Gina Bria:       Boy, are we pleased and delighted here at the Hydration Foundation to welcome Jessica Orton of The Tapping Solution. She is the author of Tapping: The Tapping Solution for Weight Loss and Body Confidence and she’s also the author of Tapping for Lasting Change, both books which I have read, I personally benefited from them, and I love to recommend them. And even in our book Quench we listed The Tapping Solution as a resource for hydration. And in this conversation, we’re going to help you understand how that’s crazily true. Right, Jessica?

So, what we want to do is today have a conversation bringing tapping and hydration together in such a surprising way. The link between tapping and hydration turns out to be the fascia system in the body. This is that connective tissue and network that runs through us like a gossamer web. It’s everywhere in our system. And a new research is showing that this fascia system, this network of spiderlike webs throughout us that we didn’t even notice until five years ago, is actually a secret irrigation system and that is how the body actually delivers water that we ingest and moves it into all our tissues and organs. And why it’s related to tapping is that this system, this fascia system, this hidden irrigation system turns out to be not only a connective system for moving hydration and energy through our body but it’s also the body’s superconducting highway for information. So, that’s astounding. And that means that tapping, moving, percussing is going to have an impact on information in our system and that’s emotional information, thought information, and literally the function of the body. It means that tapping is an extraordinary influence for incoming information in our body and we’d love to explore this whole topic with Jessica. Who else would you pick to have this conversation?

Jessica Ortner: Thank you.

Gina Bria:       So, Jessica, could you tell us what tapping is for those of us who don’t know it, how you discovered it? And we are excited to hear from the horse’s mouth.

Jessica Ortner: Yes, absolutely. And what I’m excited about today as well is that my intention is that by the end of our time together, people know how to tap, people feel comfortable with using this modality to help relax their body and clear anxiety.

So, tapping, it’s great that we’re doing video because usually I’m explaining it on a radio show or just audio but tapping, you’re actually tapping on the acupressure points. Now, a lot of us find that when we’re stressed, we go like this. We put our hands on our chest or we start to rub our temples. We intuitively know that these are spots that help us relax. What we’re doing here is we are consciously bringing up the … we’re getting clear on the anxiety we’re feeling, the struggles we’re feeling and we begin to stimulate these points. And what happens is it sends a calming signal from the body to the brain because when we are feeling stressed and anxious, what’s happening is that we’re having this response in our brain. Now, stress is incredibly helpful if we’re on a hike and we see a snake. We want to feel stressed. But there are so many times in our lives where that reaction of stress is not helping the situation. If you’re trying to change your health, you can’t stress your way there. If you’re trying to be more successful in business or get up on that stage, that stress doesn’t support you. Stress really limits us from making changes because we become less resourceful and less creative and everything feels harder. So, you have this intention to do more for your body and you say you’re going to do it but you just don’t do it because stress often holds us back. What we’re doing here is we’re giving a voice to that stress. We’re acknowledging how we feel. We’re tapping on these acupressure points. And we get to the point where we can have that thought, we can be honest about what we’re struggling with, but now we don’t have that physical response anymore. When we don’t have a physical response of anxiety to a thought, now we have the power to choose something better. Now we feel more ease, more resourceful. Action is not so difficult when we don’t feel like we’re frozen in anxiety.

Gina Bria:       I love thinking about it literally as a Morse code.

Jessica Ortner: Yeah.

Gina Bria:       And now that we understand the role of fascia, that it’s very delicate, all connected, spider web like tissue material inside of us, when we jangle it anywhere, especially at these points where it surfaces close to the skin and we have better access to it, and Jessica is going to show us the points, we’re going to do that, that that’s a code, an electronic impulse that’s being sent through tapping. You’re just literally like tapping that jangle through and it’s an information interruption. So, you’re getting to your stress system through your own device. I mean, we’re handing ourselves our own switch-on buttons, our own levers for taking care of the massive amounts of incoming information that’s coming into our society which creates so much stress. We have never lived in such an abnormal culture. This is an important thing to say because people are not aware of it. We’re just in it. We don’t know it’s boiling water.

Jessica, I’m an anthropologist and I’ve looked at transformation techniques using ritual all through the world. And one thing that really fascinated me about rituals was the use of percussion in every ritual or some kind of drumming, dancing, singing, stomping, or tapping. Each of these activates the parasympathetic system and alters states of consciousness. So, tapping literally allows us to leave behind a stress state and move into an altered state or a calmer state. We shift our perceptions and we see things in new ways. That’s like opening the door and being able to walk into a new way of looking at whatever it is that is stressing you. And it’s these tapping rituals that really allow us to take on new identities and also access sacred experiences. So, we have all this cultural information from other cultures. Why is it missing in our culture? That’s what we’re trying to bring back. And I was searching for modern versions of this. That’s how I came into the tapping world is I was an anthropologist doing research, looking for where these techniques would show up in a modern lifestyle. And you it, baby. You are it.

So, I wanted to just ask you, from my anthropology research, whether you ever thought about tapping as an altering or altered state of consciousness.

Jessica Ortner: I am always thinking about the best way to explain it and also my personal experience with it, the hundreds of hundreds of emails that we get of people’s experiences and I definitely think it is an altered state. I think it’s our true state. I think we are in an altered state now. We’re feeling stressed and anxious. It brings us back home. And we need these tools more than ever, like you said. We are in boiling water and we don’t even know it. There is so much stress and overwhelm. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with life, of course you are. Look at how much is going on. It’s not that you need this because something’s wrong. It’s that we need these tools to survive in the world that we are born into at this moment. I mean, you as an anthropologist, you’ve seen that you were able to take a step back and look at the changes we’ve made. And you look at our grandparents compared to our children now and the difference between the world that they’re growing up in is unbelievable. And so, yes, we need to use these tools. And I find it personally fascinating. And, as you say, I’m nodding my head like yes. How many cultures use the body as a way to process emotions and uses a form of that?

Gina Bria:       Yes. Because this is the rest of our brain down here.

Jessica Ortner: Right, exactly.

Gina Bria:       It isn’t just up here, guys. The whole body. And it runs on water. That’s why I want to connect, again, tapping to hydration. We all know that water conducts electricity and that’s actually happening inside of us to subtle voltages. Literally subtle voltages are conducted by the water inside of us. So, that’s why hydration is just insanely important.

Jessica Ortner: Another aspect of that as well is when you’re dehydrated, one of the signs is anxiety. It impacts your mood. And the challenge about being stuck in anxiety is that we often don’t do what we know is good for us. I mean, how many times have we been in that state of anxiety and we don’t do something. And then when we’re feeling better, we think “Why didn’t I do that?” I know what tools to do but when we have that anxiety, it’s like we’re offline, we’re not able to access the things that are good for us. What I find to be so helpful is that when we are tapping and feeling more centered, we’re able to access the information that we already know, the information we’re learning from this Hydration Summit. And all of a sudden, maybe tapping is just the thing that we do in the moment but once we do that, we can begin to take the knowledge we haven’t actually implemented.

Gina Bria:       It’s such a surprise for people to hear that percussion or tapping has something to do with hydration.

Jessica Ortner: Yeah, everything has to do with hydration.

Gina Bria:       I love it. I love it because one bit of information that I wanted to share is there’s a chemistry to water but there’s also a physics to water. And this really aligns with tapping because when you tap or you shake or you percuss in some way, drumming, you’re actually creating a wave just like when you throw a rock into a pond. So, that tapping is like tossing a rock into a pond in a microscopic way. And it’s actually affecting our particles. When those particles collapse because of the wave, they carry information out. So, this is an information management system, tapping, run on hydration. And the information management system, we’re putting it in your hands. We’re putting an information management. God, do we need information management tools in a culture that is so abnormal that there’s no gateways, there’s no portals that we can close to get away from information which is around us so deeply. And this is like your own personal way to create a moment of information management about your inner thoughts as well as all that incoming information. So, wow, that is really news that that this form which I believe in so much, I experienced tapping myself, I know its value, I want the tabbing community to know that this is all run by hydration so that when we connect and link up our resources and say there’s multiple ways to hydrate that you didn’t know about it. it is not just guzzling vast amounts of water. It’s actually absorbing the water and letting that water have electrical charge. It’s not just tap water which doesn’t have any electrical charge. It’s water we get from fresh fruits and vegetables locked in those plants which has already been charged by the sun. It’s things as simply as putting a bit of a pinch of sea salt in your water that then allows that water to start an electrical cascade. Drinking that kind of water and tapping together is going to be a different level of experience. So, that’s vital information I want to share with the tapping community and glad to bring your techniques into our community at the Hydration Solution Summit. We really love now if we could learn to tap.

