Essential Fatty Acids: An Interview With Udo Erasmus
Table of Contents
Today you are in for a special treat! I interviewed a very special guest recently and would love to share our conversation with you!
My guest was none other than Udo Erasmus, founder of “Udo’s Choice” and author of the book Fats That Heal Fats that Kill, which has sold over 250,000 copies. I happen to have one of those copies!
He is a trailblazer in the health and wellness industry and founder of the healthy fats movement. As an acclaimed author and speaker, Udo has an 8-step process that takes into consideration all of the elements of nature and human nature, including physical health, mental health, presence and awareness, life energy, and being in harmony with nature and humanity.
Udo’s background includes studies in biochemistry, genetics, biology, and nutrition as well as having a master’s degree in counselling psychology. Welcome to the show, Udo!
It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show!
Udo: When you say all that, I think - wow, I think I went to school way too long!
Me: Well, before we get started, I’d like to remind listeners to stay tuned to the end of this show to discover how they can access their free gift, generously gifted by Udo.
Now, many listeners probably recognize the name of a line of products found at their local health food store called Udo’s oil. — Some of them may be utilizing theses oils now. But before we start talking about essential fatty acids, I’d like to start at the beginning - with your story and inspirational journey. For listeners who may not know, can you please tell us how your personal journey began?
Udo: Well, the long story is I was born during the Second World War. I was a refugee kid when I was two years old, fleeing from the Communists who were chasing us in tanks and trucks. And the Allies, the good guys, were shooting at us from planes. They were using the refugees as target practice. And there was mostly women, young with young children on horse drawn hay wagons on dirt roads - no military presence. But that’s what happens in war. And it was very chaotic. And it kind of alerted me very early to how bad things can get.
So when I was six years old, I listened to adults argue, and I thought what they argued about was really trivial. And this thought occurred to me - man, there must be a way that people can live in harmony, and I’m going to find out how. That’s been my driver all my life.
Me: From six years old.
Udo: From six years old. And I wasn’t on it every day. I got sidetracked and distracted, you know, shiny new shiny objects. So I explored everything. But I always came back to that idea there must be a way to live together in harmony. We live in a time where maybe that’s a really important question to get an answer to. So I’m prepared for that.
The short story is, in 1980 I got poisoned by pesticides. My marriage had broken up and I was ready to kill something and I was really upset. So I took a job as a pesticide sprayer because I had gotten the license to do that in a gardening job. And I was super careless. I’d walk barefoot over the lawns I sprayed rather than wear rubber boots. I did it in a bathing suit because it was a summer job. The wind would drift a spray on my back. And after three years I got poisoned.
When I got poisoned, I went to the doctor and said what do you have for pesticide poisoning? And she said nothing. That was the day the penny dropped for me.
That thought - oh my god, my health really is my responsibility. And I got really interested in knowing that the body’s made out of food, water, air and sunlight. I got really interested in health from that perspective, and I got stuck on oils, because that was the most confusing area. And I decided that I would make sense out of that area. That’s how it all started.
Me: Well, we’re very grateful that you did! And that is such a powerful statement - that we must take responsibility for our own health.
Udo: Yeah, absolutely.
Me: So you are known as a pioneer in the healthy fats movement. So, how did you discover the power of essential fatty acids?
Udo: Well, when I was looking for self help, after I got poisoned, I was looking at everything. So I was looking at minerals and vitamins and amino acids and fats and saunas and fasting, and everything, right?
But I got stuck on oils, because it was confusing. And there was one particular thing that drove me crazy. There was a study that said, Omega-6’s are essential, which means we can’t make them from anything else, but we have to have them to live and be healthy. So therefore, they have to come in from outside. And then number two, if we don’t get enough, we can’t stay healthy. Now our health goes down, we get deficiency symptoms, that are degenerative in nature, they get worse with time, and if we don’t get enough of any essential nutrient long enough, we die.
Knowing these are the essential building blocks for body construction, maintenance and repair. This is THE stuff. Everything we do in nutrition is built around the importance of these essential nutrients.
