November 30, 2016
Podcast from: bengreenfieldlife.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/how-to-biohack-your-home/
[0:00] Introduction/ 2017 Detox Adventure
[1:36] Nuts.com
[2:45] Kimera Koffee
[4:47] Introduction to this Episode
[6:22] Melissa Ambrosini
[9:39] Melissa's Office
[16:22] Testing For Feng Shui Purposes
[22:29] Other Things Melissa Tested For When Moving Into Her Apartment
[27:11] Air Quality in Melissa’s Home
[30:15] Quick Commercial Break/ Harry's Razors
[32:05] MVMT Watches
[33:24] Continuation/Plants
[36:20] The Use Of A Salt Lamp According to Melissa
[38:07] What Melissa Does When Cleaning Her Home
[42:40] Colors That Can Affect the Home
[47:12] Melissa On Decluttering The Home
[51:34] What is Energy Clearing
[58:34] Other Things Melissa Does When Traveling
[1:11:01] End of Podcast
Ben: Greetings. That's actually probably one of the most Trekkie-esque ways to start a podcast, referring to of course Star Trek. I haven't really seen much Star Trek, but I think they say “greetings” in that movie/TV show. Anyways, I'm Ben Greenfield, and before we jump into today's show I want to make a confession to you, and that is this: I am toxic. I have toxins in my body. I've been tested. I've actually got a podcast coming out about this. Frankly, just about everybody has parabens, and phtalates, and phytoestrogens, and heavy metals, and all sorts of things that our liver and kidneys frankly do a pretty good job filtering out, but I'm a fan of, once a year, doing a big detox. And this year, I want you to join me. If you're game. I promise, there's no strange diarrhea involved. It's just basically what's called a true cellular detox. A true cellular detox. I interviewed a guy named Dr. Dan Pompa on my show a few months ago about this, and on January 9th, 2017 is when I'm going to kick this thing off. And I'm inviting you to join me. bengreenfieldfitness.com/2017detox. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/2017detox, bengreenfieldfitness.com/2017detox. As in 2017 Detox, in case you didn't get that. And you can join me for a detox adventure. It's going to be a lot of fun. Trust me.
Also, speaking of detoxing your body, let me run a few healthy little bites by you, like Bombay Ranch Broccoli Bites, which is just what it sounds like, broccoli that's been dried and then drenched in a special Bombay Ranch powder, sea salt and vinegar. And not only that, but a wide variety of other healthy snacks including no-bake granola bars, pumpkin seeds, also called pepitas, roasted pistachios, half-popped popcorn. The list goes on and on. You can get all of this stuff now from nuts.com. And nuts.com, because they're a sponsor of this show, they're actually giving you four free samples. You get to choose from over 50 options when you make an order from nuts.com. So the way that you do this, and that's a $15 value by the way. Cold, hard cash delivered in the form of nuts. Go to nuts.com/fitness. That's nuts.com/fitness, and you get four free samples with your nuts.com order. Just in time for Christmas, if you need to have a few extra Christmas snacks hanging around.
I also want to tell you about this guy named Nick The Tooth. I don't know if you have come across him before. You should Google him. Nick The Tooth. He's a commentator for the EBI, which is an elite jiu jitsu competition. He's been all over different reality TV shows, and that includes the television drama Kingdom, and the reality TV show “Looking For A Fight”. He's big in the world of MMA. He's also relatively crazy, and a very fun guy to surf, and his Instagram profile is quite amazing. As is his blog. Why am I telling you all about this dude? Well, he lost his tooth in a surfing accident. That's why he's called Nick The Tooth. But more importantly, he is afficionado of something that I have sucked down copious amounts of, and that is Kimera Koffee.
Nick is one of the faces of Kimera Koffee. Kimera Koffee is coffee that's infused with nootropic-like smart drugs, so that you get a big blast of things like taurine, alpha-GPC along with your actual coffee. And you can check this stuff out. You go to Kimera Koffee, KIMERAKOFFEE.com. And when you go to kimerakoffee.com, you just use discount code Ben, and that will get you 10% off. It's also available in Australia, by the way. I don't have a discount code for Australia, but for you Australians who want to get your hands on this coffee, it's sold on the Optimoz website, O-P-T-I-M-O-Z, optimoz.com.au, dot whatever other suffixes they have in Australia. So, anyways. Kimera Koffee. It's really tasty coffee that spins a lot of dials in your brain and basically makes smoke come out of ears. So check it out.
And now, I want to deliver to you an amazing woman, Melissa Ambrosini. We're going talk about Feng Shui in your home, how to detox your home, all sorts of other cool ways to make sure that you feel like a million bucks when you step into your house. Alright. Enjoy.
In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show:
“If I look at my desk, or if I start my day in my desk in absolute mess, there's papers, there's glasses, there's tea cups, there's things everywhere, it is not conducive to creativity, and it automatically sends me into overwhelm.” “We all have that inner critic. We all have that fear-based, egoic, limiting voice inside our head, the one that says we're not good enough, or we're not smart enough, or we can't do this. “
He’s an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America’s top personal trainer and one of the globe’s most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. “Power, speed, mobility, balance – whatever it is for you that’s the natural movement, get out there! When you look at all the studies done… studies that have shown the greatest efficacy…” All the information you need in one place, right here, right now, on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.
Ben: Hey, folks. It's Ben Greenfield, and my guest on today's podcast is probably somebody who would just about throttle me if they saw the workout environment that I just finished my evening workout in. It was basically my messy, cluttered garage with an old camper that my wife, at some point in the next few decades, plans on turning into a glamper but that is right now a dilapidated, old, dirty, probably mold and fungus filled piece of crap. Don't tell her I said that. And the garage floor was messy, and I have like rusty kettlebells and an old stained yoga mat, and it's definitely not what I would consider to be a workout environment that inspires a nice, clean thing Feng Shui-esque workout. Perhaps something more like where Sylvester Stallone exercises in Rocky IV, I would say, is a little bit more like my workout space. But it works for me.
Now the reason I'm telling you this is because I want you to sit back and imagine for a second places where you felt really inspired, or rejuvenated, or energized. Places like a retreat, or a wellness sanctuary, or a posh health club, or walking in the forest, or whatever, and I really am of the opinion, and I believe that my guest is too, based on some of the things that I've seen her write, that you can change your mood, you can change your health, you can change your wellness based off of your environment. And that's kind of this concept of Feng Shui, this Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing everything with the surrounding environment.
And my guest today is Melissa Ambrosini. She's in Australia, which means it is either a very different time than where I'm at tonight, or also an ungodly time, or both. And she wrote a book. Her book is actually called “Mastering Your Mean Girl: The No-BS Guide to Silencing Your Inner Critic and Becoming Wildly Wealthy, Fabulously Healthy, and Bursting with Love”. That is quite a subtitle. She's a speaker, she's an entrepreneur, and she is a self-described self-love teacher who teaches women how to master their “Mean Girl”, smash their limiting beliefs and ditch self-doubt.