Jessica Ortner: Yes, let’s learn to tap. Absolutely. So, let me go through the tapping points, first. The first point is a side of the hand. And it doesn’t matter what side of the hand you tap on. This is also known as the karate chop point. And then just lightly tap, tap, tap.

Gina Bria:       Wait, wait. There’s a massive cord of nerves that run right here that they all roll into a rope and the run up the side before they branch into the fingers. So, you’re getting a huge moment where everything happens. It sends out signals to the whole rest of the body.

Jessica Ortner: Yeah, I love that. Absolutely. The next point is the eyebrow point and it’s where the hair of your eyebrow begins. So, you can tap on both with both hands or you can just do one. So, right where the hair of your eyebrow begins. Tap, tap, tap. And then follow the eyebrow until you’re on the side of the eye, right on the bone.

Gina Bria:       Okay.

Jessica Ortner: Then you have underneath the eye on the bone.

Gina Bria:       Jessica, I’m just noticing, speaking it from the Anthropology point of view, I actually handled a lot of skulls, this is the ocular socket you just identified where the vast amount of nerves come to the surface around the eye. We have more access to the nervous system in the ocular socket than anywhere else in our body. That’s amazing. So, I’m fascinated by that. So, under the eye. Wow! So, you’re hitting the ocular [inaudible][14:59] point. Okay, great.

Jessica Ortner: Right. And then underneath the nose between your upper lip and your nose.

Gina Bria:       Oh my god! So, that’s where the feed comes. This is your main point. So, wow! This is a huge point of nerve coming together from all of your head and brain. Where did you get these?

Jessica Ortner: Well, I will say, when it comes to tapping, I didn’t invent tapping. This is something that I share but a man called Roger Callahan started this and then Gary Craig is someone who took these nine points as some of the most powerful points. You have acupressure points all over your body. What we’re doing here is we’re, like you said, accessing some of the most powerful ones.

So, we have underneath the nose. And then we have underneath the mouth. So, the crease between the chin and the upper lip. Then we have the collarbone point. And if you feel the U-shaped bone and you go down an inch and over an inch on either side, it’s your collarbone point. You can also use your hand and just tap on your chest and you’ll access it.

Gina Bria:       So, I’m noticing that this point in the body activates the entire lymph system. So, this bar right here is the dashboard for your lymph system. So, now you’re hitting yet another system in your body that’s run on hydration, helping move waste out of the body. So, tapping that is going to be really great.

Jessica Ortner: And for those who are watching this, tap along with me, as we talk through this. The next point is underneath the arm and is about a hand width from your armpit. I’ll kind of sit up a little bit so you can see it. So, for the women, it’s where your bra strap lies.

Gina Bria:       Okay. Another huge two-point system. That’s another large rope where your parasympathetic and your vagus nerve come together, your vagus nerve access is there. And by the way, this is the whole lymph system drainage right here. So, this is incredible. How many times do we actually do this gesture in our life?

Jessica Ortner: All our life. Yeah, never.

Gina Bria:       Women getting their hands above their head, huge for breast care. If you aren’t getting your hands up there … And now you’re vibrating it. So, you’re actually creating two-system response – a nervous response and lymph response. So, forgive me for interrupting,

Jessica Ortner: I find this incredibly fascinating. You should come with me as I do other interviews so you can show the different elements of this.

And then the very last point is on the top of the head.

Gina Bria:       Okay, right. So, if you’re talking, like if I take my ears and I lay my hands, my thumbs on the top of my ears or anywhere here and I lay my hands over my head, what I just laid my hands on is where all the nerves come together at the top of our head. So, it literally is another point in which you’re at the crossroads of everything. That’s why it’s such a revered spot in all rituals. The Jews wear the yarmulke over their heads. That’s a sacred spot. Women often cover their heads. There are all the traditions that refer to the Crown Chakra. These are points that are sacred in every culture. We know them. We know these points. And you’re actually hitting them all.

Jessica Ortner: Yes. And what’s great is that it’s those nine points and once you know those points, no matter what different thing you want to tap on, you’re always using the same nine points. So, just by learning that, by having this technique no matter what you’re facing, you can then come back to those nine points.

Gina Bria:       Okay, let me see if I learned from you.

Jessica Ortner: Okay.

Gina Bria:       Okay. So, first you went to the hands. Hands, of course are sacred and they’re powerful. They have so many nerves and electronic charts in them. Then you went to the eyebrow point. Then you went to the side of the eye, then underneath the whole ocular socket. You went under the nose where everything is draining and all those nerves are coming in together there. Then you went to the chin, which really was curious to me because that’s where the nerves that go into your teeth. And those are then connected to your organs all over your body. So, again a huge central cross-point. Then you went to what was the collarbone point. And then you went one last place was under your arm, lifting your arm and hitting, really basically padding the side of your body. Beautiful. Wow!

Jessica Ortner: And then the top of the.

Gina Bria:       Oh, there’s the top of the head. I forgot that’s sacred.

Jessica Ortner: Yeah. And then the top of the head. So, those are the nine points.

Let’s actually have an experience with it now. We know what the points are. I think, when we feel anxiety, it’s not just in our mind. We feel it in our body. We tend to hold on to tension. So, I invite everyone who’s watching to just move your shoulders around, take a nice deep breath in, just ask yourself where are you holding tension in your body. Is it in your jaw or your shoulders, your stomach, your back? Notice where that is and just measure the tension on a 0-to-10 scale. So, 10 is very tight, very tense; 0 is completely relaxed. Where are you on that 0-to-10 scale. Take a mental note or you can write it down. And we’re going to do some tapping.

We always start with the setup statement which is acknowledging how you feel, acknowledging the problem, and then bringing in some acceptance because oftentimes when we are facing a challenge, on top of the challenge we have an immense amount of judgment around how we’re feeling. The moment we simply say “I accept how I feel. I honor how I feel,” we really open the gates to honesty, to deep healing, to really processing that emotion. Then you tap on the rest of the points and you give a voice to how you feel. So, it’s really the opposite of the positive thinking. It’s just being honest – “I’m struggling with this. I’m holding on to this tension.” And when we do a few rounds and we begin to feel better, then we can move on to something more positive that helps us relax even more.

So, now that I kind of talked you through what it’s going to be like, let’s actually have an experience. You have your number from 0 to 10. And let’s start together by just taking a nice deep breath in. So, just inhale and exhale.

So, tapping on the side of the hand. And, Gina, if you can repeat after me and I invite those who are listening, repeat after me either in your mind or out loud.

Gina Bria:       I’m going to do it out loud.

Jessica Ortner: Perfect. So, on the side of the hand – “Even though I’ve been holding on to this tension …”

Gina Bria:       “Even though I’ve been holding on to this tension …”

Jessica Ortner: “I honor how I feel …”

Gina Bria:       “I honor how I feel …”

Jessica Ortner: “And I give my body permission to relax.”

Gina Bria:       “And I give myself my body permission to relax.”

Jessica Ortner: “Even though there’s a lot more going on in my life …”

Gina Bria:       “Even though there’s a lot going on, too much information coming in …”

Jessica Ortner: “And I feel this tension in my body …”

Gina Bria:       “And I feel the tension …

Jessica Ortner: “I accept myself and how I feel.”

Gina Bria:       “I accept myself and how I feel.”

Jessica Ortner: “Even though I have this tension in my body …”

Gina Bria:       “Even though I have this tension in my body …”

Jessica Ortner: “And this overwhelm in my life …”

Gina Bria:       “And this overwhelm in my life …”

Jessica Ortner: “I accept myself and how I feel.”

Gina Bria:       “I accept myself and how I feel.”

Jessica Ortner: So, eyebrow point – “All of this tension …”

Gina Bria:       “All of this tension …”

Jessica Ortner: Side of the eye – “This tension in my body …”

Gina Bria:       “This tension in my body …”

Jessica Ortner: “There is a lot going on …

Gina Bria:       “There’s a lot going on …”

Jessica Ortner: “And I’m holding this anxiety in my body …”

Gina Bria:       “I’m holding this anxiety in my body.”

Jessica Ortner: “There’s a lot going on …”

Gina Bria:       “There’s a lot going on …”

Jessica Ortner: “And part of me feels overwhelmed …”

Gina Bria:       “And part of me feels overwhelmed …”

Jessica Ortner: “And part of me feels scared …”

Gina Bria:       “Part of me feels scared …”

Jessica Ortner: “And I’ve been really hard on myself.”

Gina Bria:       “I have been hard on myself.”