And then the third part of the definition is if you’re not getting enough, and you’re going down, before you die, because death, by definition is not reversible, so before you die, you bring enough back into your diet that’s too low, then all the symptoms you got from not getting enough are reversed. Because life knows how to make a body that works, provided we take responsibility here - at our mouth, to make sure that the essential building blocks land in our body so life can do its job.
There are 42 of those essential building blocks; 18 minerals, 13 vitamins, 9 central amino acids that come from proteins, and two essential fatty acids that come from fats.
So I was looking at all of that. And the year after I got poisoned, I got poisoned in 1980, it was established that omega-3’s are essential nutrients, by the definition I just gave. And that 99% of the population doesn’t get enough for optimum health. And that every cell needs them. And that they’re a nightmare to work with because they’re super, super sensitive to damage by light, oxygen and heat.
And when I found that out, I said, Oh my God, if we could make oils with health in mind, and could bring the missing omega-3’s back to the population, we could help almost everybody. And it was like I went off like a firecracker. It was like, oh my god, I finally found something really worth doing. This is worth doing. And we could help almost everybody.
And that became the inspiration behind that whole project. Literally, I was just blown away by the possibility of helping so many people. And I was broke for 15 years while I was building it. Because it was never about the money. It was about something that really needed to be done. And then the money got better after that. But it wasn’t the money that drove it. It was the idea that we could make life better for so many people. And that was perfect for my six year old thinking there must be a better way to live than this. And I love when I get to do something that makes life better than it is for people, including myself, as well.
Me: Yeah, that’s absolutely beautiful. So you designed machinery that actually started to extract the oils. Tell us about that. How did you how did you design this?
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Udo: Okay, so what brought that to mind was I got this study that said Omega-6 is essential. And then there was another study that said Omega-6 gives you cancer and kills you. And I’m going what? It's essential, you have to have it for health, and then it gives you cancer and kills you? How’s that even possible? It drove me nuts.
And it was trying to figure out why it would be that contradiction that made me look deeper into how oils are made. And they’re made very sloppy. They’re treated with Drano - with window washing acids - then they’re bleached. Then they go rancid and smell bad then they have to be deodorized at frying temperature. And this happens to oils before they go into plastic bottles, before they go on the shelf, before you even buy it, that oil has already been fried.
And I said, No. We’ve got to make oils with health in mind. We need to protect them from light, from oxygen, from heat. That requires them to make a really tight system, so I developed that system. I grew up on farms a lot during my childhood, and I knew how to tinker with stuff. If you know what the issues are, then you find a way to deal with it. So I developed a method for doing that.
And then we had engineers make custom made parts for the machines because they’re not available in the oil industry, so we had to make them. The idea is that no light, no oxygen, and no heat gets to the oil from the time it’s enclosed in the seed, which is good packaging - nature’s packaging is very good - through the pressing, the filtering, the settling, the filling, and until it’s in a brown glass bottle, in a box, in the fridge, in the dark - to preserve its freshness.
We started with flax oil, because it’s the richest source of Omega-3’s and we wanted to return the missing omega-3s. But I became Omega-6 deficient on flax oil, because it has so much three and so little six - a four to one ratio that if you use it by itself, you don’t get enough Omega-6s. And then out of that came making a blend that is better balanced. So you get omega-3’s made with health in mind, you’ve dumped the Omega-6’s you’ve got in your diet because they’re damaged. Replace them with Omega-6’s also made with health in mind, in the right ratio. And in glass because plastic swells when you put oil in it and plastic leeches into oil quicker than into water. It’s the worst packaging material for oils - plastics. Of course everything’s in plastic.
Then I worked with a bunch of people and we created flaxseed oil in 1986. And then Udo’s oil, the blend, in 1994.
Me: Beautiful. And I’m really glad that you talked about all that, the background, and the difference between healthy omega-6’s and unhealthy Omega-6’s, because when people hear omega-6, they think one thing. They don’t realize there is a difference between where it comes from or how you get it from your diet. And that is crucial in understanding. Many of my listeners have heard me talk about what omega-3’s are and Omega 3 essential fatty acids in the past, but it’s really good to hear a different perspective. So, I’m glad that you were able to explain what those essential fatty acids are.