I was recently on her podcast where we talked about stuff like anti-aging, and eating copious amounts of rosemary for sexual performance, and all sorts of fun little topics, and now she is here on my podcast to talk a little bit about Feng Shui and transforming your home into a wellness sanctuary. So, Melissa, welcome to the show.
Melissa: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. And it's actually not that bad a time. It's only 1:42 PM in the afternoon. So it's not an ungodly hour.
Ben: That's not too bad. It's also not too bad that we only were an hour off on today's scheduled podcast time with all of the fall back time changes over here in the US, and the fact that you're 8 billion time zones away, I think we did a pretty good job.
Melissa: Yeah.
Ben: Speaking of which though, speaking of recording a podcast, if we're going to talk about Feng Shui, we're going to talk about like how you set up your home, how you set up your life. Tell me a little bit about where you're at right now. What does your office look like? Do you have little biohacks, or tricks, or tips, or tools that you use when you're using your computer, or your microphone, or your recording equipment, or your office?
Melissa: Yes, I do. I have a couple. And for me, I am an author and a speaker, and like you mentioned, I help women. So for me, creativity and being inspired in my space is really important. And I work from home, so I have a home office. So making sure that my home environment is conducive to creativity and being the best version of myself is imperative. So I'm currently sitting at my stand-up desk, which I don't always do. Obviously, this is an interview which might go for a while. So I thought I would sit, but I…
Ben: That's kind of weak sauce. You can't stand for the entire length of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast?
Melissa: Well, I don't know! I'm not sure how long you'd have me. Maybe I'll get up. I might get up and down. We'll see. But, yes. So I've got a stand-up desk and I've got my Defender Shield Card here in front of me, which is going to block out some of the EMFs, which is great. I've got Flux on my computer, which is a free app which block the blue light in the computer screen. Most people use Flux at night, but I use it all day. It's such a nicer, softer light. I have my Swannies, my blue blockers, next to me. I don't have them on because it's day time here, but I use them at night if I'm ever looking at my computer or my phone at night. I wear them as well to block out the blue light.
And I also do something called the Pomodoro technique. And I have an app called “Focus Keeper” which reminds me to take breaks every 25 minutes and move my body. And so every 25 minutes, my alarm will go off and I'll move away from my desk and I'll do one minute of squats, or one minute of star jumps, or one minute of push-ups, or something just to move my body because I actually, being a writer, I sit a lot. Well, before I got my stand-up desk, I sat a lot. And I actually gave myself chronic lower back pain, and hip flexor pain, which I had to spend thousands of Dollars going to different people to help me fix. And then I discovered the Foundations technique. My husband introduced me to Foundations technique, which I started…
Ben: You mean like the core foundation exercises from Dr. Eric Goodman?
Melissa: Yes! So I do those…
Ben: Yeah. Those are fantastic.
Melissa: Yeah. Absolutely amazing. And they've helped me so much with my lower back pain. And I got a stand-up desk, and now I introduced this Pomodoro technique where I take breaks every 25 minutes, and my lower back pain has dramatically increased. They say that sitting is the new smoking, but it has been so detrimental to me. It has caused me a lot of pain and a lot of money, so this is something that I really think a lot of people should get into. And I know you have the treadmill desk which might not fit in my two-bedroom apartment, but it's something that is on my wish list for when I get a bigger home.
Ben: Yeah. And a couple of things that popped into my head as you were describing everything from the computer software that you use, to your Foundation exercises, and the treadmill desk, first of all, have you tried this software before called IrisTech as an alternative to Flux?
Melissa: No, I haven't!
Ben: Okay. So I recently did a podcast on this, and by the way, everything that we talk about, I'll link to if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/melissa. That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/melissa, with two S's and one L. But IrisTech is a software that does everything that Flux does, but then it's got some extreme customization built in. Like you can adjust not just the brightness of the screen, but the flicker, and the temperature, and all these other things that affect your rods and your cones in your eyes. And then you talked about the Pomodoro technique. Well, you can set this software up so it not only causes your screen to pop up and remind you for your specific, whatever, if you're doing 55 on, 5 off, or 60 on, 10 off, or whatever, but it walks you through specific eye, neck, ear, and full body moves that specifically fight against the type of stuff that happens to your eyes, and your ears, and your neck, and your posture, and your body when you're at your computer. So it's really cool stuff.
I know that Flux is free. I think IrisTech, it's a drop in the bucket. It's like nothing for what it costs. But that software, I think, is like Flux on steroids. If anybody hasn't tried it on their computer, I think they should. The other thing I wanted to mention was you talked about how you do those Foundation exercises. Same thing for me. So what I did was I have the book by Dr. Goodman. It's called “True To Form”. Have you read his newest book?
Melissa: No. My husband has, but it's next on my list.
Ben: Okay. So he's got one page in that book that I took a photograph of with my phone and it simply moves that you do on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and the moves that you do on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. And I went from doing like 5 or 10 minutes of yoga when I get up in the morning to instead doing his exact Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday moves and his exact Monday, Wednesday, Friday moves, and it turns on your butt for the day, it decompresses your spine, it opens up your lung. I freaking swear by it. Those exercises are indeed amazing. I think anybody who lives a modern life, sits, stands, anything, should be doing those Foundation exercises. But that book's called “True To Form” and I would recommend, if you get a chance, to like check out the algorithm he has in that book for like what you do on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday, 'cause it took me like one week of doing it to memorizes all the exercises, and I don't even have to glance at my phone now. But it works really well.
Melissa: Oh. I'm going to check that out. Thank you for mentioning that.
Ben: Yeah. So you mention that you live in an apartment. How recently did you move into your apartment?
Melissa: We actually moved into this one in May this year. So we haven't been in here for that long.
Ben: Okay. When you moved into your apartment, did you research at all things that you could test for? I mean I know Feng Shui is a little bit more about like how you, I guess like how you organize and space things in your environment. But I also want to consider health. Like did you test the water, or the carpet, or the wood, or anything like that or do you think people should?
Melissa: Absolutely. I think you should. There's two things that I think are imperative, and this is a relatively new building. I mean it's been re-done, and it's beautiful, and it's modern. But there's two things that I would check for moving into any space, and the first one is mold. That is a biggie because it is killing people. Like it seriously is. It's making people very depressed, obese, and sick. And I don't know if you've seen Dave Asprey's documentary “Moldy”, but whoever is currently living in a moldy place needs to watch this. And if that was me, I would get out of there straight away. I wouldn't even move into a house that has mold.
