Valerie: Rise, Renew,
reconnect.
Welcome to from the Ashes, a podcast where bold conversations empower healing and authentic, vibrant living.
I'm your host, Valerie Huang Beck, and I'm on a mission to evolve the dialogue that moves humanity harmoniously forward.
Asia: And the fire in the darkest night of Phoenix birds, it's ready for flight Shadows may come try to tear you apart but you're the. All right, everyone.
Valerie: Welcome back back to from the Ashes podcast.
I'm your host, Valerie Wong Beck,
and today I have a very special guest and I'm really, really excited to have her here because she is a force of nature and she is the founder of Bones, Bugs and Botany.
Her name is Asia Dorsey,
and she has quite the story to tell.
But before I invite Asia on to talk, I want to tell you a little bit about what she does and her mission and her story.
So I met Asia at the Colorado Ayurvedic Conference last year where she did a presentation on meat as medicine. And I knew when she gave this presentation,
she's somebody that I want in my circle for a very long time.
And she will have you really digging deep within yourself to see what are the tools of healing that we can all use.
So her Bones, Bugs and Botany organization is devoted to translating the pattern language of the earth and her people's culinary and herbal genius into simple, safe and effective interventions and healing through cutting edge educational modalities.
And the thing that I really want to emphasize is that she presents the tools that you can use to experience embodied liberation, a liberation that isn't dependent on a politic, but on your relationship to self.
So with that introduction,
welcome, Asia.
Asia: Thank you,
Valerie. It is so,
so good to be here in this space with you right now, in this moment.
I know that you're calling in from Japan,
and I just want to thank you much for, for making space to have. Have this time with me right before the solstice.
Valerie: Thank you for being here and for making the time.
I am so glad that we have crossed paths.
And having heard your journey has given me a lot of courage and the way that you speak out about your convictions on healing and,
you know, really emphasizing relationship with the earth and with self is something that I've. I feel like I've been searching for and not had really the words or like the, the people around me to really progress that dialogue.
And so here you are.
And so I'd love to start with your story.
And,
you know, I know we also have some parallels with having gone to NYU around the same time.
Everything but. And, and you just mentioning that, like, a lot of your depression started around that time and that you started off as an activist.
So I'm gonna kind of lead.
I'm gonna ask you to lead with that.
What is your story in becoming that healer and in diving into that and what led to that moment?
Asia: So I'll share that.
I was a love privileged black girl growing up in a historical community in Colorado called the Five Points.
And I was raised not only by my mother, but by her sisters, by my grandmother, by the entire community.
I grew up very safe, very adventurous, but also my family intentionally relieved me of the burdens of reproductive labor.
I didn't grow up with chores.
I had a responsibility. And that responsibility was to play and to do school.
And that is.
That is what I did.
My grandmother really trained me as a scholar and told me, you know, to value science and that superstition was not our way.
And in that, she kind of pointed me away from traditional African American kind of spiritual practices and towards the books. And so I found myself at New York University.
It was the first generation in my family to go to college, and I was so excited to be on track to study environmental law.
And one of the things that that happened for me as a student is, of course, I really was able to expand my radicalism. I was already an earth and environmental justice kind of hearted person.
I was kind of like Hermione Granger from Harry Potter.
So I was already that way. But getting access to so much knowledge and so many wisdom keepers and academics, like, I set it set my world on fire,
but it also dampened my world in a particular way.
I got to New York City from Colorado. Colorado has the most days of sunshine out of every other state in the Union. So I get to New York and it is damp and it is cold, cold, and it is dirty, dirty.
And also I'm there, I'm doing my work, I'm being a student, but also I have no idea how to eat.
So I'm like,
you mean I could have anything I want for dinner?
Ice cream.
Valerie: Ice cream.
Asia: Honestly, Valerie, I had my favorite dinner was a waffle with mint chocolate chip ice cream, Cool Whip and peanut butter.
Valerie: Oh, my goodness.
