CFDS Episode 022 The Body Whisperer: Adventure Was My Missing Nutrient

Clean Food, Dirty Stories

How Fiona Robertson travelled the world on a shoestring, discovering her life path as she went. Plus the best travel food ever!

Hi everybody, I'm Barbara Fernandez, the Rocking Raw Chef, here with my Clean Food, Dirty Stories: one to entertain, the other to inspire.

I help people stamp out stress, depression and fatigue over at RockingRawChef.com, and today's title is:

Adventure was my missing nutrient

In addition to this story, at the end of this episode I'll share with you the best travel food I know. It's not only packed with nutrients and easy to carry everywhere, but it's also the best food to help eliminate parasites from the body.

OK enough hints from me, let's get on with the story.

I am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Fiona Robertson, the Body Whisperer, who helps people understand who they want to be. Fiona has travelled all over the world and has some amazing adventures to share with us which I think you will find very inspirational.

So Fiona, welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast!

Fiona: Yeah, thank you very much for having me. Thanks for inviting me. Nice to meet you here finally, face to face.

Me: Yes, exactly! Cause we've known each other for a while, right? But it's been like an internet based...

Fiona: An internet-based friendship, yeah, I know (laughs).

Fiona's story

Me: Super! So I know that you've got, you've had quite a lot of adventures, but I think you mentioned that your taste for adventure perhaps came from your childhood. Is that right? You said you felt quite different as a child, can you maybe explain why?

Fiona: Yeah, 4 years old we went to South Africa to live as a family. We kind of grew up with no shoes. So basically just kind of playing with lizards and centipedes and understanding all about nature and just wanting to be outside climbing trees, being a tomboy.

A different way to grow up

It was just a different way for me to grow up. And when we moved back to the UK, I realized I was just different. I wanted to be outside playing in different ways and not playing giggly, schoolgirl games.

Me: So how old were you when you moved back to the UK?

Fiona: I was nine. Yeah, nine, nine and a half, something like that. Just kind of old enough, over the formative years, you know, that I'd really got a different country and kind of life under my skin. You know, I'd learnt Afrikans, I'd learned there was another language, I'd learnt there were different things going on. We were in South Africa at the time of apartheid as well, so you get a lot of different experiences, you know? We travelled there too on holiday of course.

You see, I didn't think it was different, but it is, you're in a game park for a holiday and there's cheetas walking in the car park. It's exciting! And that's what my story's about, I didn't realize that adventure was so under my skin.

Into the military

Me: And so you said that you signed up to work with American Express in the military, is that right?

Fiona: Yeah, one of my first jobs when I finished college and school and everything, I didn't want to go on to be an interior designer. That was my dream. But when they mentioned to me that it was four years foundational course and then I could specialize, I was like, “You've got to be kidding me! I can't sit still for that long! I've gotta be out there doing something!”

I was interested in travel and so I got a job with American Express and it was on the American Air Force bases in the UK. So I started in High Wyckham and I was basically doing their travel tickets, their military travel tickets, then I ended up going and reliefing on the other different air force bases. So Greenham Common, Huntingdon, the ones in East Anglia, and just travelling around and doing that. Going and doing my travel, my specialist travel stuff for the American air force base.

A different world

It was cool because you walk into a different world. You go on the American an air force base and that land is owned by America. They have their happy hour, they have their bowling alleys, they have their shops, they have their own ways and cultures of doing things.

Me: Wow. That just strikes me as really weird, you know? Like I've never, I mean even though I've lived in the UK for quite a while now. I've never been on any of the bases, and so part of me always just thinks, 'you're not contributing to the local economy', you know.

Fiona: Oh they are, they don't all live on base, they live outside. But that was when I was nineteen, I started working on the American air force bases.

The perfect job in travel

Looking back now I just think what a perfect job for me. Working in travel and on an American air force base, you know?

Me: So you organized travel for them, is that right?

Fiona: I organized travel for them and basically with the old Prestel sets and the old ABC travel guide books we found air flights and all that kind of stuff. So I took all my exams for APTA travel. After that I went on to do incentive travel and after that I went on to sort of venue finding. Anything to do with people and traveling and moving. But incentive travel was very interesting, I liked that too.

Me: What's incentive travel?