Jessica Ortner: “I can feel it in my body …”

Gina Bria:       “I can feel it in my body …”

Jessica Ortner: “All of this tension …

Gina Bria:       “All of this tension …”

Jessica Ortner: “All of this worry …”

Gina Bria:       “All of this worry …”

Jessica Ortner: “I honor all of these emotions …”

Gina Bria:       “I honor all of these emotions …”

Jessica Ortner: “And it’s safe for me to now relax.”

Gina Bria:       “And it’s safe for me to now relax.”

Jessica Ortner: “Even before anything changes …”

Gina Bria:       “Even before anything changes …”

Jessica Ortner: “It’s safe for me to relax.”

Gina Bria:       “It’s safe for me to relax.”

Jessica Ortner: “Releasing this tension in my body …”

Gina Bria:       “Releasing this tension in this body …”

Jessica Ortner: “Right now and right here …”

Gina Bria:       “Right now, right here …”

Jessica Ortner: “I am safe.”

Gina Bria:       “I am safe.”

Jessica Ortner: “I am where I meant to be.”

Gina Bria:       “I am where I’m meant to be.”

Jessica Ortner: “I can trust my life.”

Gina Bria:       “I can trust my life.”

Jessica Ortner: “I can trust my path.”

Gina Bria:       “I can trust my path.”

Jessica Ortner: “Releasing this tension from my body …”

Gina Bria:       Releasing this tension from my body …”

Jessica Ortner: “Releasing it at a cellular level …”

Gina Bria:       “Releasing it at a cellular and a sacred level …”

Jessica Ortner: “I am grounded and I am safe.”

Gina Bria:       “I’m grounded and I’m safe.”

Jessica Ortner: Okay, take a nice deep breath in and exhale. And simply check in with your body again where you felt that tension and notice if you felt a shift, if you feel an openness, that number has gone down. Sometimes we begin to tap when we realize “Oh, actually I know what’s really bothering me.” We start to get clear on what to tap on, what to target and honoring how we feel.

How is that, Gina?

Gina Bria:       Well, Jessica, in putting this summit together, there’s a lot to do. And I have felt overwhelmed. And this was such a surprising moment for me to just get released from that and trust that it will go into the world and it will do the work it needs to do to support us and help us and there was a big shift for me into just … I’ve been following your work since 2011. And here I am. You led the tab, Jessica. Thank you so much. You are a dream creature. You are a beautiful leader and a voice and it’s so wonderful to share with you what the water molecule does for tapping and with tapping and I think it’s great to share that. And thank you so much for this time.

Jessica Ortner: And can I share an extra resource that people can use along with the summit? We have this great app called The Tapping Solution app that is free. And there’s free tapping meditations, including one on releasing anxiety, which is my favorite. So, you go to Google Play or you go to your Apple store, you can download that app and be guided. Sometimes we all need to be guided the same way we’re being guided in this summit. We’re meant to support each other and not have to do it alone. And so, I hope with that tapping, we’re all able to relax more and we’re all able to better support each other and better support ourselves.

Gina Bria:       I love the idea that in this device on our phones we can call in a voice to help us and literally just walk us through those stages. That’s a really beautiful invention and support and I love knowing about that. I wasn’t aware that you guys already had gotten an app for people to just …

I’ll tell you a quick personal story because I was searching for a ritual to help me live in a modern New York City and also to study it. I was doing tapping and I would find myself often alone, nobody else around me when I was doing this but I would find a way to surreptitiously tap on the subway. And I think the Hydration Foundation is even in existence because I was able to tap through meetings that were scary, discouragements that went down the wrong hole, years of waiting however it went. I found ways to tap even. Even I didn’t hit all the points, I would just go quietly tap my chest.

Jessica Ortner: And it shows that just one acupressure point can make a difference. I mean, we have to self soothe. If we want to do big things in the world, it is always about getting out of our comfort zone. It’s always unnerving. It’s not about making it always easy. It’s about finding comfort in the discomfort. It’s finding ways to ease ourselves into it so that we can speak up, we can share our voice, our dream and our ideas. And to have that courage, we have to take care of ourselves.

Gina Bria:       Well, thank you, Jessica Orton. You’ve had an impact on my life personally and I’m just grateful to you for your voice on this summit. Thank you so much.

Jessica Ortner: Thank you, Gina. Thank you.

Gina Bria:       God bless you. Take care.

Gina:               The Hydration Foundation would like to welcome Hope Fitzgerald to our Hydration Solution Summit. I wish I could share the intensity of feeling and delight in having Hope Fitzgerald here with us. She is a spiritual teacher, a healer, a neurofeedback practitioner and she has received this extraordinary meditation technique called the Infinity Wave. We’re going to have an experience with that at the end of this interview and to have Hope here with us. She’s been a guiding light to us at the Hydration Foundation. Imagine having someone whose capacity to even imagine water, not even to just bring the presence into our cognition, our mental picture, have impact on us and it has here at the Hydration Foundation.

So, Hope, we welcome you in your beauty and your ability. My experience around you is your ability to raise the odd in reference of water for each of us. We wanted to invite you to elevate our reference during this 10-Step Program, the experience of the Hydration Solution. And at the end of this conversation, of course, we’re going to invite you to lead us in a crystal bowl meditation which matches our other interviews, our work with resonance, Jon Stewart Reid, his work on synaptic and understanding how water carries vibration. And I think your work, especially the meditation called the Infinity Wave, makes very practical, say for example, the landmark work of the marine biologist Wallace Jane Nichols, his work on the Blue Mind and his writing on how water affects our wellbeing and our health just being around water. And now you’re taking that to another level which, I think, is so fun and playful, which is just to imagine water affects our wellbeing and our health. So, I’d love to know. Can you share a little bit of your thoughts with us about what water does to thoughts, to our very thoughts?

Hope:              Well, let’s start with what I’ve learned along this path because I think my journey with water is unique to me but there are many aspects of it that aren’t unique to me and that we all share. I grew up on the water all the time. I was a sailor for my entire life and then in my 20s not so much but up until then I was on the water all the time. And I loved the water. I loved being around the water. And years went by and I drank my water and learned a little bit about filtering it and that sort of thing. For a while I lived in a landlocked place with no water around me. It was very difficult for me. And I just went along like everybody else did, drinking water and loving water. Then I had this extraordinary situation where I had these visions. I had three visions in a row, one right after the other. And the first one was a giant wall of water. It was hundred storeys high, huge, turquoise, beautiful and it was moving towards me slowly. And there was kind of a byline, an understanding that went with this beautiful vision. By the way, I was not used to having vision. So, this was a little different. And the byline was that this beautiful wall of water represented a push of evolution that was going to be coming to the planet. This was back in the late 2010. And it would be wrapping around the planet and fully here by the end of 2011. And if we chose to resist this push of evolution, things would not go so well for us, whereas if we learned how to swim with it or surf it, then we would be using that momentum for our own evolution. Now, I’m talking spiritual evolution as well as physical evolution but it’s more in the esoteric realm.

Gina:               Hope, I would say, as an anthropologist who is responsible for listening carefully to indigenous voices that what’s so remarkable, I’m just hearing now for the first time, is your vision coming to you distinctly as a unique individual is actually matching group visions, tribal visions, indigenous visions we’re hearing and we’re collecting these stories from all over. You’re not the only person who is hearing this need to elevate, raise either through the air or the wings of condors. There’s some, well, what do we say, something in the water. Something is happening and, as science people, and I know you have a profound interest in science as I do and read a lot and think a lot around everything from the molecule of water and the hydrogen angle bond to quantum tunneling and all the exciting things we’re finding out, some of which we share on our summit but what you’re telling me is that it’s, I think, unique for one individual to get a vision like that, maybe not. Maybe we just don’t talk to each other enough. Stories are happening all over right now. So, there’s a new kind of coherence for how people are talking about this and the need to become at another level, another jump in evolution, our understanding of ourselves and each other and our plan.

Hope:              Yes, very much so. And, of course, I have learned that over the years because … Well, let me get to the end of the three because then I can explain a little better. So, then that giant wall of water turned to a side view. So, when you’re looking at a surfer and he’s coming through the tube, through the tunnel, over the curled wave like this, kind of makes the letter C in a way, right? So, it turned sideways like that and in that vision, the byline was just as the to create a wave, the water pulls away from the shore and deepens into the seabed in order to get its energy to create a crest. That’s how it works. And the byline was, just as that happens, I should leave all my book learning, all my so-called knowing on the shore and go to the earth, go deep into the earth and to the wisdom keepers of the earth for my knowledge and then to mix that with this incoming push, whatever that was, and then the sea instead of the water just falling into the water, it turned into this standing figure-eight made of flowing water like this. It looks like crack.

Gina:               We’re talking spiral. This matches Victor Schoenberg’s work and da Vinci did drawings very similar. I mean, the Infinity symbol shows up in nature everywhere.

