Ep#112 When My Body Said No – With Magic Barclay, Author and Integrative Health Practitioner

0 (1s):
Welcome to the Soul Science Nnutrition Podcast, where you’ll discover that when it comes to your health, you’re so much more powerful than you’ve been led to believe. And now your host, she’s a Holistic Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach, chef author, and Yogi, Christine Okezie.

Christine Okezie (23s):
Hello, and welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition podcast. I’m Christine Okezie. Thanks so much for listening. Today’s guest is a compelling example of the power of choice we all have when faced with adversity, we can choose to see ourselves as a victim of our circumstances, or we can decide to lean in and see it as an opportunity to heal and grow into who we truly are and came here to be well, my guest’s name is Magic Barclay and the list of curve balls that life has thrown her way has been formidable. They include childhood trauma, alcoholism, relationship abuse, anorexia obesity, cancer, diabetes, and auto immunity in 2015, when years of intense stress and physical negligence culminated and threatened, and her life magic immersed herself in nutrition, wellness, and natural healing, giving her pivotal tools in her own recovery feeling let down by the traditional medical system magic subsequently joined forces with other holistic practitioners who had been in similar situations and formed a group called Wholistic Natural Health Australia.

Christine Okezie (1m 31s):
A small group of integrative practitioners, Wholistic Natural Health Australia, aims to assist people who are dissatisfied with the current health care system by addressing root causes and guiding people toward an ethical, sustainable lifestyle from long-term health. All of their practitioners had battled and overcome major health issues, including cancer, lymphedema, hypoxia, stenosis, auto-immunity and diabetes. So they not only walk the walk, but they talk. The talk to magic is also an instructor on the PNEI of trauma, and has gone on to become a bestselling author of two books, “Gut Recovery and Whole Foods.”

Christine Okezie (2m 13s):
“Stop Being Fat. Love Yourself Skinny” Also Magic is the host of her own podcast, A Magical Llife Health, Wealth, and Weight Loss. You can learn more about her at her website, www.magicbarclay.com and check out all her services at Wholistic Natural health.com.au. I can’t wait for you to listen to this informative and inspiring conversation. And if you do like it, I’d be grateful if you’d visit apple podcast, subscribe and leave a rating and review. Thanks so much for listening everybody and enjoy the episode. Hey, Magic. Welcome to the podcast. It’s really a pleasure to have you here today or this evening in your case, it is this evening.

Magic Barclay (2m 58s):
And thanks so much for having me.

Christine Okezie (3m 0s):
My pleasure. So I’d love if we could just jump in, tell us how you came to do the holistic healing work that you do today. What was your path?

Magic Barclay (3m 10s):
My path was a lot of chronic illness and medical mismanagement, medical gaslighting, and then unfortunately, surgical malpractice. And I had to look for what was my next step? What was I going to do? You know, as a single parent of two kids on the autism spectrum, and the worst moment in my life was saying goodbye to them saying, we’ve got a year left together and you know, that kind of forces your hand. I’m not ready to say goodbye to them. You know? So yeah, I put myself right into my studies and I went back to the ways that my grandparents used to teach me of, you know, this plant in your garden, this weed in your garden, this food on your plate, this is all medicine.

Magic Barclay (4m 5s):
And I thought, okay, I can do this. I’ve got this. And when I worked out that I could do things, my own family, I threw myself back into my studies and started doing things for other families, because I said to myself, no woman or man should ever have to see that pain in their kids’ eyes.

Christine Okezie (4m 25s):
Thank you. Yeah. That’s, that’s quite a wake up call and an opportunity, right? To do something different.

Magic Barclay (4m 33s):
Definitely. I mean, as parents where the guardians were the nurturers of our children, and if we just lay down and take chronic illness as, oh, well, that’s it, it’s all done. We’re not those nurturers. We’re not those guardians and we’re not doing our jobs well, that’s the way I saw it for me and everyone sees it differently. But yeah, you know, not, not today. I’m not laying down today.

Christine Okezie (5m 1s):
Wow. Thank you. That’s, that’s listening to something higher within you that knows. Right. That’s

Magic Barclay (5m 8s):
Amazing.

Christine Okezie (5m 9s):
So if you could break that down, like, you know, what, what specific health conditions chronic illness did you seek to treat and what were some of the most effective changes you made in your journey?

Magic Barclay (5m 21s):
Yeah. Well look, the first diagnosis I got with cancer and it was stage four, so it was pretty far along. By the time we found it and I had the surgery, I didn’t have a choice to have the surgery. I was going through a divorce courts, kind of forced my hand and went well, you know, you’re not a good parent if you don’t do this. So I did that, but I drew the line there. Unfortunately, the surgery was quite botched, so it left me with other conditions while I was recovering, I took my kids on a road trip and I got bitten by a tick. I got Lyme disease. Oh my goodness. So, you know, here I was kind of, I thought cancer was worst thing could happen to me.