Ben: So you wouldn't try to like remediate the mold? Let's say you just found an apartment that you're completely in love with. You would just run? You wouldn't even go in and try to spray it? I mean even like Dave Asprey, I know he has some kind of mold killing spray that he markets now. Would you just go to a different apartment versus treating the apartment that has the mold and the fungus in it?
Melissa: I think I would. It is an incredibly expensive exercise. I just had a friend who has gone through it and it cost her about 30 grand to the re-gut all the bottom of her house, because she had a leak, and her and her family were getting incredibly sick and they couldn't get better. And they just didn't know why they were getting so sick. They had like sinusitis, and really bad phlegm, and they were so unwell, and she couldn't understand why. And then she looked in one of her cupboards and there was mold on everything. Like this was a winter cupboard that she hadn't looked in in a while, and she looked in there and there was mold on all of her cloths and she thought, “My goodness! What is this?” And she realized that their house was on a slant and there was a leak coming in from the laundry, and it was an incredibly expensive exercise.
So for me, it's definitely something that you need to be mindful of whenever you're moving into a new house. It is so detrimental to your health. My husband is still detoxing 8 years of mold exposure that he got in an old apartment many years ago, and he was incredibly unwell. He was bedridden for 3 years, couldn't work and he was incredibly unwell. Diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which is kind of a diagnosis for “we don't really know what's wrong with you, but we'll just say you've got fibromyalgia and just put you in that category”. But I witness every day what he has to go through to detox his mold. And he's such a trooper and he never complains, but he's still working on it. And it's just not something that, if you can avoid, then avoid it. It's one of those things. If you can avoid it, please avoid it.
And the other thing is your exposure to EMFs. I live in a city, in an apartment building, and we got someone to come in and test the exposure to the EMF radiation, and she actually said our apartment was pretty good, considering we're in a city and we're kind of like in a little WiFi box. We cannot really control all of the WiFi from everyone else's computers around us, but we can control what we do in our home and the exposure that we limit ourselves to. So I would definitely test for mold and EMF, they're probably my two things and I would get a professional in to do those if you're unsure. It'll just save you so much time, down the track, so much time, money, and energy down the track, like my friend. She spent 30 grand trying to fix this mold issue, and it's just not worth it. And the effects that it can have on your health.
Ben: Yeah. I actually interviewed Dave on my podcast. I used some of the information there to write a book. I have a book called “How to Biohack The Ultimate Healthy Home”, and a few of the little things he talked about in there was, yeah, don't get a home mold test kit. There's one made by a company called, I think it's called American Air Testing over here in the States. And then on a website, where I know they actually talk a little bit about Dave's documentary “Moldy”, a website called Surviving Mold, at survivingmold.com.
There's a bunch of other folks who are like certified technicians who can test for mold, but then we even talk about, you mentioned your husband and what he went through. We talk about things like edible clay, and this supplement called cholestyramine, and coconut-based charcoal, and even a book about using nutrition to kind of like bypass genetic mutations that would make you more susceptible or more sensitive to mold, along with, of course, like hepa air filters, which I think are really important. But, yeah. It can be a huge issue.
So you guys tested for that when you moved into your apartment, which was obviously a good move. But let's say that, just because, honestly, I don't want to say this to sound trite, but it seems like mold and fungi, at least in like our really healthy community, and I know everybody listening to this podcast is just healthy as hell, so you might have this already dialed in, but a lot of folks know about mold and fungus. But when you moved into your home, were there other things that you looked at fixing right away, or that you tested, or looked into in addition to mold and fungus?
Melissa: Yeah. We wanted to, we looked at the carpet, because obviously carpet has a lot of dust mites and allergens, and we wanted them to rip up the carpet. So we're renting this apartment at the moment. So if we owned this apartment, we would have just ripped the carpet up straight away. But we can't because it's not ours. So we asked them to do that, and they said no. So they paid to get very, very good organic carpet cleaners to come in and do a really, really good clean. And it's just in the two bedrooms, which is fine, but that's something else that you want to be really mindful of, the carpets and what's going on there. That's the only other things that we really looked at when we first moved in. I mean if there was wood, we would look at that, we'd look at the erosion that's happening there and if there was anything going on there, but for us, those three things, the mold, the EMF, and the carpets were the main things.
Ben: Yeah. And the wood, you make a good point. You want to make sure you don't have like volatile organic compounds in the wood, which is important. I think that you can mitigate some of that stuff with hepa air filters. You can get like standalone hepa air filters in your house. They also make like air ozonators and all sorts of things that can mitigate some of those issues. But, yeah. That's a definite consideration too. Now as far as carpets go, did you or have you looked into like alternative fibers for a healthier carpet, or natural wool, or any other type of unconventional carpeting material that isn't quite as carcinogenic as a regular carpet?
Melissa: To be honest, we haven't. But when we build our home, or dream home, we will definitely be looking into more of that stuff. And like you mentioned before, there is lots of things that you can do like to create a home wellness sanctuary because we spend so much time in our homes. And whether you work from home, or you don't, you still come home at 6 o'clock, and you're breathing in the air in your home sanctuary, and you're sleeping, and the microbiome in your home is so important because it is where you spend the most amount of your time.
And yes, we do clays as well, and we do activated charcoal, and we do all of that stuff as well to really support our own microbiome and support our health, but there are so many things that you can consider to help create the most inspiring wellness home sanctuary for you and your family to really thrive. Because that's what it's about, it's about creating a space where you can flourish. And we want that space to be not filled with mold and EMFs. We want it to be really filled with beautiful energy and not be toxic so that we can do the best work that we can do, and we can show up in the world as the best version of ourselves.
Ben: Yeah. I completely agree. It's multi-factorial, right? Like you talked about carpet. We wound up paying a lot of money, frankly, carpet that we did put in the home, but it's like a natural wool carpet and it doesn't off gas like a lot of carpet, and they use like some kind of environmentally-friendly like non-polypropylene based backing, and it's less hospitable to like dust mites, and pollutants, and toxins, and fungi compared to like a synthetic fiber. But, yeah. A lot of this stuff you kind of pay for, but ultimately in my opinion you pay less in hospital bills down the road. And you also, at least in my opinion, you're more productive.
Like I walk into my office and, for example, I've got big natural lighting windows, I've got a hepa air filter, and an air oxidizer, and like a negative ion generator, and I've got the stand-up desk, and then the treadmill right next to it. And I have all of these little things, there's even like an infrared panel hanging against the wall, I think we talked about this on your podcast, that I pull my pants down in and sit against every once in a while during the day to increase testosterone levels, believe it or not. But, yeah. It really is interesting how many of these things can affect your health and all the different things that you can do. And I wanted to ask you also about air, like you talk about fresh air. Do you do special things in your home to enhance air quality?