Udo: Yeah. So more health problems come from damaged oils than any other part of nutrition. And more health benefits come from making the oil change that your body needs. And there are two things we have to do. One is we have to bring in the missing omega-3’s, but they’re very sensitive - they’re five times more sensitive than the Omega-6’s, so they need to be very carefully made. That’s why the system has to be built so tight. And then the other one, the Omega-6’s are damaged, so we need to switch them out for Omega-6’s that are also made with health in mind.
That was the idea of the way we put it together. You’ve got to deal with both. One issue is damaging the oils and the other issue is not getting enough of the right kind.
Me: Absolutely. And do you know what ratio Udo’s Oil has of omega-6's to omega-3’s?
Udo: Of course. I made the decision on that! There is twice as much omega-3 as omega 6. And that’s simply because we get so little of them. Our ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 in the diet is like 1 to 10, 1 to 20, and sometimes 1 to 50 in favour of omega-6’s, but those omega-6’s are partially damaged.
So we basically started from scratch. Number one, make them both made with health in mind. Number two, get them in the right ratio. And 4:1 is flax. It has four times more omega-3, which is too high. So we brought it down to two. The highest Omega-3 traditional diet that I know is 2 1/2:1. So we brought it just below that to 2:1. And that’s the ratio where we’ve always seen the best results. That’s why we use that ratio.
There are other people who have different ideas about about what’s the best ratio, like in the research, but nobody’s done as much work with actual people in actual situations as we have. And we’ve tried all of them. You get the best results when the ratio is twice as rich in Omega-3 as Omega-6 consistently, around the world. We’ve been in 40 countries.
Me: I came across a quote of yours that says, "Omega 3’s are the single, most widespread essential nutrient deficiency of our time…
Udo: Yep.
Me: …Every cell in your body requires them for health and for life.” Can you expand on that? Why is it a problem to have an Omega-3 deficiency?
Udo: Because if you don’t get enough long enough, you die. And before you die, everything falls apart, because every cell needs it. So everything falls apart. That’s what degenerative means. It means it’s falling apart - every cell.
So there are a ton of symptoms and the research that’s now being done, it hadn’t been done when we started 40 years ago, but now there’s been a lot of research done on omega-3’s. And the research, if you summarize it in one sentence, says if you increase omega-3’s in your diet, provided they’re not damaged and don’t contain toxic molecules, if you increase omega-3’s in your diet, you can improve virtually every major degenerative condition of our time.
Me: That is a pretty powerful statement.
Udo: Yeah, now, I didn’t say “cure.” Because omega-3’s will only reverse problems that come from not getting enough Omega-3.
If you’re not getting enough magnesium, omega-3’s won't fix that - you’ve got to get magnesium to fix that. If you’re not getting enough vitamin C, omega-3’s won't fix it - you need more vitamin C. So that means, in all of these conditions that are improved by increasing omega-3’s, to the extent they improve, to that extent they were caused by omega-3 deficiency. It’s very, very precise the way the molecules work.
Me: Right. So can you give us a few give us a handful of those conditions or symptoms that indicate an Omega-3 deficiency?
Udo: Yeah, well, according to the research, they’re super important in pregnancy. So when a woman is pregnant, she needs to maintain her brain, which has a lot of omega-3’s in it, and she needs to manufacture another brain, the baby’s brain. And they both require omega-3’s. So women become depleted if they’re not getting enough in their diet. And they’ve shown that every child gets less than the previous child. This means the oldest child, on average, is the smartest and they get dumber as they go down.
Me: Oh no! I’m the fourth child of four!
Udo: So am I, and I’m smarter than all the rest! But they’re not here to prove me wrong. And each child depletes the mother further. They think this is the reason why women get certain conditions 2 to 15 times more frequently than men, including depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, collagen inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. And the depletion of omega-3’s are the biggest factor in that, they think.
