yes. You let go of control for a moment, let go of control—

20:23 Speaker 3 Falling asleep during acupuncture—that’s nice.

20:25 Speaker 2 Oh, it’s one of the best experiences.

20:28 Speaker 3 It really is.

20:29 Speaker 2 You can get hooked on it.

20:30 Speaker 3 What was I going to ask you? I’d like everyone who’s taken the time to listen to this important podcast to hear a few things that can get overlooked—things that, from your experience in the clinic, you see most often.

20:49 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:49 Speaker 3 And that you see people overlook most often.

20:51 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

20:52 Speaker 3 I’ll tell you right now: stress. Let’s start with that.

20:57 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:57 Speaker 3 We could talk about it for five hours.

20:59 Speaker 2 Exactly. Absolutely. It’s one of the things that drives me most today. Look, in my early years I worked in health clinics, at Maccabi Healthcare and Maccabi Tivi, and I also worked in the delivery rooms and women’s ward at Hadassah Mount Scopus. I met so many women, in all kinds of situations—

21:16 Speaker 3 What do you do in delivery rooms, by the way?

21:17 Speaker 2 Acupuncture.

21:18 Speaker 3 Acupuncture that... helps labor progress?

21:20 Speaker 2 That helps labor progress, acupuncture that calms, even acupuncture for someone who suddenly has premature contractions in the women’s ward. In the maternity ward, it could be for someone having trouble with her milk supply. All of that. Pain, of course, headaches. You know, there’s no shortage of things that aren’t related to childbirth either. But yes, we were there to help naturally when someone wanted that. And at Maccabi Tivi, I mainly did tui na, which is a form of massage—traditional Chinese massage, it’s called.

21:48 Speaker 3 What’s that?

21:48 Speaker 2 It’s a treatment done over your clothes.

21:49 Speaker 3 What’s it called?

21:50 Speaker 2 Traditional Chinese massage.

21:52 Speaker 3 No, you said another word—

21:52 Speaker 2 Tui na.

21:53 Speaker 3 Oh, tui na.

21:54 Speaker 2 Tui na.

21:55 Speaker 3 Do you speak Chinese?

21:57 Speaker 2 I speak a few words.

21:59 Speaker 3 Yes.

22:00 Speaker 2 So I treated people in several different settings, let’s put it that way. At Maccabi Tivi, people mainly came to me for various orthopedic issues, pain and things like that, or because they simply wanted to take care of themselves. And in the hospital, I met women during one of the biggest events of their lives: giving birth. Over time, as I treated more people, I noticed that the complaints were almost always the same, and that the most significant factor in both the complaint and what was causing it was stress. Chronic stress.

22:39 Speaker 3 Explain for a moment what stress is.

22:41 Speaker 2 Stress is a kind of state of tension that the body enters. It can show up in all kinds of ways and situations. People who are aware of it usually already experience it as pressure, a sense of distress, very frightening thoughts, or anxiety attacks. That’s when it’s already quite visible on the surface. But chronic stress—the quiet kind, let’s call it the silent enemy—mainly shows up, for example, as tension in the muscles. That’s one of the things women most often—

23:14 Speaker 3 Shoulders.

23:15 Speaker 2 Shoulders, shoulder blades, neck, clenched jaws, lower back pain—all kinds of aches that keep coming and going. And I would ask, “Tell me, what happened? Why does it hurt? Did you make a wrong move? Did you do something?” “No, I don’t know. I just woke up like this.” And then she’d start telling me about her week, what she’d done, and how she’d barely managed to get here. And you realize she’s under an enormous amount of pressure and stress throughout her week. Then you meet another woman, and another, and another, and suddenly you realize there’s something here that nobody is paying attention to. It can show up as pain, but it can also show up in the digestive system: weakened digestion, bloating, nausea, tremendous fatigue, real difficulty even falling asleep at night, difficulty waking up in the morning. It’s a feeling that you’re dragging yourself through life rather than truly living it, that you’re in a kind of fog all the time. And there are many, many other things: headaches, problems with the menstrual cycle.

24:20 Speaker 3 So this can show up differently in different people.

24:22 Speaker 2 Right.

24:22 Speaker 3 But if I understand correctly, the cause can also be different.

24:26 Speaker 2 Right.

24:26 Speaker 3 For one woman, the stress comes from having too much on her plate; for another, from the security situation.

24:29 Speaker 2 Right.

24:30 Speaker 3 For someone else, it comes from being a bit of a control freak and not letting go—

24:34 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Right.

24:36 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s incredible.

24:37 Speaker 2 Stress is called the father of illnesses. It’s on the list of contributing factors for almost every illness you see today in the Western world. And I think it’s something we experience especially in our country, and also in the Western world generally, which constantly pushes us to be the best, do as much as possible, succeed, produce a lot, and always contribute something to the world. There’s no space to sit quietly for a moment, rest, and feel okay about it.

25:10 Speaker 3 When you said “in our country,” did you mean because of the security situation?

25:12 Speaker 2 That too.

25:13 Speaker 3 I think there’s also something here... I can tell you as someone who lived in another country for quite a while. There’s a certain tension in the air here, even before—

25:22 Speaker 2 Yes.

25:22 Speaker 3 Before the security situation.

25:23 Speaker 2 Right, right.

25:25 Speaker 3 I mean, you don’t see that many mothers out walking with a stroller here.

25:30 Speaker 2 Right.

25:30 Speaker 3 No, the child goes from one program to the next. Here we are in summer vacation, and all the talk is about day camps. I was talking with two friends, and we laughed. They were talking about camp—when does camp start? I said to them, “Do you realize we had children just so we could look for programs for them?”

25:43 Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely.

25:45 Speaker 3 It’s terrible, it’s terrible when you look at it from the outside, but that’s our reality.

25:49 Speaker 2 I imagine it’s also because this is a relatively new country, and there’s this pressure to be productive. We need to, so to speak—

25:58 Speaker 3 I really think it’s a combination of many things. First of all, Jews who need to, you know—

26:02 Speaker 2 To survive all the time.

26:04 Speaker 3 To survive, and at the same time to get things done and succeed.

26:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:07 Speaker 3 There’s no Sunday here.

26:09 Speaker 2 There’s Shabbos.

26:10 Speaker 3 There’s Shabbos, but think about it: a lot of families are busy hosting. Shabbos is also—no, not everyone rests on Shabbos.

26:16 Speaker 2 Exactly.

26:17 Speaker 3 And then Sunday starts right away.

26:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:18 Speaker 3 So even practically speaking, there’s this constant race here. You stand in line at the supermarket, and you can’t help absorbing the stress around you, and—

26:27 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

26:27 Speaker 3 What I’m saying is that it’s very, very hard to escape it or protect yourself from it, because it’s in the air.

26:35 Speaker 2 Right.

26:36 Speaker 3 So it’s really our work to understand that we can do something about it, and to understand how.

26:43 Speaker 2 First of all, to me, it starts with awareness. First, just to be aware of it at all. Am I tense? Am I stressed? How is it affecting me? I hurt here, I hurt there. Why is my body reacting this way? Why do I suddenly feel weak? Why do I feel tired? Why am I all tensed up and unable to relax? You mentioned Shabbos. We actually have—so to speak, we’ve been told: sit down and don’t do anything. Take one day when you’re not productive, when you don’t do anything, when you sit and rest.

27:11 Speaker 3 A gift.

27:12 Speaker 2 And you were saying—and there are people who don’t know how to appreciate even that, and are still busy with all kinds of other things.

27:17 Speaker 3 No, sometimes it’s just the circumstances.

27:19 Speaker 2 Yes.

27:20 Speaker 3 Think of a woman, say, in her fifties or sixties, whose grandchildren come over and she cooks for them and cleans up after them, and—

27:27 Speaker 2 Right.

27:27 Speaker 3 There’s less help here, too. You know, it’s not like when you go to the United States and every home has a housekeeper who—almost everything is done on your own here, so...

27:34 Speaker 2 Right, right, that’s one aspect of it. But there’s also the aspect of people simply not knowing how to rest.

27:39 Speaker 3 Yes.

27:40 Speaker 2 I just posted a video about how some people wait for a vacation so they can rest.

27:46 Speaker 3 Oh, I saw that. It’s interesting. And then on vacation they’re busy—

27:48 Speaker 2 And then on vacation they can’t rest, because they’re not used to it. They’re not really used to letting go. Letting go takes work, it takes work. You need to know how to get rid of the thoughts that stress you out. You need to know your body—what actually feels good for it? How does it really manage to relax? How do you reach a point where you feel safe enough to relax? In other words, it’s a skill, and when you get to a vacation, you won’t necessarily be able to do it. A vacation isn’t what will save you from all the tension and stress in your life. A vacation once a year is an opportunity—

28:19 Speaker 3 You need to know how to take a vacation.

28:20 Speaker 2 It’s an opportunity to disconnect, and—

28:21 Speaker 3 Or how to take a vacation in... how to live with that vacation feeling day to day.

28:25 Speaker 2 Exactly. The skill is knowing how to lighten my load, reduce my stress, and live with more calm and presence in my everyday life, even in my busy routine. And it often doesn’t surprise me when people come back from vacation and then get sick. It happens a lot.

28:43 Speaker 3 There’s an expression for that: a vacation from your vacation.

28:44 Speaker 2 A vacation from your vacation. Because when our bodies experience too sudden a drop in tension, we suddenly feel... the body’s true condition. When we live on adrenaline—adrenaline is a stress hormone. When we’re stressed, two main hormones are released: cortisol and adrenaline. They give us energy, fake energy. Because when we’re constantly stressed, the body weakens in a way; its reserves are depleted. We’re not really taking care of ourselves, but we keep functioning on the energy from that hormone.

29:16 Speaker 3 Which was really meant to sustain us in emergencies.

29:20 Speaker 2 Yes. I mean, if I’m facing—

29:21 Speaker 3 It’s the extra energy, the reserves.

