Chef Amber’s Wholicious™ – Episode 6 Healing From The Effects Of Trauma and Stress

Welcome to Wholicious and welcome to my spiritual corner. If you feel a longing or desire to break free from all physical and mental limitations, you are absolutely in the right place. Today is an exciting show and I’m going to be talking about an important topic. How to remove trauma and stress from the body to gain inner freedom. Most of the time this journey is so challenging. It can be a roller coaster ride of emotions of going inward and diving deep into yourself to heal you from traumatic experiences that are blocking your energy flow. 

 

Trauma

Word trauma can be scary and you might not relate to it so much when it comes to your own story. However, when your body feels overwhelmed from a traumatic experience, it tends to shut down and stress and distortions occur often without you even noticing. Your soul becomes disconnected from your body and mind. As a result, our consciousness is spared and our body suffers. Then with every nerve wracking experience small or large, the stress continues to accumulate. Trauma resides in the nervous system which is constantly trying to give us indicating signals. Our muscles get tense, our heartbeat soars, we start to tremble, feel dizzy, or even start to sweat. This is such a journey for sure. And I am still on it y’all a day at a time, diving deep and discovering different parts of my true self that were asleep and dormant for many decades. It’s a journey where we get to rediscover and gain insights on how to continue to live the best life and feel free in your body every day. And that is what I want to share with the world so we can grow, shine and rise together. 

I’m Amber Caudle, aka Chef Amber, professional chef, holistic lifestyle advocate, and your host of the show Wholicious. I was inspired to create Wholicious, and to dedicate a whole episode to the topic of trauma and self healing as I want to show everyone that it is possible to find a healthy relationship with food and also feel amazing in our bodies. It’s time to embrace all that you are. Open up to all possibilities. And let me assure you, you can live the fulfilled whole life that you are dreaming of. 

What helped me is to see that trauma was not happening to me, but it was really happening through me for my highest good. I had to learn that I can heal stress, anxiety and distortion within this lifetime. My stress and trauma showed up in my body through disordered eating, emotional eating and having an unhealthy very painful relationship with food and my body for many years. To heal my relationship with food and learn to really love myself again, I needed to see why I had been abusing food since the age of eight and what I was escaping from. My book, “Hungry, Why F***ing Eat” is inspired by my self healing journey. And I share my battle over the years with having an emotional relationship with food and abusing food. And I give you all the tools that are very helpful on how to disconnect whenever you feel lost. It’s a major step towards gaining confidence, inner self esteem, peace, acceptance for self, and inner freedom. Freedom around food is freedom around self. So much of my work has been about body, mind, and soul connection. It’s a huge breakthrough to have embrace and to feel life and embody it. 

 

Today’s Episode

So today I’ve invited my spiritual mentor and coach Christopher Lee Matar later on the show. He is the creator of True Body Intelligence, which is an extremely holistic system. Christopher is one of the most fascinating experts in this field when it comes to addressing our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energetic world. His system helps remove exhaustion, discomfort, anxiety, scarcity, and transforms the limitations that keep you from expressing the fullness of your authentic and abundant nature. I personally have been working with Christopher intensively for over two years and I have had the honor to learn his system too to help my clients. I am still devoted to his work and I practice it daily. Christopher and I will dive deep into this topic and give you some profound takeaways. 

But first, let’s get into my Wholicous kitchen. I have prepared some soul food recipes for you that you’re going to love. Today we’re going to cook stuffed delicata squash with bison swiss chard, little bit of sherry, cumin and paprika topped with this creamy almond ricotta, and then we’re going to finish with a spiced orange cake with a coconut cream a little extra virgin olive oil, lavender and thyme. Join me in the kitchen. 

 

Stuffed Delicata Bison

So let’s get started. So first what I’m going to do is we’re going to start to sauté our fennel. So I’ve got about a medium size fennel bulb here. I’m going to slice off the end, cut it in half and make some nice slices like this. Hey, and then I’m going to do a nice chop and it can be a rough chop because we’re going to caramelize this so it doesn’t, doesn’t have to be perfect. I’ll just do a quick little chop here to show you. 

Okay, I love cooking with fennel. One, it’s great for digestion, loaded with fiber, but also it adds a little bit of like an a nice flavor. And I know a lot of people kind of stick their nose up to the licorice and nice flavor, but it’s very mild. And when it’s caramelized with the cumin and the paprika, it really just gives it like a nice little sweetness to the dish and it’s a nice substitution for onion. So if you’re someone that cannot eat onion, this fennel is a great substitution. So I’m going to do about high to medium heat because I really want to get this caramelized and I’m going to do some avocado oil right here in the pan a nice drizzle, and I have some more fennel chopped here. So I’m actually going to load us up with the fennel, and I’m going to let that go for a couple minutes before we add the bison. I’m going to add a little bit of pepper to that. And I’m going to add all of our spices so we have paprika, cumin, a little crushed red pepper, and salt. And I really like a little pinch of crushed red pepper to bring up the spice just a little bit. And you can obviously if you’re a spicy person, you can make it a little bit spicier. Alright, so this is going 

 

Squash

Perfect. Okay, next, let’s get into our delicata of squash. So the delicata squash is one of my probably most used squashes in the kitchen. Why? One reason I love delicata is that you can eat the skin and use the skin. Unlike the butternut squash, you have to really peel it. Acorn squash, you have to peel the skin but I love the delicata skin because it adds so much fiber and texture to the dish. So we’re actually going to roast these in quarters today. And then we’re going to stuff it with the bison. So I’m going to half it, half it again. And then we’re going to just scoop out the seeds here, like this with a spoon. Okay, super easy. 