Asia: Yeah. Yeah, I was. I was really wiling out.
And it's because I grew up where I never even made my own plate. Like, my family,
they did everything for me. They fed me, they,
you know,
so I was out there on my own and I didn't know what to do with myself,
but I knew how to work and I knew how to study. And I knew how to fight,
and I did that, joining various movements for the abolition of prison and the elimination of racial discrimination and policing.
I was acting up with activists, queer activists on campus.
I was learning and beginning to embody a feminist practice. But what was happening to me is that I got sick. And I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker.
And that sickness really fomented after reading Michelle Alexander's the New Jim Crow,
where I learned that the law,
this thing that I had devoted myself to from a really young age,
I learned that the law was not just.
And to some of you, that sounds like duh,
but for me,
like, I truly believed that it was a place where we could create worlds and futures that were better and more beautiful.
And I did not understand the inherent biases that the law had. And so I was heartbroken,
60 pounds overweight,
depressed, clinically depressed, with therapy providing no solution for what I was feeling. The depression was both existential and a physical manifestation of the place itself. In response to my body.
Right, Yep.
Yeah.
And you were also in Nueva York?
I was,
yeah. What was that time like as you were studying international education?
Valerie: So this is where I think we both had an experience of a shattered reality, or. I don't know the best way to.
To phrase that, but basically where we really started to question.
Because I was just coming back from three years abroad in Japan, where everything was peaceful. I knew who I was in that context. I had been teaching for three years and had made a huge impact on my community.
And I was like, wow, I really want to dig more into this.
I've connected with people across language barriers and cultural barriers. And wouldn't it be awesome to study this further and see how I can perpetuate this work?
That was my idea, coming back to NYU to study international education.
Asia: Okay.
Valerie: And so when I got back again,
cold,
dirty,
loud,
New York,
and then the program at nyu,
I quickly realized that the mission was not.
And this was explicitly actually explained to us,
the mission was not to create these cross cultural bridges of understanding between peoples and to use education in a way that would be progressing that kind of like harmony.
Harmony between peoples. It was to use education as a imperialistic tool to democratize other countries.
Asia: Yikes.
Valerie: And I can't be clear.
Asia: Oh, no.
Valerie: Because that was exactly what we were told that this program was for.
Asia: And that is devastating.
Valerie: It is.
It was. It was infuriating. It was devastating. It was frustrating because I could see a.
The majority of my classmates go along with it because it would further their careers.
Right.
And it was saying yes to the system that I feel like I had somehow fought. Not even fought, just, like, existed outside of.
In a way that I saw what it could be. I could. I could see what the world could be.
And yet there was. Now I'm in a educational system that was going directly against it.
Asia: Yeah.
Valerie: So that was the start of my.
The tumbling of my mental health, I would say. It's just that I don't.
I did believe that the world was also benevolent and just.
And I was quickly realizing that it wasn't.
Asia: Yeah.
Valerie: So here we are.
Asia: Yeah. You know, it's very interesting the way that we treat depression, as if it is and can be reduced to imbalances of the microbiome or certain insufficiency of serotonin in the brain.
I think we rarely sit with the fact that sometimes people get sad.
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: And that, like, there's a place, there's a purpose, there's a reason for that sadness that it isn't necessarily to be fixed.
Right.
Without a culture that honors processes like grief,
it's hard for us to conceptualize that even our sadness has a place.
Right.
Valerie: Right.
Asia: And what you. What you spoke to.
That's depressing.
You know,
like,
it's depressing realizing that the state apparatus is out to hunt and kill black people. That.
That is depressing.
And it's important to have emotional honesty and acknowledge and perpetuate and uplift emotional honesty.
Right. Which is the expression of depression.
Yeah. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that.
Valerie: Yeah. And thank you for asking this, because this leads me to something I actually wanted to ask you because you did then go on eventually to heal your depression through the gut.
Asia: Yes.
Valerie: And, you know, both you and I probably have touched in this activist world where we really wanted to fight.