Magic Barclay (6m 6s):
Lyme disease is terrible. And they also told me I had diabetes. So, you know, take that with a grain of salt. But here I was with all these conditions and then post-surgery and post recovery from Lyme and getting my blood sugars back in order, I developed quite serious autoimmune conditions, in fact, poly auto immunity. So if your listeners that’s multiple auto means multiple labels, but it all comes down to the same thing. My body was desperately trying to keep me alive and throwing up all these big waving red flags, because I didn’t see the little white surrender flags along the way, basically.

Magic Barclay (6m 51s):
So, you know, a lot of stuff going on recently, it’s culminated to now have an auto immune that’s taking place in my brain. And that’s just me is needs of, for me, high stress, years and years of mistreating my body, not having a relationship with self. I mean, prior to the kids, I was anorexic. Then all of a sudden, you know, not only was I anorexic, I was an alcoholic. Then all of a sudden I had to change my way of living because I was growing a little person inside me. So you’re not all that time. I never had a relationship with me.

Magic Barclay (7m 31s):
I was something to someone else all the time. I was my brother’s protector. I was my ex-husband’s wife and half servant. And then I became a parent and you know, so I never really had me. And that was the problem. And, you know, you can say auto immune is a horrible thing to go through, but it kind of makes you work out who you are, no matter which auto immune you’re diagnosed with, it is just a label. It makes you work out what’s going on. And so for me, that was the impetus to making some changes.

Christine Okezie (8m 7s):
Oh my gosh. That’s amazing. Thank you. And I love that deep insight that you had and to ultimately the true root cause, you know, underlying this cascade of, you know, the breakdown in health. And so you alluded to a lot of stress growing up, a lot of, you know, self neglect as a result of dealing with the stress and a lot of trauma and you have come to become quite the expert in a field. And I’m going to say this slowly so that we can hear it. Psycho neuroendocrine, neuro immunology, and PNEI, I guess, would be the short version of that, right?

Magic Barclay (8m 49s):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I actually read a book by Dr. and it’s when the body says, no, is the book for all your listeners. This is a book you have to read isn’t an and changer. It was the game changer. And when I was reading it, I was like, I could tick every box that he spoke about. You know, I went through my parents’ divorce when I was very young. I was the political football between them. I was my brother’s carer. I was, you know, then I became this kind of rebel, you know, rebelling against all of that, that I’d seen and really mistreating myself and getting jobs when I was young, but setting my sights on the top job, you know, for example started in hospitality.

Magic Barclay (9m 44s):
So I started waitressing like busing even, which is where you just pick up dirty plates. Then I got to waitressing and then I went, do you know what dammit, I’m going to be head waitress. So within two years, I’m head waitress. Then I decided, okay, this is no more of a challenge. I’m going to go into bartending. Within two years, I was a bar manager. So I was one of these people that I thought thrived on stress. You know, like I had to be the achiever that a type had to be the best of the best all the time. And that was coming from my childhood because I was nothing to anyone as a child. So now I had to be the best of the best in the shortest amount of time possible, which meant if I slept three hours a night.

Magic Barclay (10m 30s):
So be it, as long as I had the, the name badge that says I was the top monkey on the chain, I was happy. Got it. So here I was in a really stressful lifestyle and mistreating my body because I didn’t know who I was. And you know, when you do that for long enough, it, it accumulates. So when I read, when the body says, no, it was like, yeah, cortisol’s been my jam the whole time. You know? And I used to joke when I started on that tool, health pathways, I used to go self-confessed cortisol junkie here. Know what?

Magic Barclay (11m 10s):
It wasn’t a joke. It was true. Cortisol was running my life. And so now here I am post most of these conditions and in remission for many of them, but I’m now left with, you know, I, I test my cortisol levels and they’re still off the charts because that’s what my body’s learned to get stuck in. And so for me, you know, my body can say no at any time, I now listen to it. And you know, before we came on air, I was like, yeah, you know, you’re lucky I’m awake because I have actually had to learn that even if I’m not tired at 9 30, 10 o’clock in the evening, that’s bedtime.

Magic Barclay (11m 54s):
That’s no more devices. That’s, phone’s down switched onto airplane, TV, off lights off. That’s it draw the line because otherwise my cortisol won’t get into a healthy pattern. And so, you know, there’s all these things that I’ve learned. So back to PNI of trauma, what is it? Well for a self-confessed cortisol, reformed, cortisol junkie like me. I’ll put it that way. All the journey. Yeah. So cortisol is your stress hormone that is released for chronic stress. So you have acute stress when there’s something bad happens.

Magic Barclay (12m 36s):
You know, you have to survive a car accident or something happens. Or, you know, someone at costs, you at supermarket or whatever it is, you release adrenaline that gets you out of the situation quickly. Cortisol is the opposite. Cortisol says, well, you weren’t safe. Then you might not be safe. Now I’m going to slow release myself here. And I’m going to shut certain areas of your body down. I’m going to cause inflammation. I’m going to cause all these other things going on. And so that is what kind of triggers the PNEI system. In most cases, not in all.