29:22 Speaker 2 An emergency. Exactly. I need those reserves. I need that hormone to kick in and my survival systems to activate so I can protect myself. But what happens if that’s going on all the time? My body weakens, and I keep functioning on that energy. Then, when I go on vacation, for example, and the pressure suddenly comes off, I feel the true condition of my body. Suddenly I’m tired; suddenly I come back sick, and I don’t understand. Wait, I was on vacation—why am I so tired all of a sudden? But that’s exactly why.

29:51 Speaker 3 Even in everyday life. You spoke about awareness. I think because it’s so common, we’ve really gotten used to it. I think so many people—women among us—walk around with headaches and stomachaches and don’t even give them any attention, because it’s as though we all have headaches. You come into—

30:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

30:11 Speaker 3 The office in the morning. “How are you?” “I’m tired.” “I’m tired.”

30:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

30:15 Speaker 3 Right, another headache at the beginning of the week, at the end of the week, and it’s like—

30:17 Speaker 2 It just feels normal.

30:19 Speaker 3 Yes. So before you can address it, you have to recognize it in the first place. Knowing the illness is half the cure. So—

30:25 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Awareness is the first step toward recovery and healing. I can tell you that I wasn’t always doing “well” either, let’s put it that way. I mean, I got into this whole subject of stress because of something that happened to me personally. I began suffering from an autoimmune condition called vitiligo. It’s not dangerous, not terrible at all. It’s a condition where the pigment in the skin... that is, there’s no pigment in parts of the skin. It appears as these white patches on the skin. When I saw a patch above my eye, it—

31:00 Speaker 3 When you were already a therapist.

31:01 Speaker 2 When I was already a therapist. I was already in this field, already treating people, and suddenly I saw this patch. I went to a dermatologist just to check what it was, what was going on. She told me, “It’s an autoimmune condition. It’s vitiligo.” Then she laughed and said, “Don’t worry. In a way, it protects you from skin cancer. Because your immune system is already overprotective, your chances of skin cancer generally go down too.” And I thought to myself: Okay, I wonder what this is. How did it suddenly happen to me? What’s the connection? So I went and looked into it and studied what an autoimmune condition is. Why did it happen specifically to me? I was already used to investigating why something happened—first, so it wouldn’t get worse, and second, because something was probably out of balance in me. I needed to check. And then I discovered that the main trigger for autoimmune conditions is stress.

31:55 Speaker 3 Wow.

31:55 Speaker 2 I mean, these conditions can be hereditary. If there’s an autoimmune condition in the family, you have the potential to develop it, so to speak. But chronic stress can act as a trigger for the condition to appear. Once I understood that, I really set out on a journey to explore this whole world. What is stress? I went to therapy myself; I went to understand what was happening. Through my own inner work, I came to understand how I’d lived until then and how I could live from now on. It’s work I did on myself too, and boruch Hashem, the condition stopped progressing.

32:34 Speaker 4 Wow.

32:34 Speaker 2 But I always say, when an illness or some other problem comes along, we can resent it. We can also push it aside, take some medication and, so to speak, forget about it. But often it’s a kind of wake-up call to stop. Stop for a moment and understand what’s going on with you. Why did you reach this point? How can you take better care of yourself? Your body is waving a flag at you: something here isn’t right. And a lot of people get upset when you tell them that, but sometimes an illness can be a gift—or any other challenge you encounter in life.

33:10 Speaker 4 Absolutely.

33:10 Speaker 2 So, yes.

33:12 Speaker 4 Wow. So someone comes to you with something, and you immediately pick up on the stress. In a way, you’re putting the ball back in her court: can you treat the stress, or are you only treating its effects?

33:26 Speaker 2 Well, first of all—

33:27 Speaker 4 I mean, stress obviously calls for inner work.

33:29 Speaker 2 Right. Acupuncture does help reduce tension and stress, especially when the treatments are more or less regular. There are actual studies showing that certain acupuncture points, and acupuncture itself, really reduce stress hormones in the body and bring about calm and relaxation. It’s amazing to see women arrive carrying the whole load of everyday life, and then, wow, suddenly their bodies relax. It really helps them. It gives them a way to experience what a relaxed body feels like, what it means to feel calm. And that’s an important lesson in itself, because you need to know what the other state feels like. I know what stress feels like. I’m under stress, but I don’t know what calm feels like.

34:12 Speaker 4 What to aim for.

34:13 Speaker 2 Exactly. You have to experience it to understand where you’re trying to get to. So that’s one of the real benefits of treatment, especially acupuncture: it lets you feel what it’s actually like to be calm, to be relaxed. Then your work, in your everyday life, is to aim for that. And when you feel yourself moving away from it, you know where you want to return. That’s one thing. But I realized that isn’t enough. It isn’t enough for you to come to me every so often, for me to put in the needles, and for us to calm your system, so to speak. We need to understand what sets that system off in the first place. Why are you under stress? As I said, there are all kinds of causes. They can be mental, patterns of thought. I might have thought patterns that put my brain on the defensive. It detects a threat because of things I’ve been through in life. Thought patterns are shaped by all kinds of experiences, things I’ve heard, things people have said to me, things the people around me have experienced. There are also stress factors connected to nutrition and lifestyle, and to having too many tasks on your plate. And someone who’s very... In the end, it all also comes down to things going on inside: perfectionism, the need to succeed, the need to be seen.

35:38 Speaker 4 Wow.

35:38 Speaker 2 All kinds of places that are really—

35:40 Speaker 4 So in the end, it’s probably always a combination of several things.

35:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:42 Speaker 4 Because presumably no one comes to you without having been through anything in life, eating perfectly, and it’s just her boss at work who’s stressing her out, and—

35:52 Speaker 2 Yes.

35:52 Speaker 4 I mean, it really is, like you said, a treatment of tens of thousands of—

35:56 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a whole new [unclear].

35:58 Speaker 4 To think about my entire daily routine, what I eat, and then see how I can live differently.

36:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

36:02 Speaker 4 Is it possible to live completely without stress?

36:05 Speaker 2 That’s interesting. You remind me of a patient I had at Maccabi. She didn’t come to me many times, actually—maybe twice—and then she stopped coming. She’d come because of very severe headaches, migraines, and a very stiff neck, which are connected, of course. I explained a little about stress and what causes it, and she told me her job was extremely stressful. She was a coordinator at a seminary, with so many projects on her shoulders and a huge workload. She said to me, “Listen, I really feel like it’s doing me harm.” Gradually she understood the connection between her neck and headaches and her work. Then, after a while, she suddenly came back for a treatment. She said, “You know, since that treatment, I’ve really thought about what you told me about stress, and I’ve decided to follow my dream. I’m leaving that job. I’ve gone to study journalism.”

36:54 Speaker 4 Wow.

36:56 Speaker 2 Yes, she made a complete 180-degree change. I was stunned, because usually a process takes time, and you go step by step. I always explain that you don’t make changes all at once. But apparently she was really ready to make that change.

37:14 Speaker 4 That too.

37:15 Speaker 2 Sometimes, when you suddenly realize that your body is reacting to these things, it’s already something physical. It’s not just that I’m not enjoying myself as much. We sometimes tend to ignore things like that, but when you realize it’s hurting your body, it gives you a bit more drive to make the change. So it was amazing when she came back and told me, “And since then, I haven’t had headaches.”

37:36 Speaker 4 Wow!

37:36 Speaker 2 Yes, amazing.

37:38 Speaker 4 It’s interesting that you translate “stress” as “tension,” rather than “pressure.”

37:43 Speaker 2 It’s more or less the same idea.

37:46 Speaker 4 I say that because pressure is only negative, I think, while tension can be something positive. I think we need a little stress in our lives. We can’t just... Look, there are people who sit on the couch watching shows all day and don’t have stress, but Hashem help us, where does that lead them? There’s something about that drive to get things done. I don’t know, a certain vitality that comes from needing to.

38:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

38:13 Speaker 4 We need to be so balanced.

38:16 Speaker 2 I understand what you mean. On the other hand, I really see stress as something negative. I mean, the drive is negative, not positive. For example, I came to the podcast today, and I could spend all day telling myself, “Oh no, I have a podcast tonight. I have to do A, B, C and D, because if I don’t...” In the back of my mind, subconsciously, if I don’t manage to do all those things, then I’m not worthy. I’m not okay. I’m a terrible mother. How can I leave my children? All kinds of thoughts can be running beneath that drive, so to speak. But if my drive... For example, I can’t remember his name—oh, I have to remember it—a professor. Maybe it’ll come to me later. I heard him give a lecture about stress, and he explained that the way we interpret certain situations affects how our bodies respond. Even if, say, my day is very full, or I want to do lots of things, it’s how I interpret what I want to do, or that drive.

39:22 Speaker 4 Of course.

39:23 Speaker 2 That determines whether it harms me or helps me. So he suggested, for example, looking differently at a heavy workload. Say I’m going through a busy, pressured time. At the end of the day, none of us can just sit peacefully on the beach and chill out. We can’t. We have to deal with things; we have to get things done. We need a paycheck coming in. We have obligations to meet. He suggested simply changing our interpretation from, “If I don’t do this, I’m a failure, I’ll mess up, no one will take any notice of me,” and all those kinds of thoughts, to seeing it as a challenge: “Wow, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I’m taking it as a challenge, and I’m going to get through it, because I believe in myself and I have the skills for it.” The interpretation completely changes the way the mind relates to it.

40:11 Speaker 4 Really, to everything we do in life.

40:13 Speaker 2 Right.

40:13 Speaker 4 I’ve started learning a little about Dr. Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy—Frankl. They’re particular about saying “Frankl” there.

40:19 Speaker 2 Frankl.

40:21 Speaker 4 And he really brings out this whole idea—

40:23 Speaker 2 Oh, wait, it’s Dr. Roz Guterman [unclear]. I just remembered his name.

40:27 Speaker 4 I mentioned one doctor and remembered another name. No, I think he’s a professor. Sorry.

40:31 Speaker 2 Okay.

40:31 Speaker 4 Anyway, this idea that you can live what are, on the face of it, the very same lives, but the moment you give them a different interpretation—why am I doing what I’m doing? Take being a mother: you often find yourself in that situation before you’ve even fully realized you’re a mother.

