learn more. So, I went back and got a degree in nutritional therapy and was trying to help other wiggly kids. You know which as a petitioner, it’s hard when they’re moving all over the place. It’s really hard to kind of even assess them and figure out what will help them. So, I’m based in Seattle, and there is a practitioner here who has a muscle testing protocol called autonomic response testing. And I learned back because I thought, Oh, this will be helpful. It’s a really easy way to assess kids, even if they’re all over the place. So, I was working with that technique. And then the next shoe dropped my then husband to I just thought was crazy fun. When we got married after my daughter was born, we found out he was bipolar and very manic. We thought we kind of got that under control. And we had a second and then he went in the other direction and just kept getting more and more depressed. Till it got to the point where I became very concerned, he might die on my watch. So, friends convinced me that this was above my paygrade. And we should move him to a residential treatment facility. And the moment I knew he was safe, and it wasn’t my job to keep him alive. It was like I had crossed the finish line for a seven-year marathon, and I had just run out of gas. I could barely get up. You know, my kids were five and seven. They would of course, wake me up, I would make them breakfast or pack their lunch or driving to school, I would come home crawl back into bed and set the alarm for pickup. And I also had no full-time job at this point. I was class parents, I had all these responsibilities, and I just had no energy to do anything. But I knew what remedies should be helping me I was trying to support my adrenals I was trying to eat right, and nothing seemed to move the needle

 

Jodi Cohen  05:00

 I am as a volunteer; I had just helped a friend with a big fundraiser, and she was interested in essential oils. So, she brought over a big box of oils and said, now these might help you. You’ve been really high cortisol for a really long time, which causes systemic inflammation, I bet your gut is toast. So, nothing you’re ingesting is actually getting assimilated, but oils can go through the skin, they can get into the brain through the nasal passageways. This might help. And again, I thought, well, I have nothing to lose, why not? You know, I’m muscle tested the boxes, anything in here going to help my adrenals and I got a really solid, yes. Which felt very encouraging was like, Oh, god, look at that. This seems totally weird, but it could help. Like, why not? And I kept trying to test normally I like, you know, will this work at all, then I kind of whittled down what’s going to help. And I normally get like one remedy, but I kept getting the same five oils. And that really stumped me for a moment until I realized, oh, wait a minute, they’re liquid, I can combine them, you know, why not? So, I went to my kitchen, total newbie, grab shot glass, and began testing. Okay, seven drops. So, this one, three of this one, you know, made my quick recipe and my shot glass put it on my adrenal glands on my low back and felt like myself, felt like oh my god, I could go running, I could clean the kitchen, I can go to the supermarket with all these things that felt completely overwhelming. I you know, clean the house, I did the laundry, I made their favorite meal, I had a really kind of successful day. And that night, when I was laying in bed, it’s not uncommon for anxiety during the day to lead to insomnia at night, you know, I would like sleep all day and then be up. But um, oh, gosh, I wonder, you know, I kind of had heard that oils were good for sleep. And I’m like, maybe something will help my sleep. So, I made something up, it helps sleep. I just kept every day like, well, let’s make it up kind of like, you know, it’s dinnertime. What do we have in the fridge? What can we make with you know, an avocado and these things? So, I kept making things up. And finally, I started to feel better and like myself again, and all my friends wanted to know, oh, what did you do what worked. And so, I was gifting them formulas, a lot of them were in the nutritional space. They were testing it on their clients. And they were all getting really good results. So, they came back and said you should do something with this. And that was the first time I actually went and looked online. Because it seems so obvious to me. I kept thinking, Well, someone must be doing this. And when I finally went online to research, I was really surprised that not only was no one really looking at oil blends through the lens of balancing organ systems and regions of the brain. But they made it seem really complicated. I was almost grateful that my mental capacity was so limited, because if I had started with research, I probably would have felt completely unqualified and never even tried it.

 

Dr. Manon  08:03

That’s funny how sometimes when you just stumble into things. It’s the thing that is yours, you know? Yeah. Good. Yeah, that’s very interesting story. So how do you account for, as you know, my background, I’m a naturopathic physician. So, we’re trained in nutrition and a whole bunch of other things. We don’t do oils. That’s not part of our training. But our belief would be, it’s not particularly mine. But I’m just saying, as a profession, that when you’ve got all the foods you need, you’re good to go. And that’s a presumption to believe that when you’ve got everything, then your body sorts everything out. Now, in my personal experience, because I do something called Bowen therapy, I have found that you have to deal with the body, you have to put the body into parasympathetic, you have to regulate the autonomic nervous system, because you can’t even serve the food properly. If you’re not if you’re not in this calm state, you know, of being able to receive the nutrients. So how is it? Like I’m just assuming it’s something similar, but what is your understanding of nutrition? Because that’s your background. And how do you see that it helped you?