 

Easy Entertaining Dish

And I really love this dish for entertaining. And I’ll tell you why you can make the squash the night before. And you can also make yourself a bison the night before, and then stuff your squash the next day and throw it in the oven. I also love this because this is a really great dish served at room temperature also. Like it doesn’t need to be like piping hot. So if you’re having maybe like a dinner party or a taco party, you can let the boat sit out and then guests can serve themselves. Alright, so we’re going to pop these guys in the oven for about a half an hour. But first, let me grab our tray here. And I’m going to put a little bit of salt and a little pinch of pepper. And then we’ll do just a little drizzle of avocado oil. And I’m gonna roast these upside down like this. Okay, let me give this a nice little flip here. Oh, yeah. So yeah, so the fennel are going to become nice and sweet and carmelized. Honestly, for some people that actually don’t like onions, I’ll sub fennel and actually it just gives you the mouthfeel and the texture of of an onion. So it’s great. Alright, so I’m going to throw these guys in the oven. Okay. All right, perfect. 

 

Bison

So let’s talk about bison. Because it’s my favorite protein. So I want to talk to you about sourcing bison. It’s really really important to find wild bison and there’s a company that I use, and the company is called Wild Idea Buffalo Company, and they ship worldwide, frozen. And let me turn this down a little. And I started eating bison because it’s high and omega is it actually has one serving of bison has as many omegas as a piece of salmon. So you’re getting your omega. It’s also a low cholesterol food. And it’s a great substitute for red meat because our bodies actually digest the bison a little bit easier, almost digest like poultry. And so this is a really great red meat substitute. If you’re someone who eats red meat a lot and you’re trying to cut back on red meat, give bison a try. You can use it in your tacos, burgers, sautés. I love turning people on to bison. I think sometimes people get a little scared of bison because they think it’s going to be gamey, but it’s not at all it’s very delicate. And I love the fact that it’s a low-cholesterol and low-saturated fat food. So I eat all the cuts of bison. I do short rib, I do rib-eyes, plank steaks, roasts. Bisons’ my protein of choice in my house. Alright, so this is sauteing up really nicely. And it just kind of stir this around. All right. Let’s grab this chard. So I’ve got some Swiss chard here, and it’s gonna I’m gonna roughly chop it.  

And you know, I always teach when I’m in the kitchen, it’s about substitutions. So you can sub kale here, you can sub spinach. You can do dandelion greens, I actually have used dandelion greens quite a bit in this recipe because I love the bitterness of it. And the the mouthfeel that it gives. It’s like really amazing like the sweetness of the bison with a little bit of the bitterness of the dandelion greens. 

 

Swiss Chard

So swiss chard is usually my go to because I love using the stems because it gives it a little bit of crunch and texture because I don’t like my greens, overcooked y’all. Okay, so let me chop this up. Right so you can go ahead and add if you see the bison is about medium, still a little pink. Okay. So we’re going to add the Swiss chard now. Okay. And I’m gonna give this a little stir. And this is such a quick prep. So on Sundays when I meal prep, I always have some sort of veggie sauteed bison in the fridge, and I’ll throw it on salads, I’ll warm it up, I’ll eat it with my cauliflower, rice, broccoli rice, throw and my eggs. I like to eat bison cold. 

This is actually really delicious in the morning. For breakfast, I like to actually eat for myself, I like to eat dinner for breakfast because I need more protein and fat in the morning. So it’s a favorite meal of mine. Okay, so let’s let that go for a minute. I’m gonna add the juice of one orange, kind of get that in there. Orange, paprika, sherry and cumin is one. It’s a really great combo. If you’ve been following me on Wholicious, you’re probably noticing that it’s a go to spice combo of mine. And especially with meat it really adds like a lot of sweetness. Okay. Perfect. Then I want to add just like a little splash of sherry vinegar. Couple teaspoons maybe like one and a half teaspoons. And that will also bring out the sweetness of the bison. Okay. I turned up the heat a little because I really want the sherry to burn off. So it’s not too vinegary. Right, get in there. 

 

Cooking in Spain

Yeah, so when I was in culinary training, I got to go to Spain and cook in Spain in the Basque region and I fell in love with Topas and all the spices that they use in the Basque region of Spain. So that is probably why I go heavy with the paprika and the Espelette peppers. Okay. Well, when you smell oh my gosh, divine. So good. And this is such a high vibrational dish, we’re using a really great quality bison you can really tell the difference when you source your meat and you’re eating meat that is sustainably-farmed, pasture-raised.

This company actually stages the buffalo. They use all part of the buffalo which I think is really, really rad. Alright, we’re gonna let that go for like, I don’t know one more minute. We’re going to check on our squash and I’m going to add some thyme and rosemary. So I’m just going to pull off a little bit of the rosemary, like this. And you can use oregano here, you can omit the rosemary, you can actually add a little bit of sage if you want. So this is where you can really get creative in the kitchen and put your own twist on it. Especially with something like a sauté. You can really play around. I mean, if you wanted to add tomatoes to this, you had some extra tomatoes that were kind of going bad in the kitchen. I would definitely throw some tomatoes in this dish. Cook those down. Or if I had some extra cilantro that needed to be used. You can throw it in here. This is how you gain your confidence y’all in the kitchen. Okay? I always say like, have fun. Don’t take it too seriously. Okay. That’s how you become a really great cook. All right, this is what Perfect. All right, I’m going to turn this off. 