Hope:              Of course, it does but you have to remember this was in 2010. I have been a spiritual seeker my whole life but I never had visions, I never had wild things. I mean, I did have a few wild things but nothing like this. And I didn’t know what the heck was happening. And this figure eight floated out in front of my consciousness for a couple of days. And I’m walking around with this thing sort of hanging out in front of me and I was like “What is going on?” So, fortunately, I had been a dowser already for many years and I’m showing you my dowsing rods, they’re right here. The only reason I bring that up is because that is the oldest technology on the planet. It’s on the cave walls in southwestern France. The dowsing, initially it was to find water but the interesting thing is in order to find water, you have to be hydrated.

Gina:               Yes, makes perfect sense, the water talking to the water.

Hope:              Exactly.

Gina:               And the magnetic pole, those we now have. We can talk about Heart Math work and the fact that they’ve documented these resonances carried by water.

Hope:              Yes, yes. So, anyway, I got out my dowsing rods and I started to ask questions about this figure-eight in the flowing water in front of my face. And, eventually, I figured out that it had a name, it was called the Infinity Wave, that it is a gift from a loving universe for us to use in these upcoming times which, at that point, were upcoming and now we’re in in order to keep us in flow, in order for us to not be in resistance and to be willing to change our very molecules in order to adapt and move along the path of our spiritual evolution. So, this information is coming into me. And then they said “You need to teach this.” And, of course, I didn’t know what the heck I was teaching. I wasn’t all that keen on doing that but I say yes in spirit. So, I did that I taught one weekend a month for the next seven months. And every week, different meditations would be channeled through me. I had not done that before. And it turned out at the end of this series of months that there were step-by-step practices that led us, I was along on the ride, that let everybody in the workshops into a new way of being and it was remarkable and I would just kind of rub my eyes and almost couldn’t believe it but it was happening. So, I was challenged on many levels to confront my own belief systems and the limitations within them. Even though I’m a very openminded person, still there are layers, right? So, eventually, I had this system. And I came to understand that embedded in that watery flow is this highly purified love and compassion, a version that we are not used to dealing with on this planet, we’re not used to feeling it. And the idea is when you take that highly purified love and compassion and you apply it to this three-dimensional reality that we live in here on planet earth, it starts to change, it starts to shift reality. And I have many examples and I’ll give you one in a sec but the best way of saying this is it’s working in the quantum, it’s working in the space between the space, right? It’s working not necessarily here but it’s affecting here.

So, I’ll give you a quick example. I had a friend who needed very serious neck surgery for bone, muscle and nerve. It’s big deal. We had to go to LA. I was her advocate. She learned how to do hypnosis before surgery and she was all ready when we finally got through the hospital stuff and got that down on the cap and the whole thing, we’re ready, we’ve spoken to everybody except the anesthesiologist. And my friend had learned through the hypnotherapy that she needed to have a written-out piece of paper with what she wanted the anesthesiologist to say to her when she’s going under and coming out to program the subconscious mind for better healing and better outcomes. Now, a surgery like this is rather scary. So, she was a little nervous, understandably, and she’s holding this paper and it was beautifully done. And, finally, incomes the anesthesiologist. Well, this is a woman who comes in with this unusual surgical cap. It’s kind of looked like a mini pizza hat. She’s got this clipboard like this. She comes in, she goes the opposite side of the bed from where I was sitting at the foot, and she never looks at my friend. She’s got her head – “Okay, we’re working on the outside. We’re going to do that.” And all this medicalese came out, absolutely no, zero connection with her patient. I have been at that point doing this wave work for a year. And I think in the past I probably would have said “Excuse me. My friend’s very nervous.” I would have intervened and sort of helped her to become aware of my friend but that was an old reality. My new reality was I’m looking at her going “Huh!” I looked at my friend. I could see she was starting to get really “Huh.” And I said “I don’t really like this reality,” in my mind, I said “I don’t really like this reality. I want a different one.” And boom! Out of my solar plexus this Infinity Wave comes blasting out. I didn’t make it happen. I didn’t decide it should happen that way because when you use these technologies, you just kind of stand back and let them run because they’re going to do a better job. Anyway, the woman goes like this. She looks at my friend, she says “Hey, babe, how are you doing? You’re ready to do surgery today? Oh, look, what do you want from me? It’s so beautiful. It looks like this recipe that you’ve written up. I’m going to take such good care of you.” Well, both my friend and I, our eyes popped out, our jaws fell because her turnaround in less than a second was so profound. She went from a closed box to a ray of sunshine. And she did take care of her and was wonderful but I learned a lot about the power of this energetic that is watery for a reason and can be extremely gentle and can pack a punch when necessary.

Gina:               I would like to make a case here for the skills that are missing in our lives as moderns that have been accessible. I mean, we really are the first culture who haven’t had access to these kinds of skills that traditional or indigenous traditions are very well aware of that the mental constructs, even the biohackers will talk about, now we have a great movement for plant medicine and use of plant medicine in our culture because the need for understanding of holding our imaginative powers with new recognition of their impact, that this capacity to imagine, to picture, to call into being by words and thoughts and pictures in our head operates at a level that we have skill set. We’re a society that never learned those. We’re not lineages. So, there’s many places that are trying to get back to that now. And I think your description is one that matches stories that we collected or I’ve heard from many, many anthropologists around the world was like “What!”

Hope:              Yeah, you’re right, Gina. And, of course, the second directive was for me to go to the earth and go to the wisdom keepers of the earth, which I did.

Gina:               I’m so interested in it.

Hope:              Well, I kind of fell in love with the earth. I always loved the earth but I fell deeply in love with the earth. There’s a way to recognize that those aspects of our that are the earth. There’s literally the earth of us. We tend to think we’re walking around on top of it. we don’t realize that we’re really extensions of the earth and of her energy. And, of course, if we want to move over into the water aspect of things, we know that water is the life, it’s the well, it’s where life emerges from initially and still. And we know that all over the planet there are healing waters that come from deep inside the planet and carry with it that electromagnetic charge. That’s another thing that [inaudible][20:16], by the way, measuring those things but I started to also go down the rabbit hole with water when I started to understand structured water better. And I dove into Dr. Emoto’s work and I came to understand that water has consciousness, that water has memory. And Dr. Emoto stopped this short from saying “Water is God” in his written work but he said it out loud. I’ve heard him say it in interviews because, in a way, it is a unifying element. It’s in space. It’s everywhere on the planet. It’s in ourselves. It’s in every living thing’s cells. So, what if this water, all the water can be programmed. We know that when monks pray next to a brackish pond that the water comes back to life and it remembers that that’s what it’s there to do. So, it stays alive. And when we get back to the Infinity Wave, I realized that one of the ways to use the Infinity Wave is interpersonally. So, I imagine, I focus on this way, this watery flow going from my heart center, imagine a figure-eight going to your heart center and then back again. And now we know that love and compassion at a very high level is flowing in the watery essence. We don’t have to manufacture that love and compassion. It’s in the water. And whatever I send to you comes right back to me. This is one of the beauties of the geometry. There’s an ‘As Above, So Below’ perfect balance to it. There’s also this ‘give and take’ aspect of it. So, what we’re doing when we do that is we’re inviting, we’re actually structuring the water in your body and the water in my body with this love and compassion. We’re saying to ourselves it’s just the same thing. It’s putting the word ‘love’ on a jar that Dr. Emoto did and we know that the water turned into these beautiful crystalline forms, for instance, with that word and many other words. So, what we’re doing is we’re basically imprinting love and compassion into your cellular water. And the same for me. So, how can we not have a fantastic conversation, right? It just raises everything up to another level.

Gina:               It’s so true. I’m glad you’ve spoken about what the water not only within us but between us can do. I think that’s a unique thing you’re bringing to our information on water in the summit, which is to help us understand that there is a way that water is literally flowing between us whether it’s in the vapor, with breath of our breathing, however you want to picture it if it’s hard for you to picture. Yet these resonances are available between us. And how we use water as a thought to help carry it is actually a picture of what water really does do in the physical realm. Now we’re picturing it in the thought world or the imaginative world. And to use our imaginations, again, this is not something we’re used to in our material reductionist point of view of understanding that our imagination is how we get to the next capacity of ourselves.