 

Jodi Cohen  09:34

Yeah, I agree. I think that once upon a time, food was enough, like probably when I was a child in the 80s. But I think there are so many factors that kind of interfere with our body’s ability to drop into parasympathetic to fall restfully asleep. And I think that we’re being so bombarded with toxins, that it’s really hard for our lymphatic system and drainage pathways to keep up so I feel like I 100% agree that when the body is in balance, it heals itself. I just think that a little bit more support is needed to get the body in balance. And that’s where I feel that oils can play a really powerful role in tandem with nutrition. You know, if you’re celiac and you’re committed to eating pizza, it doesn’t matter how many oils you use

 

Dr. Manon  10:19

 No, absolutely. But what is it about oils? That that have that impact?

 

Jodi Cohen  10:29

Well, I think part of it is the brain, you know, like they don’t do chemo in the brain. Because the molecules are too big, the brain is protected by the blood brain barrier. So that’s why the essential fatty acids are always kind of touted as brain food, because they’re the right size and consistency to get through. Only super small fat-soluble molecules can really pass through the blood brain barrier and get into the brain. So, I think why CBD works so well. It’s kind of like, if the ambulance can’t get to the injured party, you’re not going to save them, you know, oils, because they’re super small, and fat can get into the brain, they can pass through the blood brain barrier, you know, what people don’t realize is the nasal passageways the most direct access to the brain. That’s why cocaine is snorted through the nose. And then seizures delivered through the nose because it works. Because, you know, the blood brain barrier is really thin there, the capillaries are closer to the surface there, and no cells are brain cells. So just by virtue of kind of the tech application model, you know, oils can get into the brain really quickly, or sense of smell is critical to our survival. We smell food, we smell water, we smell predator odor. So, the sense of smell has kind of a direct passageway to the part of the brain that is involved in our safety response, our amygdala. So, when we talk about being just a backup, in case people don’t know what the parasympathetic nervous system is, your body’s operating system is known as your autonomic nervous system. It controls your automatic functions, your breathing, your heart rate, your digestion, your detoxification, and just like a car, it has kind of a gas pedal, it can speed up that fight or flight, you know, you’re in danger, you have to prioritize survival, or it can slow down. That’s parasympathetic, rest and digest. And what people don’t realize is that, you know, when you’re stuck in the fight, or flight, your body prioritizes certain things and kind of down regulates other things like digestion, detoxification, immune function, anti-inflammation, those are all down regulated, if you think you’re going to die, because they’re not critical to immediate survival. But if you’re constantly in that state of fear, and it can be anticipatory stress, it can be fear about the news or fear about a relationship or finances or your health, that keeps you stuck in this emergency gear. And you’re kind of down regulating, delayed maintenance, all of these critical functions. So being able to access the brain and help the brain shift out of I’m going to die, I need to prioritize survival to I’m safe, the world is safe, I can kind of take care of my digestion and everything else. That’s really critical. And it’s really nice to have kind of that access route. Because it’s really hard to help people. You know, they can be eating all the right foods during all the right exercise. But if they’re constantly anxious and worried, it’s almost like trying to bike uphill in the rain in high gear. It just is harder.

 

Dr. Manon  13:38

So, have you found in this last year, or going on a bit longer now that now that there’s such a large increase in eating disorders as well as in suicides and depression and anxiety? That, the use of these essential oils can help. And do you have any examples?