Fiona: Imagine that you've got top salesmen and saleswomen and they're given an incentive. If they're the top team in the whole company in the whole of the country, then they get sent to some glorious destination and everything's paid for. So we used to organize all that, you know? With the ground agents and meals and restaurants. Down to exactly what kind of napkins would be on the table. It was like organizing a big wedding every few months, you know? Everything from the chauffeurs to the taxis to the kind of color-coordinating the flowers, everything.

Import, export and video cameras

Me: And then you went into a very different kind of business, right? With video cameras or something?

Fiona: Yeah, I had another job in between time working for actually Ocean Pacific and I was on the export desk there. And I used to do all the certificates of export, and that was interesting for me. Because other people couldn't understand what these guys were saying, and I was just able to tune into what maybe the Greeks or the Spanish or the...You know, they were speaking pidgin English and wanting to be understood and then I was able to tune in somehow to what they were actually trying to tell me.

And then I went on selling military cameras into industry, and again I worked with a lot of people from all over the world. So I listened to their languages and I listened to their accents and I understood about their cultures

Me: So what happened when you wanted to go travelling? Because you said that at one point you had this business and then you sold it, is that right?

Fiona: Yeah, from running the company I was working with I then set myself up for myself and found all my own clients and things and did that for two or three years. And I woke up one morning and thought 'God do I want to be doing this in five years' time? No! Two years? No!'

Time to go travelling

Me: So was there any specific incident that prompted this decision? Or was it literally from one day to the next waking up and going 'I don't want to do this'?

Fiona: I thought that the company that I'd set up was my baby. I'd been with this other guy who was in the same industry though he ran a different company. So when we split up I think that was probably one of the kick up the backsides. I just said, “No, this is my baby, I want to hang onto this baby, this company” because Vision Source was my baby.

But then when I woke up in the morning I just went, 'oh my God what am I doing? Do I really want to be doing this?' And when it was such a loud, resounding 'no', I couldn't not listen to that. I really had to think, 'no I'm just not going to be satisfied, it's going to kill me if I stay in this office and do this'. Even though it was doing really, really well.

I managed to find somebody who was interested in selling, I sold the company to them. I rented my house out and I just took a rucksack and started travelling around the world.

Me: So then how did you start? I think you said you bought an around the world ticket or something? I'm asking because, you know, if there's somebody listening who thinks 'oh I'd really like to travel around the world', I think some people wouldn't even know where to start, you know?

A pink-haired rebel going round the world

Fiona: Yeah, I was thirty-nine, I dyed my hair pink.

Me: That's hilarious!

Fiona: I was like wanting to be rebellious. Most people when they see the photographs kind of say, “Were you fifteen then?” and I say “No, thirty-nine, dyed my hair pink”. And I had my rucksack, a friend just said, you know, grab a rucksack. You buy a ticket that goes one direction around the world, and you can't go backwards so you always find a destination that forwards. And I think I didn't go that off the grid really. Thinking about it in retrospect it was fairly obvious.

South Africa I started because that's where I've still got family living. Then, you know, Thailand, Singapore, Fiji, Cook, New Zealand, Australia and America. I really did not want that to end. That was just...no way.

Me: But I think at the beginning I mean I imagine you would have had a decent amount of money to do that from the sale of your business, right? At some point did the money run out? I ask because you said that at one point you were just very trusting and that you thought, 'OK how can I just go to this new place with no money and nowhere to stay?'

Fiona: I didn't...the business wasn't sold until I came back from my travels. They owed me the money. They were supposed to be selling my cameras and selling everything while I was away, and they just basically didn't. So I had to sort of deal with things until I came back. And my house that was rented only rented for a few months rather than for the whole year. So yes.

Me: Wow.

How travelling can be cheaper than staying at home

Fiona: In fact it's cheaper to travel around the world than it is to live in a house and try and support yourself.

Me: Whoa, you're kidding! Really?

Fiona: No, I mean you stay in backpackers. You've got no material needs, you've got your shorts, your t-shirts, your toothbrush, you bring everything back to real, real basics. So you've got a book, you finish a book, you swap it for another book. It's just cheap. You stay in youth hostels, you meet fantastic people. Some of them obviously an awful lot younger than I was at the time. I was thirty-nine, they were all on their first out of university experience, they were travelling the world finding out who they were. And I didn't do that till later, but...