Melissa: Absolutely. We, no matter what, we open the windows and we open the doors every single day, even in the middle of winter, to circulate that air. That's something that's really really important. We also have and Air Oasis. Like I mentioned before, I'm a writer, and so my home has to be creative and inspiring, especially my office. Otherwise, I'm not going to want to feel inspired to write. And the Air Oasis removes odors and contaminants. If you leave on long enough, it ends up leaving the room smelling like a beautiful rain forest. It's really amazing. And it gets rid of the carbon-based molecules, including things like smoke, and bacteria, and airborne viruses. And it's just…
Ben: And is that like a standalone unit that like goes in the corner of the room? Or is it like a desktop? Or is it a little bit of everything?
Melissa: It's a standalone unit that we put in the corner of the room, and it's really beautiful. It honestly makes the room smells so good.
Ben: Do you know if that has a negative ion generator in it?
Melissa: Oooh. I'm not 100% sure. It probably does. I know it uses…
Ben: A lot of the good ones do.
Melissa: Yeah. I know it uses like a UV lamp to convert the carbon-based molecules into harmless molecules, like carbon dioxide to water vapor.
Ben: Yeah. Okay. Cool. I actually have a built-in air filter in our house that uses kind of a similar thing. The one I use is called an AllerAir. It's just like built into the vents of the home. But these little negative ion generators that you can plug into outlets in your house, they're very similar to this concept of like, have you seen like Himalayan salt lamps that hippies have all over their homes?
Melissa: Yes.
Ben: Yeah.
Melissa: I've got those all over my home.
Ben: I do not have a Himalayan salt lamp, but I wear the equivalent of a Himalayan salt lamp on my wrist. I have like a bracelet with all the minerals in it that generate negative ions the same as like a Himalayan salt lamp. But then you can get these little things for like 20 bucks off of Amazon, these negative ion generators that you can plug into any outlet of the house, and the they generate the same type of natural ions that you get from water crashing against the beach, or running over springs, or wind passing through forests trees, and all the things you would get if you were spending a lot of time outside. And they're these things they plug into the wall, and they work amazingly well. Especially in like a one-two combo with something like that air filter that you described. So, yeah. Air is fun to play with.
Music Plays…
Ben: I want to interrupt this podcast to tell you that I'm quite excited because I finally get to shave at the end of this month. It is almost the end of No Shave November, and that means I get to whip out my Harry's five blade razor. Now this holiday season, Harry's is offering a limited edition shaving set. They've got a midnight blue chrome razor handle. That's a pretty sexy handle to have sitting on your bathroom counter if you ask me. You can get it engraved with your initials. I guess, anybody else's initials if you wanted to have somebody else's initials on your razor blade. It comes with three of Harry's German engineered, five-blade cartridges for a very close and comfortable shave, foaming shave gel that smells amazing. It's got stuff like aloe vera in it so it soothes your skin too. It comes in a beautifully designed gift box should you choose to just buy this as a gift for somebody, and it typically goes for $30 at harrys.com. And they also offer these different handles and shaving sets that start at just 10 bucks if you didn't want to spring for the 30.
But anyways, either way you choose to go, you get 5 bucks off any order from harrys.com, and all you need to do to get that is go to harrys.com and you use code Ben at checkout. You'll also get free shipping. The free shipping ends on December 9th of this year, so act soon. But go to harrys.com, HARRYS.com, enter code Ben, and you'll get that midnight blue chrome razor handle with three of Harry's German engineered five-blade cartridges. Enjoy it. Do you like my sexy razor blade talking voice? Oh, yeah. I picked that one up. I studied razor blade voices in college.
This podcast is also brought to you by, speaking of sexy, one of the sexiest watches on the face of the planet. I'm a huge fan of these new watches called MVMT Watches, MVMT Watches. So what they've done is they've designed this amazing series of watches that look like a 400, 500 Dollar watch, but you get 'em for under 100 bucks. Mine is leather with like a white face on it and it looks really amazing. And this holiday season, you can ship all the crazy lines at the mall, all those crazy lines at the watch store, and you can instead get the watch shipped straight to you. They cut out the middleman so you get a slammin' deal. And not only that, you also get an additional 15% off their already amazing prices on these watches, with free shipping, and free returns if you don't like the way it looks on your wrist, send it back, get another. All you got to do is go to mvmtwatches.com. That’s MVMTwatches.com/ben. mvmtwatches.com/ben. MVMTwatches.com/ben, and you could step up your watch game and have a nice little Feng Shui of timepieced-ness on your wrist.
Music resumes to play…
Ben: What about plants? Do you do much with plants?
Melissa: Oh, yeah. We have them all over the house. As well as the Himalayan salt lamps we absolutely love, and we have plants. I just wanted to fill many plants as possible. I love succulents. I think they're really pretty, and I mainly just kind of went for them because they were pretty. But there is certain common indoor plants that will significantly reduce the amount of toxins in the air. And the plants take in the toxic chemicals through their leaves, their roots, and even the soil that they sit in, removing many of the toxic vapors that may be lurking about our environment. So there's so many great ones that you can have, and they're so cheap. You just got to get out there, and pick them, and bring them into your house. Peace lillies are great for getting rid of the VOCs. Boston ferns, they absorb moisture. There's so many good ones. Mother-in-law's tongue is a potent O2 producer at night time. There's spider plants, there's so many great ones that you can get into your house. And I really love, I haven't done a lot of research on succulents and cactuses, but I just love them because they're so pretty.
Ben: Now the definition of a succulent would be like, are those like kind of like the thick, fat, stocky plants, like a cactus?
Melissa: Yes.
Ben: Okay. And those, specifically, do some of those things that you just talked about?
Melissa: I'm not 100% sure. I haven't really looked into the benefits of succulents, but I know peace lillies, and Boston ferns, and spider plants, mother-in-law's tongue, gerbera daisies, they're all really, really great for eliminating the toxins in the environment.
Ben: A lot of those that you mentioned, those were part of the NASA study on how certain plants can kill, well, a lot of people think they just produce extra oxygen or they produce negative ions, like I was talking about. But that's not true, I mean it is true. But like you mentioned, they can actually absorb toxins. Like you talked about the peace lily and how that could literally like take volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, out of the air. Or like the Boston fern that can absorb a lot of like the moisture that can cause mold and fungi. And a lot of these plants, they aren't just producing oxygen. They're doing a lot more than that. And it's really interesting how you can kind of pair you know, ancient tools like that with these more modern tools, like negative ion generators, and air oxidizers, and of course salt lamps, probably kind of fall into the middle. But I actually wanted to ask you to describe to folks why it is that you'd want to actually improve indoor air quality by using something like a salt lamp for negative ions?