 

Jodi Cohen  14:04

I think essential oils are essential during this time period. Yeah, absolutely. Direct inhalation, literally smelling under the bottle, is the fastest way to get things into the system. And it’s interesting there’s a whole branch of chiropractic called Functional Neurology that’s basically trying to isolate and stimulate different areas of the brain. So, if you’re having an anxiety attack or panic attack, that is the right hemisphere, the numerating hemisphere, that’s overactive, specifically the forehead area, the frontal lobe executive function. So, the best way to kind of unravel an anxiety attack is to stimulate the left forehead the left frontal lobe, and the easiest way to do that is to smell anything. It could be you could peel you know oils or live in the peel of citrus fruits appeal a tangerine and smell it or any oil you have in your house. Smell it through the left nostril that then stimulates the left frontal lobe balances the two hemispheres’ calms anxiety. So that’s a really easy one, you don’t even need to buy an oil, you can do that right away. If you do have an oil, you can carry it in your pocket. Anytime anxiety hits. The other thing that is really great. So, the on off switch between the two gears of your nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic is longest nerve that most people have never heard of the vagus nerve, it’s cranial nerve number 10. It is literally the information highway between the brain and the body, the brain starts in the back of the neck splits was around both sides, behind the earlobe, on that bone, that’s your mastoid bone. That’s where it’s most accessible to the surface, it then winds through the heart, the lungs, every organ of digestion and detoxification. When you practice deep breathing, what you’re doing is stimulating the vagus nerve to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system. This is why you feel better if you do yoga and Shavasana. Then at the start of the class, the combination of kind of the twists and the turns, and the breathing activates the vagus nerve.

 

Commercial Break  16:16

Hi, I’m Dr. Manon Bolliger and I wanted to take a moment to thank you for watching this podcast. If you haven’t subscribed, please do and also, feel free to leave comments and like as this way more people get to find out about this work and other choices for health as I think it’s really important that we all share this information. I have a free gift to you. It’s a seven-sequence email that has tips for every day. And it’s a little insight about how to live your life when it comes to health. And it’s very much built on how I managed to overcome stage four cancer and what it took. So, I would love you to have this and thank you once again, for listening to these podcasts.

 

Jodi Cohen  17:21

There was a New York neurosurgeon by the name of Kevin Tracy, who was playing with surgically implanting a pacemaker like device right behind the ear lobe and testing that to activate the vagus nerve and stimulate parasympathetic response. He did such a good job that the FDA approved this for epilepsy, depression, and migraines. And I thought Huh, stimulate that’s fascinating because several oils are known as stimulatory meaning that if you were to say Apply drop on your arm, it would make it turn red, it might feel hot stimulatory oils or oregano, thyme, peppermint, rosemary, clove, cinnamon, all of these oils. So, I started playing with stimulatory oils, and what can be used to activate that Vegas nerve and kind of turn on parasympathetic activity and the one that worked, the best was clothed. But what’s interesting, what I love about blends is that you get the benefit of both. So, clove is great, but it has slightly larger molecules. So, it takes about 20 minutes to get through the skin. Lime has smaller molecules, if you combine it with fractionated coconut oil, which is coconut oil that doesn’t get hard and cold temperatures, it suddenly you just apply it right there and it’s literally like an acupuncture needle, it gets right into the skin, stimulates the vagus nerve turns on parasympathetic, you feel calm, immediately you ask for feedback, you know, the vagus nerve basically controls the whole digestive cascade. So, you know, the moving walkway that is our digestive system. So, anyone that suffers from constipation, if you stimulate the vagus nerve that kind of turns on your motility, and you can have a bowel movement, if you’re feeling super anxious and kind of overwhelmed. One thing that happens is your vision changes your pupil as the black part of your eye gets really big. So, it can kind of selectively focus on your next choice to keep you alive. But it also shuts down kind of your ability to connect to your intuition, your higher cognitive function have an intelligent conversation. You can watch someone in your life you can see their pupal is really big, put a little drop of clove behind their ear. Watch the people shrink up and watch them if they’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed. Suddenly they feel Oh, you know, as opposed to seeing the world as black and white and I have no choice and you know, we’re all very your will never make it suddenly they’re like, oh, wait a minute, I can get more information on this. Or maybe I could do this, and options start to open up and it really helps you just no matter what is going on. In the world kind of show up as your best self.

 

Jodi Cohen  20:05

I don’t recommend oils in the ear, but there are devices that are kind of like acupuncture stimuli. Yeah, the ears have a lot of great reflex points, you can massage and stimulate it manually.

 

Dr. Manon  20:35

So, I was reading that you have a book? Has it come out? Yes.

 

Jodi Cohen  20:43

out on March 16. It is to boost the brain and heal the body.

 

Dr. Manon  20:49

Oh, great. So that’s a resource, we’ll be putting a link so people can get more information on that, congratulations. That’s really great. And then, what can you tell us a little bit about trauma? And your experience with that? Because a lot of our listeners, I mean, that’s a big part of what I train, as well at Bowen College. So, I’m sure there’s many listeners interested in seeing what else is available to help?