40:50 Speaker 2 Right.

40:52 Speaker 4 And you get up in the morning for the kids. Is that just the default, and you somehow get through the day? Or do you say to yourself, just before you wake them up, “What a privilege it is to be their mother. I’m such an important person in their lives. I have so much to give them. What I do matters—I’m their role model”? Then your day looks different.

41:11 Speaker 2 Completely.

41:12 Speaker 4 So that’s really what it is... After all, what are hormones? They’re something running through us all the time.

41:18 Speaker 2 So look, the whole question of how we interpret things is really interesting. I mean—

41:23 Speaker 4 I mean that hormones are actually a result of thought.

41:26 Speaker 2 Of thought.

41:27 Speaker 4 Exactly.

41:27 Speaker 2 That’s exactly where I was going.

41:28 Speaker 4 Oh wow, now I’m going to connect it to Chassidus. I can’t help it.

41:32 Speaker 2 Ultimately, what decides whether I’m under threat or not, whether I’m stressed or not, is my brain. My brain takes in information. The question is what information it takes in, what thoughts are going through my head. My interpretation is what I think about what’s happening. And when my thoughts make my brain understand that I’m under threat—negative thoughts, depressing thoughts, thoughts that leave me feeling hopeless—my brain detects a threat and activates my whole survival system. That includes releasing stress hormones, increasing blood flow to the muscles, and raising my blood sugar. My senses sharpen. I’m reacting as though a lion has just appeared in front of me, even if all I’m telling myself is, “Oh no, how am I going to manage with all the kids at home now?” Ultimately, I do have the strength to do it. I also have the ability to take care of myself. And if I really can’t do it, I can arrange for someone else to, or find another solution. But I react as though this is the greatest threat I’ve ever faced. Not intentionally, of course. I didn’t mean to—but our brains—

42:37 Speaker 4 It’s automatic, right.

42:38 Speaker 2 Yes. I mean, we’re wired for survival, and the moment our brain detects something that isn’t right, something that threatens us, it responds in survival mode. And when that happens all the time—when my pattern of thinking constantly interprets reality negatively, looks for what’s less good, for what might go wrong, and I keep going to those negative places—I’m constantly telling my brain that everything is negative, that everything is a threat. I’m in danger all the time, so I’m under chronic stress. And when I do this work on my awareness, when I really make that shift and pause for a moment to look at my thoughts, to understand what my story is, what I’m telling myself—what’s the story of my life?

43:20 Speaker 4 So first, it really comes down to understanding that I’m the one telling the story.

43:23 Speaker 2 Yes.

43:24 Speaker 4 And that it isn’t being forced on me: “What can I do? I have no choice. This is reality.” Instead, I understand—and it really isn’t simple—that no matter what my circumstances are, it’s in my hands to decide how I read them, and—

43:38 Speaker 2 Completely.

43:38 Speaker 4 And what I—

43:39 Speaker 2 The responsibility comes back to me.

43:40 Speaker 4 Yes.

43:40 Speaker 2 I mean, the easiest thing is to be a bit of a victim: “Well, that’s the situation in the country.” “Okay, I’m a mother of six. What do you expect from me? These circumstances were forced on me.” “Well, I’m sick, so what can I do?” But once you understand that the power to heal—and this really is healing—lies within you, and that the way you look at the world can change, you realize how much depends on you. And it takes work. Hard work. I won’t pretend it doesn’t.

44:14 Speaker 4 Working on our middos, ultimately.

44:15 Speaker 2 It’s a lifetime’s work.

44:17 Speaker 4 Absolutely, absolutely.

44:17 Speaker 2 It makes me laugh because I once did a retreat—a day to let go, relax, and all that. And I really learned tools there for how to live with more ease and calm, how to avoid stress and manage it. Then they would say to me, “Okay, but what do we do now? We really enjoyed this, but...”

44:39 Speaker 4 We go back to real life.

44:40 Speaker 2 Back to real life. I said to them, “What did you think would happen here? That I’d wave a magic wand and that would be it—you’d be calm women?” No. Even for me, now that I’m aware of all this and have worked on it, the work never ends.

44:57 Speaker 4 Right.

44:57 Speaker 2 There’s always a challenge, and always something that comes along to strengthen us in this area. We’re aware of it. That’s how it is. There’s no getting around it.

45:03 Speaker 4 Right. Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world so that we’d always have work to do. Otherwise...

45:08 Speaker 2 Yes.

45:08 Speaker 4 Otherwise we’d go crazy, too.

45:09 Speaker 2 Right.

45:10 Speaker 4 I mean, that’s the mechanism that keeps us sane and helps us move forward.

45:14 Speaker 2 Completely.

45:14 Speaker 4 It’s precisely this work—working at it, working at it, working at it.

45:16 Speaker 2 Yes.

45:16 Speaker 4 But we can do it, and it’s work that pays off tremendously.

45:20 Speaker 2 Completely. I always say: live with curiosity. It sounds like work, but it isn’t just hard work. It’s work that makes you say, “How wonderful! Wow, I got through today, even though it didn’t start so well. I managed to change my thinking, and wow, I feel so good now.”

45:41 Speaker 4 Absolutely. And how wonderful it is to realize that I can do that.

45:43 Speaker 2 Right.

45:44 Speaker 4 Because so often we’re busy looking for some external magic to finally redeem us.

45:49 Speaker 2 Yes.

45:50 Speaker 4 But no. Someone might give us tools.

45:52 Speaker 2 Yes.

45:52 Speaker 4 But in the end, we’re the ones who’ll have to use them.

45:55 Speaker 2 Completely, completely. And when you see women who suddenly understand that, put it into practice, and watch their lives change before their eyes—including their relationship with their husband, their relationship with their children, and their relationships at work—almost everything suddenly changes for them. They’re happy. They come to me saying, “Wow! No, you don’t understand. Wow, wow, my life has changed.”

46:18 Speaker 4 How moving it must be to see those changes happening before your eyes.

46:22 Speaker 2 Wow. Yes.

46:23 Speaker 4 Incredible.

46:24 Speaker 2 It’s amazing. It really is amazing. And I always say, “It’s not me.”

46:26 Speaker 4 “You’re the amazing one,” right.

46:27 Speaker 2 It’s you. Because I can give you every tool I have, give you meal plans and other things. Ultimately, the decision and the responsibility lie with the patient, with the woman who came to make a change.

46:41 Speaker 4 A slightly discouraging question: are there women who come but aren’t ready, so to speak, to enter a process that will demand something of them, and it ends without success?

46:52 Speaker 2 Of course. There are some who, as I put it, came at the wrong time. They hadn’t yet understood what it means to take responsibility, and that’s completely okay. I know they’ll go through their own journey and get there.

47:09 Speaker 4 Right, they’ve still gone through something that might awaken later on.

47:13 Speaker 2 Completely, completely. They might suddenly come back to me a year later and tell me about tiny, tiny changes they did make. And, as they say, every little change is like throwing a stone into water and seeing the ripples it makes.

47:28 Speaker 4 Yes.

47:29 Speaker 2 Because even with the smallest changes they make in their lives, they suddenly see things happening. Then they come back because they realize something has changed.

47:37 Speaker 4 That’s fascinating.

47:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:38 Speaker 4 In an indirect sort of way.

47:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:40 Speaker 4 Tell me, we’re talking about inner work, but there’s also this question: I do have some control over my immediate surroundings, and they can affect me and reduce my stress. I mean...

47:55 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:55 Speaker 4 The first thing that comes to mind, for example, is not watching the news.

47:58 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:59 Speaker 4 Imagine I turn on the news and watch it, and then say, “Let’s replace that thought with a positive one.” No, that’s not... We have a responsibility. I mean, before changing my thoughts, I need to stop myself and ask: What am I watching in the first place? What am I listening to?

48:12 Speaker 2 Yes. In terms of my habits.

48:13 Speaker 4 Yes, yes.

48:14 Speaker 2 So of course watching the news isn’t something that does us any good. I also understand the people who do watch it. I mean, watching the news gives me a bit of a sense of control, as though—

48:27 Speaker 4 An illusion of control.

48:27 Speaker 2 An illusion. As though I know what’s going on, and I’ll be ready for any scenario if something suddenly happens. But it isn’t healthy. I mean, it often comes from a lack of security, and the news feeds that feeling because something is always happening. There’s always... How do you put it? Advertising and media companies make a lot of money from people’s insecurity.

48:49 Speaker 4 Wow.

48:49 Speaker 2 At the scariest moments in the country, the number of people going onto news sites and watching TV, for example, is enormous. Then advertisers pay more money, and the media companies make more money. So their interest is, first of all, to make you feel unsafe, to make you feel threatened and stressed, so you’ll keep watching them. Because they know everything and give you a certain sense of security, and that’s what feeds the whole—

49:15 Speaker 4 The whole—

49:15 Speaker 2 The big machinery of the industry.

49:16 Speaker 4 Say there’s a period when the sirens are going off. I remember once being next to someone who... What do I mean, someone? There are lots of people like this. But she had an app, and suddenly she says to me, “Oh wow, a siren in Rehovot. Oh wow, a siren.” And I’m thinking, why do you need to know there’s a siren in Rehovot?

49:30 Speaker 2 Right.

49:30 Speaker 4 If there’s a siren here, you’ll hear it.

49:32 Speaker 2 Right.

49:32 Speaker 4 And you can see how incredibly on edge she is—

49:35 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

49:35 Speaker 4 So often we’re doing this to ourselves with our own hands.

49:39 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s a cycle that feeds itself. I mean, I feel insecure, so I want to know everything that’s happening. But on the other hand, that also heightens my insecurity, and then I become tied to—

49:50 Speaker 4 I put so much into things like that.

49:51 Speaker 2 A sort of... Yes, yes. One thing I did, for example, was silence my phone. My phone is on silent almost all the time. Now, I keep it nearby, I’m, how do you say—

50:03 Speaker 4 Like, come on, your Zara delivery is here and you’re not available.

50:08 Speaker 2 Someone’s whistling at my door.

50:08 Speaker 4 I’m joking. The important things in life.