And I just did an interview with Dave Asprey for the summit and the whole discussion, the words, the language, there is biohacking but the purpose of biohacking is to raise our capacities to the next level. And this is the same conversation with another language, another way to speak, maybe the softer side of speaking about how do we become more than we were just a minute before this conversation started, how do we have more capacities to both love out of ourselves and bring love but also the joy, the reception that comes back in that give and flow where actually what we get back and what we’re giving out is this raising our pleasure and appreciation of the world and our ability to communicate with things besides just ourselves or the people around us, what we are starting to develop capacities to hear and receive trees and their essences, plants, ponds, streams, animals. This capacity which got diminished by our reductionist point of view is now starting to rise for people all over. And, again, I think we match over our passion for soils and water and the microbes in the soil, the organisms that live there that are invisible or microscopic to us and yet we have a renewed capacity to care for them and about them, listen to them as the indigenous do. This is really, really raising us to the next evolutionary capacities. We’ve been so diminished. This is an exciting conversation we have.

Hope:              Well, I have also gone deep into the Celtic world looking at the druids. I’ve looked at age. I mean, I take people all over the planet to places that are still very alive with the old ways and places that have land that is still very potent. So, whether it’s Peru … This year I went to Easter Island where the water is very precious and that’s a very interesting story, in England and Ireland, Wales, many, many places that we go, even South Africa, and how water is viewed. And I tell you, we use the wave, the wave can be any size. So, you can put it inside your body. You can use it for pain. You can use it just to like water. Water can be tremendously vigorous and cleansing and water can be so soothing, so relaxing and calming. So, you can use the wave in sort of a big figure-eight for your whole body and have it trickle and boy, is that a great way to go to sleep. People use it a lot for that.

Gina:               So, just to clarify, I want to make sure I’m understanding it, but it’s literally picturing this figure-eight flowing over you in whatever size you might imagine and whatever place you want, whatever angle you want to lay it over yourself or turn it to towards somebody, maybe even in a grocery line or when you’re driving that car and connecting up. How playful! Where is play in our healing.

Hope:              Exactly.

Gina:               As we move through our day, our ability to be playful, children with the water, if I could put it that way, boy, we sure are missing that but, again, it’s speaking of indigenous traditions in their capacities to be playful in their healing and playful in their solutions and approaching things and the deadly environment we live in where everything is so grimly stated and conclusory and raising our capacity beyond the dual, there’s either this way or that way or no way. Wow! How much more wise we become through even imagining water. This is really fun.

Hope:              Well, that’s interesting that you talk about the either this or that. We talk about that in terms of dualistic thinking. That tends to be the way things are on planet earth. When we apply the wave to that, the whole situation can’t stand it. It becomes a ‘yes and’, it’s a ‘yes and’, ‘yes and’ so you can hold multiple points of view, you can hold it all in this frequency and then it lives out of duality and not being stuck in duality solutions can be found. It’s even better than a compromise. It’s actually something even higher. It’s happened so many times. So, I really encourage people to use ‘yes and’ instead of ‘no but’ or ‘yes but’ or anything like that because it, all of a sudden, pops you up into another consciousness.

The other thing is that we’re talking about the imagination and that, of course, has been very pooh-poohed in our society – “Oh, it’s all in your imagination, whatever” – but when you look around you, except for outside, everything that we’re sitting on, looking at, viewing through has all come from an idea. It’s all come from an imagination and it takes form. Somehow it comes from this idea and into some kind of material property. So, the imagination, in my opinion, should not be pooh-poohed. It should be listened to and cultivated because our intention, our picturing with our fervor, in a way, creates and changes reality. My example with the doctor is exactly that. Now, there’s that poor woman probably had been on call for five shifts in a row, I don’t know, but she was clearly very low ebb in her being and she got a massive dose of love and compassion and it rose her up to her highest and best self in a nanosecond. So, how did that happen? I didn’t say anything. I didn’t sprinkle holy water on or anything. It’s an idea that changed reality in a nanosecond. And there are many, many more examples but we can also use it on a mass scale. Any time I go by a river or a lake, I wave those bodies of water. I send them this, this is like a prayer really. And you send them love and compassion. You send them the wave. And then it starts to communicate with itself and it travels downstream.

Gina:               Yeah, I think that one way to hold this idea is that it’s a picture prayer. It’s a picture blessing. And my teacher, my trainer was Madeleine L’Engle, who wrote A Wrinkle in Time, she is very dear to me and receiving her many lessons but one of the things she loved to talk about was the imagination, of course, how do you not if you’re that kind of a writer. And she would really break it down and it’s the image of “We are made in the image of God,” she would use that phrase and she would talk about the relationship between being an image of God and being an imaginative, that our imagination was this gift from God that marks us uniquely and that we’re just letting that kind of lay around and we’re never picking it up and we’re never using it in the way that we could literally be on our way to a grocery store driving in our car alongside a river. In our imagination, we could draw this figure-eight and just send a picture prayer to that water or feel a picture prayer from that water. And this is a way of life that every other culture has engaged in for all time. We are the first culture that has missed the teaching about how to use our imagination to live in a bigger world and affect it. So, helping people step away from that very diminished capacity to understand what your imagination can do, what it’s for, why it’s holy, why it has impact, I’m so grateful, Hope, that you brought and open this conversation to our Hydration Summit because water carries information, it is the life source. And how we think about this is really going to change everything. It’s so central. It’s why we call it the Hydration Solution. And now we’re getting to play with it as our imagination.

I think you have prepared for us an Infinity Wave meditation to go through. Is that true? Can we do that?

Hope:              We sure can. So, I’m just going to move over here. Here’s my crystal ball but I need to stand up to play it.

Gina:               Oh, we get a crystal ball out of this.

Hope:              Yes, you do.

Gina:               Yes. Well, crystals are formed by water. What tells the crystal what shape to appear in. It carries that information. Structured water is liquid crystalline water. So, it’s water shifting into specific shapes and that allows information to be conducted more effectively. That’s really a very shorthand explanation of what structured water is that is water that the hydrogen bond angles of the molecules are being reshaped to conducted information electricity more efficiently. I love that you have a crystal ball for us because that’s a very efficient way to conduct information.

Hope:              It’s all about sound. It’s all about frequency and resonance. So, this is a beautiful device for that.

All right.

Gina:               Thank you, Hope, for this beautiful experience.

Hope:              So, let’s begin by taking a deep breath and imagine that running from your crown down through your body down all the way into the earth is a tube. We call this the chronic tube.

To begin with, we will breathe from the heart center down the tube down into the earth, exhaling deeply into the air and breathing back up to the heart center. The qualities of the earth that you feel are just for you. It could be her nurturing, her generosity, whatever you imagine the earth has for you, breathe that into your heart center up through the tube. And every exhale allows you to release any heavy energies that have accumulated. And now, let’s imagine that we’re actually allowing water to come up through the tube into our bodies into the heart center and exhaling out like a delta emptying all the stagnant heavy energies, breathing life into the heart and exhaling the heavy energies, allowing the water to cleanse your entire body, cleanse your mind, cleanse your emotions. It’s an easy ebb and flow of life up into the heart and to release.

And now, let’s switch the focus from the heart center upwards to the crown. And this time you’ll exhale deeply up and out like a fountain, expanding in all directions all around you, and bringing back into the heart center that which lies around us and above us at all times, whatever you imagine that to be, but you might think that you’re bringing into your heart center light and love, exhaling up and out, expanding and breathing into the heart center light and love.

And now, let’s try to breathe from both directions. So, inhaling into the heart life from below, light and love from above, exhaling above and below and inhaling life, light and love and exhaling, expanding your field with life, light and love. And do that for a few moments until life, light and love are within you, on you, and surrounding you.

Good. And now, bring your attention to your heart center again. And if you would imagine a little figure-eight made of flowing water floating there in your heart center. It can be any color and it can be turned in any direction. For now, just observe it there. And remember that it’s moving. The water could be trickling or it could be rushing but however it appears to you is fine. There’s no right or wrong way to do this.

Now, invite it to turn sideways so that one loop is facing your right ribcage and the other is facing your left ribcage. And just notice if you’re feeling anything physically in your heart center, little fluttering perhaps, a relaxation. And if you don’t feel anything, that’s fine too. And now as you inhale, those loops of the figure-eight are going to begin to expand almost like balloons. They’re going to grow slowly and they’re going to become bigger and bigger, just stretching ever so slowly across the chest. Now, if you find that you want this to happen a little more rigorously, you can always invite the water to flow more strongly.

And remember that as we’re doing this, we are giving ourselves a nice dose of purified compassion, compassion for our walk on this planet, for our choice to come here, compassion for the challenges, compassion for what we might perceive as failures and our missteps, compassion for our challenging lessons. And also embedded in the way is purified love, nonjudgmental love, abundant infinite love, love for the way you love, love for all the choices you have made to continue to walk step by step on this earth, love for your giving, love for your ideas, love for the way you create and reach out to others. The list is long. Just invite that love and compassion deep into your heart right now.

You’ve done a good job. You are loved beyond measure. Now, stretch that Infinity Wave wide in the heart all the way across the chest and just feel what it’s like to be so open, so vulnerable.