Melissa: Oh my gosh. Not only do they feel really good in the house and they kind of emit a really calming, they have a calming effect on your nervous system. I don't know the science behind that, but it just does. And maybe that's why, you said, all the hippies have them, and they're really super chilled out. Maybe there's a reason for it, all the Himalayan salt lamps. But, yeah. Himalayan salt lamps producing negative ions in the air. So we have them as efficient all through our house, and it really, really helps.
Ben: Yeah. And it's interesting too. They can also draw water molecules from the air, and that's like, when you go into a sauna, for example, like a dry sauna, and you splash a bunch of water on the sauna coils, you actually get, it's one of the reason that you feel so good if it's a good sauna and if wherever you're at actually filters their water. Otherwise, you're breathing in some other stuff too. But if it's like a good sauna, you splash the water in there, what you're breathing in is just a boatload of negative ions. You get the same thing if you have like an essential air diffuser next to your bedside. But when little droplets of water in the air are actually hit this, like a Himalayan salt lamp, you get the same thing produced. I mean that's how the salt lamp is producing these actual ions. It changes the electricity in the air by the salt interacting with the water. So it's really kind of cool how a piece of salt can do that.
Melissa: Yeah. It's amazing.
Ben: Now what about in terms of like cleaning your home, anything from like cleaning your carpet and vacuuming, to cleaning the countertop. Do you have specific things that you do with respect to cleaning the home?
Melissa: Yes. We have an amazing vacuum with a heap filter, which is really important.
Ben: It's super important. I know I'm interrupting you right off the bat, but we have one of those too. We have one called a Rainbow vacuum. Ungodly expensive, it's like a $2,000 vacuum or something like that.
Melissa: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Ben: But, yeah. It's got the hepa air filter, it's got like an essential oil diffuser in it. I mean like you clean our house, and at the same time you dump a bunch of negative ions and essential oils into the air and kill all the mold and fungi with the hepa. Yeah. I think having a good vacuum is crucial for anybody who vacuums. So you guys use a solid vacuum?
Melissa: Yes. And ours doesn't have the essential oil, but now I'm really jealous and I'm going to ask for that for Christmas from my husband.
Ben: Yeah. You could probably duct tape one to the side of it. I would imagine. Figure out something to do.
Melissa: Yeah. But we do have a beautiful, one of those young living air. What is it called? Sorry.
Ben: Like an essential oil diffuser?
Melissa: Yeah. Yes! We have one of those, and we love that. So we have that going all day, every day just to produce really nice smells in the house.
Ben: What do you diffuse in it?
Melissa: For creativity and when I'm writing, I love peppermint because I feel like that's really like a pick-me-up. It's really punchy and amazing. I just love it. At night time we do jasmine and lavender. They’re really beautiful for more calming. If I'm having people over, I'll sometimes do like lemon, lemon grass. There's a couple of mixes that you can do, like a balancing mix. There's so many great oils they have. I love them, and we have that thing going all day, every day. It's just really beautiful. So we have that and we have the hepa vacuum. We use a steam mop because we've found that they work a lot better than normal mops that kinda just move all of the toxins around on the floor. The steam mop really, really works quite well. And then we make a majority of our own cleaning products. We make our own with essential oils, bicarb soda, vinegar. We use a couple of Dave Asprey's Bulletproof products, like his Homebiotic products which are amazing. And, yeah, we make a lot of our own. We make a lot of our own with essential oils from beautiful oil companies, and filtered water, bicarb soda, and vinegar. And it's so much cheaper. That's the thing. Like it's so much cheaper, it's so much better for you, for you and your family. And think about it, like especially if you have kids and they're crawling all over the floor, and they're going to be touching the floor, and then licking their hands, you do not want them to be in contact with toxic bleach or any of those highly toxic chemicals if they are known endocrine disruptors and can cause a whole host of health issues. So you want to make sure that your cleaning products are as organic and natural as possible.
Ben: Yeah. And you don't necessarily have to make them. I mean I know like the Environmental Working Group, for example, like they have some really good resources on actual brands that do a decent job making chemicals that aren't super toxic. But, yeah. Same thing over here. It's oregano, it's vinegar, it's lemon. You can use some sea salt on like butcher blocks to dry out some of the stuff from meat. And then we use two oils. We use oregano and we use Thieve's, and it's so, so simple. And you're right. It's probably way less expensive in the long run as well.
Melissa: Mhmm. Exactly. Yup. We make a lot of our own Thieve's sprays for the kitchen bench top and things like that, and it not only smells good, but it does the job.
Ben: Alright. I'm going to apologize for just a second because I'm opening my can of sparkling water. Let the party begin. So, anyways, I want to kind of ask you a few things that I guess might fall a little bit more formally into this idea of the flow of Chi in the home and Feng Shui, and that is like colors. Did you focus much on like pallets, and colors, and the idea that certain colors can affect certain moods, or have you looked into that much at all?
Melissa: Do you know what? We had a Feng Shui expert come into our home before we moved in and she spoke a lot about this. And she kind of said, for Nick and his creativity, these are his colors. For you and your creativity, these are your colors. I have a 10 year old stepson who spends 50% of his time with us, and she did his chart and told us his colors. But to be honest, we really haven't dove into it a lot. It is something that I would really like to explore more of. But, no. I haven't gone into it too much. I'm curious. Have you gone into it at all?
Ben: Yeah. There's a really good book about this. It's called “Drunk Tank Pink”, and I heard this guy speak at a conference. And he goes into, the whole idea is based around the fact that that's what they color the isolation room in like prisons, like the room where people go into when they really got to calm 'em down. They use drunk tank pink. And then he went on to talk about how, well, he talks a lot in the book about things like “Buy” buttons on websites, and how orange makes people want to buy, but pink makes people want to donate, or blue calm people out, or like black is considered an aggressive web site, which is probably why like T-Nation, and Bodybuilding.com, and all these web sites are black. But, yeah. There are some interesting things in the book about like work space.
Like it talks about how the color green is really restful for the eyes, and if you have like green, especially in like an office where you might be looking away from your computer for screen breaks and stuff like that, either having a window like I do that looks out into a green forest, or else like a wall, or an object, or a plant that's green in an office is one of the things that he goes into. And then to like stimulate you, orange is really good and red is really good. But you wouldn't want to have those like in the bedroom where you're going to go to sleep, where you'd want like more of a neutral color like a white, or a pink, god forbid, or something along those lines. And then like a gym would be something that's very stimulating, again like a black, like an aggressive black or a red. But, yeah. It's a super interesting book in terms of like the way that colors affect mood and affect people. So that one's called “Drunk Tank Pink”. It's a good one.