Asia: Yes.
Valerie: And we were fighting something so much bigger than ourselves.
Asia: Yes.
Valerie: And at some point, I realized that, yeah, it. It could kill me if I were to. To keep doing this. I'm one person.
Asia: And.
Valerie: And there's so much. There's so much. Systemically, there's so much. And I can't carry it on all on my shoulders. And. And so. So many of us do.
Asia: Yes.
And, you know, I am so grateful for those who have chosen to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders,
because they have,
in a lot of ways,
decided to sacrifice for the good of the community.
Traditionally, these people would be actual warriors, not just social justice warriors, which I want to name that people who are fighting for justice are also exhibiting the same PTSD that soldiers on the front Line experience.
Right. Yeah. The difference is that our social justice warriors do not have access to the same kind of health care that our military does,
does not have access to the kind of care, work and care workers to care for them.
They do not have access to the nutritional substrate.
They don't have access to nutrients like sunlight,
exercise, and the things that keep a mind healthy enough to engage in battle.
Right.
Valerie: Yeah. Yep.
Asia: And to recognize the fundamental unsustainability of being warrior outside of a context where the community is caring for you. Traditionally,
our warriors were fed extra, were given extra care, had wives and husbands and things to uplift that work. Like, we as a village were grateful,
but our warriors are begging for foundations to fund them and hungry and eating ramen noodles out of a cup.
Right?
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: And that. That is not sufficient, and it's not sustainable.
And I also want to acknowledge, of course, that as a warrior myself,
there was a suicidality that was propelling me forward.
Right. There was a quintessential experience of not wanting to be here on this earth anymore and looking for a way to go out with honor.
And so Protestant Christian ethics combined with,
you know,
not wanting to be here, that said that I'm gonna sacrifice my body for the cause.
Right.
Yeah.
I'm gonna be a sacrifice.
And as you know, through my work, as I gained more appreciation for my life and more appreciation for the lives around me and the fact that my black life mattered.
Right.
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: I began to value that life,
and I laid down my arms around myself and moved towards a past of post activism where,
you know,
the means are similar to my siblings,
the ends are similar to my siblings, but the means differ.
Right. How we. How we get free.
Yeah. Is very different.
It's a different theory of change,
some might say.
Yeah.
So I.
Valerie: Yes, the means are different.
And I think because there is a fundamental realization of the valuing of self and.
Right. We go from martyr to almost like we become the main beneficiary of our own action.
But in order for that to happen,
at least in my eyes, I had to learn that I was,
or I am worthy of the love,
that I am part of the world that I want to help,
as opposed to the world that I'm sacrificing for.
Asia: Yes.
How did that occur for you?
How did I learn that I am somebody.
Yeah.
And not just anybody,
but somebody worth caring for.
Right. Yeah.
Well, I will share.
So I'm in Nueva York,
suffering,
sad, depressed, but an activist, doing my thing, you know?
And nothing makes me feel like I'm inside of my Body at all times. I am outside of myself, watching me do things,
and I feel dead.
So I'm watching Netflix.
I'm on the Netflix when Netflix was new. Okay, we're like, what is this?
And I see a food documentary.
And featured is this beautiful brown woman with this giant maroon bindi on her third eye. I didn't have the language for third eye, but now I do.
And I am entranced by her.
And I start looking for other things that she's in so that I can hear her speak. And her name,
Svendana Shiva.
And I love everything that she speaks to. Rather,
it is resisting bio colonization or rejecting Franken foods or,
you know, valuing traditional agriculture, resisting industrialization.
And I just. I never like, wow, she was so amazing.
And I felt something in me.
Like I felt alive again.
And the more that I followed this trail, this. That this goddess was laying, more and more I felt alive until I decided to seek out the kind of knowledge that she was speaking to,
which was the knowledge of food and agriculture. But it was so much more.
And I was able to find that NYU had one of the only food studies departments in the.