50:11 Speaker 2 But that’s just it. Who decided that we—

50:13 Speaker 4 Exactly.

50:13 Speaker 2 Have to be available all the time? The delivery person can come and leave the package outside my door. That’s perfectly fine. If I know it’s something important, they usually let me know in advance, and I will be aware of it and watch out for it. But phone notifications are one of the things that raise our stress and tension. I mean, suddenly your whole body goes on alert. Your heart rate goes up. You can really feel it.

50:38 Speaker 4 It distracts us, too.

50:39 Speaker 2 And it distracts us.

50:40 Speaker 4 We’re not... we’re not here.

50:43 Speaker 2 Right. By the way, I’ve also turned off notifications for most of my apps.

50:47 Speaker 4 Yes.

50:47 Speaker 2 I mean, if I’m already on my phone, working or doing something else, I don’t want people interrupting me—I mean, certain apps interrupting me or pinging me about all sorts of things that are happening, or news popping up, and things like that.

50:59 Speaker 4 Everything that pops up from the bottom while you’re in the middle of preparing some work—

51:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

51:02 Speaker 4 Or cooking, and suddenly...

51:04 Speaker 2 Ding, ding, ding.

51:05 Speaker 4 Yes.

51:05 Speaker 2 In a second, it pulls your attention away, and your whole being is focused on the phone.

51:10 Speaker 4 I haven’t had WhatsApp notifications for years, not for groups and not for private messages—

51:13 Speaker 2 Yes.

51:13 Speaker 4 And when I see them on other people’s phones, it drives me crazy—

51:15 Speaker 2 Wow.

51:17 Speaker 4 Like, what would happen? Because I do it the other way around: I’ll open WhatsApp now and see everything.

51:23 Speaker 2 Yes.

51:23 Speaker 4 If something were urgent, they’d probably call, and—

51:25 Speaker 2 Right.

51:26 Speaker 4 If it were a matter of saving a life, they’d come knock on my door.

51:30 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

51:30 Speaker 4 It’s really about taking a moment to understand that not everything is in my hands, either.

51:35 Speaker 2 Right.

51:35 Speaker 4 It’s just crazy.

51:35 Speaker 2 I don’t have to be available all the time. I don’t have to be on alert all the time. Being available means being a little on alert all the time. I’m constantly bracing for the next thing that comes in, the next person who needs me. No. Sometimes I know how to give myself those times when I’m not there for everyone. I know how to give myself times when I have some quiet.

51:55 Speaker 4 Available to yourself.

51:56 Speaker 2 Just quiet, available to myself. Now, for some people that might be a little too far to go. They need a few steps along the way to get there.

52:05 Speaker 4 Yes.

52:05 Speaker 2 For example, I have a new client who came to me not long ago, and suddenly her phone rang. The ringtone was very, very, very loud, with vibration and a flashing light.

52:15 Speaker 4 Wow! No, no, no. Maybe it thought it was supposed to be one of those police beacons...

52:19 Speaker 2 Exactly. And I told her, “Listen, let’s turn off that flashing light first.”

52:26 Speaker 4 Wow.

52:27 Speaker 2 Because it startled both of us so badly. I said to her, “Look how that startled us. Do you realize you’re bringing unnecessary stress into your life?”

52:34 Speaker 4 There used to be songs, remember? Suddenly the phone—

52:38 Speaker 2 Yes.

52:39 Speaker 4 You’d set some song as your ringtone.

52:39 Speaker 2 And you’d jump all at once.

52:40 Speaker 4 Whoa, music! Someone turned something on in here.

52:42 Speaker 2 Exactly.

52:42 Speaker 4 So today it’s relatively subdued.

52:45 Speaker 2 Exactly. So that’s something to think about too. For example, choosing a calmer ringtone.

52:49 Speaker 4 Yes.

52:49 Speaker 2 One that starts softly and builds gradually, instead of startling me all at once.

52:53 Speaker 4 Yes.

52:53 Speaker 2 I mean, paying attention to little things that can sometimes really improve my quality of life. The same goes for songs I listen to. You know when a song makes you feel good and when a song brings up all sorts of feelings, or has words you don’t connect with, or describes a situation that doesn’t sit right with you. You don’t have to listen to it. The idea is to be sensitive to almost anything in your surroundings that you feel isn’t good for you, and simply disconnect from it in some way.

53:27 Speaker 4 Exactly.

53:27 Speaker 2 Except for a child crying.

53:30 Speaker 4 It’s like, um, like keeping kosher. We—

53:32 Speaker 2 Right.

53:33 Speaker 4 Pay attention to what we put into our bodies.

53:35 Speaker 2 Right.

53:35 Speaker 4 So first of all, with food too.

53:38 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

53:38 Speaker 4 There’s that too. You know, sometimes I say this really shouldn’t count as kosher. Once, the children came home with some sort of powder in plastic.

53:50 Speaker 2 Oh wow.

53:50 Speaker 4 And I said to myself, “Badatz Jerusalem, how could you do this to us?”

53:54 Speaker 2 Seriously.

53:54 Speaker 4 It’s not—

53:55 Speaker 2 It’s literally poison.

53:55 Speaker 4 It’s not exactly...

53:57 Speaker 2 It’s poison. I need to talk to the children.

53:59 Speaker 4 You know, there should be some kind of standard for even calling something food.

54:03 Speaker 2 Right. By the way, bleach also has a Badatz certification.

54:06 Speaker 4 Oh, right. Maybe you should have used that powder to clean the house.

54:10 Speaker 2 Exactly. Maybe. That reminds me: I always explain to my children about all those candies. You know, it’s poison, just poison. And I tell them I’d rather they throw it in the bin. I give them a few shekels instead, and they go buy a prize. That’s how my mother raised us; that’s how we grew up. It’s not that we never tasted any now and then, let’s put it that way, but that’s fine, as long as you keep it balanced.

54:30 Speaker 4 Yes.

54:30 Speaker 2 And teaching them to pause for a moment, hold back and understand what’s good for them is a very, very important lesson. That reminds me: I went to my daughter’s kindergarten, and the teacher said, “I gave them some candy—I think it was a toffee or something—and your daughter said you throw it in the bin.” So I told her, “That’s right. She throws it in the bin and gets money instead.” And she says to me, “No, no, no. Give her the money, but give the candy to me. I’ll give it to another child. It’s a shame to waste it.”

54:57 Speaker 4 So it won’t be bal tashchis.

54:59 Speaker 2 I said, “Why would you give it to another child? We throw it in the bin. It’s not food.”

55:05 Speaker 4 That’s something.

55:06 Speaker 2 I don’t see that as bal tashchis at all. I don’t see it as bal tashchis.

55:09 Speaker 4 Wow, awareness really needs to grow. Here’s our chance to raise awareness. Ladies, sugar is poison, for anyone who didn’t know until today.

55:16 Speaker 2 We all know that.

55:17 Speaker 4 So why is it like this? Well, we’re all addicted too, but—

55:21 Speaker 2 Right.

55:21 Speaker 4 What do you mean, all of us? Anyone who eats sugar is addicted, and then they want to give it to someone else too. Think about it: we, and the teachers and kindergarten teachers, tell our children that if you’re a good child, you’ll get sugar. As if it’s something good.

55:32 Speaker 2 Yes.

55:32 Speaker 4 Something positive. A reward.

55:34 Speaker 2 Exactly.

55:34 Speaker 4 Something that supports us.

55:35 Speaker 2 It’s very, very, very deeply ingrained. Very deeply ingrained.

55:38 Speaker 4 It’s like we’ve been brainwashed, and not just us. It’s been going on for generations.

55:42 Speaker 2 Right, we grow up with it. I mean, by the time my son turns three, he’s already showered with sweets at his upsherin and at all the parties.

55:50 Speaker 4 Really.

55:51 Speaker 2 And from there it becomes an everyday thing: you did this, you get a treat; you do that, you get a toffee. It’s awful.

55:59 Speaker 4 By the way, sugar and stress are also a kind of vicious cycle, of course.

56:01 Speaker 2 Stress raises the risk of diabetes for people who are already at risk. It raises blood sugar, and healthy people simply absorb that sugar again if they haven’t actually used the energy. But for people who, say, have a family predisposition to type 2 diabetes and so on, it can really speed up the onset of the disease. And of course, if our diet is already unbalanced, sugar floods the body with excess energy, putting it in a state of very, very high arousal. My children, for example, aren’t used to eating a lot of sugar. So when I sometimes let them go a little wild—you know, Purim and things like that—

56:40 Speaker 4 When they go out of the house. Yes.

56:41 Speaker 2 You can see it within seconds, how the child changes. He becomes more aggressive; he gets this kind of wild look in his eyes. He loses his peace of mind. He’s restless. I really feel sorry for him at that moment. It’s awful. That’s why it’s easier for me to set boundaries, because I know how badly it affects him. Today you see children from a young age with extreme attention difficulties. It’s so common. And sugar is one of the things that puts our bodies into a state of arousal and restlessness. We can’t just sit still. We have energy that we have to get out. And that’s directly connected to how we calm ourselves down and how, little by little, we—

57:23 Speaker 4 Yes, I mean, where do you even start making a change? You see ads for sugary drinks nonstop, and it’s like, enough already.

57:29 Speaker 2 Yes.

57:29 Speaker 4 Let’s change direction. Let’s—

57:31 Speaker 2 I remember I had a friend in my class. I went to a Chassidic school, and she would say to me—she knew I intended to study Chinese medicine, and I’d always been the type to eat healthy food and bring whole-wheat bread. You know, that was the kind of home we had. She would always say, “Oh, come on, forget it. Everyone dies in the end. I don’t get this whole health thing. I don’t get acupuncture or any of that stuff. What’s the point?” And I remember going to my father, who practices Chinese medicine, and saying, “I don’t know. My friends seem healthy to me. Look, they’re not overweight or anything. They look slim, they look good, and they eat so much junk food.”

58:09 Speaker 4 Convince me.

58:10 Speaker 2 Convince me why I’m avoiding all these things. And he told me, “Just wait. See how you look after giving birth.”