And now, with this widened heart with love and compassion flowing through, you can decide where you would like the Infinity Wave to rest within. You can stay this big if you like or you can shrink it back up a little bit. Find the comfortable place and just enjoy.

Gina:               Oh, thank you.

Hope:              You’re so welcome.

Gina:               I’m so grateful to have someone to connect imagination and water. It’s very key to me, personally, just using the powers within us that are holy, that are given to us and we’re just so forgetful to use them or haven’t seen how it could be done. Thank you for giving us a way and a wave to do it. we’re going to use this again in our lives. I feel very strongly that it’s coming to me and that I’m going to walk around and be shooting figure-eights all over the place to myself and to others. And I would say, what’s coming to mind, is that in indigenous traditions in tribes all over, you find that women especially are called to be the water bearers. And we so rarely have an opportunity to really think about how to do that. And I love that you’ve given us a way, a playful way, an imaginative way to go through our day bearing water without even having to get to a tap or a bottle or a glass or a lake just to bear it, to be it, and to imagine it flowing out from us towards others, plants, animals, however …

Hope:              I wave the snowy fields knowing that when it melts, it’s going to go down and nourish everything in the ground. I wave the clouds wherever it’s going to fall. You can wave a situation from afar. It’s remarkable. It changes things. So, I love you enjoyed it.

Gina:               I love that you’ve given us a very powerful, very specific picture prayer. Rollin McCraty with the Heart Math Institute talked about feeding the field …

Hope:              Yeah, exactly.

Gina:               … resonant field that exists between us and around us, this life-giving information and field that we can offer in any situation now to use the Infinity Wave as a way to really feed and nourish and give a drink of water to the field itself. Thank you so much. We look forward to hearing his meditation again. I’m sure we’re going to offer it in many different formats but bless you, thank you, I send my figure-eight to you.

Hope:              Thank you, Gina, very much.

Gina:               The Hydration Foundation thanks you. We’re so excited to bring this kind of information to audiences when they’re expecting just to hear more about water molecule and then they discover that that’s inside them and they can picture it.

Hope:              Everybody, just say thank you to the water as often as you can.

Gina:               Yeah. Thank you.

Gina:               Dr. Roger Jahnke, it is an honor to have you here at the Hydration Foundation for our Hydration Solution Summit.

Roger:             Thank you, Gina.

Gina:               I’m so excited. This interview, we wanted to open a conversation together. So just a very conversational, two people coming from different expertise and sharing some of the new science around hydration, which is really extraordinary. And what we’d love to do is open up the relationship with Chinese traditional medicine and love that we can call on you to do that. I want to introduce your work a little bit too so our listeners can understand your really unique place in influencing the American medical field on a national level.

So, Dr. Roger Jahnke is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, OMD, with 40 years of clinical practice and 10 research pilgrimages. I love that they’re called ‘Research Pilgrimages’, that’s the way to think right there, to study all the healing traditions there. And he’s also the director of the Integral Qi Gong and Tai Chi Institute. So, the Institute of integral Qi Gong and Tai Chi. I love getting to say those words in a context of [inaudible][01:29]. Hot stuff. And why it’s so important is that your institute there helped open doors to hospitals and social service agencies and corporations around introducing complementary and alternative medicine. It’s the reason we are here today that we get to have these conversations, opening up doors to the medical community that were really closed before. It was really the [inaudible][01:57] alternative and complementary questions in medicines. It started allowing physicians to let that in and now receive the benefit of that wave. So, thank you for that work now with resistant people and you did it. I love it.

You’re also a champion for effecting national health policies. And I wanted to mention I like that you co-convened a national expert meeting on Qi Gong. You have edited and translated clinical chapters for Chinese medical Qi Gong and published a comprehensive review. I knew that took a lot of work. And you did that on evidence-based health benefits of Qi Gong and Tai Chi in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

So, one of my most favorite things that you do, among many, is that you’ve been really persuasively calculating the cost reduction using Tai Chi, what that reduction would actually look like if we get on board. So, you’re bringing in the healing and then you’re bringing in the rationale and then you’re bringing in the economy of how it would affect us ultimately to take charge of our own health and heal ourselves. And that leads to the last thing I want to make sure our listeners know about you, which is your groundbreaking books. The Healer Within is an instant classic. It is a book I had at my side as I walked my husband through acute leukemia. Really important book in our life. And I know I’ve passed on multiple times, many times. The Healer Within is an extraordinary reflection and presentation that, while we have pharmaceutical manufacturers making external prescriptions in pharmaceuticals for us, you carried out a brand-new paradigm, actually it’s a very old paradigm, that you’re representing that we can become our own manufacturing factory inside for chemicals. By the way, we think how to rule their mindset. And those chemicals are as potent as pharmaceuticals. That’s extraordinary, really.

Roger:             The most profound medicine is produced within the human body for no cost.

Gina:               That is extraordinary. We need to spread that. And, oh, by the way, it’s carried by water. It’s delivered by water.

Roger:             It is.

Gina:               So, that’s why we’re having this conversation. It’s really exciting. I also want to mention your book The Healing Promise of Qi Gong. It said different regions say it differently but we all really mean a very simple activation of energy within our own systems and that Qi drives all biology. And that’s the eastern connecting now to the Western. They have the driving biology part. They just didn’t know the what.

Roger:             Yeah. So, now we know that everything in the cosmos including the world that we think we’re in is made out of energy even though we perceive it as substances and so forth of bodies and entities but we know at the ground level or beyond the ground level, it’s fields of interactivity and that those fields of interactivity are picked up into substances like bodies as frequencies and that those frequencies drive function, just as you said.

Gina:               I had the exquisite honor of sitting at an international water conference. It just happened in Germany. And this is the annual gathering of anybody who’s doing really advanced research on water. And I was sitting next to Victor Boyka who is Russian Academy of Science’s physicist of renowned, a sweet little man, and we were listening to a lecture on wave and physical particles. And I turned to Victor and I said “Victor, what’s a particle?” because sometimes your science eludes you all of a sudden and you’re like “Wait, what is a particle?” And he said “Oh, particle. Particle is nothing more super concentrated waves. Now, shh.” And I’m like “Wait, what did you just say?”

Roger:             Super concentrated waves. It’s great.

Gina:               It’s concentrated waves, concentrated enough that we can touch them and taste them and experience. This is just nothing more than super concentrated waves. Not nothing more. It’s everything more. So, if that’s the case, then how we move our waves and how we think about ourselves as a wave being suddenly becomes a very different paradigm. And it makes sense that the waves that we can manufacture new concentrated waves which become particles which become medications, custom made, inside our own health.

Roger:             Custom made within our own being, yes, at every level. So, the medicine within is not just a substance. It’s also ideas, insights, mindset. It’s also the presence of something eternal that is impossible to describe. And these three components are what the Chinese call the Three Treasures – the body, the mind, and the spirit. So, the underlying concept in Chinese medicine is to integrate. So, integration is a big idea – to integrate the body, mind, and spirit utilizing the body, mind and spirit. So, we don’t just use the spirit to heal the body, we don’t use just use the body to heal the spirit. It’s a churn or convergence or integration of these three primary aspects of ourselves which are revered as The Three Treasures.

Gina:               What does water have to do with that?

Roger:             Water is a substance. So, it’s going to be associated with the physical part of that story. And in the world, water is in a relationship with air and fire. So, that’s the Yin and the Yang. By the way, that’s the Tai Chi symbol. So, people think that Tai Chi is a martial art or a moving meditation but actually Tai Chi is a cosmological phenomenon that is the first step into what the world is. From no world to some world, the first thing that happens is what the Chinese call Tai Chi. And the water is in a relationship with the fire. So, the red part on top is the sun and all the magnetic energies in the cosmos. And the water is the local. So, the sun is representative of all sun throughout the multiverse. And so, that’s the non-local world. And then the water is associated with the very local substantial world. And, of course, water is in a relationship with fire in the human system because the greatest percentage of the human system is water. The greater percentage of the human system is energy because everything is energy. And so, the energy in association with the water merging, churning, pumping, engaging, nourishing, detoxifying, expelling and carrying waste products, in a way, the water is all of it. So, when we do acupuncture, the acupuncture needles are placed within the system to be able to encourage trigger and support the realigning and the reconfiguration of the energetics. And impulses that are discharged or circulated as a part of the acupuncture phenomenon are largely carried in either the Qi which is this nebulous, difficult to understand, idea in western science but it’s basically the presence of the universal energy that infuses our being. And so, the Qi and the water are interacting all the time. And the best description that Western science has of how the Qi impulses are carried in the body is in water. And there’s lots of research on ions, the presence of ions in the body. So that’s a very big part of it. Some of the science from Europe declares a system within the human body called the Preferential Ion Conductance Pathways. So, what does it mean when ions have a preference? Well, it means that they’re making decisions about how to do what they do. Well, it turns out that the Preferential Ion Conductance Pathways are actually what are called Vascular Interstitial Closed Circuitry. So, then think what’s inside of a vessel. Water – blood water, lymph water. What’s inside of the interstitial spaces? Water, the discharge of water from the cells, which takes us really to the question of “What do you mean water from the cells?” Well, the formula for metabolism in a cell is Oxygen + Glucose, so Oxygen plus the sugar that we get from broccoli and rice and anything else that we eat. And then in the presence of a catalyst which gives you then ERGS. ERGS are units of cellular work. So, what makes work happen? Energy . So, ERGS, it even has some of the from ‘Energy’ in it, plus Carbon Dioxide which is a poison plus water. So, Oxygen plus Glucose gives you energy plus CO₂ or poison plus Aqua Pura, water.