Magic Barclay (13m 17s):
So what is the P the P is a psycho. So something happens no matter what it is. Something happens. And no matter what age you attach a feeling or an emotion to that, and you do that from the center of your brain, the limbic system in your brain. So at the base of the brain, we have the reptilian brain that scans for danger that sends you into fight flight, sorry, fight flight, freeze, or fade. And you, your reptilian brains working all the time. You walk into a new room and there’s a bookshelf in the room and your brain goes, is that bookshelf going to fall on me?

Magic Barclay (13m 59s):
Or you don’t even know it’s doing this. So that’s your reptilian brain. But next up is your limbic brain. So that then says the bookshelves not falling on you, but how do you feel about that? Right? So it attaches things. So when something happens and cortisol is produced, the limbic center of the brain has to activate. And it says, yes, this is a great feeling. No, this is a bad feeling, whatever this is, there’s a feeling, okay. Now, when this feeling happens long enough, and particularly if it’s a bad feeling that then triggers the nervous system.

Magic Barclay (14m 40s):
So your body says, well, you’ve had this feeling for a while. You kind of didn’t listen to what I meant by that message. So now I need to slow you down to keep you safe. The nervous system comes in. So you might start feeling random body pain. You might start feeling headaches. You know, you might start feeling anxious or jittery or nervous around a certain person or in a certain situation. That’s your nervous system coming in. So that’s the end. The neuro now, when that gets ignored, long enough endocrine system comes in and this could be like, you know, when you meet a certain person that kind of makes you feel a bit, you know, icky the hairs on the back of your neck, stand up a little bit.

Magic Barclay (15m 28s):
All of a sudden you start to feel a bit hot or a bit clammy or headachy, or, you know, you get a tummy pain or something like that. It’s not a pain pain, but it’s like a warning. And that’s your endocrine system saying, well, you had a feeling, you didn’t listen to that. Then you had the nervous system reaction. You didn’t listen to that. So now I’m going to change your hormone profile and maybe you’ll listen to that. Okay? Now the thing with all of these, the P the N and the eight is when they exude their properties long enough, the immune system says, holy cow, this body’s in danger.

Magic Barclay (16m 14s):
That’s a member of the reptilian brain is the first part of the brain says, are you in danger? The immune systems, the big dog on the block. And so that then says, well, gave you a feeling. You didn’t listen. I gave you a pain. You didn’t listen. I made you get all hot and clammy and you didn’t listen. So now I’m going to see all of that over flow of information. As now, you are in danger. So, you know, you might be around someone you don’t particularly like you’ve ignored all the messages. You had, the hot flushes, you had everything. Then all of a sudden you get the sniffles or you get a sore throat and you go, oh, I’m coming down with something, not having a year, not it’s your immune system going, you ignored everything else.

Magic Barclay (17m 3s):
The only thing you won’t ignore is when you feel like you’re getting a cold or the flu or something like that, cause you’re going to go, oh, maybe I need to go home and go to bed. Now you’re out of that dangerous situation. Brilliant. So that’s an example of how PNL works. There’s many other ways that it works, but it’s a collection of big systems of the body that need to communicate. So no system works alone. And this is really, really important. The PNI is just one collection of systems of the body that worked together. Other really famous partnerships are the circulatory system and lymphatic system.

Magic Barclay (17m 46s):
They always work together. You know, we have the musculoskeletal system, the cardiovascular system, they work together. So we know that when we go to the gym, you know, we get a bit of a Huff and puff and sore muscles. They’re generally exuding, same amount of force on you at the same time. But the PNEI is probably the most unique pathway. And that is, you’ve got four chances to listen. And if you don’t think the immune comes in,

Christine Okezie (18m 18s):
It’s really beautiful. The way that you break that down for me, that I’ve never quite heard. It explained that way. So thank you. That’s, that’s so helpful. I’m sure to our listeners and that’s really resonating is to, you know, I just got this visual of, you know, little surrender flags going along the way. And then, you know, the alarm system starts sounding right. And that’s it. We’re just going to take you out, right? You’re going to go lie down, you know, lights out, you know, you’re going to have no choice, but to surrender at that point. And to your point, when we don’t listen to those little taps on the shoulder, those nudges, you know, we can get to like a Def con five situation. We’re trying to avoid all that. And so this gets to the point of your core of your approach with holistic.

Christine Okezie (19m 1s):
And I love that you use also the w H in that word to explain or hammer home, the beautiful point that we are whole, you know, systemically interrelated and connected. Talk to us, you know, about holism, you know, you know, what were some of your insights that, you know, really radically changed? How you navigated your health conditions and then how you evolved to be in such great service to the people now who are facing very similar challenges.