Then you've also got different generations who decide to do it. But staying in youth hostels, they're pretty much...they're a good crowd of people. And when I really kind of left my rucksack in the first place, I locked it up, I tied it up, I did all the things that I thought I had to do. And then I walked out of the youth hostel and I went, 'no, damnit, I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna unlock everything. We're all in the same boat, we're all from different countries, we're all in the same boat. I've been travelling on an open-sided bus in a tent, on ants' nests and all the rest of it. This is not gonna be a problem for me'.

A successful mental mindset

So mental mindset: “I' am not gonna have any problems with anybody touching any of my stuff. I got nothing they want to steal, we're all in the same boat, we've all got like...” We had our old CD players, we didn't have mobile phones and those kind of things then.

Me: That's true, yeah.

Fiona: And I carried my passport and my money and my tickets with me in a little bumbag as we had then. Everybody was in the same boat and if you're that open and trusting and you believe you're OK, this is very much the work that I do now too funnily enough, but if you have that vibration running through you, you'll be OK. If you have the vibration running through you like...

People before I left wanted to say to me, “Oh my God! Really? You're going to this country? Well don't let anybody put anything in your bag” and “don't put your bag out of your sight” and really all their fears they were trying to put onto me before I left.

But if you have this kind of like 'Do you know what? We're all in the same boat, we're all wanting to be experiencing travel and different places and different people and food and...

Me: Yeah. So then...Wow! I'm still reeling actually from the previous thing you said about it being cheaper to, you know, travel the world and stay all over the place than to stay in one place, you know. I'm going to be thinking about that for a while!

On to Reiki training

But I know that you said that at some point you started just like doing things for people to kind of pay your way, right?

Fiona: Yeah, it wasn't so much to pay my way but it was just to experiment. During my travels I decided that I would finish off my Reiki. That was a funny story as well.

So I'd been travelling, I ended up in Cape Town and I decided to go for Reiki because I enjoyed Reiki. And this guy gave me Reiki and I was completely knocked out. When I sort of came round, he said, “Oh something came to me when I was doing your Reiki. If you're interested in pursuing, maybe finishing off your masters or something like that to do with Reiki, I know a very good woman. She lives in Prince Albert.”

And he told me where that was and I thought 'well that's kind of up from where my dad lives on the wilderness in South Africa, I could go and see Valentine and have some time with her'.

So I thought about it for a while and I rang, and I rang, and I rang, and I remember writing in my journal, “Bloody hell! This woman is impossible to get hold of!”

Changing your thought patterns

I scrubbed that out and I put “This woman is easy to get hold of”. I did have a phone, beg your pardon, one of the first kind of Nokia phones. She rang me. So imagine – I'd been saying all this time, 'this woman is really hard to get hold of'.

Me: Yeah, and of course she was then.

Fiona: Just by scrubbing out that whole thought pattern and changing my thought pattern, I'd actually said 'this woman's gonna be...and she's really easy to get hold of'. My phone then rang and she rang me to say, “Great, I've had your messages. When can you come?”

Me: Super! Wow!

Travelling with the flow

Fiona: So I was on this roll when I was travelling of trying to be this very open, flowing person who wanted to experience how easy and safe the world was. Rocking up in an airport like in Australia, I hadn't got any Australian dollars, I hadn't got anywhere to stay. It was kind of one o'clock in the morning when we landed. I wanted to find out how easy it was just by allowing myself to feel easy.

Me: And so what happened in that Australian airport at one in the morning?

Fiona: Oh God it couldn't have been easier! They are so set up. Maybe in another country it would have been harder.

So you arrive in the airport and most people had somewhere to stay and they were being picked up by people. I walked in and I thought, 'oh a cash machine, fine, pop my card in, get cash out, that's easy'. By the cash machine there's a desk there, a welcome desk, there's brochures everywhere for youth hostels and everything. And I thought, 'I wonder if I ring them now if anybody would be on the desk, or if I should have to sleep in the airport'. Which I had done before.

And so I rang and somebody said, “Yeah, yeah, no problem, we can come and pick you up, we'll see if there's anybody else coming this way. We'll be there in about an hour”. And they were. Super polite, super easy. Picked up my bags, picked me up, took me to the youth hostel in Perth. Got me a room and that was it.

Don't plan too much in advance

Me: Wow. So generally you found that that's the way it worked, right? With the trusting and that it would be easy and things just kind of like fell into place?