And so I took a class,
and I fell in love.
I fell in love,
and I followed that love feeling.
That love feeling led me to Australia,
where I studied permaculture and apprenticed with Jack Laughton.
That love led me to India,
where I actually got to stay at Navdanya and be with Vandana Shiva and understand the organization that she had built and the mission that she was carrying forth. Seed. Satyagraha.
Right.
And the kinds of indigenous forms of liberation I got to experience firsthand. And that love took me to Waria, New Zealand,
where I apprenticed. I didn't know it was a apprenticeship, had no idea what that even was.
But I was really taken under the wing by a woman named Kay Baxter,
the Kanga Institute, also a seed saber who taught me about biological agriculture. And importantly,
she spoke the language of ancestral food and traditional food and gave me.
Gosh, that woman gave me so much.
And she also gave me the remedy to depression.
She said,
you can heal your depression by healing your gut.
And I said,
bet.
Valerie: Bet.
Asia: Okay.
So following the works of Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, I took on a gut healing protocol,
and I healed my gut,
and my depression went away. And not only that, but I developed a second sight, a second sense anesthesia, the ability to taste and hear food simultaneously.
And that work really put me on path to listen to the honesty of my body.
It helped me understand that I was somebody.
And that that body was talking to me, that that body had needs,
it had opinions about things.
Through healing my gut, I learned to speak the language of my body.
And that body said,
we're tired,
sister.
We don't want to eat that,
sister.
It sounds nasty to us. It is not resonant with us. It is discordant. My body had so much things to say to me,
so much things to say about the world.
And it was learning how to listen to that body and not only listen to,
but attend to the call that my body was sending out to me. Healing is not the end product.
Healing is shortening the distance between the call and the response.
So I learned to hear the call of my body and respond more and more and more immediately.
Right.
Until I had salves to heal each burn.
Right. I had yarrow for every spray.
Right.
Spraying something. And here's comfrey. I started supplying my bodies with the things that it needed. And that's that act, that simple act of my body being in pain, my body being discomforted, my body being cold, and me responding responsibly.
That's how I knew that I was somebody.
Right. That's how I became somebody.
Somebody worth protecting, somebody worth defending,
somebody worth honoring and caring for and centering.
Right?
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: And so,
yeah,
it took. It took some. Some time. Some. Some scholars helped me out. Ta Nehisi Coates is between the world and me, gave me permission to protect my black body and understand the tradition of the destruction of our bodies in this country.
But it was that responding to the call.
Right.
It's like, oh, this milk makes my nose stuffy. And now I am mouth breathing.
Body doesn't like mouth breathing.
I know that body doesn't like mouth breathing because body is anxious now.
Right.
So listening and then responding. Like,
took me so long to learn the quality of milk that was required for my body to be happy because poor quality milk literally took my breath away.
Right?
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: So we don't have that anymore because I am somebody worth breathing, right?
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: Yeah.
Valerie: There's something that you said about the healing not being the end.
And I think sometimes we. We tend,
especially if we're very accustomed to living outside of ourselves and living for others as opposed to ourselves,
that it's very, very easy to fall into the trap when we're on this journey of healing, to have it become about the.
The healing as opposed to us,
the vessel of it.
Could you speak on that a little bit?
Asia: Yeah. There's obsession with healing.
I think that healing is a way of being.
It's a way of being in response to the call. And,
you know,
there isn't a there.
Yeah,
it's like, oh, I'm finally healed. No,
there are spirals. Like we are spiraling through this world, and sometimes we spiral back to old patterns and old habits and old sensations to learn new lessons.
Right? Yeah. There's actually a place, and I love to tell people that there's a place called Good Enough.
There's a lot of folks who want to do, you know, their ancestral healing journey.
And I love it. I'm not gonna knock it,
but I also tell them,
you gotta save some of this for your kids, baby.
You can't do it all in this lifetime. Nor should you.
There is a such thing called good enough.
Valerie: Yes.