58:18 Speaker 4 And then you quickly pull out pictures from before.

58:22 Speaker 2 And it’s true, because in a way, giving birth is a somewhat extreme event for the body, and very often it suddenly brings things to the surface. Oh! Sorry. Very often it suddenly brings weakness and imbalances to the surface, and all sorts of things—sudden significant weight gain, a sudden thyroid imbalance, and other things that suddenly come up.

58:43 Speaker 4 Weight gain—I have to stop you for a second and say that very often there are also women who shrink right back after giving birth—

58:51 Speaker 2 Right.

58:52 Speaker 4 And for them it shows up in another way, doesn’t it?

58:53 Speaker 2 Right.

58:54 Speaker 4 In other words, weight gain—

58:55 Speaker 2 There are all kinds of factors. Yes, there are all kinds of factors. I assume that’s what he said, but he hadn’t really looked into it.

59:01 Speaker 4 Yes, yes, he needed to come up with an answer.

59:03 Speaker 2 But I can tell you that I worked at Maccabi. I worked in Bnei Brak with a Haredi population, and unfortunately there isn’t enough information about health and healthy living in the Haredi community. There are people who do know about it and are involved in it, but I would see women coming to me at relatively young ages—fifty, sixty, even forty—and you’d see a whole list of illnesses in their medical records and think to yourself—

59:36 Speaker 4 Wow.

59:37 Speaker 2 What? How did she get to this point at that age, with so many imbalances and so many illnesses? Diabetes, and she’s had her gallbladder removed, and another surgery, and all kinds of things. You think to yourself: she’s young. She shouldn’t have reached this state at this age. And then you realize that maybe in the first few years you don’t feel that imbalance because the body compensates for it. We have reserves, and we have various genetic factors that might give us a little more strength, so we don’t really feel it when we’re young. But then you suddenly reach a certain age and start suffering, carrying around a bag full of medications. And I keep remembering that friend who said to me, “Come on, everyone dies anyway.” But how are you living? What is your quality of life like? Are you suffering all the time, tired, depressed, out of balance? Or are you energetic, acting from a positive place and doing these things for yourself?

1:00:38 Speaker 5 Absolutely.

1:00:39 Speaker 2 I talk a lot about how good nutrition is good for my body. When I take care of my body, it’s because I love myself. A lot of it is about self-worth. If I value myself and the body Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave me, I’ll want to reach 120 in the best possible condition. I want both length and quality of life.

1:01:01 Speaker 5 Not just quantity. Exactly what you were saying—if you look—

1:01:03 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:01:03 Speaker 5 Only at quantity. After all, most people who reach this point of living a healthy lifestyle aren’t really thinking, “I have to live longer.” That’s not the goal in front of me, because—

1:01:12 Speaker 2 Like Caesar Petros[?].

1:01:13 Speaker 5 That story, yes, that story about the woman who ate nothing but lettuce and died in a car accident.

1:01:20 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:01:20 Speaker 5 That’s sarcasm. No, really, when a person, as you say, has a sense of self-worth and is connected to herself—

1:01:26 Speaker 2 It’s a matter of respect.

1:01:27 Speaker 5 Yes. I want to live well. I don’t want to wake up in the morning—and you know, I sometimes say this even to the people close to us: you wake up in the morning, and all day everyone has to hear how tired you are and how bad you feel, and this and that. So let’s be pleasant. Let’s be nice and easy to be around.

1:01:43 Speaker 2 Right.

1:01:43 Speaker 5 So we can really bring our best selves to everything.

1:01:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:01:45 Speaker 5 It’s day by day, hour by hour. This is our life.

1:01:48 Speaker 2 Completely. Even if you’re a mother of six, you can wake up feeling alert. You can live with positivity and joy, rather than depression and gloom. You can feel good. You don’t have to suffer from pain or from digestive problems.

1:02:04 Speaker 5 It’s not inevitable.

1:02:06 Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely.

1:02:08 Speaker 5 Come on, there’s one more thing I mentioned to you earlier, about blood deficiency.

1:02:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:02:15 Speaker 5 Why do I want you to talk about it? Because it’s something I had once.

1:02:22 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:02:22 Speaker 5 I can tell you how I discovered it, too. It was after one of my children—pregnancy, birth, nursing—and I kept having dizzy spells. I’d get so dizzy that I’d be walking and have to hold on to the wall because everything went white.

1:02:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:02:38 Speaker 5 White, black—there was a whole range. At first I kept telling myself, “Well, I’ve just given birth. Well, I’m nursing.” But when I stopped nursing and it continued, I told myself, “Chani, you can’t put it down to that anymore.”

1:02:51 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:02:51 Speaker 5 So I went to a naturopath, and she told me, “You have a blood deficiency.” That was the first time I’d heard of such a thing. Now, since then, when I happen to talk with different women, a friend might suddenly say, “Wow, I have this tingling in my fingers and toes. It’s so strange.” And I tell her, “Listen, check whether you have an iron deficiency.” She says to me, “What’s a blood deficiency?” It really is something people aren’t sufficiently aware of; they don’t know it exists. So—

1:03:20 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:03:21 Speaker 5 Tell us what it is.

1:03:22 Speaker 2 It’s funny, because I really encounter it mainly in connection with dizziness. Dizziness is something women just aren’t willing to put up with anymore, let’s put it that way.

1:03:31 Speaker 5 It’s awful. And the low mood, too.

1:03:32 Speaker 2 So they call me and say, “Listen, I’ve had all the tests, and everything came back normal. Blood tests—everything came back normal. Nobody can tell me why this is happening. Help me get out of this, because it’s really frightening.” When you suddenly lose your sense of balance a little, you lose...

1:03:47 Speaker 5 There’s dizziness, and then there’s dizziness.

1:03:49 Speaker 2 Exactly. It really is a very frightening symptom, and often it really is that...

1:03:53 Speaker 5 Can you see it in blood tests, or is it more a matter of...?

1:03:55 Speaker 2 You can’t always see it in blood tests.

1:03:59 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:03:59 Speaker 2 Sometimes you can see lower levels of certain things in the blood—iron, ferritin, hemoglobin, things like that.

1:04:06 Speaker 5 So you have to put things together...

1:04:07 Speaker 2 Of course, if you have anemia and your levels are low, that’s a blood deficiency. But sometimes even when the levels are relatively high—not high, let’s call them average—and supposedly there’s no problem medically, you can still experience all kinds of symptoms of a blood deficiency.

1:04:25 Speaker 5 Like, the numbers show up green on the test results, but...

1:04:28 Speaker 2 Yes, but you could still be suffering, and then they’ll tell you, “We don’t know what’s wrong with you.” You might also take supplements and find they don’t really help, because making blood isn’t just about the nutrients; it’s also about the systems that produce the blood. According to Chinese medicine, women are more prone to blood deficiency because, in practical terms, we lose more blood.

1:04:52 Speaker 5 We lose our blood.

1:04:53 Speaker 2 Yes. Every month we shed the lining and build it again. That means we need more blood. And of course, after giving birth there’s a much more substantial loss of blood and of vital nutrients. And during pregnancy too, by the way, the baby takes a great many nutrients from us and is nourished by our blood. So if I’m already somewhat depleted, pregnancy will leave me a little more depleted. Blood deficiency often shows up as hair loss, sometimes blurred vision, little floating spots in your field of vision, and extreme fatigue. Sometimes it can also show up as anxiety—anxious feelings suddenly surfacing. For example, many women experience anxiety after giving birth, or postpartum low mood. Low mood, fatigue, depression—all of these can also be symptoms of blood deficiency. The less blood we have, the weaker our body becomes. It will show up differently in each woman, because it really depends on which system it affects for her. And there really is a solution. Usually it will include working on nutrition too. We’ll look at what she eats and where we can add more foods that build blood. If we’re talking about the colors of fruits and vegetables, then the color red...

1:06:10 Speaker 5 Literally.

1:06:11 Speaker 2 Builds blood. Yes, so there’s beetroot. Beetroot is excellent for building blood. Women undergoing fertility treatment know this: to build up the uterine lining, they eat a lot of beetroot, because it really builds blood. And of course there are red fruits too—berries, pomegranates, things like that—which contain a lot of iron.

1:06:30 Speaker 5 A pomegranate really looks like...

1:06:32 Speaker 2 Right.

1:06:32 Speaker 5 Blood, kind of.

1:06:33 Speaker 2 So that’s what the Chinese did. They really looked at how...

1:06:36 Speaker 5 A little...

1:06:36 Speaker 2 At how things looked, and based on that they associated them with different systems. And then studies show that these foods really do contain large amounts of iron and all kinds of nutrients we need. And when you take them in their natural form, they’re usually much easier to absorb. Of course, if you’re deficient in iron, B12, or folic acid, you can always use supplements as well to build those levels up. But you need to check that you’re absorbing them well enough. So often the treatment also involves strengthening the digestive system so it can absorb nutrients better. Sometimes I use medicinal herbs. If I see a significant deficiency, I won’t wait for diet to do its work, because sometimes the fatigue is so severe that there’s also a real loss of appetite, and eating becomes very difficult. It’s a cycle that feeds itself: I’m very weak, I’m very tired, I know I need to eat, but I don’t feel like eating, I have no appetite. So I don’t eat much, and the cycle just keeps growing. That’s why I often use medicinal herbs. Which...

1:07:43 Speaker 5 Medicinal herbs that actually...

1:07:44 Speaker 2 Build blood.

1:07:46 Speaker 5 No, I mean in what...

1:07:48 Speaker 2 In what form?

1:07:48 Speaker 5 Yes, as a tea, or...?

1:07:51 Speaker 2 Right, so as I was saying, it depends on how far along you are.

1:07:53 Speaker 5 There’s a word for it...

1:07:56 Speaker 2 Tincture?

1:07:57 Speaker 5 Yes. Where it sits in...

1:07:59 Speaker 2 Right, so the herbs that build...

1:08:01 Speaker 5 You know, I once prepared medicinal herbs for myself, Dani...

1:08:03 Speaker 2 Oh, amazing!