 

Almond Ricotta

And I’m going to let that sit and we’re going to start on the almond ricotta. Alright, so the almond ricotta is a staple at both of my restaurants at Hermosa and Manhattan Beach. We put it on everything. And what I love about this almond ricotta is that it seriously three ingredients. Almonds, lemon juice and salt. We’re adding water, but I’m not counting the water. Okay. All right, so I have got some blanched almonds. Blanched means that they’re peeled, so that’s why they look white versus a pealed almond. If you make these with almonds that are not peeled, you’re just going to have a brown ricotta, it’s going to taste delicious. It might be a little bit more grittier, but it’s not going to be white. And what I love about this almond ricotta is that it’s white, and I serve it all the time to regulars that think it’s real ricotta cheese. It’s really fun to layer in lasagna, put with your meatballs. In fact, we have a dish at the restaurant that bison meatballs with almond ricotta, so good. All right, I’m going to add a little bit of lemon juice and a big teaspoon of salt to a couple of big pinches there. And I’m going to add our water, about three fourths of a cup. And don’t worry, I’ll give you guys all the ingredients and recipes. Okay. All right, and then I’m going to go over to the VitaMix and do a big blend, okay.

Okay, oh yeah. All right, let me take a look at this. So creamy. Let me put it in here for you guys. So you can see. I also like when I serve this dish, I like to sit a little bowl out on the table like all top the bison today with it. But you can also put this on the table drawers, a little olive oil and put a pinch of Maldon sea salt on the top. Because then your guests can dip bread in it add more to their district they want to. Okay, that looks perfect. Look how creamy doesn’t it look like real ricotta? I mean, come on. Look at that. Okay, let’s grab our squash and stuff these babies. Okay, so I’ve got some roasted delicata squash. See how nice and carmelized and brown the top got. Okay. So what I’m going to do is, we’re just going to stuffed these babies with a little bit of the bison mixture like this. Hey, and we’re gonna do two of these because I think two is a really nice portion. 

So if you’re having a dinner party, like I said, You can roast the squash the night before. And you can even do your bison mixture the night before, but I’d probably do it the day of but these you can definitely do the night before. Then say I’m prepping during the day and I have my party starting at like six right? I’d go ahead and stuff these guys like this, put them in the frigerator and then I’d put them on a sheet pan and toss them in the oven for about 15-18 minutes. And it’s ready. So it’s really an effortless, easy meal to prepare but it’s so elegant like you’re really will wow your guests. So let’s grab some of this almond ricotta, a big dollop, like get in there. Put that right on top. Like that.Okay.I mean it’s amazing. And let’s put a little bit of tiny leaves on top and we’ll finish it with a drizzle of olive oil. 

 

Other Ricotta Uses

Another thing I like to do with the almond ricotta is like I like to make it herby so I like to add all different types of fresh herbs, mint, basil, cilantro, and then a little lemon zest and a little sea salt and that is delicious for avocado toast, for your sandwiches. You can put it on the table and dip away put it on a charcuterie board and so there’s so many uses. I like to give lots of uses for everything that we make in the kitchen so it’s not just like well what do I do with this big bowl of almond ricotta now? So many things. Or you can make it sweet right and you could drizzle some honey or maple with banana and make an almond ricotta toast. 

Alright, look at that. Oh my gosh, drizzled a bunch of olive oil on there the almond ricotta, stuffed delicata with bison, Swiss chard, carmelized, fennel. It’s really a beautiful dish. And Christopher’s gonna die. It’s seriously one of his favorite and he really is particular about what he puts in his body. And because he really appreciates high quality, high vibrational food and he knows that this is going to fuel and nourish his body and that brings me so much joy. So next let’s jump into our orange spice cake. 

 

Easy Baking

Okay, before we jump in to this orange spice cake, I want to give a little backstory, because when I was growing up, I’m from the south, I’m from Atlanta, and I ate my share of poundcake, so much poundcake, but it always made my stomach hurt so bad left me with a headache from all the sugar. And so finally, about a year ago, I created this orange cake that’s made with almond flour and egg. I’m actually putting a little olive oil in it, and some lavender, and it has the best mouthfeel y’all and it reminds me of poundcake, but it’s loaded with protein, healthy fats and fiber and you can actually eat this for breakfast. 

So love it. First of all, I’ve said this before, if you’ve been following me in my past episodes that I’m not a baker, I like to make my baking very easy and minimal, no fuss. Okay, so I’m a blender baker. So I’m going to be using the Vitamix today. This is a like I said, a no fuss cake. You cannot mess this up. This cake takes like you’re gonna see it’s going to take under 10 minutes to make and it’s going to wow your guest. 

 

Orange Spice Cake

Okay, so what I already have done is the big part of this are our oranges. So I’ve got two oranges here. Organic oranges really important because we’re using the skin. Okay, I’ve boiled these for an hour. So these have been boiled in water for an hour. I strained it, put them in the fridge, let them cool. And now I’m going to put the whole orange the whole thing the skin, the seeds, all of it are going straight into the blender. Okay, the biggest thing here is like I’ve boiled these oranges earlier today, so now my oranges are cold, but I’m about to put eggs in here. So you wouldn’t want to take the oranges out of your boiling water, throw them in here hot and then put the eggs on top because you’ll cook your eggs. Okay, so that’s just like a quick little thing. It’s best if you want to make this cake. Get the oranges boiled like a day ahead, a couple days ahead. Okay, so I’m going to add five eggs here. Right into our blender here. Like I said, this is so easy, right? That’s three. I don’t want to mess this up because this is seriously the best cake ever. And I love the minimal ingredients. Alright, one more.