Asia: You don't need to get a hundred percent. This isn't academia. Huh?
Valerie: Huh?
Asia: Sometimes 75% is actually good enough. And it's good enough for you to extend your energy out again and realize your broader purpose in the world.
Right? Yes.
It is important to turn in on ourselves.
And as women, we have the opportunity to do that.
Well, menstruating women have the opportunity to do that each month.
And so there is a time for that inward turning that, that, that belly, you know, searching our belly buttons.
But then there's also time where you have the resources to give and to be and to, to create the thing that you were called here to create.
And it's, it's a different point for each person. But I will say that, you know, if you get trapped in cycles of forever trying to heal every little thing,
then sometimes you miss the forest for the trees.
Right. We are I, me and my.
But the big, the bigger part of who we are is we, us, ours.
Right. And that reintegration is,
is significant.
And so is the differentiation that our healing journeys often put us on.
Right. And I want us to envision that life is,
you know, flowing. It's like the cadacious staff. It's,
you know, different cycles of internality and externality and internality and externality.
And we don't want to necessarily get stuck in one mode.
We want to be able to flow through.
Right. In good time.
Valerie: Yes, absolutely.
And I think one of the things that you spoke to is in terms of responsibility and being in response to the call and reaching to your broader purpose falls very well in line with Ayurveda.
And that idea of being settled in the self as the definition of health,
because once we're there, it's not really about us maintaining, it's about us giving in a way.
Asia: Right.
Valerie: Producing Creating and that being a pleasureful process,
something that we want to do.
So I want to ask you a couple of things about the language that you use because it's useful for us to start to wrap our heads around. It is.
One is pattern language.
Asia: Right.
Valerie: Because you're speaking to a deeper level of understanding beyond what the superficial of what we're taught. We're often taught rules and frameworks and paradigms, but underneath all of those are universal truths that we can start to identify across cultures.
Asia: Yes.
Valerie: Why is it important to know pattern language and what is it?
Asia: Yeah.
So pattern language and understanding. Pattern language and pattern mind. Right. One of my favorite thinkers on the topic is an aboriginal man named Tyson Young Comporta.
He wrote a book called San Talk which I really recommend to all,
all the people.
But thinking at the level of pattern, we are often taught in academia and in sort of industrial,
sort of monocultures of the mind. We are taught to think simplistically and at the finest level of detail.
Right. And we're taught to associate lots of information in lots of detail with the, with smartness.
Right. So it's how many words do you know versus can you get your point across?
Right,
Right. It's. I know how to name all these different words in the body, but I don't necessarily know how they work together.
Right. To make, to make wholeness.
It's knowing sort of all the details of,
you know,
how mitosis happens in the cell without understanding the importance and meaningfulness of bringing both families together to celebrate the union of the child. Right.
So it's, it's.
And permaculture. We are taught to look at the world from patterns to details.
Right. What are the broader patterns? Right now there is the pattern of the solstice that's happening in all the temperate regions of the world, all the places with four seasons.
Right?
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: And all throughout the world we see the same kinds of celebrations happening.
The Christians are celebrating the birth of a new sun.
Right.
The earth based peoples are recognizing that the sun is. This is the point where the sun begins to.
We get to have more sun. Right.
We have Jewish folks celebrating Hanukkah with lights.
Right. To, to shelter us and to give us solace during the darkness.
Right?
Valerie: Yep.
Asia: But all over we see people doing the same kinds of things.
The detail is the specific group,
but the pattern is how humans themselves are responding to the darkness of winter.
Right?
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: And what I love is my experience studying all over the world with Wisdom Keepers. It helped me to understand that people are logical.
This is different than what you're taught in economics, right? Yeah.
What I was taught, you know, was that every action that people are taking in the world, everything that you are observing when you see them,
there is a sense. There is a sense making.
And this way of thinking helped me to honor and value not just my own culture as the single source of truth,
but the cultures of everyone.
Right.