Magic Barclay (19m 34s):
Yeah. Well, look, I’m glad you asked that for many, many years, I saw a doctor when I felt sick or felt unwell. And, you know, you go in and they say, what are your symptoms? So you tell them the symptoms and they treat the symptoms, but they haven’t actually treated the problem. So a few days later you might feel a bit better. You’ve had antibiotics for something that maybe wasn’t even a bacterial issue, because that’s what goes on. And, you know, you get thrush or you get something else. And it’s like, wow, it just got better from something else. Now I’ve got this. No, honey, it’s the same thing. You’re just not treating as a whole.

Magic Barclay (20m 16s):
So I really looked into how modern medicine works and modern alternative medicine works as well. And many people treat using reductionism. So that is your symptom says, blah, so we’ll treat blah, but we won’t treat what actually started it.

Christine Okezie (20m 39s):
Okay.

Magic Barclay (20m 40s):
So that’s reductionism. In a nutshell, I read T Colin Campbell’s book whole, and he was talking about Holies. And the same thing that I just said before, no system works alone. And you know, he was saying the body as a whole, you can’t just treat one thing. So I really looked into that and all my studies, since now, I study under Dr. Perry Nicholson from stop chasing pain, Dr. Stewart Gillespie from innate immunity.com. And what they’ve taught me is symptoms are just a message, right? It’s a system of the body that’s asking for help a bit like the red flags in your P and the eye.

Magic Barclay (21m 28s):
And, you know, if you don’t treat the body as a whole, you’re going to miss something. So what I’ve learned along the way is, you know, our bodies are made of bacteria, fungus, and viruses, and look listeners. I know that the V word virus is a dirty word these days, but guess what? Only 10% of your body cells, a human let that sink in for a minute. Wow. So we have bacteria, fungus, and viral cells, and they all keep each other in check. Well, they’re supposed to now what goes wrong is when one of these overflow issues. And sometimes they do particularly certain bacteria and certain viruses, and to a lesser extent, some fungal situations they flourish and their numbers get out of control.

Magic Barclay (22m 20s):
Now, when something like that happens, the other guys in this symbiotic relationship can’t keep up. They can’t keep you in check. Okay. So what happens when we use things like antibacterials or antibiotics is we’re taking bacteria out. So remember I said, if you take antibiotics, probably get threshed later, or now you’ve got a fungal situation, or you might start getting cold sores. Now you’ve got a viral situation because that balance has gone. So this is where holism is really, really important because we have to see that we are made of all of these cells and they do have to get along, you know, some bacterial influences like strep and staff.

Magic Barclay (23m 6s):
Well, we all have those and they’re not supposed to be dangerous, but we’ve made them into the super bacteria because we tried to kill them for so long. And they got really, really good at surviving. Same with candida being a fungal situation, you know, same with herpes or Epstein BARR, all these viral situations they’ve gotten really good at, well, the human is going to do this. So I’m going to do this. Their situation of this is a lot more powerful than ounce.

Christine Okezie (23m 47s):
Yeah. Nature is pretty incredible. And we always forget that we are nature, right. And nature is always seeking balance. The way our bodies are always seeking balance. And biology always wins is another way that I look at it, right. So we can have all our kind of, you know, quick fix mentality, you know, symptom treating, as you said, but before it is underlying, that, which is trying to seek balance will always override, you know? And so it’s, it’s almost like you, what I’m hearing is when you learn about this holistic approach to the body, you, for me, it’s like, you, you, you come into this sort of reverence for the operating system, reverends from our design, you know, and, and a little humility, really, you know, because I mean, I think that’s necessary to kind of correct the overreach when it comes to so much of these, I guess, you know, over intervention.

Christine Okezie (24m 46s):
And we’ll just call it, you know, as you mentioned, a few examples of that, but yeah, that’s beautiful. So a different map, a different appreciation for how we are designed. I would love to talk about now is as a functional health solutions practitioner, one of the many hats you wear in the healing field, what types of health conditions do you really like to help people with? And maybe if you want to share a story or two about how this root cause holistic approach really made a difference for them.

Magic Barclay (25m 20s):
Yeah. Look, I specialize in advanced immune. So I love your immune system. I think it’s just so incredible that we think we have an immune system. We don’t, we have two layers of immune system. And one of those layers actually has four known offshoots that we can be in any one of them at any time. And I think that’s so super intelligent, you know, like this is just an amazing system. So yeah, advanced immune is one area, mold toxicity. Recovery is another. And you know, I, after cancer and after all that stuff, I moved into a house of black mold for two years.

Magic Barclay (26m 4s):
Oh my gosh. And I started putting weight on and I developed, you know, breathing issues. And I went, what on earth is this? I learned a lot about mold. So now I treat that, but I also obviously work with PNI of trauma as well. So look, there might my favorite areas to work in, but I also do work with post-menopausal women. Yeah. As I said, I’m a reformed cortisol junkie. Well, cortisol pretty much drives your hormones. Post-menopause so, you know, if you’re not lucky, that’s what it does.