Melissa: Yeah. I'm going to check that out. Definitely. And now that you say that, like I was thinking, my office, there's, I look to my right and I've got the ocean and it's really beautiful and inspiring. And mainly in our bedroom, it's very neutral colors, it's very calming, it's very beautiful. I think that's something that we organically gravitated to because we think about what type of way do we want to feel in each particular room. Like in our bedroom, we want to feel relaxed, we want to feel calm, we want to feel comfortable. So you do, you automatically gravitate to, I mean for me, there's no way I have a red wall, or a bright pink blanket, or something like that. It just doesn't entice me. And yeah, in my office there's lots of beautiful, bright colors, and there's a Himalayan lamp just next to me, and there's a big, beautiful vision board with lots of colors, and beautiful word, and things like that. And then I've got a big beautiful window next to me that overlooks the water, which is amazing.
Ben: I like it. Cool. Okay. So a few other questions for you. One thing that I wanted to ask was basically, a far as Feng Shui goes, I know part of it is like open spaces, and decluttering, and cleanliness, and I'm curious if you have like specific tactics that you use to ensure that your mind stays organized. Because I know that there are certain people who just have reams of paper all about their desk and they swear that their mind is super organized and they know where everything is. But at the same time, they've done studies that show that those type of things detract from your actual attentiveness. They increase distractibility, they increase propensity to multitask. So do you do specific things to kind of ensure that your home is decluttered?
Melissa: Oh my gosh. I am the most neat freak person you'll ever know. And that is because when I have a cluttered environment, cluttered environment means a cluttered mind, like you said. And cluttered mind, cluttered environment. And it is a reflection of what's going on internally for you. So if I look at my desk or if I start my day and my desk is an absolute mess, there's papers, there's glasses, there's teacups, there's things everywhere, it is not conducive to creativity and it automatically sends me into overwhelm. It sets off my fight or flight response in my body and I start producing cortisol. I start going into panic. And this may be a feminine thing. I don't know, but this is just how I work and what I have noticed over the years. But if I create a beautiful environment that is inspiring, the work is going to flow a lot more effortlessly.
So my job is to make sure that I have a beautiful, clutter-free, clean, and tidy home environment. We have a two-bedroom apartment and it's not massive, which is great because I can keep it really nice and tidy. I sometimes think how do people with five, six, seven bedroom houses do it. But obviously they probably have help. But, yeah. It's really easy to keep my space really clean and tidy, and it's very important. And my husband has a music studio, and for him to feel he's a musician, for him to feel in his creative flow, like he can't have equipment all over the place, and cables everywhere. It just wouldn't flow for him.
Ben: Yeah. I completely agree. I did not use to think that decluttering was important at all. And now I am a decluttering freak. Like if I, I mean not just in my home. If I walk into a hotel room, I will get rid of like magazines, books, things [0:49:33] ______ that I'll shove into drawers. And I even turn that into a place where there are as few distractions as possible. And when I get books in the mail that I know that I want to read, but they're going to distract me, there's a specific hidden drawer that I know contains books that need to be read, but they're not out in sight. So I'm not getting that visual stimuli to get distracted and thumb through them throughout the day. Next to my bed, I've got all my little bedroom biohacks, like my pulsed electromagnetic field therapy for my collar bone, and my little CBD oil vaporizers and all these things, but they're in two little drawers on the bed stand, so you just can't see anything. So you're not distracted before you go to bed at night.
I think a lot of people don't think about those things. It's so easy to think about whatever, neurofeedback for your brain to decrease distractibility, or using a nootropic or a smart drug, or perhaps doing something like distracting yourself with Pomodoro techniques. But ultimately, if you have a really clean, organized, decluttered workspace or living space, I think it helps with productivity in leaps and bounds.
Melissa: Absolutely. And I'm exactly the same. When I go into a hotel room, I get rid of all of the notepads, the pens, the magazines, the booklets, the brochures. I put everything away in the drawers because it overwhelms me. And I'm the same. I have a drawer under my little man's bed that is full of books that I need to get to, and then I keep one or two beside my bed because it just creates more flow and more stimulation for the creativity to flow in. And it's just so much more pleasant to be in. It's such a nicer energy and a nicer environment.
Ben: Yeah. I completely agree. Now I also know, I think you mentioned this in a blog post or in your writing somewhere that you actually hired somebody to come to your house and do an energy clearing. And I'm curious what that is. Like what is an energy clearing?
Melissa: Yeah. So we had this expert, her name was Jenny and she is from a place called Healing Places, actually. And she comes in to evaluate the energy in your house and clear any bad or negative energy that was present from the previous owners or the tenants. And she did this clearing on the house and then she also did an energy clearing on myself and Nick, and this allowed us to basically let go of any negative energy that we were carrying. Because ultimately, we wanted to move into this new space with clear, loving energy and intention. We set intentions for this house.
We want this house to be full of love. We want this house to be full of adventure, joy, happiness, fun, spontaneity. These are all words that we really want our home environment to represent. And she also helps clear any bad or negative energy from anyone that lived in here. Not just the past owners, but like maybe years ago that lived there because maybe there was a divorce in this house, or maybe there was a couple in this house that there was domestic violence, or maybe there was a death, or maybe there was a serious incident. And it is now scientifically proven that everything is energy, and that negative, bad energy can lurk around. And it needs to be cleared before you enter. And it's so important. I don't know if you've ever had, I've walked into rooms before and I'm like, “I don't like the energy in here.” I don't know what it is, but it feels really uncomfortable.
Ben: Yeah.
Melissa: It feels really uncomfortable.
Ben: I agree with you. I mean, I have a little bit more of a scientific bent to the way that I think. A lot of stuff that tends to delve into the woo-woo, it makes me question the science behind what's actually happening. I think a lot of stuff that's spiritual, you can still measure, you can so quantify. And like if you look at quantum physics, like actual vibration of matter, you can change the vibration of matter for a long time.
I mean they've shown this in, it's kind of controversial, but they've shown that, for example, if you project positive energies towards water, if you pray, and you say the word “love”, and play classical music where there is water, and they've shown something somewhere in plants, the water actually forms a more crystalline lattice-like structure, or the plant grows a little bit faster, especially compared to if you say negative things, words like hate or you have negative energy. And it's really interesting because they've also shown that humans can do this. We produce beta brainwaves that operate at specific frequencies when we are stressed out and we can actually change matter around us even without saying words like “hate” or glaring at a glass of water.
And it would seem, well, it wouldn't seem, we actually know that everything vibrates. Like your liver vibrates at a specific frequency, and your red blood cells at a different frequency, and your brain cells at a different frequency, and the freaking like spackle on the wall at a different frequency, and the leaf of the plant in your home at a different frequency. But everything vibrates. So if you can somehow change the actual vibrational frequency from one of negativity to one of positivity, I mean that's the freaking basis behind a whole bunch of people who literally heal people in like Sedona, Arizona is like one of the sound healing frequency capitals of the world. And I interviewed a guy on the podcast who literally makes music that heals specific organs. So as cheesy as it may seem, I could totally get the concept of not just changing like the vibrational potential of a cell, or of water, or of a plant, or of an organ, but of a home.