Fiona: I was told before I left by a girlfriend of mine also called Fiona. She said to me, “Don't book too much up in advance because so many things are changing the whole time. Try not to plan too much because if you plan, you're planning out what the universe might have to deliver to you. Something more fun, something more exciting.”

Me: Oh yeah, that makes total sense.

Fiona: So don't plan too much. I kind of took it from the other point of view, that I'm a planner, I'm a scheduler, I'm a bulldozer. I'll make things happen. And I was really trying to be experiencing from a different perspective. This was my opportunity to really experience that to live in the flow.

And that's really what I want to try and do in my everyday life as a mom now as well. Be more open and understanding and intuitive to...'OK so why did that happen then? Why are they ill?' So this is what brought me...OK raw food kind of came in there as well, but it really brought me to sort of try and interpret what I was being shown.

And if you happen to get arrested...

Me: Yeah. So did you have moments when you were travelling when the flow just stopped? And you started to feel fear or you were just like 'Oh this isn't working” or... If you did, how did you get back into flow?

Fiona: Yeah, I'm trying to think about it. I got complacent, I was in Thailand and I stayed longer than I should so I was kind of arrested when I left.

Me: Oh my God, you were arrested!

Fiona: Yeah, because I'd overstayed my visa. You're only allowed to stay there a certain length of time so when I left, I just handed in my passport. And they pulled me off to this room and they really interrogated me and I'm just like, 'I was just kind of complacent and I didn't really think about it' and “Well I'm leaving now so just let me go!” (laughs)

Me: And so what happened? Did they let you go?

Fiona: They let me go, but they made me wait it out. I think I missed that flight so I had to get another one or something. Yeah, they wanted to really make a point there that you can't be complacent. So I thought OK... I wasn't really in charge of looking at my dates in that respect.

When you have to push a little

Another time was when I was in Australia. I was coming down the west coast of Australia and it became a bit of a rush. So I knew that my visa ended at a certain date, I had to be in Sydney so that I could get my flight to New Zealand. The people I was travelling with were under no speed whatsoever. So I realized then 'I have to do something, I have to move this forward faster'. Then I became out of the flow and I was very proactive into getting things moving. And I don't know what would have happened if I'd just bummed along, I don't know.

Me: Well yeah but I mean, but then you...that was kind of necessary, right?

Fiona: Yeah.

A Thailand detox adventure

Me: Sometimes you have to do that right? And then you said that at one point you said you kind of discovered raw food and detox and you started coaching girls on your travels?

Fiona: I did, that was really fun.

Me: How did that happen?

Fiona: I was in Thailand and I'd done Thai massage, Thai cooking. And I'd said to the girl that I'd met when I was travelling...I said “God, you know we need to be doing something that we would never, ever dream about doing when we went home”. She said, “Yeah I agree, we need to do something that's kind of off the wall”. I said, “Exactly!”

I walked into this bar just to order a water and there was a leaflet on the desk that said The Sanctuary. And it was for detoxing. So I took the flyer and I said, “This really, really hits me! Let's go and try this!” I spoke to the guy behind the bar and he said it's a really cool place in Koh Pang Yang.

That's where we went and did detoxing, and they had a fantastic raw restaurant. I'd never experienced raw food before. So we did the detox and I learned what I could from Moon, who was the guy who ran the place and the time. I looked at these menus of these foods and of course your tastebuds change when you do a detox. This was a full detox, colon cleanse, doing enemas, coffee enemas and everything else. Met some fantastic people, had some great conversations, we slept a lot.

Simple food for radiant results

We met all sorts of shamans, all sorts of stuff. And then I realized afterwards that myself and my friend, our bodies had completely changed, our body temperature had changed.

In about three weeks after that, we went for two weeks to another island and we did absolutely nothing. We just ate very, very simply, just raw food. So tomatoes and everything. The restaurants there were very confused. We didn't want the Thai food, we just said, “Basic, plain plate of tomatoes, that's all we want”. So we learned how to say that and we were doing that. We radically shifted some weight and we radically...our bodies changed and our whole energy was completely different. I was like, 'geez I like this! I get this! I feel awesome, I feel radiant!' We were just having so much fun!

The coaching begins

Me: So then you started coaching girls? To help them...