1:08:04 Speaker 5 I—well, not amazing, because I think I ended up forgetting about them and never used them at all. They sat in a jar at my place for months. I have no idea how I got into it, but—

1:08:13 Speaker 2 So nettle really is one of the herbs

1:08:15 Speaker 5 I’d completely blanked on that word.

1:08:16 Speaker 2 that build blood. A tincture is an extract of the herbs in alcohol. Um—

1:08:21 Speaker 5 Oh.

1:08:21 Speaker 2 They’re extracted in alcohol. That’s the most recommended way to take them, and the most common one in Israel, at least as far as I know. Some people find the taste of the herbs difficult. It’s medicine—it’s bitter in your mouth. It doesn’t always—

1:08:34 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:08:34 Speaker 2 taste good.

1:08:35 Speaker 5 That’s funny.

1:08:36 Speaker 2 Yes. They’re always telling me, “Wow, what a taste!” And I tell them, “What did you expect? It’s medicine.”

1:08:40 Speaker 5 That’s funny.

1:08:42 Speaker 2 It’s medicine. Some people take them in capsules, or as a powder mixed into water. There are different ways to take them; there are herbal teas. In the end, the foods we eat are medicinal plants too.

1:08:54 Speaker 5 Yes, of course.

1:08:55 Speaker 2 But there are plants that are particularly well known for this, and combinations of them have an effect. They give the body a boost and strengthen it, and it’s simply amazing to see. Acupuncture, by the way, is also very strengthening. It helps balance the body and strengthen the digestive system and absorption, so that what you do eat is absorbed properly. And it’s amazing to see that as soon as the body gets a little stronger, the appetite suddenly comes back. Then they tell me, “Wow, listen, suddenly I’m hungry, I’m starting to...” And then it’s easier for them to eat properly. You can actually see the woman gradually building herself back up, standing taller, and suddenly living better. It’s—

1:09:34 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:09:34 Speaker 2 Yes, people need to be aware of it.

1:09:36 Speaker 5 You know what I really love about it? That it’s a whole package. When you go to a conventional doctor, first of all, they don’t take you—I don’t know, maybe I haven’t met the right doctors, maybe I need to... I mean, generally, a family doctor sees you because you’ve come in with a problem. “I need to give you some kind of solution, and goodbye.”

1:09:58 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:09:58 Speaker 5 But when someone comes to you, you take her on as a case.

1:10:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:10:02 Speaker 5 Like, “Here’s a case. We need to understand—”

1:10:04 Speaker 2 Investigate it.

1:10:05 Speaker 5 Yes, exactly.

1:10:06 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:10:06 Speaker 5 You sort of—I remember being so surprised by this when I went to the woman who usually treats me. I had COVID during pregnancy, and...

1:10:16 Speaker 2 Oh wow.

1:10:17 Speaker 5 And I thought to myself, wow, she’s giving me over an hour of her full attention. Just that feeling in itself. I thought, someone is looking after me. I don’t know, at a family doctor’s office it just feels rushed, and—

1:10:30 Speaker 2 “Why are you here?” Stress.

1:10:32 Speaker 5 Your card. They spend ages typing what I’m saying. Hang on, listen to me, look at me! And outside you can already hear people arguing over who gets to go in after you.

1:10:41 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:10:41 Speaker 5 Speaking of stress. And here it’s like—

1:10:46 Speaker 2 By the way, it’s a known thing. Some people’s blood pressure is higher at clinics because of—

1:10:50 Speaker 5 Wow, then the reading isn’t reliable.

1:10:52 Speaker 2 Yes, so they send them home with the, with the—

1:10:55 Speaker 5 Device.

1:10:55 Speaker 2 With the device so they can check it at home.

1:10:57 Speaker 5 That’s something.

1:10:58 Speaker 2 I think it’s called white coat syndrome, or something like that.

1:11:00 Speaker 5 That’s something. It really—

1:11:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:11:02 Speaker 5 I mean, there’s something about getting that whole package. Just knowing that I have this and this, and that I’m also changing my diet, is incredibly supportive, and—

1:11:15 Speaker 2 Right.

1:11:16 Speaker 5 It gives you this feeling that you’re really going through a process. I don’t know, it’s—

1:11:19 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:11:19 Speaker 5 Amazing.

1:11:19 Speaker 2 Look, conventional medicine is amazing in some ways, in an emergency. My grandfather is a surgeon.

1:11:28 Speaker 5 Oh wow, wow.

1:11:29 Speaker 2 I mean, my father’s whole family are surgeons, you know. About as Western-medicine as you can get.

1:11:35 Speaker 5 So he’s the one who—

1:11:36 Speaker 2 Uh...

1:11:37 Speaker 5 went in a different direction?

1:11:39 Speaker 2 Right, my father was accepted to medical school but went on to study natural medicine. I had a dream of becoming a surgeon one day, because that really feels like medicine—

1:11:48 Speaker 5 Wait, you’re still young.

1:11:50 Speaker 2 Go for it.

1:11:52 Speaker 5 We’ll see.

1:11:52 Speaker 2 You’ll be a surgeon who combines everything. Giving them herbs and acupuncture in the middle. Actually, they already use acupuncture in surgery, so maybe it—

1:11:59 Speaker 5 Oh, wow.

1:12:00 Speaker 2 Maybe it’ll happen. Anyway, what was I saying? I lost my train of thought for a moment.

1:12:06 Speaker 5 That conventional medicine—

1:12:07 Speaker 2 Oh, yes. Its aim is supposedly to improve the patient’s life, and basically, if you come in with a symptom, they’ll want to make it go away so you can live without it. You have a headache? No problem. Take a pill. Like—

1:12:23 Speaker 5 Right.

1:12:23 Speaker 2 What could be easier than taking a pill, and that’s it—no headache? Then, for example, a woman came to me who’d been given a pill, and then a stronger pill because the first one wasn’t working so well anymore. Then she was referred to a neurologist to get an even stronger pill, and a stronger one—

1:12:39 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:12:39 Speaker 2 And a stronger one. Eventually she was given the strongest painkiller there is. Those pills can be a bit dangerous, because there’s a risk of becoming addicted to them. In the end, even that didn’t work. She came to me at Maccabi back then, and after a few treatments and explanations about how to sit properly at a computer, what to eat, and how she could help herself—and we did a little massage—the headache disappeared.

1:13:07 Speaker 5 Wow, that’s incredible.

1:13:09 Speaker 2 You see? It’s like... yes, it’s a bit sad.

1:13:13 Speaker 5 By the way, some people combine the two.

1:13:15 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:16 Speaker 5 In my own experience, I once went to a neurologist—

1:13:18 Speaker 2 Right.

1:13:18 Speaker 5 Because of headaches, and she figured out that it was my posture while nursing.

1:13:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:13:22 Speaker 5 And with massages and all that, it went away.

1:13:23 Speaker 2 There are amazing doctors. There are doctors—

1:13:25 Speaker 5 Yes, that’s what I’m saying—

1:13:26 Speaker 2 Who care.

1:13:27 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:13:27 Speaker 2 There are doctors who care, and you have to find them. So when some women come to me and say, “Oh, I’m against Western medicine. Doctors are idols,” you know, all sorts of things like that—no. No, no, no, absolutely not. Doctors are people who went into this to help you.

1:13:44 Speaker 5 Yes, nobody went to study medicine with bad intentions.

1:13:46 Speaker 2 Exactly.

1:13:47 Speaker 5 That’s what I was saying.

1:13:47 Speaker 2 The problem is a lack of knowledge, plain and simple. And a lot of it is what you might call pharmaceutical companies taking over medical education, so all you’re taught is how to prescribe medication. But there are doctors who do take an interest—

1:14:02 Speaker 5 Absolutely—

1:14:02 Speaker 2 And investigate.

1:14:03 Speaker 5 I think it’s a very overloaded system, and you don’t really have—

1:14:05 Speaker 2 No, the system, the doctors—

1:14:05 Speaker 5 The opportunity, as a doctor, to give enough—

1:14:07 Speaker 2 Right. Right. I definitely don’t think doctors are a bad thing. I tell every woman who comes to me: first, go see a doctor too. Get the necessary tests done, because testing is amazing.

1:14:19 Speaker 5 Of course.

1:14:19 Speaker 2 We didn’t used to have these tests, and we had no way to really check what was happening inside the body. It’s always another diagnostic tool, another way of looking at things. There’s no reason to avoid it. So, as they say, you have to know how to combine them. For example, in the delivery rooms we worked alongside the doctors. It was interesting, because at first they were very suspicious. When I started, the acupuncture project in delivery rooms was really just beginning, and they would sort of watch me from the side—

1:14:44 Speaker 5 Where do they do that? I have to know for next time.

1:14:45 Speaker 2 Today, most hospitals have it. At the time, I was at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, almost all the hospitals have it.

1:14:52 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:14:53 Speaker 2 In the center of the country, they have it at Ichilov and Tel Hashomer. At Beilinson, they only offer touch therapy. They’re introducing it gradually.

1:15:01 Speaker 5 I remember that my midwife during my previous delivery... She saw that things had stalled a little, and she told me, “Listen, I also practice Chinese medicine,” and—

1:15:10 Speaker 2 And shiatsu.

1:15:11 Speaker 5 And shiatsu. She worked on my legs.

1:15:13 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:15:14 Speaker 5 She was amazing, you have no idea. It was just—

1:15:15 Speaker 2 By the way, the person who brought us into the hospital was a midwife who had also studied complementary medicine—

1:15:20 Speaker 5 It has to come from someone in that position—

1:15:21 Speaker 2 Exactly. And she knew how important it was to bring it into delivery rooms, and she really got us in. It was a brand-new pilot program.

1:15:28 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:15:28 Speaker 2 Everyone looked at us suspiciously. Being an acupuncturist in a hospital was not an easy experience.

1:15:33 Speaker 5 You need pioneers to start the change—

1:15:35 Speaker 2 Exactly. And little by little, suddenly you see the doctors getting interested. Suddenly they see that it works. Wow, like—

1:15:41 Speaker 5 That’s something.

