Konstanze: I am totally fascinated every time you talk because I learn more with everybody I talk to, I have the pleasure to have an acupuncturist in front of my house now who is heavily involved in Daoism, and he’s a priest, and he is part of a temple in China, and he’s American, and he’s an amazing person. I did an interview with him a few months ago and he helps me all the time and so much knowledge and he brings me tea from China and it’s incredible the history of China, so little…not so many people know about it anymore.

Rehmannia: They don’t, and I think it’s a bit tragic because Chinese civilization is an extremely spiritual civilization, I think it’s this impression of what they’ve done recently in Tibet is tarnish their reputation in the West, but on the whole, they’re a Daoist civilization, they take care of their people over there, you don’t see [inaudible 00:00:57] and untouchables and street people all over the streets, everyone is taken care of, they’re very…you know, and when I was there in 1985, there were people from the Chinese government that came and talked to me at times and they would always say the same thing, “We know you in the West think that our communist system is wrong,” and say that’s what they think, and you’d say, “Well, you see, we cannot let people starve so we don’t…”

We’ve lived on this land for over 5,000 years. We’ve been farming this land as a contiguous civilization for over 5,000 years. That means the land itself, the vitality of the land is now, you know, endangered although the Chinese know a lot about…they invented composting, they showed it to the Western world, dredging the minerals from the bottom of the creek and using their feces and everything, they know about all these things and all about humic acids for the soil. They are in the process of protecting the tonic herbs because they know that there’s propaganda in the West that says the tonic herbs, that Chinese herbs have chemicals and pesticides and heavy metals in them. You know, for one thing, plants don’t really take up heavy metals so that’s a misnomer, but pesticide residues are also working at the base, they go in there within a few days, but, and so, all you have to do is wash any residues off.

But in any case, the herbs that we get are collected from forests from the wild and the Chinese government, in order to protect the reputation and protect the integrity of TCM, which they consider a gift to the world, they’ve gone into regions where the herbs grow and they’ve traced the herbs back to their place of biological origin, which is where we get them, so the herbs are grown in the very soil that they evolved in, which is an important factor for, you know, integrity and efficacy of the herb, and health and strength of the herb. Well, they’ve taken those regions and now protected them. They are now UN-monitored by world…UN biospheres.

And so now this is more sophisticated than our organic certification system because now if you have an eco…If you have a biosphere, no pollutant factory can be allowed within 100 miles of its perimeter, or no chemical can be allowed within 100 miles of its perimeter so that there isn’t that bleaching of the glyphosates and the problems that we have seen with Monsanto seeds blowing into other people’s fields. The Chinese are way on top of this, and so they’re actually formulating a new designation called Di Dao [SP], which means from the place of biological origin, and Di Dao herbs…and I asked our supplier that you and I both get herbs from, I said, “Can you tell me which of the herbs are certified Di Dao? And he goes, “They all are.” I said, “Yeah?” He goes, “Because the Chinese government has mandated that all herbs, so all Chinese herbs sold on the market must be designated Di Dao.”

And so, you know, so that’s…I’m just…My screen went dark here. So yeah, our herbs are picked in forests, wild, and I guarantee you that you know these peasant-type people are extremely monetarily poor people, and by our standards, they go into the woods and walk miles back there to pick things off trees, pick that are wild, and pick the epimedium wild, and they will actually…in some cases, they’ll walk backwards and fix the path they…so no one…there’s this do no harm, and they’ve been doing this for 5,000 years. So if somebody came to them and said, “Hey, how about taking this and spray it all over the forest, it’ll make it get more,” they’d go, “Are you are crazy?” Plus, they can’t afford it anyway.

And the Chinese and the world’s top biologists from 5,000 years ago, they know better than to destroy the soil, at least, you know, of their forest and where they’re taking the wild herbs from, and there is a lot of efficacy. And then these people collect it and they take it to the villages and they put it on these big, flat wicker baskets and put it up on there, they stick these bamboo poles out their windows on those…you know, the villages go up the side of those plateaus, those fields, and they go…and the villages are like this, stepping up, and they have these bamboo poles that stick out and they slide those big bamboo trees out there for the herbs to dry in the sun. It’s actually phenomenal how, you know, this has not been modernized on purpose because of the love that the Chinese people have for the herbs and the integrity of them.

Now, here’s a thing, I wanna finalize this discussion with just like anything, folks, if you buy the cheap stuff, you get something that’s cheap and maybe tainted with chemicals. If you spend the money and you buy the high-quality stuff, you look into your sources, make sure that they know what they’re doing, find out where they’re sourcing from, look at certificates of analysis of this stuff that shows they’re clean, you can be guaranteed you’re getting very high-quality product. That’s the case with anything you buy in the world. You go to the grocery and buy the cheapest celery, and you go get the organic stuff grown locally and picked fresh, there’s a big difference. It’s the same with anything.

Konstanze: It has to do with energy and minerals and they’re all missing on farm stuff with pesticides, so you don’t get the same benefits at all. And I had your product tested by a lot of herbalists who took it and they all were like, “This is amazing what impact it has in the moment you take it.” But I never went into that detail with you about how they exactly farm it, and you have been there and I haven’t, so it’s great to hear. Thank you.