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: I don't have to like the patriarchy,
but I could like the cuisine.
Right. I could like the. The architecture. Right. Like, I could like historical facts, I could like rituals.
Right.
And so I have always moved. Well, not always, but I've learned actually to move with the perspective of looking at people,
trying to understand their logic, being curious,
asking about it, researching it,
to see.
Right. Why are they doing this?
And it's by comparative analysis. Right. Being able to look at multiple instances that we're able to see the broader picture of kind of what's going on with human behavior and with human culture.
And we're able to take that pattern and apply it to where we are in a way that makes sense.
And so the way that I celebrate the solstice is based not only on the land where I am,
the ancestors I descend from, but also my teachers. In this lifetime,
those are the three footprints that we all have.
And that is for me, how I sort of make meaning.
I have learned to speak the pattern of the things and to speak with that language.
It's what's really supported my understanding the genius that lives in all of our ancestral lineages.
Valerie: Yeah, I really love that. Because when you do speak on pattern language and how we can apply different concepts, you're very clear.
Right. Because, you know, people ask you about all sorts of things, I'm sure about, like, should we do this with our food and should we do that with our food?
And oftentimes it's.
The answer is. It depends on.
Asia: Yeah,
absolutely. Because our ancestors,
you know, what. What creates culture. Right.
Culture is created from place.
So the things that people are doing are based on the place that they are in.
It's based on preferences.
Right.
I really love the exploration of beauty as a preference in nature, throughout nature, that some things are.
Because they are simply beautiful. Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks to that.
And of course, like, workability.
Right. What's wise is what works.
And so for us, there is this triangulation that we're having to do to figure out how to eat to live.
Right?
Valerie: Yes.
Asia: The triangulation often requires, in my opinion, as a prerequisite, I don't do anything that somebody's ancestors did not already do. So I'm not eating any crazy fake meat.
Valerie: Right.
Asia: Because ain't nobody's ancestors do that.
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: So there's also. We can derive knowledge from scientific inquiry. Right?
Valerie: Right.
Asia: We understand, though, that science is biased towards capital and that these biases distort data.
So we have to be very aware of that.
Right. But if the science is saying something, if the ancestors are saying something and you prefer it and it works for you,
then we're. We're getting close to what's correct.
Right.
We're getting real close to how to make a good decision.
One of the things that I'm introducing, though, as a scholar and as a medicine woman is what did the ancestors have to say about it?
And that's one of the pieces that are missing when we're making decisions about food.
Right. Is that sometimes we're leaning too heavily on the lens of modern science, forgetting that a rat study is not generalizable.
Right.
That a rat study does not display the complexity of a human life,
and so we can't extrapolate the results.
Right?
Valerie: Yeah.
Asia: But culture.
Culture is enduring.
We're talking about patterns over generations. There's nothing more scientifically valid than that because we're actually able to test these theories in a field.
We talk a lot about saturated fat. Right.
One of my favorite topics as someone who teaches me as medicine,
and people say crazy things like, saturated fat causes heart disease.
Wow,
what a crazy thing to say.
The idea that the only fat that most humans engage with for thousands of years, we're talking millions,
so long is. Is saturated fat. If saturated fat cause heart disease, why don't lions have heart disease?
Why don't wolves have heart disease? Right. How come none of our ancestors had heart disease? Why did heart disease show up only in the 1920s and 30s when trans fats and polyunsaturated fats were added to the diet.
Right.
So when we're just looking at the science,
it's very easy to manipulate that. But if we add science to cultural anthropology,
when we add science to epidemiology and case studies,
human record, then we're able to come to more logical conclusions. It's actually illogical to rely on science alone when we're talking about something as complex as food,
right?
Valerie: Yes, absolutely.
Asia: We need long case studies over generations.
Right. And then we need molecular data. Right. But we,
we need both.
Well,
I don't know how much we need molecular data, but I will say that we do need to look at populations over time to make really good decisions about. About food.
It's a. It's complex.