Fiona: Yeah then in the next place I went to I met some young girls. And a couple of them had said, “We're on our last leg”. They were kind of going the other way around the world. And one of them had kind of said, “You know, I'm a nurse and I left that because I wanted to find myself, I wanted to find out what I really wanted to do. And here I am on the last leg of my journey and I don't think I've found myself at all!”

Magical questions

I said, “Oh, OK”. So I just started asking her some questions, and I set her some tasks for the evening. I said, “What do you want to do?” And she said, “I've got no idea!” I set her some tasks for example, I think one of them was 'a hundred and one things that make you happy'. How easy. And setting out what her perfect day would include. They were two of the simplest tasks that I thought that she might actually do or might actually enjoy doing.

And the next morning when we were kind of...She was leaving and I was just having breakfast. And she was like, “Oh my God!” She said, “I totally get what I wish I'd known before. I know what it is that I want, I know what makes me happy, I know this and I know that and I know the other” and I was like 'oh my God'. And then just other conversations, it just seemed to be natural for me that when I was speaking to somebody...Not telling them what they should do, but kind of like, 'have you ever thought about what it is you'd like to do? What it is...Who you'd like to be, what you'd like to wear? How you'd like to sound, speak? Do you enjoy singing? Dancing? What is it?' All the different things that make you who you want to be.

Me: Wow.

Fiona: It came from that, really. Just having conversations. Nothing structured, but just allowing people to find out for themselves what they liked about life, about being alive.

Finding a travel partner

Me: And then at one point you met your Dutch partner, right? How did that happen?

Fiona: Yes, we met in Australia and we just started travelling together. We were going the same route together. Very interesting conversations. He allowed me to be very profound and very deep. And I found something new about myself as well, which normally I would not have had those kind of conversations with people. In a very deep, delving, wondering, curious, inquisitive, wanting to know more. So that was kind of refreshing and probably why we stuck together for so long because we allowed each other to have those kind of conversations. And I found myself a different kind of person. That I didn't agree with everything that he said, or I had an opinion. I found my strength from having those kind of conversations too, I'd had a strong interior. And I found that I knew what I wanted, let's put it that way.

Back home and pregnant

Me: I know at some point your trip around the world ended. And then you were...you were back at home feeling sad, right? But then you were...you started travelling again when you were three months pregnant, is that right?

Fiona: (laughs) Yeah, I got back to my house in Oxford. We stayed there for a while and I'm just like, 'God, I don't want to be here because I'm gonna end up doing what I used to do and I don't want to do that'. The world's a bigger place, you know?

So I was three months pregnant, I was age 40, and I said “Right, that's it. We're gonna take a caravan, and we're gonna find somewhere that makes my heart melt. That really fills my heart, that makes me feel fulfilled”.

Me: Wow, what did your partner say? Was he surprised? Or was he like 'yup'...

Fiona: He was cool for that, he's now back in Holland, he's not here with me in France. He couldn't make it work for himself. But that's OK. So that was it. He said, 'yeah, great! Let's have an adventure'.

An adventure to find your ideal home

We took a caravan and basically I had a tick list of the things that we wanted. So what would you want if you had everything you could possibly imagine? You'd want the sea and you'd want the mountains. And you'd want the outdoor life because South Africa's under my skin. I'd have the plants in the garden, hibiscus plants and palm trees. It would be very green.

So we started travelling, you know, down the coastal route of France, and kind of 'does this place? No. This place doesn't feel good. Does this place?' And “How will you know when you find it?” he used to keep saying. “I'll just know, I'll just know”.

Me: And so how long were you travelling before you found it? Because most people wouldn't leave when they were three months pregnant, right? Cause they'd be thinking about 'oh my God'...

No tests, no scans

Fiona: I didn't have any tests, I didn't have any scans, I didn't have anything. And I was huge, I had like a huge baseball, like a beach ball stuck out in front of me. My son ended up being five kilos, he was a big boy. But I was a very happy mom, and I was just really, really happy being pregnant and travelling.

Me: And so where was he born? Was he born before...

Fiona: He was born in Holland. So we stayed here, we found the place, we found Biarritz Saint Jean De Luz. And I imagined us living here what it would be like. We both had tears in our eyes and it just felt so homely, we had left and we'd come back. And when we came back it felt like we'd come home. So it was all feeling-based.

Me: Yeah, I'm the same, I'm very feeling-based so I can totally relate to that.