 

Paleo

Now, this is technically keto. And paleo. Keto is a high fat diet, no grain and paleo is grain free, no dairy and the reason that this is going to be keto is because we’re using monk fruit today. So if you don’t like monk fruit because I have met people that don’t prefer the flavor of monkfruit you can definitely sub equal amount of coconut sugar here. It would still make it paleo and low glycemic but it wouldn’t be keto. This is keto because this is a very low carb cake. Okay, so because we’re using almond flour. So we’re using almond flour, high in protein, high in fiber, we’ve got our oranges the monkfruit, five eggs. Already you can see how high protein this is. 

Okay, I’m going to add my almond flour and add a little pinch of salt and baking powder. Okay, now for me when I make this I really love to add some lavender. Lavender and orange is such a great combo. And you can leave this out because again, I think people either love or hate the lavender flavor and I’m going to add about six drops. Now just a little note on. Okay, added a couple more because I just like love lavender so much. A couple notes on the quality of lavender oil, I’m using doTERRA. You can use doTERRA you can go to your grocery store and ask for a high quality lavender oil that you can ingest but don’t just buy any cheap lavender oil that you would like put in your diffuser or your bath. Okay. And also another oil that’s really delicious in here is peppermint oil. Okay, you can make a peppermint orange cake, which I’ve done before. 

All right, we’re ready to blend. Okay, yeah, I mean so easy. You have to have a high speed blender for this and you definitely have to have a tamper and to really get it nice and creamy. So oh my gosh, love, love the smell. Okay, so what I’m gonna do, I have a round cake plank pan here. You can also do a lot of a flat like baking sheet too if you want like a thin cake. And you can also make these into muffins. So this is a very versatile cake dough cake batter. I’m going to do a nice spray generous spray here. And I’m using a coconut oil spray. Sometimes I use avocado spray, but definitely we haven’t really talked to out loyals yet, make sure that you refrain from those vegetable oils, y’all those canola oils. Okay, so there’s so many other oil options out there. And coconut and avocado are my favorite to bake with. All right, let me grab a spatula here. And I want everything in this pan. Okay? And the color is gorgeous, isn’t it? You get that. Okay, you get all of it in here. And we’re going to make a coconut cream next and we’re going to drizzle the coconut cream on top along with a little bit of olive oil. Okay, that looks good. I want all of it.

Okay, perfect. Then smooth this out. And like I said, you cannot mess this cake up. Okay, I’m gonna give this just do that because I want to make sure that the air bubbles come to the top. Okay, here we go. Look at this baby. And put this in the oven. Now this is going to bake for almost an hour. So I’ve already baked a cake. Put that in the oven. And voila. Okay, here we are, will be nice and brown on top. Okay, and I’m just going to flip this because I’ve let this cool for us. And all right, perfect. So I’m gonna make a nice slice here for us. And I have to tell you, that this is great for breakfast, especially if you make them into muffins because it’s loaded with protein. It’s really delicious with my tumeric latte or my adaptogen hot chocolate. It’s really great. And I actually will eat this as a snack because it’s loaded with protein and it’s low glycemic and it gives me energy and healthy fat. So it’s like a guilt free cake. Look at this, look at how perfect and easy and it’s so smushy when you try it, you’re gonna, you’re gonna know what I mean when it tastes and like feels like poundcake. 

 

Coconut Cream

Okay. All right, so let’s do our coconut cream. Let me move this to the side here. Alright, so for the coconut cream, I get an organic coconut cream. And I want to just show you that the top when you buy coconut cream, it’s different than coconut milk, because the whole top is like very thick with the actual cream. Okay, so what you want to do is you want to take your spoon, and really take the top layer of the cream off because there is still going to be a little bit of the coconut water at the bottom. That’s why I left it in the can because if I would have dumped this upside down, we’d have still had a little bit of liquid and water. But look how thick this is do you see all this cream and make sure you do get a nice clean organic coconut cream because there can be so many fillers that are added to the cream. So this one’s a very, very simple clean one minimal ingredients. And if you’ll see in the bottom of the can, that there’s a little bit of liquid, we don’t want that. We want this cream to be really thick. 

Okay, what we’re basically doing is we’re making a whip a whipped cream out of coconut. Okay. Alright, so I’m gonna add a little, just a little bit of vanilla extract. That’s good. That’s like a half a teaspoon. And I’m just going to sweeten this just a teeny bit, barely a teaspoon, big teaspoon of maple. You can leave the maple out if you want this to be very strict keto, you can also sweetness with a little pinch of monkfruit. I like a little bit of the sweetness in the cream, because it balances out the tartness of the cake. So I’m going to do a nice little whisk here. It’s not going to get as fluffy as regular whipped cream, but it’s going to be beautiful. And let me just do a little whisk here. Okay, that’s perfect. That’s delicious. Nothing wrong with that. All right, let’s plate this baby. Okay, so I’m going to put a nice drizzle of this cream right on top here. Nice big dollop. Okay, now I love the texture of the extra virgin olive oil. It’s delicious with the coconut cream and the sponginess of our orange spice cake. 

So I’m going to do a nice look at how sexy this is. I mean this is so sexy. Sexy is my favorite word to describe food. And this is such a healthy, amazing nourishing dessert. And feels so good because when we feel good in our bodies, and we’re nourishing our bodies with the right food for me it makes me feel so alive, vibrant, confident and sexy. And this is such a gorgeous, gorgeous cake. I’m not done yet. I want to add a little bit of Maldon sea salt to bring out the cream, just a pinch of the Malden. And then we’re going to finish it with some thyme leaves. Just a little bit. Okay? Sometimes I’ll put flowers on here. If you can find fresh lavender flowers, you can put a little lavender flower but the thyme goes really well with the lavender. And here is our cake. Okay, look at how gorgeous this is.