Magic Barclay (26m 47s):
And if you are lucky, then your adrenals use other hormones, but I wasn’t that lucky. But anyway, so yeah. Look, I love those kinds of areas to work with. And to give you an example, I recently had a client come to me and she was worried about some kidney numbers on some tests. And I said, okay, well, that’s great. Thanks for sharing the tests. But the kidneys aren’t the problem. And she was like, what do you mean? I’ve been having kidney problems for, for years. And I said, you’ve got an infection. So we went through her intake form, my intake form.

Magic Barclay (27m 30s):
Just so your listeners know is 17 pages. I always say, sit down with a cup of tea, do as much as you can walk away, go for a walk in the sunshine or whatever, come back to it because you’ll have remembered a whole lot of stuff you didn’t know before. So yeah, we went through her form and sure enough, I found a couple of infections that have been there since she was a child that weren’t addressed and we started treating those and she’s on top of the world now. So that’s really, really fun for me to see the, the human body is just so amazing.

Christine Okezie (28m 9s):
Exactly. Exactly. I love this. Yeah. And so what, what type of, you mentioned an intake form are the, the sort of the testing and diagnostic systems that you use. Can you share some about that?

Magic Barclay (28m 26s):
Yeah. I use here in Australia, neutral path, integrative pathology, and, you know, I can use other integrative pathology around the world, but to be honest, I don’t do a lot of testing because I don’t need to. So once I get the 17 page form back, I also get a list of your medications and supplements and things like that. And I think several times on the form, it says, do you feel any better taking these or do you feel heard by your doctor because that’s, what’s important, you know, every little ache and pain that you’re feeling, every concern that you have is important, there is nothing unimportant.

Magic Barclay (29m 10s):
And so, yeah, the, the intake form generally tells me what I need to know. Sometimes there is a test here or there that might need to be done, but I think that’s what separates functional health solutions and innate immunity practitioners from say a naturopath in general, I’m not saying all natural paths, but that is, we don’t want to sell you two shopping bags of supplements. You know, we don’t want to sell you four tests at $400 each, if we can get it from an intake form and from nature, then that’s great.

Magic Barclay (29m 53s):
So your history should tell us everything that we need to know. Sometimes we do have to delve in, do a little bit of testing. Yes, we do use supplements, but we keep it very sparing. You know, you might be on five supplements, but not 25.

Christine Okezie (30m 10s):
Okay.

Magic Barclay (30m 10s):
And you’ll only be on them for a short amount of time.

Christine Okezie (30m 14s):
Right. Very targeted, very personalized. And I love that fat, you bring up a huge component, which is the person’s sort of psychological and emotional self mindset, you know, are they feeling empowered? Are they feeling disempowered? Are they feeling invalidated? You know, looking at those really important drivers for their lifestyle and, and what, what underlies the habits right there where the inability or capacity to really tune in to the body. So that’s so important. So if I can ask you then, like, what is your definition of health? So someone who comes in with all these, you know, catch up symptoms, what are you seeking?

Christine Okezie (30m 58s):
What is the mirror that you like to hold up so that you can help them to find out what their true picture of health is is?

Magic Barclay (31m 8s):
Well, it really depends on what they want from life. You know, I have an idea of health for me, and that is to be able to play with my kids. They’re now grown men. We do LAR mediaeval role-play. So for me to go on the field and run behind them and somewhat keep up and be able to whack people with my foam staff. That’s that’s fitness for me. You know, that in my brain says you are fit and healthy for me. It’s also being able to go outside at any point in time of the day and put my feet in the dirt and play in my garden.

Magic Barclay (31m 49s):
And you know, so that’s my idea of health and being happy within myself every day. I don’t need to impress anyone and then have to reach ideals set by anyone else. So that’s my idea of health.

Christine Okezie (32m 1s):
Thank you.

Magic Barclay (32m 3s):
And so for a client, it may be very different. It may be their idea of health is being well enough to go out with the girls for drinks on a set day night, and making it through the night and then waking up, okay. On Sunday, not riding off a day. Everyone’s idea of health is different. We all set different goals, but the whole overarching picture of health is that you are not suffering from the day-to-day choices that you make with your life. So, you know, for someone else, health might be working in an office and feeling great about it. As long as you feel good about what you’re doing, you will be healthy because you only become unhealthy when you are unhappy and it might not be consciously unhappy, right.

Magic Barclay (32m 54s):
Might be unconsciously unhappy. So that’s, you know, remember we went re just mentioned the PNI system. If your immune system feels unhappy for you, it will let you know.