No French, no job, no baby knowledge...

Fiona: And so then we found the house and then we went back to Holland. We had Micah in Holland, we lived in a holiday home for two months. Micah was my eldest who's now twelve. He was one month old when we moved back here. I knew nothing about babies, I knew zip! Nothing! Nada! I had his sister who helped me go shopping and all the rest of it. And I was breastfeeding and I thought, 'Well what else do I need to know?' I probably sound like such a hippy!

Then we came here, we didn't speak French, we didn't have a job, we had a house, a big house. And we had a baby, and my big dog, he was with us as well, Milo. I sometimes wonder how I managed but I used to speak to my spirit animal and for some reason she used to guide me through and make me feel very comfortable and very safe. And that's how I did it.

Me: Wow. And then...well, you speak French now, right?

Fiona: I don't think I could ever call myself a good speaking French person. I do my best.

Me: Well yeah but you make the effort, right? You do what you can, right?

Fiona: Oh yeah, I make myself understood. And even funnily enough when we first moved here he would say to me, “What did they say?” I'd say, “I couldn't repeat it, I don't know what they said. But I know it's OK. And we need to do this, this and this”. It was just like an infusion.

Me: Yeah, well like it was when you heard people speaking with different accents before, right? That's cool.

Fiona: So I was here on an adventure.

The world can come to you

Me: Well and I know that you said that you kind of had the world come to you, right?

Fiona: Correct, correct.

Me: So what happened there?

Fiona: What a great thing.

Me: And how did you start that, actually?

Fiona: My partner at the time was trying to work in Holland and travel. And I just said, “This isn't working, let me have a go”. I'd just had my second baby and he'd just stopped breastfeeding. And I opened up Retreat Biarritz, which is basically a detox retreat. I was running it from home, we had two studios that we'd built. People were staying in the studios and I was basically doing for them what I'd learnt to do when I was in the Sanctuary.

So basically they're doing three day fast, colon cleanse, learning all about raw food. We did raw food kitchen. Then I used to take them hiking in the mountains, I used to take them to the beach, I took them to the hammam. We took them to the local markets. Just so that they could have a holiday experience while they were here.

Me: That's fantastic, that's really great. Wow. So do you still...what do you do now? I know you do a lot of things, but do you still run the retreats now?

Detox retreats

Fiona: I still run the retreats for small groups of people. Sometimes individuals come, and again from all around the world. I mean I've had ladies from Greece, America, Australia, Russia. And they just find me, God knows how they find me. They come and they go, “I'd really like to come and work with you”. And I'm like, “OK do you just want a detox? I can just do a straight detox for you”.

But at some point always the conversation comes up. They're in an old story or they're stuck, you know? 'I used to have a body like this' and 'I don't understand why my body does this'. And then the body whispering seems to sort of come in, and we have that intuitively guided conversation that helps them understand more about their body.

Me: So then how does the body whispering work? Can you give us just sort of like a short, I don't know, a little brief idea?

How body whispering works

Fiona: Oooh, yeah, how does it work! Goodness me! Basically a lot of the ladies who come, they are stuck in a particular story. There's something that they haven't digested emotionally. It could be that they're feeling anger, but then I kind of go beyond that, what's under that. And if you're feeling anger or resentment and things, often what I'm feeling is that people are feeling very disconnected. They're not feeling any connection to other people, but they're not feeling safe.

So one of the main things I do is I help them to feel what it feels like to feel safe. And most people, they have no idea what their safe place feels like. When they can discover what their safe place feels like, you've almost got something to back into when things don't feel comfortable for you. When the shit's hitting the fan or you're at a dinner table or there's a conversation going on that you're not feeling comfortable with, you can kind of go, 'hang on a second, where am I?'

Tuning into your body

Zone in – some people might call it being centered or whatever, but you zone in and tune into yourself. You get out of your thinking, analyzing, bulldozing head and you get into your body. So you reconnect with your body and you go, 'wow, there I am'.

And it's like 'OK so what's kicking off at the moment? Does it have anything to do with me?' And your body is able to kind of respond to you when you understand how your body works. Your body would kind of say to you, “It's got nothing to do with you”.

But you can pick up who it is in the room that's really got the energy, the strongest energy in the room that's affecting you. And you can say, 'OK so if that's the person, has what they've got going on got anything to do with me? No. Back off'. You can back off, you can get back in your own energy.