Okay, I have to have a bite of this. Okay. And I’m gonna get some of the olive oil with the cream. It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect. It hits all the fields for me. I know Christopher is going to love this. I don’t think that I’ve made this exact cake for him yet, but he also doesn’t eat any sugar and eats a very clean high vibrational diet. So he’s gonna love this. He’s gonna go crazy over the bison. I can’t wait for you guys to meet Christopher. 

 

Special Guest

We have a really exciting profound talk coming up around really how to live and be the best version of yourself and how important it is to remove trauma, stress and anxiety from the body. Okay, y’all, I am so excited for you guys to meet Christopher Lee Maher, my mentor, spiritual coach and friend, and he is the creator of True Body Intelligence and the author of “Free for Life. A Navy SEALs Guide to Inner Freedom and Outer Peace.” Christopher, thank you so much for being on the show. I’m so excited to have you here.

 

CLM: I’m so glad. I’m so happy. 

 

CA: Feeling so happy. This is long overdue. But before we dive in, I’ve got to have you try my bison dish. As I know, I told everyone I told the Wholicious community when I was cooking that you eat high vibrational food you really appreciate and pay attention to what you put into your body. And you’re very particular. And so this area in particular, 

 

CLM: very particular. 

 

CA: So I love cooking for you. And this is stuffed delicata squash. It’s got roasted bison, some Swiss chard, a little bit of spice, because I know you like the spice. And it’s got a little creamy almond ricotta on top with some thyme leaf. So you can give it a little taste test.

 

CLM:  And it looks beautiful.

 

CA: Sexy, huh? Yeah. This is the test y’all. 

 

CLM: Yes, perfection. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay, amazing. Oh, it’s always.

 

CA: So we’ve been trying to have this conversation for a long time, I’ve been wanting to introduce you to the Wholicious community. And I’ve been working with you for two and a half years. And so I’m really passionate about spreading your work because it’s profound. And my life changes that I have have been amazing. So, you know, I could go on forever and ever telling the community like, I mean, first of all, I’ve stepped into the most authentic version of myself, my relationships have changed. I have better boundaries, better communication, and just living a life full of happiness and health. And with your help and guidance and support my relationship with food has changed tremendously. Yeah. So I thank you. Thank you all so much. 

 

CLM:  I’m happy to be here. This is an amazing opportunity to be able to share. Awesome. 

 

CA: So let’s talk about first true body intelligence, because it’s kind of hard to explain. So I would love for you to explain what inspired you to create true body intelligence. Let’s start with that.

 

CLM: Okay, so I wasn’t one of these people who woke up in the morning and thought I want to inspire the world. Right. I was someone who was self focused, I had a lot of my own individual goals. And I continued to keep getting injured all the time. And I kept experiencing more and more pain at the joint level was affecting my sleep, affected me emotionally. And year after year after year, I continue to get worse and worse and worse. And when you start losing massive amounts of sleep, when you start getting you know you’re tired, you’re like a zombie all the time or my digestion wasn’t good. My elimination wasn’t good. I was having all kinds of things. But the biggest problem is I didn’t have the ability to talk to anyone about it. Because I didn’t know that it was okay to talk to people about the things that you’re suffering like so I basically I suffered in silence while on the outside. I looked like Adonis. Yeah, but on the inside, I was a complete mess.

 

CA: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I so relate to that. Because when I met you, I didn’t realize how much pain I was in. And I think we’re all so used to walking around, feeling bloated, tired, having brain fog, constipated. And when I met you, you said something like alright, So let’s talk about your trauma. You’ve had it I was like, I don’t have trauma, trauma. I was like, I might be a little bit of stress. It’s like, oh, no Amber, you run it like a level 10, probably the last 30 years, the majority of your life, and I didn’t realize that all of my small little bits of like little trauma. And stress accumulates in the body that leads to distortion. So I kind of want you to talk about what you taught me that the body never lies, because that really was like an eye. 

 

CLM: Yeah,here’s the wonderful things the body always tells the truth, the mind with lie a 1000 lies. Emotionally people have no clue. Now. Most humans are made, their emotional bodies in Detroit, right? Their mental bodies in Alaska. Their physical bodies, somewhere in South America, they’re just so fragmented. So the good thing about the bodies, the bodies will always tell you the truth. So whenever you have pain or discomfort, all you have to do is reverse engineer. If I have pain, if I’m tired, if I’m upset, if I’m angry, it’s always leading me back to find where am I tense? Where am I stressed, where I’m distorted in my physical body. And most people have no idea, all you got to do is look at someone’s posture are their shoulders rotated to forward is their head to forward is their neck to back or their hips rotated? Whatever’s going on in your body is always going on in your life? So if there’s some aspect of your life that you don’t like, what’s the obvious choice, go into your body, take out the tension and the stress and the distortion that’s causing that to happen. And that automatically instantaneously changes that aspect of your life that is operating in a way that’s less functional.

 

CA: Can we give an example of that? Like, what would be an example like, say we open up somebody’s kidney? Would it be? Can you talk a little bit about how like fear is stored in the kidneys? And how that would? 