Christine Okezie (33m 7s):
Brilliant. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, I think that’s, I love that, that, that, again, going back to the genuine holistic approach to the body and to help it comes down to something, you know, only, you know, you know, why, what your inspiration to take care of yourself is right. I mean, and it’s gotta be rooted in something pretty important. And, you know, connected, I say always to like, sort of what really matters to you, your core values. So you bring up your children, you know, your grown children, but I find unless you’re able to help your patient or your client connect to that, then a lot of it still becomes very superficial in terms of treating symptom or setting goals that maybe aren’t even your own, you know, there’s some external standard, you know, you mentioned as you were growing up that achievement, you know, what I, what you thought success was supposed to look like?

Christine Okezie (34m 5s):
So it’s brilliant that your approach is looking at what does health look like to you? It’s an important question. I think we all need to sit with, you know, actually this

Magic Barclay (34m 17s):
It’s one thing, setting ideals, lofty ideals for yourself,

Christine Okezie (34m 22s):
Right.

Magic Barclay (34m 22s):
But it’s another thing actually sitting with yourself and saying, is that really what I want now in the whole past couple of years, I have to say, I have completely changed. You know, my idea of a really nice night out used to be going to a five-star hotel and a lovely dinner and wearing lots of jewelry and six inch heels and a dress and, you know, freezing my butt off all the time. Just so I looked good, even in the middle of an Australian winter, maybe the jacket didn’t look that great with the outfit, you know, but over the past couple of years, I’ve really gotten to know who I actually am and I’ve picked up this wonderful, you know, it’s, it’s almost like a brand new discovery to me and your listeners are probably going to laugh, but I camp now, and I know how to put my own tent up.

Christine Okezie (35m 18s):
Yeah. I can totally relate to that.

Magic Barclay (35m 20s):
And that’s such an achievement, huge. And I might not shower for two days and guess what? There’s no heels and dress and diamonds, then I’m got to tell you, so, you know, really getting in touch with who you are and why I’m saying this is the old me did that because that’s what my brain told me success look like. And that was having the nice jewelry and the nice clothes and the five star hotel. But guess what? Then I’d go home and feel really crappy about myself because I looked at how much money I’d spent in art. It was really extravagant and it was one night fleeting fun. And you know, what have I got to show for it next week?

Magic Barclay (36m 4s):
Now I know I can go camping for a night and come home and tell my kids, Hey, I went camping and I put the tent up by myself and I used our Porter potty, and I got bitten by a bug. And like, you know, like there’s all these things because I’ve achieved something and I feel so good and grounded about doing it. I never felt that way about going to a hotel. And I love that. You know, my, my point is get to know what you really stand for. Not what other people tell you looks good to stand for. Beautiful. And it took me till maybe the past couple of years to work that out.

Christine Okezie (36m 46s):
And nature has been a huge part of your healing journey. I mean, from the herbs that you grow in your garden to being out in the Australian Bush, I read a lot about, you know, your, your love of nature. Tell us a little bit about how that’s really deepened over your journey.

Magic Barclay (37m 1s):
Yeah. Look, I’ve always loved animals and plants. I’ve always been a Gardner. And when my youngest son started getting of age, I’ll put it that way. He wanted to do wildlife rescue. Wow. But he couldn’t drive. So I would go, so we both did the courses and I connected with animals in a whole separate way. And particularly, you know, when you’re dragging an injured kangaroo off a main road, because it’s been hit by a car and this animal is in the last moments of its life. And you put your hand on its hip to calm it down, to let it know it’s safe.

Magic Barclay (37m 42s):
And it just looks up at you and clucks at you. And so cluck is a noise that they make. It’s not like a chicken clock, but interesting, you know, and they cluck at you. And it’s kind of like the go thanks. I can see you’ve got me. And then they, they pass. That was kind of that monumental moment when I went, not only have I always loved nature and animals, now I can help and being a healer. Yeah. You know, that, that was really great. So my son and I have been doing that for many years now. And, you know, sometimes you’re there in an animal’s absolute worst moment and sometimes it’s a false alarm kind of looks at you and goes, okay, I’m done.

Magic Barclay (38m 25s):
I’m good. You know, and off it goes, but really to be able to connect on that, that really primal level within animal. Yeah. It just, it’s amazing. And you know, when we have no animal to attend to, we still go for drives out in the Bush. We live in an hour away from the Aussie Bush here. And do you know what that’s great when you can get out of the car and sit on the bonnet and just go, wow, look at that tree. And how many colors are on it and have a sun’s catching it and the birds in it and leaves dropping. Like, it’s just, there’s nothing like it. I really urge all of your listeners wherever they are in the world tools, stem phones off go and be with nature for even just half an hour and listen, and smell and touch and observe because it’s just amazing.

Magic Barclay (39m 24s):
I got to sell my KP now, but

Christine Okezie (39m 27s):
Really

Magic Barclay (39m 27s):
It is amazing.