Valerie: It is.
And you know, with.
With the introduction of so many chemical forms of food and, and altered forms of food that have been created and then promoted as food. Right,
right. Eventually we're going to need to also show the data that. That simply not what works, but.
Because that's what I think a lot of it. You know, I think you made a really good point that science is very capital driven.
What makes the money gets the most exposure and what. And gets the most promoted.
And until we really realize the truth of that,
it's.
Yeah, it's tricky. It's tricky.
And it's somewhat dangerous as well.
Asia: Yeah, it's very dangerous.
There's a wonderful book called the Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology.
And in the book it really details how the lack of investment in science,
the decreased investment from the government was met by an increased investment from capital and how that has shifted the scientific landscape such that graduate students aren't producing science based off of what brings them joy, what's on their spirit.
Right. Like me finding food,
but that graduate students are producing science based off of what will earn profit for the organizations that are funding them, which are for profit institutions.
And that is dangerous.
Yeah, that's a very, very dangerous thing.
Because it undermines the validity of science.
Yeah. And if we underline the validity of science,
then we move into this realm of chaos where people,
you know, are afraid of.
It's very political to talk about vaccinations and things like that.
But it's important to name that without that faith in science,
then having questions about our public health institutions and things like that. It creates chaos and it creates danger and it creates fractions when people can't have faith that the science is not biased.
And so it's within all of our best interests to have science for the public good and not just for private profit,
because we do need to have the ability to rely on the data. And I think that the way that we do that is.
Right. Is by helping science to become more intersectional,
helping scientists to understand that there are more than one sort of epistemic worlds to pull and to derive truth from.
Right. That we can actually derive truth from a lot of places. And I actually feel really optimistic that people from diverse backgrounds who have different worldviews and different exposures.
Right. Are moving into fields of medicine and bringing that medicine with them. One of my favorite medical doctors was a Chinese man,
and he was the first doctor that acknowledged how fundamentally healthy my body was and did not over emphasize sort of my weight.
Right.
He was pulling from his Chinese tradition and using sort of Western tools,
but not over relying on them. Right.
And he produced the best, in my opinion, medical results because he was able to pull from not only ancestral knowledge, but scientific knowledge as well.
So I am optimistic.
I think our new generation of scientists are becoming aware of these biases and people,
you know,
people are evolving, like people are learning, people are growing.
And the kinds of questions that our siblings are asking are very different questions than the ones that were asked in the past. And I think there's this point of merging.
Right.
So long conversation about science. But it is important to remember that behind,
you know, corporate greed, there are actual people with a big heart who are not there to hurt and cause pain, who think that they're doing the very best that they can for the world and they just are ignorant and.
Right.
Just ignorance. You could be smart and ignorant at the same time, honey.
Totally.
Valerie: And I think also this,
you know, I think one of the beauties of academia as it was meant to be was that it's a place for inquiry. It's for us to question and to dig into the questions of,
of nature and to dig into the questions of like, why are we here? Right. And if we were able to go back to a space where that type of curiosity is at the forefront, I think we can save science.
Asia: Absolutely.
Valerie: Yeah.
Okay, so I want to close off our,
our episode.
I did want to ask you like, what is healing justice to you? Right. Because there's this,
you know, I think you have found this path where it's, there's still justice in your work, there's still the social justice aspect, but it's done in such a different way.
And like you're, you know, you're finding a way to empower without the self sacrifice.
And then I also would like you to,
I would like to invite you to talk about like what, what are you creating in the next year and if there's anything you want to tell my audience about.
Asia: Yeah,
thank you for this question.
What is healing justice?
Healing justice for me is democratizing healing.
It's democratizing the tools for well being.
And what that means is that right now we are in a very dangerous place.
The 1920s, there was a report published called the Flexner Report, which took accreditation away from any institution that was training medical doctors that included things like homeopathy or herbalism and really put doctors on path to this new pharmacological kind of revolution, this chemical revolution in medicine.