 

CLM: Yeah, so got it. So any position that we would get into when we were opening up the body, it would expose what your level of comfort or discomfort was right. And that level of comfort or discomfort based on the position would let us know if you were had an excessive amount of fear, an excessive amount of anxiety, an excessive amount of anger, or an excessive amount of self righteousness, right? So we deal with really the four worlds. The physical, the mental, the emotional, and spiritual. And the reason why we deal with all of them so we can get them unified. So the person can become an amalgamated being, right, someone who’s physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually intelligent, because when you’re intelligent, you make good decisions. Yeah. And you make good decisions, your life shifts out of struggle and strife, and into ease and grace, 

 

CA: And who wouldn’t want ease and grace,ease and grace. And I remember when, before I started to work with you finally, the our good friend said, Amber, your life doesn’t have to be so hard. And I was like, Really, I don’t really feel like my life is hard. And then I met you. And we started taking the distortion and stress out of my body. And I was like, Wow, I am working way too hard for this life can be easier. We don’t have to live in pain, mental, physical, emotional pain. So it’s just, it’s brilliant. It’s completely been life changing for me, and I’m still on this journey. I’ve taken you know, I’m in practitioner training with you now, already helping some of my family and co workers and just being able to witness not only my own life change, but other people’s life change. With the smallest bit of effort, it’s amazing to see that change, and then have them put that into their lives and use it in a practical way. So next one I want to talk about because in your book, you talk a lot about stress and trauma, as Strama. And so let’s talk about that a little bit. 

 

CLM: Okay. Like it’s a new term that I created. Yeah. So it’s stress plus time, eventually turns into trauma. So let’s say a friend of yours got in a car accident, right? That’s blunt force trauma. Yeah. Strama is something that happens a little bit every single day. So let’s say I’m someone that has an office job, I’m sitting down nine to 12 hours a day in the same position. Well, guess what, the next week, by muscles, they’re a little bit tighter. And then the next month, they’re a little bit tighter. Next month, they’re a little bit tighter and a little bit tighter. And then over time, right? One day, I go down to tie my shoes, and I can’t get up. Because yeah, my back is in excruciating pain. And I gotta lay down for a week, and then I gotta go get a bunch of help. So stress, plus time, if you don’t resolve the stress, it eventually turns into trauma, which means that it eventually turns into trauma.

 

CA: Yeah. Okay. Now, that’s good. And I definitely learned that and felt that and, yeah, it’s just, it’s crazy, because we just don’t know 

 

CLM: We have no idea like no idea. No, I was in the SEAL teams and I was going through SEAL training and I had no idea that seven or eight years later, I was going to be that guy that bent over to tie a shoe and wasn’t gonna be able to get off the ground. My gosh, I mean, here I am young, healthy. Or I was thinking healthy, right? Because I was fit and that was the difference. I made the assumption that because I was fit, I was healthy. And I had no idea that all the tension that I was putting in from all the excessive exercise that I was doing was actually not only causing me structural issues, it was causing me physiological problems. It was causing me emotional issues. It was causing me sleep issues like it was constant. And it was unrelenting. I started losing my vision, I started losing my hearing. And when you’re a young guy, and you don’t have anyone to talk to or don’t even know, you should be able to talk to someone. Yeah. When you finally get a little bit of relief, you’re so grateful.

 

CA: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, what a journey. Such a journey. I was, I want to go back to how it’s, the outside world might look like someone’s healthy and fit. And so some of my best clients come in, and they’re like, Chef, I’m desperate to make a change to my health. I’m fit, I have like the perfect body. But inside, I’ve been eating and drinking whatever I’ve wanted my whole life. And I haven’t been paying attention about what I put into my body. Sure. And so a lot of people walk around, gassy, bloated and fatigued. When it comes to food. I always say it matters so much we put into our body. So I definitely relate to that like having, you know, having the physical pain, but having everything inside, you’re just tearing apart and you’re you’re crumbling down. But on the outside, you’ve got this persona, or you’ve got this body that’s like this amazing machine, everyone thinks that you’re the perfect, healthiest person. And so leading into food, let’s talk about because like I said before, you and I definitely believe that it’s so important to fuel and nourish our bodies with the right food, right? What we put in our bodies matters. And really, for me to function and to feel amazing. I have to eat high vibrational food and food that’s prepared with love and organic ingredients and non GMO ingredients. And so I know you talk a lot about in the book, no sugar, no alcohol, no caffeine, no daily drugs. So let’s talk about that and how that affects the body.

 

CLM: It’s just as easy. So what happens is if we took every person that you know, and we took every person that every watcher, every viewer of this show is. If we took all of their friends, and we lined them up, and we put them on the ground, and we took them through this process called teaching through testing, we will find that every single one of them is locked into fight or flight. Right. So when you’re in the fight or flight response, it means your outer reactive versus inner directed. And so substances that you can immediately start eliminating from your life that put you into a higher state of fight or flight first is refined sugar. Next is caffeine. Next is nicotine. And next is any alcohol and then a pharmaceutical well, any recreational drug. Yeah. Because those things are expressing the stress that you’re in at a higher level. The challenge is, is people are so stressed that if they don’t use those substances, they don’t feel normal. Yeah. And because they’re acceptable by society, they think you can just gorge on them. And there’s no actual effect, but you’re not going to feel the effect right away. But 6,7,8 years from now, it’s going to show up when you don’t want it to show up. Yeah, yeah. It started affecting your sleep, it’s gonna affect your communication, it’s gonna affect your energy. Even affect your temperature. Like when I came out of the SEAL teams, I was so hot. I always had to have a bottle of water with me at all times. Because I was boiling inside.

 

CA: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I definitely relied on sugar for 30 years, you know, it was my drug of choice. And like you said, it’s acceptable. You know, it’s a legal acceptable drug and sugar. That’s why I’m so passionate about the cooking I do now is to create food that’s free of processed sugar. Because, I mean, that’s all I relied on for my energy. And yet it affected my sleep. And it affected my mood. I mean, it affected everything. So once I let this started to let go of that, I mean, my body and my life started to change.