Rehmannia: Well, to discuss your point just now about the efficacy of the formulas, that I created your formulas for you, and then I created them based on my deep knowledge probably from past lives I know and then my training. Well, and here’s the thing for all of your viewers to see. Now, you’ve got a formula that contains, what, about 10 or 11 herbs in there, and some formulas and they have maybe 10 or 11 herbs, 9, 10, 11.

Konstanze: Perhaps maybe around five, around five.

Rehmannia: They can sometimes be up to 9 or 10, but really more ideally 5, 6, 7 herbs [inaudible 00:07:26]. Now, here’s the thing for your viewers to understand about this, they could go out to the health food store and buy a tincture of astragalus and maybe buy a tincture of [inaudible 00:07:41] and put that into some hot water and drink that in the morning, that’s all fine, those herbs have their benefits. But the beauty and the power and the sophistication of the Chinese “Materia Medica” is in the formulas that have been developed over thousands of years, when they found through trial and error over eons, that when you combine astragalus with ginseng or goji or Rhodiola or, you know, [inaudible 00:08:09] whatever, you get…the sum is more powerful than the parts, and that is the beauty of the alchemy of the Chinese herbalist, and which could only have developed over thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

And that is the gift that the Chinese people have given to the world that is precious, and we save people money because we have created the formula based on the proper ratios of those herbs, you use a certain amount of astragalus to a certain amount of Rhodiola. We know that stuff. We’ve been trained, so we provide the increments that produce the ratios that have the most benefit, and then we are providing this formula for people, saving them a lot of money from wanting to buying this and mismatching this and that. And it’s fun to be around the alchemist, I’m not saying don’t do that. For instance, someone could get your formula and go out and decide to add some…like a woman could get your formula and say, “Oh, I heard [inaudible 00:09:06] is good for like menstrual period and blood…and I think I could add a little more than that, I’m probably fine.”

Because the tonic herbs are kind of like a big salad bar, they go together really easily, they don’t contraindicate. And many times people ask me, “Well, when you make a formula, will this go bad if I use this formula of yours along with this formula at the same time?” Well, no, it’s really, the tonic herbs are like a big salad bar, you know, when you go to the salad bar, you wanna put it all on there. I know I do, I put everything on there, and it’s vegetarian.

Konstanze: Actually, I have people who ask me if they can mix the Superlative Beauty together with the Holy Body and the Sensual Supreme and they take it all together. I’m like, every one of the formula has 6, 7, 8 herbs, so you are making it 14 or 20 herbs plus other things to taste good. I just think it’s better to use one and then see the benefits of it before you start using another one.

Rehmannia: That is very important for people to really determine the actual benefits of the formula because again, we created it with the knowledge of knowing this is going to create this effect, and so it’s nice for people to be able to experience that. But then all I’m saying is that people decide to match a little and add here and there, the tonic herbs are highly benevolent and they do not contraindicate with each other. If there was an herb, and throughout Chinese history, that was found to have a negative side effect when combined with other herbs, that herb is immediately relegated down to an inferior class of herbs, and the tonic herbs that we use are the ones that have been proven through history to have no side effects even when used in combination.

Now, here’s the only thing that we teach people, the herbs have two basic energies, one called yin, and the other call yang. Yin means the taking in or holding, it’s the female energy, the quiet, the receptive female energy, that women always quiet and they are taking in and holding, receiving. That’s because they’re going to bear lives out of their body so they need to absorb, they’re like sponges of energy to…we call energy called jing, but so women are yin jing, they take in. Men are yang, and when we use yang jing, we have to go up and nail, we have to build a roof on the house so that the family is safe and covered from the rain, right. We have to take that yang energy, so we need our muscles toned.

So we make formulas that tonify yin for women, for blood, and then we have formulas that tonify yang for more of an athletic-type person, women or men. You know, are yin formula would be great for a vegan, vegetarian man too, or a guy that feels lethargic, has pale skin and maybe, you know, men can get anemic too. So when we make the formulas where they are either balanced, you know, usually the formula winds up 60% yin, 40% yang, or maybe as much as 30% yang, 60% to 70% yin for a woman to tonify yin, to replenish, an anti-aging formula, you know, to replenish from excess stress and all of that, post-childbirth, very good to do replenish, and that.

But you never give someone an herb, a formula that’s all yin. What happens is if you give a woman a formula of all yin herbs, she might get too damp because the yin herbs, they help with water retention, and women might start to develop edema. So you put yang jimg herbs in the yin formula to make sure that you never throw the pendulum too far and swing that seesaw too far in one direction. And that’s our job, but they’re balanced. A woman…well, a person who has been under a lot of…say they got hurt, say they were sick and they were ill and they had an accident, have been overworking and they’re depleted, they take a yin jing formula to replenish. But then once they’re replenished, they won’t get back out and get back to work, they take a yang jing formula.

And that’s really the only difference, you know? So if you wanted to…say, for instance, a person had a formula based on yin jing and one based on yang jing and they said, “Can I put these together?” You know, actually yes, it’s still not harmful. What it is though is you’re going to wind up getting replenishment and energy at the same time, you know, but it’s still not bad.

Konstanze: Wow, so many things I have no idea about, and it’s always great.

Rehmannia: All right, thank you, Konstanze.

Konstanze: I’ll talk to you soon.

Rehmannia: Bye.