How most of us calm our nerves

What I found was I used to overeat. When I was in the company of my ex particularly. He had a very chaotic mind unless he was focused, he was ultra, ultra focused, but otherwise he was chaotic. Very argumentative, a devil's advocate. But when he was kicking off, I would find that I would overeat because I wanted to shut that off.

Me: Oh wow, OK.

Fiona: And I calmed down my nerves... The best and the quickest way to calm down your nerves when you're stressed is for a lot of people to eat. When we don't feel safe, we eat. And our body is protecting us by having the chemical reaction that goes on, the hormones that are released in the body, they lay down fat. That's the body protecting itself. Basically the adrenaline and everything that's going on...

There are toxins that run through our body, and I didn't realize how overvigilant I was because of my childhood. Certain things that happened there. I didn't realize how overvigilant I was and how aware I was of feeling empathically what was going on around me. So my only way to control that was food.

Discovering how you really feel

That doesn't really tell you what body whispering is. Body whispering for me, when I'm on a call with somebody, if I'm talking to them, I'm tuning in to them. So I can teach them how they feel. Basically ninety-nine percent of anybody who's around doesn't have a clue how they feel. They think, 'oh God that doesn't feel nice' but they automatically go into the thing that makes them feel better which is eating. Or drinking, or smoking, or shopping or whatever it is. I concentrate purely with people to do with food.

So basically I can connect in with them and I'm saying “OK how do you feel about that situation?” And they go into their heads and they start describing it in mental ways. I'm like “OK fine, now bring yourself into your body because you're mentally describing and giving me mental feedback. Bring it back from your body. What are you feeling in your body?”

And often they'll pick something up but I'm able to help them hone in to what the feeling really is so that they can recognize it the next time.

Me: Yeah, I get it, you're teaching people basically how to...

Fiona: Read their bodies.

Me: Read their bodies, yeah. That's very cool.

Fiona: And also what's happening to me is that when I'm reading their body... Even over Skype, it doesn't have to be live, even over Skype. I can say, “OK so I'm picking up...So a thought came to me, I've just been asked to ask you this question. What does this got to do with that?” or “Would this resonate with you?” So I'm allowing myself to be open that I'm picking up something for them.

A body scan offer

Me: Wow. And so I know that you have something pretty cool going on at the moment which is a body scan offer I think. Do you want to say something about that?

Fiona: Yeah, I offer people if they're interested to find out what the undercurrent is that's going on through their body. So basically I help people understand the undercurrent that's going on. There's nothing more responsive to your thoughts than your body.

That being said, if you don't know what you're thinking, then how can you possibly change your thoughts? So often people are saying mantras or they're saying positive thoughts. But the undercurrent that goes on behind that is often very subconscious. I call it on a soul level, when you have total disbelief on that ever happening for you. It could be to do with money, but I talk to people about their bodies.

How it works

So what I ask people to do if they're really interested is they can come forward and they can have a body scan. I can have half an hour with them, I ask them some questions. They're very kind of open, big questions that allow me to see where they're coming from. And for example what makes them really happy or really sad, and then I can gauge what's going on. I can gauge their stress levels, and I can feed back to them what's going on and what's the most likely reason things are not working for them. Even if they've been dieting and detoxing and exercising for years. But there's something going on in their bodies that they haven't allowed themselves to let go of. They're still hanging onto something and it's hanging onto their body.

Me: And so if people want to know more about that, where's the best place for them to find you and to look at that offer?

Where to find Fiona

Fiona: OK I have my website which is fionarobertson dot co. And I don't know how we can do that, but...

Me: Well I'll link to things in the show notes anyway.

Fiona: Yeah, I'll send you a link to the body scan so that people can come through and they can test out the body scan. Basically have a very happy-go-lucky conversation with me. And yeah, just find out a little bit more about who you are and what your body's asking for, funnily enough. What she needs, what she wants and what she's lacking the most. And it's not nutrients on a vitamin and mineral scale, it's nutrients of other descriptions.

Me: Wow super, OK. And is that a free consultation, or...?

Fiona: Yeah.

Me: OK. I thought so, I just wanted to make sure I said it because some people, that's...they'll want to know that. And then, yeah, hopefully...Well I'm sure that there'll be a lot of people interested in that because I mean I just think that's fascinating!