 

CLM: Yeah, but here’s a really great thing to know. Yeah. The reason why people choose sugar is because sugar is the taste of the spleen in the pancreas and Chinese medicine. Oh, yeah. And so the spleen and the pancreas are all about clear communication. And so when someone’s not communicating or saying what needs to be said to the people in their sphere of influence, instead of saying what needs to be said they go in and grab something sweet to eat. 

 

CA: Yes. Yes.

 

CLM: That’s right. So they’re actually using it as a way of avoiding having clear communication with people because they don’t want to get into confrontation. Yes. So if you’re a sweet hound out there, and I don’t mean like the really healthy sugars, I mean, cane sugar and white refined sugar and, and refined brown sugars, those sugars I’m talking about. You’re using that to avoid having communication because you want to avoid confrontation.

 

CA: It’s brilliant. I’m so glad you said that. Because I finally learned that and I know when you touched my spleen, I was screaming bloody murder because I was shoving my voice shoving my feelings I was self numbing with sugar my whole life and because I did not want to communicate and my book, “Hungry, Why I F***ing Eat” which was inspired by my work with you. I speak a lot about, okay, speak your truth, right? And really lean in and sit in instead of shoving that hole. And for me, my drug of choice was sugar, so, and I’m still healing that relationship. And I’m also still healing my spleen, it’s not as painful now. 

 

CLM: So yeah, yeah, and the good thing about your body intelligence is there’s positions that you can get into, that will start to remove that excess amount of tension and stress and distortion, that’s in the muscles that are connected to the organ. So every organ in your body is connected to a specific group of muscles, right. So when that organ is overstressed, it’s going to push all of the excessive heat, it’s going to push all the excessive cold down through those muscles, and those muscles are going to get short. And they’re going to get tense, and they’re going to get tight, and they’re going to get toxic. And when you remove that tension and stress, guess what happens, you actually create a pattern interrupt. And when you interrupt that pattern, you suddenly have a reprieve from being addicted to the sugar to now shifting to taking a risk, right? Oh, I’m going to tell my husband, there’s this thing that he does that I don’t like, yeah, instead of swallowing it all the time, instead of crashing, shoving your words. So got the pattern, interrupt is the key. Yeah, once you interrupt that pattern, you get to immediately build a new relationship, not only with your husband, or your boyfriend or your teacher or your students, they also are now getting the example of how to communicate clearly. The love that and whatever’s in your bodies in your life. So why not create a pattern interrupt. And here’s the interesting thing, if you go from just sugar being refined, and then you ferment to sugar, what happens you turn to sugar and alcohol, right? It makes it 10 times more toxic, but it also gets really toxic for the liver, which then causes you to repress your words more. And when you repress your words, you lose access to your ability to authentically self express. So look at how many people are sitting behind closed doors and are watching other people live the life that they want. Yeah. And they know they’re smart. They know what their passions are, but they aren’t able to get out into the world and make their dreams come true. Well, why can’t they? Because their body is full of an excessive amount of tension, stress, and toxicity and distortion that’s actually keeping them from taking that first step. Yeah. Yeah. So why not create a pattern interrupt? Well, obviously, what’s the best way to create a pattern interrupt, get high vibrational food in your body? Yeah, get yourself into a really good sleeping program, and start to remove tension, stress and distortion as often as you possibly can. And the beautiful thing about the true body intelligence process, you only need to spend 10 to 15 to 20 minutes a day. Yeah, I’m not the guy that wants to show up and do something for two hours. Because when I was first found myself unwell, and I decided to reach out, all the different types of practices that are in the holistic community that I went out and used if I needed to go a mile, they took me an inch. But I was happy for that inch. But really, they literally only took me one inch. Yeah. And now looking back, I think about all the time I spent, all the energy, I spent all the money and resources that I spent, but probably of all of those. It was all the time and effort that I had to put in that I couldn’t get that time back. Yeah. So with true body intelligence, and with the holistic lifestyle, yeah, and all the things that you’ve been teaching everyone, they can actually take these strategies, implement them and get an immediate permanent change in their life that they don’t have to go back through and do again, I don’t want to repaint the garage every month. I want to paint the garage. I want it to look good for at least a decade or two. 

 

CA: Exactly.

Right. So you just mentioned high vibrational foods. So what does that look like in your daily life for you?

 

CLM: I mean, for me, well, let’s get a definition what my definition for high vibrational food would be food that I wake up in the next morning. There’s no weird taste in my mouth. Yeah, right. Two I don’t get tired. I eat the food and there’s not a drop in my energy. My energy actually lifts. Okay. The other thing the way that I measure it the next day, look, people don’t want to talk about this, but I talked about the same I talked about poop. Yeah, right. I’m talking about your bowel. If your bowel movement doesn’t come out, like point six seconds, right. That means whatever you ate, it created issues for you. Yeah, okay. It’s either too sticky or too hard or, or took too long. Yeah, it’s because the food that you ate was low vibrational foods. Yeah, full of all kinds of chemicals, full of all kinds of rancid oils, excessive amounts of salts just, and they just create problems in your body. And when you eat high vibration foods, you have happy organs and your organs. Yeah, you have a lot of energy. Yeah. When you have a lot of energy, you’re willing to take a risk. And what does that mean? You’re willing to do something you wouldn’t be able to do before, right? And when you take risks, you get reward. Look you take a little bit of risk, you get a little reward. Yeah, you take a medium risk and be ready to take a big risk. You get a big reward. Love it. And high vibrational foods set you up to take big risks.