So, then the question is, and this is one of my favorite curiosities, is what is the nature of the water in the body? So, we have all this kind of fantastic, insightful information of oxygen and hydrogen and how they collaborate with each other. And I am, by far, not an expert in this but I know enough. Sometimes they would say “I know enough to be dangerous.” I just know enough to be curious. And so, think of it. H₂O is water. OH is Peroxide. And I don’t know about your listeners but I’m a fan of using small amounts of peroxide in water to add an OH to the H₂O. And if you add an OH to the H₂O, you get H₃O₂, which is this sort of controversial molecule which some people say is hard to find and other people say is easy to find but the water in the body is different than the water in the water delivery system in your community. And you’ve probably had speakers on this summit, who are reflecting on the fact that water needs to flow and water needs to spin and so forth. So, how do we get the best water in the body to do what water does. And the answer isn’t necessarily to drink water but it’s to produce water. And we produce water by metabolizing. And how do you metabolize? You move. And Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Kung Fu, Yoga, every other kind of exercise is basically making water.

Gina:               I’m so thrilled that you put it that way. It’s a hydrating strategy. And it’s water purification strategy that now matches what you’re saying in The Healer Within, which is we make our own chemicals inside of us for healing. We manufacture our own healing essences inside of us. And now you’re saying we can do that with water as well. So, I love that you’re bringing this right to the fore because if we think about our bodies, and at the Hydration Foundation we foundation talk about movement, we try to talk about it as a functional hydraulic system in which when you move, you’re actually squeezing the cells and the tissues and then you’re releasing, and that’s actually a pump form that has hydraulic points and canals and locks. And there’s lots of different ways to talk about it but what you’ve just said is a really new thing, Dr. Jahnke. It’s saying not only can we do all this stuff but we can also begin to purify water within ourselves by simple movement. Can you talk about it a little bit more?

Roger:             Yeah. So, one of the powers of Chinese insight is that it goes back before history. So, we get to ask the question “How long were the humans interested in these things before the writing of these things?” And it’s a curiosity because anthropologists and archaeologists cannot discover this. They can find bones and they can find fires and they can find piles of shells where human beings were hanging out together near a lake or a river and they can carbon date all of that. And we have a history of the beginning of fire that goes back close to a million years and we have history of the human gene that goes back much more than a million years. So, at what point did the mothers and fathers, the grandmothers and the grandfathers began to ask the question “How does this all work?” And probably it wasn’t but maybe a couple of hundred thousand years before they figured out that if a person is engaged and active and has a high level of levity in their life and a mind frame that is less to the worry side and more to the high intent and engagement side. So, let’s say we figured that out and let’s say we’re just talking about 100,000 years. So, let’s say we figured that out in 20,000 years. And then in the next 80,000 years, what else did we figure out? Well, it’s only 2000 years since the Chinese invented acupuncture. So, from 80,000 years ago to 2000 years ago, that’s like 78,000 years and it’s probably much longer than that, that people were investigating “Who gets sick? Who is well? What are the constitutional factors that contribute to wellness? In other words, what did you come in with as your strength?” There’s a kind of Qi for that. It’s basically called Original Qi. And then there’s the Qi that happens after you are born, which is the local Qi and the daily Qi and so forth and that’s food and rest and water and engaging work and friends that you appreciate and exposure to nature. All these things are a part of the Chinese wellness system that’s been in place for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And, of course, what do people do when they’re celebrating? Well, they dance around? What do they do when they’re not celebrating? They move around. They’re gardening. They’re hunting. If they’re nomadic, they’re packing up and moving. There’s just a lot of engagement. And what they figured out eventually was that the highest diversity of novel gestures gives you sort of the ultimate.

Now, we already know that repetitive movements cause inflammation and pain and that people start taking opioids and then kill themselves just because of the fact that they have these very, very repetitive jobs of sitting and driving, sitting and typing, scanning things across a cash tallying system for how much you’re going to pay at any kind of store. And so, repetitive movement becomes the wrong thing. And sitting all the time is the wrong thing. We know that sitting is the new smoking. And so, there’s a lot of research that demonstrates that people who don’t move around are as at risk for early death as people who smoke cigarettes. So, in very early times, thousands of years ago, it was noticed that the people who have the widest array of gestures tended to be the people who had the longevity and not just being alive for a long time but being alive and well for a long time. In our own time, we talked about the difference between lifespan which could be a long time but not that much fun and health span which could be a shorter period of time or a longer period of time but during that time the person is well. And so, the concept of Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Kung Fu, Yoga and any kind of celebration, so now let’s talk about when do ancient people dance around. Well, they dance around on the equinoxes and the solstices. So, Chinese medicine is very interested in seasons and the elements that are associated with the seasons and everything about that. And so, then we have a party. So, that’s four parties a year. Then you have the full moon. You got to have a full moon party. And you have new moon. You got to have a new moon party. That’s 24 moon parties and four seasonal parties. So, the minimum number of parties for the ancients was 28. And then there was marriages and births and all those reasons for party. So, these people were partying all the time. And they celebrated by building a fire and dancing around or doing movements that are less vigorous as rituals and so forth but what we’ve discovered now in the new era of science which is, by the way, the post-modern era, because the modern era of science was “No pain, no gain” and we only got past that to novelty and consistency. So consistent gentle movement, which you and your co-author of your great book called micromovements – adjusting the posture, getting a standing desk that also allows you to have a sitting desk, taking breaks. And if you’re going to take a break, why not move the body in novel ways, knowing that moving the body in novel ways has power.

Gina:               It’s so beautifully put. Moving the body in novel ways. What a fantastic hydration recommendation. Moving the body in ways that we don’t typically move it means we’re shifting water into spaces where it wasn’t before, which means, according to the logic that you’ve just laid out, we are actually purifying that water in new spaces in our body that we have and we’re delivering new molecules and new information to a place in our body that is dormant and active. And it’s just something like right now we can get our elbow behind her ear. How often are we doing that? How often are we getting our spine engaged and that whole possibility of the joy? What it does is it just lifts you up, it brings you new information right inside of yourself just by moving, if we think about this whole body as a vessel that has triggers and openings that we’re not exploring and it’s cutting down our joy.

Roger:             And we’ve got research on the fact, a lot of research at this point, that physical activity is equal to and preferential to mood modifying drugs. So, when we get to depression and anxiety and extreme traumatized stress, all of those people, those poor unfortunate people who are already compromised are now taking in drugs which have side effects when they could instead be engaged with movement. And, by the way, typically, not always, but typically people get together to do these practices. So, now it’s social. And so, you’ve got movement. You’ve got social interactivity. And all of these have been found to be superior to drugs for managing all kinds of internal challenges from emotional challenges to physical challenges.

Gina:               Well, I’m so glad that you brought this to the conversation because this is a topic that, I think, we’re getting some brand new investigation into through the work of William Bankston and Dr. Lisa Rankin who are really interested in developing healing together as a more potent form of accelerating healing than the way we do, which is to isolate somebody in a hospital room or you go into your doctor’s office, you shut the door, it’s just the two of you in there together and he gives you a prescription for what you’re going to go do alone. And this new thinking, this new research that’s opening up is it’s aligning it with Qi Gong and Tai Chi traditions where you get up in the morning and you go to your plaza or your open space or your park with a group of people and you move together. And that movement together accelerates healing. We may be doing it all wrong in our Western model of taking a patient and trying to heal that patient.

Roger:             Totally wrong. Healing is a part of family and the community. When I’ve been in the hospitals in China, the halls are always active with people who are doing their walking Qi Gong practices right there in the hospital. And one of the other things that I’ve seen … And we want to keep remembering that these practices are super hydrating. So, it’s not just exercise that’s going on here. It’s a whole array, a convergence of thousands, probably many, many chemical and energetic pathways that we don’t even know anything about that are happening when we move around, say hi to another person, look at another person in the eyes, and so forth.