 

Jodi Cohen  21:23

On August 27, 2018, my 12-year-old son and three of his friends drove with their dad to go whitewater rafting, and didn’t make it to their destination, there was a car accident on the way there, my son died instantly, and two of his friends passed away in the coming months. And my ex-husband wound up in prison. Because he made some bad choices that day. But trauma…I think I’m actually unraveling this as we speak, because, you know, the only advice I kind of got was the Kubler Ross model, which I only later realized was not designed for other people’s deaths but dealing with your own. And it wasn’t like I would wake up in the morning and say, Okay, I’m not going to be angry to press bargain or accept today. It was more like; how do I get out of bed? Like, what rituals do I create to kind of help me navigate this day, and early on, it was just shock. It was really just figuring out how to eat sleep and move. Because sleep is a lot. And grief can feel like a tsunami. And the one thing that there’s some really interesting research about kind of smell, and your fear and your trauma response. So, the part of the brain that kind of triggers trauma is the amygdala. And there’s a Seattle, Nobel laureate by the name of Linda Buck, who was doing all of this research, the sense of smell goes directly to the amygdala. So, she was looking at kind of a factory of receptors that pick-up predator odor. And then she took it one step further and looked at what cancels out that kind of predatory auto response, and it turned out to be rose smell of rose. So, the idea of stopping to smell the roses has scientific merit. But when you’re having…to me grief felt like, I don’t know if anyone ever wakes up with a charley horse in the middle of the night. It’s such intense pain, what I do is stand up and kind of step on it and put pressure on and that kind of comes down. So, grief would wake me up. And it would feel almost like a heart attack to me, like the Chinese medicine says great lives in the lungs. So, it feels like I couldn’t breathe, and I was having a heart attack. So, I started keeping rose, my bedside table. And I would just know, I would, you know, open it up, smell it and basically slather it all over my heart. And it was the similar effect to kind of stepping putting weight on your legs so that the charley horse goes away. So that was kind of what I did early on, you know, trying to just navigate, find a way to move through the grief. breathing exercises really helped for me, especially exhaling, exhaling seems to help a lot more than inhaling and there are things you can do with oils, you know, talk about it in the book, you know, techniques for inhaling and exhaling to kind of breathe through really intense feelings. parasympathetic, the clothing line blend that I mentioned, that really helped and then as time as the shock wore off, and you know, kind of trauma started to set in. I noticed nature, not being in nature moving in nature always helps. And for me, I feel like you know, there’s a reason I think we bury our dead or we bury crystals to recharge it. I feel like nature can hold things for us. You know, Earth can hold things for us. And so certain oils like vetiver have deep roots in the earth, you know, cedar wood, sandalwood, all of these trees. You know, frankincense is a resin from a tree, putting these oils that are very grounding, because they have a lot of that first energy on the bottom of the feet over the heart, just smelling it. That to me was almost like, you know, it’s a safe place like I like Epsom salt baths are floating in water or walking in the woods. I feel like they sometimes carry the heavy emotions for me. And I think using oils from those plants can kind of help you release and discharge…………it it’s like…….. hey, hiked Machu Picchu kind of, you know, we have the shepherds who carry the heavy bags, whereas I feel like plants in nature kind of do the heavy lifting for you.

 

Dr. Manon  25:43

well, it’s so beautiful. So well said and I can, yeah, I’m very visual. So, I totally got that. And very integrated. And I think your way of looking at how that benefits, nutrition, it really is also all the emotional components of grounding and earthing and, and the basic science of putting your body back into parasympathetic. And like you said, you know how to how it impacts the brain. So, with people that are anxious right now, because there’s a lot of people here in the States and Canada, where we’re looking at our first a lot of changes all happening at once. where a lot of people are very scared of what’s happening, there’s the virus, but I feel like it’s not so much that, that people are fearing. It’s really the liberties that our governments are taking… our rights and our ability to speak and all of these things, and I think it’s that type of fear, where a lot of people are feeling that…what would you do to really help that type of anxiety that just takes it’s not irrational, but it’s because it’s kind of logical on some level. But what would you suggest to ground people? Because going into fear isn’t the solution?