Melissa: Absolutely. Everything you're saying is totally resonates with me. I actually have some meditations on my website that are designed to heal different areas of your body and designed to help you release negative patterns through the sound waves, so like what you were saying before. I also want to mention that Jenny from Healing Places that came in and do this energy clearing for us, she picked up on something in the building. We live in an apartment block which is about, I think, 18 apartments. And she said that many years ago, this used to be a public club with poker machines. And that not abundant energy was still lurking. That real lack, that real struggle, that real scarcity mindset, that real depleted energy was still lurking in this block. And she cleared that energy for not only our apartment, but for the whole block and she did it for about a week later. So my neighbors seriously owe me on that one, but it's just interesting that something else that she picked up. So it's not just about the apartment, it's what was on this land before us.
Ben: Yeah. It's really weird. And again, this is kind of freaky, but I will like sleep in certain hotel rooms, and it seems to me this happens more in foreign countries, and I don't know exactly why. And again, I know people grit their teeth when I delve into like the spiritual and get out of the realm of biology and science, but there are certain places where I know that they do things like you know devil worship, or there's been like sacrificial rituals in the past, all sorts of kind of like weird stuff that we don't quite have as big a history of in our puritanical Little America. And I will have nightmares quite often in places like that. And I know it's not just because I'm out of my element, because it doesn't happen when traveling to other places. And again, I believe it's due to the fact that you can create negative energy that affects your spirit, that affects your pineal gland, that affects your dimethyltryptamine, or your DMT production, while you're sleep. I mean I think that there really is something to this. Even when you're going to places other than your own home or to other countries.
Melissa: Absolutely.
Ben: Well, I want to ask you another question, speaking of travel. Do you, in addition to decluttering a hotel, do you do special things when you get into like a hotel while travel? ‘Cause I know you speak and do a fair share of jet setting.
Melissa: Oh my goodness. I do. I do have a long list of things that I do when I get into a hotel room. And obviously, you are out of your comfort zone. You don't have all of your little biohacks, unfortunately. But one of the main things I do is I take my water structurer with me, which changes the structure of the water back to the structure that it is in nature, which is more of a hexagonal instead of a grid-like structure that comes out of your tap.
Ben: What do you use that for?
Melissa: There's a water structure, it's about $500 and it's, what is the website? Nauticalactiontechnologies.com, I think it is. Yeah. And you can read about the structure because you no longer need a filter, which is hard to really get your head around. But you have to check it out. And we have a whole house that goes through this water structurer now. So it changes the structure of the water back to its natural state. So…
Ben: Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. We didn't talk about this before, I don't know if you know this, but my dad is one of the leading designers of structured water and energized water systems in the US.
Melissa: Oh my god! I had no idea.
Ben: Yeah. That's what he does. It's what he's done for the past five years. It's why I actually know a little bit about water is because this is what he does. He creates these type of units that, again, he got on my case the other day 'cause I published my blog post about how to biohack your hotel room, and I didn't have one of the things that he has in there, which is actually up on my refrigerator right now, and it's similar to what you described. It's this filter like that you pour water into. So you don't have to go underneath the sink of your hotel room and pull down your plant pants to make a plumber's crack and replumb the hotel room. Instead, you just pour the water into the structured water filter. And then, it sounds like similar to you, in our home, we have like a whole house structured water filter, which is more or less in very simple speak, a series of glass beads, like a vortex that water passes through. So, yeah. The water gets its electronic energy, its vibration back. So, yeah. Being able to structure water on the go though is smart. It's a cool concept.
Melissa: Yeah. Absolutely. So we have two that we travel with 'cause like you said before, I am always on the road. Always. And I was getting so sick every time I would go away because I was out of my environment and I didn't have my little biohacks that I could take with me. I would get stressed and overwhelmed about not having clean water and going to undo all of these great work that I've been doing. So we have a couple. They're $500 each. They're not cheap, but I have one, my husband has one and we take them wherever we go. So that's definitely something that you need to look into. Also when…
Ben: That is spendy though. I think the one that I use, it's called like a Mini Energizer, like a handheld Energizer. I want to say that one's like somewhere between 150 and 200 bucks. You just pour water into the bottom, or you pour into the top, and then the water flows out the bottom after you pour the water in the top.
Melissa: I'll have to check that one out.
Ben: Yeah. You can also screw it to I shower heads, or you can screw it to like kitchen sinks, stuff like that. So you can actually use it as like a little portable filter. But, yeah. I'll put a link to it in the show notes if you want to check it out. It's got cheesy name. It's called a Hydro Energizer, but it actually seems to work. So you've got your water. Tell me about a couple other big things that you do when you go into a hotel room.
Melissa: So if you saw me when I first walk into a hotel room, you would laugh. I'm kind of like buzzing around like a little mad scientist. I unplug everything. So I unplugged the TV, I unplug the alarm, the phone, and everything. Literally everything, I unplug. Pull them out of the wall. Like I don't even turn them off. I pull them out of the wall. I open the windows, and let in fresh air. And I turn off the air conditioning because it dries me out and I wake up with a sore throat and dry eyes, so I make sure I turn that off. I sleep with the same silk eye mask that you have, and earplugs at night.
Ben: The Sleep Master Sleep Mask?
Melissa: Oh yeah. It is next level. Like it's beyond. And I have forgotten it once, and I've ended up having to put a pillow over my head and it's not the same. It's definitely not the same. So I block out the light at night as much as possible, and I wear earplugs because there's always [1:03:46] ______. I wear my blue blockers, my Swannies at night. I don't watch TV because it's very, we don't actually have, we have a monitor in our house here, but you can't watch TV on it…
Ben: Yeah. That's the same as us. We've got like a really cool monitor, but you can put a DVD in it.
Melissa: Yeah. Exactly. That's what we've got. So out little boy, when he's here, he doesn't watch TV. And we very, very rarely watch TV. We'll occasionally watch a documentary or a movie once a month, or something like that. I used to go into hotels and they always have these massive TVs at the bottom of the bed, and it's very easy to kind of just put it on and fall back into that mindless numbing that TV's doing. And I would put it on and I'm like, “I'm not even watching this and it's just polluting my brain.” So I always unplug that now.