Gina:               When my husband was in the hospital, Roger, he was connected to the IV and he was on wheels. So, because we could stroll it, we decided we were going to just get out there and walk. And so, we’d open the isolation room door and we would walk out with this IV stroller and we would go up and down these hallways that were all empty, all empty when we passed these isolating rooms. And it was very disconcerting. And we’d occasionally run into a doctor running down the hall or a nurse and they’d sort of look at us like “Are you supposed to be …?”

Roger:             Are you allowed to be out here?

Gina:               And yet, we knew that that movement was absolutely key to engaging. And what I’m trying to say is that was only 1% of what could have been happening. We could have added a whole another layer of accelerated healing if there were other people out there in those hallways doing similar activities. And if we can help people understand this message, just in the hospital context it’s one thing but then if we get the fact that we can do this as a whole healing benefit in our daily lives, it’s fine … Even now, normally in New York City, getting out on the sidewalk and walking, you’re out there with all those other people, of course, they’re doing other things but there’s an energy that happens that brings you up and alerts you and you start syncing up with other people’s rhythms and that is a biological driver. You’re changing the wave pattern that you’re experiencing by being around the energies of other wave patterns, which then perk up and sync up. We know this concept and when we talk about brain entrainment and being around other people or other sounds that train us. And this entrainment is a whole-body experience and moving is so central to that. And I would love to comment too. I know that most people think hear the word ‘exercise’ and their brain just shuts down. And so, we’re really trying to help our listeners understand we’re not talking about exercise. We’re talking about motion and being alive and moving. And that’s a beautiful thing. And it doesn’t take a marathon to change the wave pattern in your water body, your body water.

Roger:             Amen, amen. And one of the things that we should also add just so people know is that in Chinese medicine, the kidneys have a superpower but it isn’t associated with its capacity to remove or excrete wastewater. It does that and the Chinese know that it does that but the power of the kidneys is that it is the residence of the essence of Yin, the Yin and the Yang, the Yin being associated with the water and anything substantial, so stone, water, body, etc. So, the kidneys are the residents of the Yin. Number two, about the kidneys, is that they are the residents of the original Yin and Yang. So, in other words when a human being begins to formulate a body, that body is springing from an essential core of cells. And the Chinese figured out that the original core of the cellular morphology or the evolution of the cells to go from two cells, a Yin and the Yang cell, a male and a female cell, to a whole being. And so, the kidneys are revered in regards to being the residing place of the essence of Yin as well as the original spark of life, Yin and Yang. So, then you might say “Well, are there other organs that are especially associated with water?” And it turns out that it’s the lungs. The heart and the liver and the spleen and the pancreas and large and small intestine, they’re all engaged in producing water because all cells metabolize and the metabolites of all cells include water. So, everybody’s in the water game but the phrase from Chinese medicine is that “The lungs rule the water passages.” Now, the biggest way that that all works is it’s the lungs that bring in the O portion, the Oxygen portion, and the Hydrogen, of course, that is then constructed into water. You’re not just drinking water. You’re making water and you’re constantly metabolizing Hydrogen and Oxygen in and out of all sorts of forms. And, of course, people have heard the word ‘antioxidants’ and ‘oxidants’ and oxidation is a bad thing and antioxidation is a good thing. So, you want to eat blueberries and all that stuff. And so, the oxygen that’s gathered into the body through the lungs becomes a portion of how the water is the water.

The other thing about it is that when the diaphragm drops down, when you breathe, when the diaphragm drops down, when you inhale, it compresses the organs. There is an organ down here that nobody ever heard of or most people have never heard of. It’s called the cisterna chyli. The cisterna chyli is the collection place for all the lymph, from the tips of your toes, the tips of your fingers, and everything else, all of the lymph collects below the diaphragm in little balloon like organ called the cisterna chyli. And when you take a deep breath, let’s just do it right now, take a deep breath including expanding your belly, and what you’re doing is compressing the cisternal chyli. So, when you press it, the water shoots up through the thoracic duct. Lymphatic fluid cannot go backwards. It can only go forwards. So, when we compress the cisterna chyli, it shoots a pulse of lymph upward into the thoracic duct. Then it can’t go back. And so, when you breathe again, compress, it shoots again. And so, water in a system pushes water in a system. So, as soon as more water comes into the system, it continues to go. If you were to ask a water expert who’s also a physical therapist to look at people practicing Qi Gong and Tai Chi, they would say that looks like an exercise that has a huge influence on the lymphatic system, which is the baseline of the elimination system. So, when we’re doing our movement practices, we’re not only hydrating but we’re also discharging. And just think to yourself. If you wanted to clean something, you pour a little water on it, it just gets muddy dirty. So, you have to put a bunch of water onto it to really clean it. and then you also have to put some pressure behind the water. So that’s why we have like a pressure washer. Why wouldn’t I just use a bucket of water? Well, because pressure washer is better. It gets it cleaner faster. So, everything that we do to continue to do the breath practice, even when we’re not moving, so the micromovements and the novel movements give you water exchange, but the breath practice alone gives you water exchange. So, you can say “I’m going to take a break every hour and walk around but, in the meantime, I’m going to take a deep breath every five minutes or three breaths every 10 minutes” or something like that.

Gina:               Well, you’ve given us some extraordinary new thinking around hydration, one that hydration is novel movements outside of your normal chain, that breathing is essential to hydration for two reasons. One, it is a form of micromovement and it keeps you moving when you can’t be moving and also because of the lymph system, it’s driving out waste. So, when we have these conversations around hydration, so often people are only thinking about input, thinking about drinking those eight glasses of water a day. That’s your hydration strategy. What you’re talking about is so much more systematic, interesting, joyful than pouring eight glasses of water in you. It’s understanding yourself as an input system and an exput system. Elimination system is how we’re going to keep our health. In a highly contaminated environment as we are, it means that we have to think about running water through us in a more …

Roger:             Constantly. And, by the way, here’s an interesting little point that I want to be sure that we get to make here that in Chinese medicine, no one ever, of all the great wizards that I have trained with in Chinese medicine and all the people that I’ve met going to China, not one person has ever said you have to drink eight glasses of water every day. What they say is that you need to have a broad array of engaged interactivity with your world, including eating a diet that has a preponderance of vegetables. As China gets richer, they’re more interested in meat. And most Chinese people are not vegetarians. They’re more like ketogenic and anti-inflammatory on their dietary side of things but the whole idea of how do you get the water that’s necessary to carry the Qi impulses, no one has ever said you’ve got to drink a lot of water. The Chinese are very Interested in tea and they’re very interested in vegetables. And so, I thought it would be reasonable to just mention that because I’m pretty sure that that aligns with, shall we say, new era thinking on hydration and the benefits of hydration.

Gina:               Because it’s essential to have those vegetables as part of the strategy because otherwise, you’re just pouring water through you. You’re flash-flooding your system unless you have absorptive fibers which sponge up and hold the mineral content of vegetables that are the naturalized electrolytes that charge the water. So, so we’re talking about such a sophisticated entity, the reverence that we should have towards water and energy and that relationship, water and energy, and how we’re going to engage that living in such compromised environments so that we’re not afraid to go out as a body and live because we know how to do it inside of ourselves.

Roger:             Nice. Water and energy right there, symbol for it. The symbol for water and energy and harmony and balance in Chinese language is Tai Chi.

Gina:               Oh, that’s a perfect note to end on. I’m so excited to get your ideas because we’re just trying to really break through the paradigm to drink eight glasses of water a day or you’re going to be a mess. And for us to be able to present some novel ways to hydrate, again, reminding people that moving in ways you haven’t moved before and it literally can just be putting your ear on your shoulder which you have might not have done since 1962, just something new to get your self-vitality. And that you can always breathe and bring in vapor is a fabulous form of hydrating and then what that does on the other side of releasing so many of the toxins inside of us. We’re just a rolling water entity. We’re going to make it through all this and clean it all up both in ourselves and for our beautiful planet.

Roger:             And let’s do it soon. And it’s not just you and me. It’s like how many billion people are we going to be able to get through with this message by when. It’s a pretty short window of opportunity here. Many cultures are already predisposed to these ideas. However, they’re also getting jerked in the direction of the marketplace and all the mythology of consumerism. So, yes, make it well. I’m in. I’m thumbs up. Let’s go for it.

Gina:               Thank you, Dr. Roger Jahnke. It’s a pleasure.

Roger:             You’re welcome. Many blessings. Wish you well. Thank you, everyone.

Gina:               Bye, bye.