And what that has Meant when the tools of medicine are very, very, very dangerous,
that means that only specialists are qualified to administer and handle,
right? Healing. So when. When medicine is only surgery, when medicine is only pharmaceuticals, when medicine is radiation, right? Slashing, poisoning and burning,
right?
Then you really do need years of training in order to. To wield those very dangerous tools,
right? They all have terrible side effects.
But medicine is the thing that is growing outside of your door.
When medicine is the sun,
when medicine is the plants, when medicine is the food, that means everybody has access to the medicine and everybody can care for themselves as natural beings. Your dog did not need to get a degree in veterinary medicine in order to understand that she needed to eat crab grass, right?
All natural beings, all children, all humans, all animals, all plants,
all living things know how to heal,
how to regenerate using the things that are around them.
But we have been cut off from our source of knowing, our source of truth. We've been taught to be afraid of dandelion. We not just afraid, but to have vitriolic hatred towards dandelion.
Right? We have been taught to think that medicine is what comes in a pill and inconvenience is what grows outside.
Right?
And that is fundamentally disempowering.
It takes all of our power away and concentrates it in the hands of a few who are wonderful, and we're grateful to have them. But when Covid hit,
we saw that the medical industrial complex was insufficient to handle the level of need that we had.
And the people with the best outcomes were those who had access to herbal remedies and things that they could do at the house.
Valerie: Yeah, Right. Yeah.
Asia: So this, for me is healing justice. It's democratizing,
right. The power to regenerate using simple,
okay,
simple,
safe and effective herbal and food as medicine remedies.
That,
for me, is healing justice. Giving the power back to the people and.
Right.
Having the medical establishment for emergencies, which is what it's good at,
but it should not be our primary source of care.
Our primary source of care should happen at home. Yes.
Yeah.
Valerie: Amazing.
Asia: Yes. And in terms of, you know, the projects that I have coming up,
you know, if you are mine, and you know that you are mine, and you know that you want to study,
you know, how to take the. The power of healing into your own hands through food.
I have a really powerful mentorship program with an amazing ethnobotanist named Justin Robinson.
And we are bringing people through nutritional and ethnobotany,
Right? We are learning the food is medicine,
plant family by plant family,
so that not Only do you understand how to use plants in your own healing and your own liberation,
but you get to learn at the level of pattern of the whole family. So we talk about not just kale,
right? As a detail, we talk about the Brassica family as a whole.
Right.
And that helps us to have sophistication no matter what country we're in.
Right? We're in Asia. We gonna grab that bok choy, right?
We in the American South. We're gonna get our collards, right?
And so it really gives you the power to negotiate and navigate your health. Because most of our disempowerment comes from simply not knowing.
And so we're not only liberating folks with knowing,
we're giving them the patterns of knowing so that they can teach themselves anything. But we're also com but we're also providing a community of practice where you actually get to be with other learners,
ask questions from the greatest food geniuses on this planet and really have our divided attention. You get to have my attention on you and your journey right towards embodied liberation.
And that's called food genius. And it launches February 11th.
Valerie: And how do we find more about food genius?
Asia: Absolutely. So we're gonna have a link in the show Notes where you can book a 20 minute conversation to see if you're a good fit for the program and then we will also have a link on the website at www.bonesbugsandbotany.com.
but I would really love to book a 20 minute chat with you to see what it is that you hope to gain out of this beautiful year long portal with me and Justin Robinson.
Valerie: Fantastic.
Well, thank you so much Asia for coming on for this wonderful conversation.
It's been such a gift to be able to talk with you and to really pick apart some of these really complex topics on healing,
on health and everything. So thank you so much for your time.
Asia: Yes, thank you so much for yours and your thoughtful questions. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you this evening.
Valerie: Thanks for tuning in to from the Ashes. If this episode sparked something in you,
remember your evolution matters and we're rooting for you every step of the way for coaching, community and free resources to help you rise into your full potential.
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