1:15:41 Speaker 2 Suddenly the slowdowns ended, suddenly the baby’s head moved down, suddenly labor progressed, suddenly... And I remember one time a doctor came over to me himself and said, “Listen, go into such-and-such room. Her labor has stalled. Help her; get the baby’s head down.” And I looked at him and said, “Sure, absolutely.” I went in, and afterward it really worked. Then he came to me and said, “Tell me, what did you write in the medical chart? What does it mean? What are those numbers?”

1:16:08 Speaker 5 That’s something.

1:16:08 Speaker 2 He was really interested in what it was.

1:16:09 Speaker 5 I think they really are also in a position where they feel they have to protect their place.

1:16:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:16:16 Speaker 5 But when you see it with your own eyes, then—

1:16:18 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:16:18 Speaker 5 It makes you curious.

1:16:19 Speaker 2 Someone who’s motivated by concern for the patient—

1:16:21 Speaker 5 Exactly.

1:16:22 Speaker 2 Is curious. Someone who’s motivated by ego has a very, very hard time hearing it. So you have to find the—

1:16:28 Speaker 5 Wow, it always comes back to ego versus—

1:16:33 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:33 Speaker 5 A sense of shlichus.

1:16:34 Speaker 2 Right, right, right. Wow.

1:16:36 Speaker 5 It’s incredible.

1:16:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:16:37 Speaker 5 It’s incredible. And just as you’re saying, by the way, you don’t say... Because there is that voice in natural medicine that says no to conventional medicine. But being able to hold that complexity and say, yes, they have something to offer too. Sometimes—

1:16:53 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:53 Speaker 5 We need them specifically. What do I mean, sometimes? If someone needs a cast on their leg, they need to go.

1:16:58 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:16:59 Speaker 5 And really—

1:16:59 Speaker 2 It’s called integrative medicine. It’s becoming more and more common today: doctors and complementary-medicine practitioners working hand in hand for the patient’s benefit. Simply for the patient’s benefit. Because take that woman whose labor stalled in the delivery room. Stress, for example, can stall labor because it causes the release of adrenaline, which actually shuts down the hormonal mechanism of labor. It really can bring things to a halt. And if she’s stressed because she’s in an unfamiliar place, with a team she doesn’t know, in a hospital—let’s face it, no woman willingly wants to go into a hospital—and then you give her acupuncture, everything calms down and labor progresses. It’s possible that if I hadn’t been there and that had happened, the baby could have gone into distress, she would have become even more distressed, and then they would have operated to save them.

1:17:51 Speaker 5 I’m really curious whether, once women like you were brought into delivery rooms, there was some kind of decrease in... Presumably. I wonder whether anyone tracked it.

1:18:01 Speaker 2 I know they are trying to do some research on it. It’s interesting. I—

1:18:08 Speaker 5 I know there’s also a certain incentive. Hospitals also have an incentive for there to be—

1:18:13 Speaker 2 Operations performed.

1:18:14 Speaker 5 Yes, yes.

1:18:15 Speaker 2 Right.

1:18:16 Speaker 5 So, well, let’s not get too far into that, but—

1:18:19 Speaker 2 Yes. I assume the doctors in the delivery rooms have no incentive for a woman to end up in surgery. I see how much effort they make to prevent it.

1:18:26 Speaker 5 No, I mean the decision-makers.

1:18:26 Speaker 2 But the doctors’ options are very limited because there are protocols. Hospitals establish those protocols based on the information they have. Based on—I don’t know, you can’t know what—

1:18:38 Speaker 5 Who might be at risk and who might not—

1:18:40 Speaker 2 Exactly. Meaning, you have a set number of hours to give birth. Once you’re fully dilated, if you don’t give birth, you go to surgery. It doesn’t matter what else is going on. I’m certain, certain that we reduced the number of C-sections—the midwives who worked with us felt that too. How do you put it? We can’t really—

1:18:56 Speaker 5 Back it up.

1:18:56 Speaker 2 We haven’t tested it yet. I assume they’re still doing the research, but I’m certain, because you see it with your own eyes.

1:19:04 Speaker 5 Wow, Tamar, it’s such a pleasure talking to you. Oh my goodness. Come on, let’s—

1:19:08 Speaker 2 Wow.

1:19:08 Speaker 5 Now I’m handing it over to you... Until now I’ve been asking you to talk about stress, talk about this. Bring up one more thing that maybe I haven’t thought of, and we’ll finish with that—something you see coming up repeatedly, or something important to know and raise awareness about.

1:19:28 Speaker 2 Oh, wow. I think we’ve talked about so, so many things. Give me a moment to think.

1:19:34 Speaker 5 Maybe even something basic about nutrition. Does every woman who comes to you get a personalized meal plan?

1:19:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:19:39 Speaker 5 Or do you have any general recommendations?

1:19:42 Speaker 2 Nutrition is individualized in Chinese medicine. I always look at people who say, “Meat is bad,” “Dairy products are terrible”—all those—

1:19:54 Speaker 5 Generalizations.

1:19:55 Speaker 2 Generalizations and—

1:19:56 Speaker 5 Declarations.

1:19:57 Speaker 2 Those black-and-white declarations. Chinese medicine approaches each person very differently. It even divides people, I think, into eight main types, or six main types. And based on that, it can also tell roughly which illnesses they’re likely to develop. And—

1:20:18 Speaker 5 What is that division based on? Not blood type, or—

1:20:21 Speaker 2 No. So basically, Chinese medicine deals primarily with energy. It sees energy as the force that enables the body to function, so a deficiency or an excess of energy can affect all kinds of different systems, either helping them function or harming them. There’s yang energy, which warms the body and drives its processes. It makes things work in a very dynamic, yang sort of way. And then there’s yin energy. Yin is more about substance; it’s likened to darkness, to night—the heavier things, the substances in the body. We have both yin and yang, and ultimately we want them to be balanced. Sometimes there’s a deficiency of yin, meaning a lack of substances, nourishment, or certain fluids. Sometimes there’s a deficiency of yang, and then we might see excess fluids, such as swelling, and greater sensitivity to cold. When there’s less yang, there’s less warmth in the body. The goal is always for yin and yang to be balanced. Now, there are different types: there’s a heavier yang type and a thinner yang type, according to Chinese medicine.

1:21:41 Speaker 5 Wow, that’s interesting.

1:21:42 Speaker 2 It really is interesting. You know what? It’s so interesting to talk about this. Western medicine, for example—

1:21:47 Speaker 5 Wait, but where are the six? You said six. So there’s heavier yang, thinner yang—

1:21:50 Speaker 2 Heavier yang, thinner yang, unstable yang; heavier yin, thinner yin, unstable yin.

1:21:55 Speaker 5 Wow, wow, wow.

1:21:56 Speaker 2 Yes. So—

1:21:57 Speaker 5 It reminds me of the righteous person who has it good and the righteous person who has it bad.

1:22:00 Speaker 2 Which is actually very interesting, because what we’re taught, and what Western medicine says, is that being fat is bad. It’s a disease; it’s not okay. The beauty ideal is thinness. Chinese medicine looks at that and says, no. Some types are heavier and some are thinner.

1:22:21 Speaker 5 So heavier yang and thinner yang really mean, like—

1:22:24 Speaker 2 Heavier and thinner just as you’re describing it, yes.

1:22:27 Speaker 5 I thought, you know, like when people talk about a “lean economy”—these terms can be used in another way. So tell me about it.

1:22:32 Speaker 2 No, they really do look at it that way. I’m telling you, it’s very, very simple.

1:22:35 Speaker 5 So who’s the unstable type? Is that...

1:22:37 Speaker 2 That’s someone who isn’t stable. It’s probably someone who tends toward both—who has a bit of each. Now, each of the types, both the heavier and the thinner, will suffer if they’re out of balance. They’ll have some kind of illness, but the illnesses will look different for each of them. The thinner type will tend to have illnesses caused by deficiencies—a lack of substances or energy—while the heavier type will tend to have illnesses caused by excess, an excess of substances or energy.

1:23:09 Speaker 5 But someone can be fat and have, say, a terrible vitamin deficiency—be malnourished in a sense.

1:23:14 Speaker 2 Then they might be the unstable type.

1:23:16 Speaker 5 Oh, maybe that’s where the...

1:23:17 Speaker 2 But it’s also possible that the vitamin deficiency is because their digestive system is overwhelmed by fat or by what we call dampness. Dampness is a state of excess in the digestive system. I just read that in Western medicine, when they do imaging, they sometimes find abdominal fat that actually affects absorption in the digestive system. So that’s an example of excess—excess dampness. It needs to be cleared out. It isn’t a deficiency. There are all kinds of—

1:23:48 Speaker 5 Oh, you mean the excess isn’t necessarily an excess of good substances, but some kind of excess that needs to be treated.

1:23:52 Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. It could be an excess of things that aren’t good—cholesterol, fat, abdominal fat, all kinds of things that interfere with digestion and so on. By the way, I think the type considered to have the greatest potential for health, let’s put it that way, is actually the heavier yang type. I remember we were very surprised when my teacher told us that. She said, yes, this person has plenty of substances and will generally live longer.

1:24:24 Speaker 5 Oh, by “potential for health,” you mean—

1:24:25 Speaker 2 I mean they have much greater potential to be healthy.

1:24:29 Speaker 5 How interesting.

1:24:29 Speaker 2 The thinner person will usually suffer from deficiencies, and then it could be—sorry—and then it could be that they’ll die young or something like that.

1:24:37 Speaker 5 Wow, so being thin can often be much more of a problem than being fat—

1:24:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:24:43 Speaker 5 Which we think of as a disease.

1:24:45 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:24:46 Speaker 5 Because ultimately it can cause illness, but—

1:24:48 Speaker 2 Right.

1:24:48 Speaker 5 Not necessarily more than the other possibility.

1:24:50 Speaker 2 In other words, someone can have a relatively full figure and be healthy.

1:24:57 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:24:57 Speaker 2 They don’t have to be thin. That’s how they were born.