Ben: Yeah. It's pushing information to you. Like I would rather choose the information that's going to go in to my head, kind of like Sherlock Holmes where he didn't want Watson to tell him any more than he actually wanted to know. It's kind of like TV. You could go to the internet and you could pull up whatever, like Hulu and watch a five minute clip of the best of the best of whatever, the American elections, which at the time we're recording, happen tomorrow. So those are fresh on my mind. But rather than watching two hours of CNN where you just get whatever they decide to push you along with the 17 minutes of commercials that you'll see during that period of time. So, yeah. Just the fact that TV chooses what it is that you're going to watch for you makes me remiss to turn it on. Plus the remote itself has more fecal matter on it than the actual toilet seat in a hotel, if anybody was curious about that. Just so you know.
Melissa: That's disgusting. And have you tested that?
Ben: No. Somebody else has. I think it was like Consumer Reports, or some web site, had a test of what the dirtiest thing in a hotel room was and it's the TV remote of all things. I think part of it is because they just don't clean it as well as they do the toilet seat. ‘Cause it makes sense to clean a toilet, but some people just kind of forget about the remote. So, interesting. I recently published this article about I called “The Eleven Ways to Biohack a Hotel Room,” and you and I do a lot of the same things.
We unplug everything. I don't turn off the AC, but I travel with like a portable air humidifier that you can just plug in, and you can get the ones that diffuse essential oils too to kind of like kill two birds with one stone. But, yeah. Unplug everything. Unplug the alarm clock, unplug everything behind the bed. I even bring one of those like ethernet converters that lets you take the ethernet cable that a lot of times they have at the front desk of a hotel and you can plug it into your computer, and just turn the WiFi completely off. And then of course, there is the world famous trick to keep the light from coming through the crack in the curtains. You know that one, right?
Melissa: Well, what I use is I have, I don't know if you've seen, a lot of women have those hair clips and I clip the curtains together with a hair clip.
Ben: Nice. Yeah. I was going to say I use the hanger from the closet, and you put one side of a hanger on each part of the curtain, and it keeps the keeps the light from streaming in at 5:30 AM or some other ungodly hour when you're trying to sleep off jet lag. Well this is a lot of fun stuff. I could geek out on this stuff for hours with you, but I've been taking copious notes to everything from the Air Oasis air purifiers, to the vacuum cleaners, to the “Drunk Tank Pink” book, and of course to another book called “Mastering Your Mean Girl,” Melissa's no-BS guide to silencing your inner critic and becoming wildly wealthy, fabulously healthy, and bursting with love. How old is that book?
Melissa: It's literally brand new this year. It's only been out, and it was a #1 best-seller here in Australia and New Zealand when it first launched at the start of this year. It's not just for women, and I should really mention that. It's about, we all have that inner critic. We all have that fear-based, egoic limiting voice inside our head, the one that says we're not good enough, or we're not smart enough, or we can't do this, and it's about mastering that voice inside your head so that you can unlock your full potential and live the life of your dreams on your terms. So the book is for anyone. It's not just for women, but I do use a lot of female terminology, and I do call you beautiful the whole way through it.
Ben: Alright. So my wife's going to give me some really weird looks when “Mastering Your Mean Girl” shows up on my bed stand next to, what's up there right now. I think Brad Feld's book on venture capital, “The Multi-Orgasmic Man,” and then my gratitude journal are the three books there now. So we can throw “Mastering Your Mean Girl” in. I'll tell her you told me to.
Melissa: I will definitely send that to you and Jessa. For sure.Ben: You should, actually. I'd take it. Be a good Christmas present from Australia. Just be sure you sign it, okay? I won't accept it unless it's signed by the famous Melissa Ambrosini.
Melissa: Oh, I will definitely sign it for you. No worries.
Ben: Cool. I love it. Well, if you're listening in and you want access to the show notes, to Melissa's book, and she's got a really cool blog and website as well, and just a cool lifestyle, you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/melissa. And over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/melissa, again, M-E-L-I-S-S-A, you can access the show notes, her book, everything we've talked about, additional resources, and pretty much everything you need to biohack your own Feng Shui and transform your home into a little bit of a wellness sanctuary. So, Melissa, thanks for coming on the show and sharing this stuff with us.
Melissa: Pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Ben: Alright, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Melissa Ambrosini signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.com. Have a healthy week.
You’ve been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.
When you imagine the spaces where you feel the most inspired, rejuvenated and energized, you probably picture a retreat or wellness sanctuary.
But why not make your own home a complete wellness sanctuary?
Enter the concept of Feng Shui, which is a Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing everyone with the surrounding environment. My guest on today’s podcast is a complete Feng Shui freak who specializes in enhancing the energy of your external environment – especially your home, so that you can be more productive and more healthy in the place you probably spend the majority of your time.
Her name is Melissa Ambrosini, and she is the bestselling author of “Mastering Your Mean Girl: The No-BS Guide to Silencing Your Inner Critic and Becoming Wildly Wealthy, Fabulously Healthy, and Bursting with Love“, a speaker, entrepreneur and self-love teacher. Melissa teaches women how to master their inner “Mean Girl”, smash through limiting beliefs, and ditch the self-doubt so that they can start truly living the life of their dreams. Named a self-help guru by Elle Magazine her mission is to inspire women across the globe to create a heart-centered life one that’s wildly wealthy, fabulously healthy and bursting with love.
During our discussion, you’ll discover:
-Melissa’s special biohacks, tricks, tips and tools she specifically uses at her computer and with her recording equipment to keep her office Feng Shui “dialed in”…[9:30]
-Whether you should try to fix mold and fungus issues or just look for a different home…[17:00]
-Should you test a home or apartment before you move into it, and if so, what should you test for? [22:30]
-How you can create more negative ions in your home, and why you should do it…[29:00]
-What kind of plants Melissa has in her home that are specifically designed to detox the air…[33:20]
-How Himalayan salt lamps can completely change the health of the air in your home…[36:30]
-The special vacuum cleaner that Melissa uses to kill mold and fungi on carpet and flooring…[38:10]
-Why Melissa hired a woman to come to her house to do an “energy clearing”, and quantum physics proves this type of concept to actually work…[43:00 & 51:50]
-What Melissa does to improve the feng shui when she’s out of her element, like at a hotel…[50:50 & 58:30]
-And much more!
Resources from this episode:
–How To Biohack The Ultimate Healthy Home by Ben Greenfield
–The IrisTech software Ben mentions
–True To Form book for Foundation Training
–Ben’s interview with Dave Asprey about how to control mold in his home
–Ben’s “How To Detox Your Home” article
–Ben’s interview on healing frequencies
–Structured water filters than Ben uses
Hey Ben,
I was hoping you can help me find an item that you were promoting on one of your podcasts. You were talking about balancing your home and getting ride of negativity charged energy. I hope this was a good enough description.
What bracelet are you wearing there days for negative ION. I have one form ZeroPoint Encoder.
None yet. Working on designing one.