Christine Okezie (39m 27s):
It’s the, I think the best prescription and, you know, arguably for many of us, you know, quite the simplest, you know, but so impactful. So it’s important. And as you talk about, you know, you go your knowledge of, you know, kind of our eco system, right. And how important it is to use nature, to help balance, you know, us. Cause that’s, again, that’s the beautiful symbiotic design that we have with our natural environment. So

Magic Barclay (39m 57s):
It’s well, and that just gets me, sorry, that just gets me to another point there’s ecosystem, which humans are one part of, right. We’re not special. We’re not a super race. We’re not okay. We are one part of an ecosystem or there’s an ego system where we elevate ourselves above other animals, plants, beings that doesn’t work. That’s a pyramid scheme. Yes,

Christine Okezie (40m 29s):
Yes, yes.

Magic Barclay (40m 30s):
So we are part of the ecosystem. And you know, as humans, we’ve fallen into the trap thinking we have evolved so much, we’ve actually devolved. If you see gorillas for example, right. They share 95% of our DNA when they’re sick, they rest, they eat certain plants, their loved ones. Look after them, their troop come around and look after no matter what social place they have in the troop, everyone looks after them. And then they’re, well, we don’t do that. We go, oh, I’m feeling sick. I’m going to isolate myself at home.

Magic Barclay (41m 10s):
I’m going to starve myself or eat this or drink that or take this or take that.

Christine Okezie (41m 19s):
Yeah.

Magic Barclay (41m 21s):
Why, why are we not listening to our bodies? Like the gorillas, because guess what? They don’t have multiple auto immune disorders.

Christine Okezie (41m 30s):
How about that?

Magic Barclay (41m 32s):
You know what, they, they do have issues. They do get cancer in order. I mean, but not to the point that we do, we have devolved ourselves. And so when we see ourselves as a separate species to everyone and we can live without everything, because we’ve got convenience foods, convenience medications, you know, on tap entertainment in our hands at all times,

Christine Okezie (41m 58s):
Right.

Magic Barclay (41m 58s):
Are we really free? Are we really enjoying our lives or other gorillas out in the Congo really doing what we should be doing? And that is living symbiotically with everything around them.

Christine Okezie (42m 15s):
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more with those insights. I mean the last two years, you know, in the global pandemic, if there was one profound lesson is just, that is our symbiosis with each other, as a human species and with our natural environment. Right. And what, what kind of lessons were served up during that very, very unique time and continue to be quite honestly, you know, given the state of the world. So yeah, that’s, that’s important, important to sit there and kind of take stock in that line of thinking, you know, what are your top tips, you know, for helping us navigate and keep our immune system strong, maybe talk a little bit about our lymphatic system and our immune system and you know, what do you, what are your overarching again, we didn’t even get to you have four books and we’ll make sure to include all of that in the intro and the show notes.

Christine Okezie (43m 16s):
But maybe if you’re going to pull from some of those, you know, cause you really capture all your entire philosophy in the, I call it your library right now of your four books. You know, what are some guidance that we could really benefit from?

Magic Barclay (43m 33s):
Okay, look, first thing is, we’ve all heard, drink water, okay. But don’t drink plain water. You actually can’t absorb plain water into your cells. So you need to put some essential oils in that only good quality essential oils. Okay. So not from the $2 store or dime store or whatever you call it wherever you are in the world. These have to be good ingestible oils, okay. Or put some fruit in there and muddle some fresh lemon or meant or something into the water or, you know, use something that will help your body transport water into the cells.

Christine Okezie (44m 17s):
Okay.

Magic Barclay (44m 17s):
So there’s the first thing be hydrated, but be hydrated,

Christine Okezie (44m 21s):
Healthily. Yes.

Magic Barclay (44m 23s):
Quality and not tap water, no chemicals. Like please get a good quality water filter. Awesome. So there’s one thing that you can do. The thing is that will help your lymphatic system. So your lymphatic system carries waste around your body, be gentle on your skin. Okay? I’m not saying use lots of products because you don’t need to. Alright, they’re toxic, but feed gentle on your skin. If you happen to have a scar or something, look into Dr. Perry, Nicholson’s work on stop chasing pain. He shows you how to work scar scar tissue to make them dissipate and stop blocking your limp.

Magic Barclay (45m 7s):
Wow. So look after your skin, make sure it’s nourished properly use good quality carrier oils and essential oils on your skin. You know, maybe reduce your chemical footprint and start using things like soap made from hemp or something like that. That’s hydrating and nourishing because your lymphatic system sits just under your skin. So as you’re being gentle with your skin, you’re moving your lymph. Awesome. And the other thing is move. The lymphatic lymphatic system loves movement. Cause guess what? It doesn’t have its own pump.

Magic Barclay (45m 47s):
The circulatory system has the heart. The lymphatic system does not have a pump. You are the pump. So that means go for a walk take in 20 minutes of nature around you and do some walking. Now, if you happen to be in a wheelchair or you can’t go for long walks, you can still move. Okay. You can move every part of your body. And if you’re in a situation where you can’t get someone to move it for you. Okay? Okay. So there’s those top tips, but really look at what you’re putting in and on and around your body.