1:24:59 Speaker 5 But we could also get into what “thin” means, because our culture has made thinness—

1:25:06 Speaker 2 Thinness. Yes.

1:25:07 Speaker 5 I mean, ask someone on the street what counts as thin, what clothing size counts as thin. You’ll get different answers. So it’s interesting—

1:25:14 Speaker 2 Right.

1:25:14 Speaker 5 Where they draw the line, you know?

1:25:17 Speaker 2 I’m mainly thinking of women who are doing well overall but are constantly preoccupied with their weight and end up doing their bodies a bit of harm—

1:25:26 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:25:27 Speaker 2 Because they think they have to reach a certain point. But if you’re at a weight that’s relatively normal for you—not that you’ve suddenly gained a drastic amount of weight or are suffering from various problems—if you’re generally healthy and your body just looks a little fuller than another woman’s, that doesn’t mean you need to lose weight. You might harm yourself by doing so.

1:25:48 Speaker 5 That’s what I’m saying. Someone decided that thin is healthy, but maybe what counts as “thin” is what you’re calling “fat.” Do you see what I mean?

1:25:56 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:25:56 Speaker 5 Not you personally—I mean any woman who—

1:25:58 Speaker 2 Yes. That’s something I really liked about Chinese medicine: it looks at things as they are. There isn’t one beauty ideal. There isn’t one diet that suits everyone. There isn’t one single answer. We’re different, each of us—

1:26:14 Speaker 5 Is there nothing that’s bad for absolutely everyone?

1:26:17 Speaker 2 Junk food.

1:26:18 Speaker 5 There you go.

1:26:20 Speaker 2 Of course, there’s the possibility—

1:26:21 Speaker 5 You know the actual—

1:26:22 Speaker 2 Poison.

1:26:23 Speaker 5 “Fries don’t hurt me,” you know.

1:26:26 Speaker 2 Yes. Some people have a faster metabolism, or better genetics, or fuller reserves, but they’re simply eating through their cake too quickly. That’s how it’s viewed.

1:26:36 Speaker 5 How interesting.

1:26:37 Speaker 2 They may genuinely not feel it, but it could be using up their cake faster. In other words, we were given a cake when we came into the world. There are the things we were born with: our genetic makeup, the substances we received from our mother, the antibodies—all the things we got, so to speak, for free. That’s called prenatal: everything we received before birth. And then there’s what we add or preserve after we’re born, throughout our lives.

1:27:03 Speaker 5 Through our own efforts.

1:27:04 Speaker 2 The less I take care of myself, the more I eat from the cake I was given. I’m using up what—

1:27:10 Speaker 5 We’re drawing on that reserve.

1:27:10 Speaker 2 My essence, as it’s called in Chinese medicine. There’s the... the essence of life that our mother passes on to us. That’s the most yin thing there is. We said yin is substance; this is the most yin substance of all. And the more I use up that essence—we have this essence, and we need to preserve it. The more my lifestyle is unsuited to me and exhausts my body, the more I draw on my essence. It’s that simple.

1:27:37 Speaker 5 That also really explains what your father said—

1:27:40 Speaker 2 “Just wait until after you’ve had children.”

1:27:42 Speaker 5 Because age plays a big part here.

1:27:44 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:44 Speaker 5 Basically, I was given a certain reserve, and it’s like money: if I spend it and don’t earn—

1:27:49 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:50 Speaker 5 Any more, then...

1:27:50 Speaker 2 And if we look at DNA and our genetic makeup, it also carries a potential for hereditary diseases. The more I take care of myself, the more that genetic potential will simply remain as it is; it won’t manifest. The more I exhaust my body and don’t live in a way that meets my needs, the more those illnesses will emerge. They’ll simply emerge. So if you know that diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, or anything like that run in your family, take care of yourself. Look after yourself. You want to live well.

1:28:20 Speaker 5 Wow, absolutely.

1:28:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:28:21 Speaker 5 I think about that sometimes. It isn’t just about ourselves; I have a responsibility. I’m a mother.

1:28:26 Speaker 2 Right.

1:28:27 Speaker 5 I need to be healthy. If, G-d forbid, I have to deal with something, I’m far from the only one who pays the price.

1:28:33 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:28:34 Speaker 5 Wow.

1:28:34 Speaker 2 Women come to me, by the way, and say, “Listen, for the past few years I’ve been in survival mode, from one birth to nursing, then another birth to nursing. I was there only for the children. I collapsed. I can’t function now. I just can’t. I’m tired, I’m in a bad mood. I don’t enjoy my children. I don’t feel well, I’m not having a good time, things aren’t good for me.” And only when it gets to that point do they suddenly realize: Wait, I need to put a little fuel back in my own tank. Then they come to take care of themselves, which is wonderful, by the way. It’s a great step. But it doesn’t have to happen that way. We always, always, always need to take care of ourselves, to take preventive steps, because it really affects everyone around us. Even if you don’t want to think about yourself and that’s hard for you, think a little about the people around you. That can also give you some drive to help yourself.

1:29:21 Speaker 5 Absolutely. Wow, I want to sum up a few points to take with us. First of all, there’s what you just said: ultimately, the responsibility is mine.

1:29:31 Speaker 2 Right.

1:29:32 Speaker 5 I’m not a victim of anything. I’m not. Mentally, that’s a big thing. I’m not a victim; ultimately, there’s no one for me to blame.

1:29:39 Speaker 2 It’s my shlichus.

1:29:40 Speaker 5 Yes, yes. In the end, it’s in my hands. And if I want to fulfill my shlichus in the world—you know, I have this health journey I’m on.

1:29:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:29:48 Speaker 5 And the first episode is called... I explain why I call it “Health as a Way of Life,” just as I call the podcast “Shlichus as a Way of Life,” because they really go together. I mean, to bring my shlichus into the world, I need to be healthy.

1:29:59 Speaker 2 Right.

1:30:00 Speaker 5 And that’s exactly it. And it’s my responsibility—I keep coming back to that. And also this idea of taking preventive steps.

1:30:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:30:10 Speaker 5 Come on, let’s be grown-ups. Let’s take care of things beforehand, not wait until...

1:30:15 Speaker 2 Yes, it starts with awareness. I’m not—

1:30:17 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:30:18 Speaker 2 —blaming anyone or anything.

1:30:19 Speaker 5 It’s exactly what we were talking about, too: the general lack of awareness. Understanding that just because everyone does something doesn’t mean it’s—

1:30:26 Speaker 2 —good.

1:30:26 Speaker 5 —all fine and no big deal.

1:30:29 Speaker 2 Right.

1:30:29 Speaker 5 Even if you’re the only one at a women’s event drinking water, be proud of yourself. Don’t feel—

1:30:36 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

1:30:37 Speaker 5 Sometimes I think society lowers the bar. It just lowers the bar.

1:30:41 Speaker 2 Right. Look, when I was a child, I used to bring whole-wheat bread to class. It was strange. I felt like a bit of an odd kid.

1:30:49 Speaker 5 Yes, yes.

1:30:50 Speaker 2 In a way.

1:30:51 Speaker 5 I can understand you, because there was a girl like that in my class. It wasn’t me. She had whole-wheat bread and containers of vegetables, and we’d say, “What’s with her?” That really was the kind of home she came from.

1:31:02 Speaker 2 Yes, and it just shows how much our surroundings affect our habits. So if you want to build new habits and move into a new place, choose surroundings that will support you in that.

1:31:16 Speaker 5 Wow, absolutely.

1:31:17 Speaker 2 Whether it’s friends who’ll go through the same process with you, or finding a group of mothers who also like feeding their children healthy food, or going for walks—whatever new habit you want. It’s called social desirability. When the people around you are doing the same thing, you’ll want to do it too, and ultimately you’ll stick with it.

1:31:35 Speaker 5 Absolutely. And also the content we consume. Look, I follow you—

1:31:40 Speaker 2 Right.

1:31:40 Speaker 5 —and I enjoy it, because it gets me thinking about these things.

1:31:43 Speaker 2 And that’s part of your surroundings.

1:31:44 Speaker 5 It makes me feel normal when I pay attention to these things. But if I spend all day following one pastry shop and another, then it—

1:31:52 Speaker 2 Right.

1:31:53 Speaker 5 —as you say, releases certain hormones that make me...

1:31:56 Speaker 2 Right.

1:31:56 Speaker 5 I’m there. I’m basically...

1:31:58 Speaker 2 So pay attention to your surroundings: make sure they’re good for you, and also distance yourself from surroundings that are toxic. For example—

1:32:04 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:32:04 Speaker 2 —people you follow who don’t make you feel good, or a news channel, or anything like that, as we discussed.

1:32:11 Speaker 5 Yes, absolutely. So let’s wish everyone that each woman will really merit taking charge of her own life. I say “merit” because even reaching that point—where I stop for a moment, you know, think about myself for a second, and realize I need to do this—is something.

1:32:23 Speaker 2 Yes.

1:32:24 Speaker 5 And to care for ourselves and look after ourselves not just for our own sake, but ultimately for the sake of others. And that itself gives back to us, because there’s nothing like giving—giving and receiving. May we be able to give, and truly be vessels for the light and for our shlichus. Thank you, Tamar Reis. How can people reach you?

1:32:42 Speaker 2 First of all, you can follow me—

1:32:44 Speaker 5 In Petach Tikvah, right?

1:32:44 Speaker 2 —on Instagram. Yes, my clinic is in Petach Tikvah. And I also have a digital guided program for reducing stress, for anyone who feels that this is—

1:32:52 Speaker 5 “Living in the Moment, with Calm.”

1:32:53 Speaker 2 “Living in the Moment, with Calm,” exactly. For anyone who thinks maybe this is—

1:32:56 Speaker 5 Tell us your phone number. I have it here—go ahead.

1:32:58 Speaker 2 0587188756.

1:33:02 Speaker 5 Great, write that down, digit by digit. If you’re driving, come back to this episode later. Wonderful. Thank you so, so much.

1:33:08 Speaker 2 Thank you. Thank you very much.

1:33:10 Speaker 5 May we feel good. Just feel good.

1:33:11 Speaker 2 How wonderful. Amen.