 

Jodi Cohen  27:54

Yeah, you really need to stay in parasympathetic. And a lot of it feels to me, like all bark and no bite, you know, like, I’ll give you an example. We’re super allergic to polyethylene glycol, so we can’t even take the vaccine. And my daughter’s High School is like, we’re gonna mandate it. And I’m like, Okay, can we talk about this? And the minute I said, we can’t get it, they’re like, Oh, you know, like, I don’t actually think, you know, it hasn’t done the FDA approval, I don’t think it’s even legal what they’re trying to do. But I think that if you don’t kind of push back and say, you know, like that, that’s not going to work for us, the minute you kind of stand in your integrity and stand in your truth, they back right down, they have no argument. And so, I think the more that you can, it’s kind of like trying to drive with a dirty windshield, it’s very hard to see, you can feel like a victim, you can feel like you know, you have no options. And the more you can I call it actually ground center shift. So grounding, helping your body kind of drop into that place where you feel safe. And it doesn’t really matter what’s happening around you because you feel safe. And that can be the parasympathetic blend, it can be a grounding oil, like fediverse a great one. sandalwood. Frankincense is really good, just whatever you need, so that you can feel clear, because then you can see more options. Like you can say, well, gosh, you know, this, let me let me just ask you, like, you know, if you don’t ask the answer is always No, like, no. Yeah, go ahead and ask. And then center. So, a lot of the floral essences, like I mentioned, Rose, Jasmine is a good one. The flowers really bring you to your heart space. And what’s interesting, what I see happening in the world is no one’s in their heart. Everyone is so polarized. You know, what’s crazy to me is that many people actually probably think the same thing. But they don’t see it that way. And if you can get into the heart space into gratitude, into kindness into compassion, having compassion, oh gosh, maybe they are really scared, maybe that’s why they’re being so mean and saying these things, then it’s easier to kind of……….my old kindergarten teachers say you can’t have a tug of war if you don’t pick up the rope, right? If someone’s trying to engage you in a negative way, and you’re in a place of compassion. And instead of barking back, you just say, gosh, that must be hard. You know, I’m sorry, you’re going through that, what am I going to do nothing. So, then you don’t have to engage new kind of skate on by. And then the citrus blends like a lot of people like orange, tangerine Neroli, great for those who are very uplifting, they can really help to boost your mood and make you feel better. So, you know, any combination of that seems to work really well. But also knowing you know, you, you get to keep yourself safe. You know, there are a lot of ifs and maybes. Who knows, I don’t I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what the government’s gonna do. But at the same time, I trust that I can make good decisions to keep myself safe.

 

Dr. Manon  31:07

Well, I think, you know, when you say connect to your heart, because that’s what people are not doing. I think that really helps to just to make a better decision, because part of the fear techniques that are being used, it divides people constantly.

 

Jodi Cohen  31:32

They say six feet apart. They’re like, that’s how far you’re heart radiuses. And so, if you’re six feet apart, you’re not really connecting. Feeling.

 

Dr. Manon  31:43

 Yeah, that’s interesting. Anyway, oh, well, this was a wealth of information. And yeah, thank you for sharing on all these levels. And again, what is the name of your book, because I will put it up. For those, like, super visual.

 

Jodi Cohen  31:59

Yeah, it looks beautiful to us. Thank you. It’s essential oils to boost the brain and heal the body. And it’s five steps to calm anxiety, sleep better, reduce inflammation and regain control of your health. It’s really three pieces. It’s why oils work, how they work, what inhalation is how it gets into the brain. And then five imbalances that I see that we kind of talked about, like, if your nervous system is always feeling unsafe, if you’re not sleeping, if toxins are not being eliminated and drained, if you’re lacking energy, and if your immune system is dysregulated, inflammation is rampant. And then so …..I have a lot of friends that spend a lot of money on supplements they don’t take, but I find that when I explained it to them, like this is what this is going to do the minute they’re like, oh, that helps dilate the vasculature so that more blood can get to my brain, and then I have more oxygen, and then I have more energy. They get it. They’re like, Oh, I can do that. So, I really want people to understand how this is supporting them because then I find compliance increases. And then the last chapter is specific oils, specific protocols. And I do have a company vibrant Royals, where I share all the blends myself and I also give all the recipes in case someone you know if they have a lot of oils, they want to make themselves.

 

Dr. Manon  33:33

thank you very much for coming on this show.

 

Jodi Cohen  33:36

Thank you for having me.

 

Ending  33:42

Thank you for joining us on The Healers Cafe with Dr. Manon. For more information go to drmanonbolliger.com

 

Thank you for joining us. For more information, go to DrManonBolliger.com.