 

CA: Amazing. I love that definition. That was a brilliant explanation. Yeah, bravo. That’s awesome. I feel the same way. And I love how we touched on elimination digestion, because you know what? That was the first time for me. When I started to clean up my diet. It was like, Oh, well, I have energy. And I’m not constipated, bloated, and gassy. And, yeah, it’s amazing. 

 

CLM: It’s consistent energy, right? This is an energy you’re gaining from a substance. Like one of the things I became aware of really quickly is that when I’m taking something from the outside, like caffeine, or something else, some other kind of stimulant, then what’s going to happen is, that’s going to cause my body to produce a massive amount of adrenaline. And then I’m going to be agitated later, or I’m going to get really sleepy. Yeah, I don’t want to be agitated. And I don’t want to sleep. I don’t have to have that one. I have high vibrational foods.

 

CA: Yeah, Christopher, I want you to share a practical tool or a tip for the Wholicous community that they can implement in their daily lives.

 

CLM: Okay, this is easy. So obviously, the easiest thing to do is to look at the daily drugs. I mean, everybody has one that they like more, some people like to be some people like to sweets more, some people like the caffeine more, some people like THC. People like THC more, what you would do is you would take your daily consumption, and you would cut it in half. Okay, so let’s say you had four cups of coffee a day, you’d have two. What you would replace those two with a hot herbal tea. So you maintain your ritual. Right? Yeah. And then the next week, you cut that in half. So instead of having two cups of coffee, you have one. Yeah. And then the next week, half a cup, the next week, a quarter cup. Yeah, and you slowly wean yourself away. Because if you try to go gung ho, yeah, you’re gonna end up with a big headache, and you’re gonna be that’s gonna make you feel like the goal is impossible. Exactly, then you’re gonna drop right back into your old strategy. So whichever one you rely on the most is the one that I would break away from first. Yeah. And then another tip, which is really simple, is go to bed the same day, every time, like have a drop dead time. And even if you’re not going to fall asleep, just get in bed, if it’s with your book, it’s with your computer, just do it the same time every single day. And then the last thing is, your breath, right? This is something that’s easy. You don’t have to hire someone to do it. Whenever you’re stressed, walk outside, find a quiet place, and focus on breathing nice and slow for two or three minutes. And I guarantee you that’s going to create an immediate change in your base state, you’re going to feel a lot more comfortable, you’re going to be more grounded. And the last thing and I think the most important of them all is be as honest as you can with those people around you. And fire yourself from rescuing other people from having bad feelings about you. And do everyone a favor and just tell people the truth. 

 

CA: I love that. Yes, that’s the best tip right there because you really taught me Hey Amber, you’ve got to fire so fire yourself from trying to rescue everyone from their uncomfortable feeling. That’s their journey. And when I finally did fire myself from the happening to stop managing everyone else’s feelings and emotions, oh my gosh, probably lost 10 pounds and finally was able to breathe again. Left anxiety, left my body and you know, back to the caffeine. You know, when I was getting off caffeine. I don’t even know how many cups of coffee I was on probably for easily a couple shots. I was dipping my spoon right in the Macha. I mean it was It was wild. And finally when I was off, I weaned myself off with some of the adaptogens and stuff so the Wholicious community these episodes can go back and they can okay great look at that Tumeric latte or that adaptogen latte those really helped with caffeine withdrawals and coming off because you can really like help balance your nervous system. So that was good and of course sleep at the same time that game changer. So thank you. Those are brilliant. Those are, those are practical. And those are realistic practical tips and tools that you can do by yourself.

 

CLM: So firing yourself from rescuing other people from having bad feelings about you, once you do that you’re free to speak your mind and to tell the truth, and it actually preserves your relationships. People really appreciate it. Yeah, they hate it when you’re telling them two or three days later, they really start to understand that you’re coming from a caring place, because it’s very difficult. It’s to disappoint people.

 

CA: Yeah. Yeah, it is. Okay. Right. Yeah. 

 

CLM: Well, when I’m on that whole Licious lifestyle,

yes. 

 

CA: The Wholicious lifestyle, baby. I love it. Oh, my God. This has been amazing. I feel like we could seriously chat forever. I hope y’all been inspired, because I sure have. And I feel like we’ve covered a lot, and I just the work works. 

 

CLM: And the work works. 

 

CA: Yeah, and I’m living proof if you guys would have seen me, you know, two and a half years ago was a completely different person. I kind of faked it till I make it. I did a good job doing it. But my life is so much easier now. And I’m just happy to continue to spread your work with the world and share it because it’s met. You’ve made such a difference in my life. And I’m just so grateful. And it’s amazing to be on this journey with you thisWholicious journey and yeah, it’s just really amazing. So I want you to tell the Wholicious community where they can find you or, you know, you’ve got your book, you’ve got your body intelligence, maybe the website,

 

CLM: Okay, the book is called, “Free for Life. A US Navy SEALs Unique Journey to Discovering Inner Freedom and Outer Peace. And you could go to truebodyintelligence.com. I’m not really that big on social media. Yeah, my Instagram is weak. My Facebook is laying you know, I look I have a different philosophy. My philosophy is create one miracle a day. And you’ll always have people who want to be affected by your work.

 

CA: Beautiful now. Okay, well, thanks so much again.

 

CLM: Thank you. 

 

CA: You’re welcome.

 

Thanks, y’all so much for joining us today. Take care of yourself, your mind your body and your soul. And if you felt inspired and love this episode today, give it a thumbs up. If you have any questions, please comment below because I love staying connected with you guys. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. Chef Amber’s delicious. So you can be an active part of my vision of a healthy world through food. And remember, healthy as the new sexy