Magic Barclay (46m 28s):
Yeah. So as we speak just before we started talking, my hands were dry. I put some of the essential oil, hand cream on. Now I can actually make that myself. If I wanted to, I would eat it. I, I particularly want to, but I could. Anything you put on your skin should be reasonably edible. Okay. If you wouldn’t eat it, why you putting it on your skin? If you wouldn’t eat it, why do you have it in your home? Reduce the perfume has reduced in all those toxic cleaning products. So really look at your toxic load because that triggers most disease processes.

Magic Barclay (47m 13s):
Excellent. They’re probably my top tips. And I guess the final one is reduce your toxic thoughts, you know, because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what other people say about you, but what you say about you, your body hears and that then a threat. And if it’s not positive, talk about yourself, your body’s going to go, oh, here’s one of those dangerous things again.

Christine Okezie (47m 41s):
Right?

Magic Barclay (47m 41s):
So you really don’t want to react to your own thoughts.

Christine Okezie (47m 45s):
Brilliant. Thank you. Magic. Very, very comprehensive and very, very, you know, such good wisdom there. Right in and around internal environment, external or environment

Magic Barclay (47m 56s):
Took a long time together that it happened.

Christine Okezie (48m 1s):
It’s the journey, as I said, so I’m going to ask you, is there anything else maybe, you know, at this point that you wish I’d asked you,

Magic Barclay (48m 11s):
I just want to say to your listeners, my life, isn’t all sunshine and roses. I’ve got to tell you that, you know, you’re probably listening, going, oh, well now she’s got it all together. Everything’s great. But it’s a journey that we continue to stay on. And I can’t remember who said it, someone famous once said you never know EV everything that you need to know the day that you think you do, that’s the day that you did. Right. Okay. Right, right. But you know, it is a journey and you don’t always know everything. So give yourself some space to learn. And when you do realize that you’ve made a mistake or you know, that you might be looking at someone going, well, she’s got all her shit together or whatever, guess what she doesn’t, and you can make a mistake and you’ll be fine.

Magic Barclay (49m 6s):
You’ll recover. You will learn something from it. So really be open to learning and be open to embracing that mistakes happen. And that’s okay because that’s how we learn. That’s how we grow. So I want you to imagine yourself as a flower. Okay. So you start as a seed. Starters is hard, little dried up weird looking thing. Okay. And then you germinate into a plant and it become tall and ganglion leafy, and everyone goes, oh yeah, that’s cool. It’s not pretty, but it’s cool.

Magic Barclay (49m 46s):
And then you start to blossom, okay. And you become this beautiful radiant flower and maybe you’ve got a scent and maybe you don’t, but maybe you just make people smile. Cause you’re a brilliant color or you know, something. And then you start to wither and die. Now at that point as humans, we go, right, that’s it, we’re old, we’re sick. We’re whatever, that’s it. Guess what? The flower doesn’t stop there because a flower then starts producing seeds. As it’s withering, as it’s fading, as the pedals are falling, it becomes mold. It becomes compost for the next flourish of flowers and it produces its own seeds to keep itself going.

Magic Barclay (50m 29s):
Wow. We need to remember that. We’re just as special as a flower.

Christine Okezie (50m 33s):
Yes.

Magic Barclay (50m 33s):
Okay. We don’t get to a point in our life and go, that’s it I’m spent, I’m done. I’m not gorgeous anymore. We have to remember that the best is yet to come.

Christine Okezie (50m 45s):
Wow. Thank you so much magic, very artful and inspiring way to see our bodies and see this life that we’re navigating, you know, a much more conscious and compassionate way. So thank you so much for all of that. You’ve shared. And so is there anything specific that you want listeners to know that you’re working on and you know, how what’s the best way to get in touch with you if they have questions and want to seek your services?

Magic Barclay (51m 16s):
Definitely. Well, I would send everyone to my website. So it’s holistic natural health.com.edu, holistic with the w in front of it. And there you’ll find all of our blogs. You’ll find a link to our podcast of magical life, health, wealth, and weight loss. And you’ll find all sorts of free information. We have free downloads about lymphatic system there that we just love teaching people. You’ll also see links to our practitioner training for PNI trauma. And you know, if you’re more interested in learning more about how your body works, we can set you up on our innate immunity affiliate link.

Magic Barclay (51m 58s):
But most importantly, we have a services page there and you can book your complimentary root cause analysis. And then we can speak to you around the world, be it on zoom or the phone, whatever, wherever you are, we’ll sort it out. And we’ll give you some answers on what your body’s doing. And at that point you don’t have to work with us. We won’t be asking you to, you know, we just want to teach you if we all decide that we can work together. Great. If we don’t, we part ways you’ve got some information and you know, what’s going on.

Christine Okezie (52m 30s):
All right. Well, thank you for the work that you’re doing in the, on the planet. And I wish you all the best it’s been. It’s been really a pleasure.

Magic Barclay (52m 38s):
Thank you so much for having me.