Well thank you so much Fiona for being here to share your story!

Fiona: Oh, thanks!

Shed your baggage

Me: It's been quite a...it's certainly given me a lot to think about around... Well around world travel, really, because I love travelling and I have travelled quite a bit. But I'm gearing up to do some more in the future with not very much baggage at all, so that's...

Fiona: Oh, so nice to get rid of your baggage! And what a nice analogy as well, get rid of all your baggage!

Me: Yup, all kinds of baggage! (laughs)

So thank you so much for that inspiration. It's been really great to talk to you!

Fiona: Thank you so much for inviting me, thank you so much.

Me: You're very welcome, thank you, have a super, super day!

The best travel food

Right, so fantastic! I hope you enjoyed that story. And I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you the best travel food that I know. And that food is...dates!

Dates are an amazing food. They're easily portable, you can just pop some into a bag and put them in your suitcase. You can even carry them on a plane with you – at least as of today you can still do that.

Properties of dates

Now in terms of properties of dates, the first thing about dates is that they are amazing for the digestive system. This is because they are one of the best foods for getting rid of parasites. They basically bind onto and then help sweep away all kinds of nasty stuff: parasites, heavy metals, bad bacteria, viruses, fungus and especially Candida. And if you've got a tendency to constipation, dates can help there too.

In addition, contrary to what you might think as they're very sweet, they're excellent for helping to balance blood sugar. The fruit sugar that they contain also helps feed the muscles and refuel the brain – so they're a great brain food too. As well as a great food for sport.

And if you often feel stressed, dates can help you there as well. They contain almost 70 bioactive minerals that support the adrenals as they work to help us face various life challenges. On top of that, they've got a huge amount of amino acids which elevates their levels of potassium which in turn helps stop formation of excess lactic acid. Another good reason why they're really good for sport, as well as anti-stress.

They're also said to be abundant in anti-cancer properties, particularly for abdominal cancer.

And because dates are so high in nutrition, they can help with weight control. For example, some Muslims eat dates with water to break a fast before they eat anything else and one benefit to that is that it helps avoid overeating at that first meal which I think is really cool.

Why dates are the best travel food

Another very cool thing about dates is that if like Fiona you want to go on a travelling adventure and you're not quite sure about how you'll find food, some people say that a wrapped up date in your pocket or in your bag can act like a good luck travel charm. It can ensure you'll always find something to eat. Of course yes you can always eat the date itself, but some say that this little fruit can help you find more than that.

For those who want to know what exact nutrients dates contain, well there are a lot. But the ones I'll mention here in addition to potassium are calcium, iron, phosphorus, sodium, magnesium and zinc, as well as vitamin K, vitamin A, thiamin, niacin and riboflavin. It's got loads of stuff.

How to eat dates

As to how to eat dates, well you just grab a handful, right? Be sure though to remove the pit inside first please, we don't want an impromptu trip to the dentist. And just 4 to 6 dates a day can give you excellent benefits.

They're also one of the key ingredients in many recipes for things like energy balls. So for example you can blitz some dates in a food processor with some nuts and maybe a bit of dried coconut for an instant snack. And if you'd like more recipes where you can indulge in their sweetness, I'll post the link to my 5-Minute Desserts recipe ebook below the show notes for this episode.

Which brings us to the end of this week's story! I hope you enjoyed it!

And if you've got a crazy, true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day or enhanced your particular situation), I'd love to hear from you!

If you enjoy my stories and want to hear more, join us and subscribe! I share one crazy yet true story a week. And if you've got any questions, just pop them in the comments! And if you're listening on iTunes, do give me a review, that would be awesome.

I hope you have an amazing day, thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!

RESOURCES

Link to 5-Minute Desserts and other recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/

Article on dates including links to studies and other articles: https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/fruit/health-benefits-of-dates.html

Fiona's website: www.fionarobertson.co

For your free Body Scan session, book a time with Fiona here: https://fionarobertson.acuityscheduling.com/

Fiona's bio

Fiona Robertson, Author, Creator of the Home Detox Box, Retreat Biarritz, and a Body Whisperer intuitive holistic coach - supporting women as they release, reset and re connect with their bodies. I assist the body to consciously re constructing itself from the inside out, releasing the emotions and stress that cause the body to hold onto weight and create digestive and long lasting physical symptoms.