So their recommendation is women need to make sure they get a reliable source of both essential fatty acids, I add to that “made with health in mind,” in their diet, both for their own health and the health of their children. So that’s one.
Skin. Both essential fatty acids together form a barrier in the skin against the loss of moisture, and you end up getting soft, smooth, velvety skin. That’s nice, right? The best way to oil your skin is from within. And when you take about a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day, mixed in food, spread out over the course of the day, you end up with soft, smooth, velvety skin and you don’t need to put gunk on the outside. So that’s the second one.
They inhibit the bone breakdown cells, the osteoclasts - they inhibit their function, so they keep bone stronger.
They increase in athletes when they do their sport to exhaustion. Within 30 days of starting on a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day, their stamina to exhaustion goes up by 40 to 60% on average. We’ve done that both in strength and endurance sports. For marathons, they used to all carb load and then run and then run out of carbs on mile 20 and then drag their butts across the finish line.
We said, no, no, you’re doing it wrong. You need to carb deplete. You need to tank up on on essential fatty acids, especially omega-3’s and you need to have your fat burning mechanisms on full bore when you start the race. That idea was completely against the grain of what people thought it was supposed to be done. Not everybody followed us, some of them just shook their head and walked off. But the ones who did, came back and they said that was awesome - after I finished the marathon, I felt like I had the energy to do another one! Super for endurance. Good fats are the best fuel.
But when you go on keto diets, they don’t work long term if you don’t make sure you bring in and optimize both Omega-3 and Omega-6 in the right ratio in that diet. So then the Keto diet works long term. Most keto diets don’t pay attention to essential fatty acids, which is the only thing you need from the fat sector.
Me: Absolutely.
Udo: And let’s see what else… they lower the major cardiovascular risk factors and are anti inflammatory. Out of the omega-3’s, alpha linolenic acid, the body makes EPA and DHA if you optimize your intake. Sometimes people say the body can’t convert the plant omega-3’s into fish oils. But that’s because most people don’t get enough plant omega-3’s. If you give him enough, then the conversion is quite effective into EPA and DHA, which is what fish oil and krill oil contain.
But beyond that, into hormones, eicosanoid hormones, they regulate cell activity on a moment to moment basis everywhere in the body, but also into very powerful antioxidants called protectants. And very powerful anti inflammatories called resolvents, because they resolve inflammation. And feel good molecules, in combination with protein, are made out of omega-3’s. They’re called endocannabinoids. And they also make maricines which enhance immune function. And there’s lots more things going on in the arena of oxylipids, which are partially oxidized fat molecules made out of essential fatty acids.
It’s like every week they find another one and figure out what the function is of that one. They do so many things in the body. So many things!
Me: And they are a component, those essential fatty acids, are a component of every single cell.
Udo: Yes, they are. They’re part of the structure of cell membranes. If you have more omega-6, but especially omega-3’s in the cells, they actually improve hormone function at the cell receptor level. They make the receptors work better. So that means you need less hormones to get the job done, which means you will age slower. I mean, it just goes on and on and on.
Me: And this is definitely something that I suggest for a lot of my clients on a regular basis, because omega’s are so important and have such a multitude of benefits.
Udo: They can raise IQ by three to nine points, so they make you able to process quicker. Elevate mood. Lift depression. I mean, the list goes on and on. And we’ve not only seen that, from the research, but we’ve seen it in practice, too. You know, people who couldn’t focus - kids who couldn’t focus in school, give them three tablespoons of the oil by body weight and about six months later, she’s focusing, she’s getting A’s. Everything’s working.
Me: Are you talking about ADHD specifically?
Udo: Well, the one I’m talking about now is a woman who called me - when I started this, I was the expert in the field, so I put my phone number in the back of my book because I felt I should make myself available for people if they needed help. So she calls and says my daughter is 13 and she used to get A’s in school and for some reason now she can’t focus and she can’t focus for more than five minutes and her grades are dropping. So I asked her what are you doing, what is she eating, and we went through all of that. And I said, what does she weigh? 140 pounds. And so I said, Okay, give her three tablespoons and see what happens. So she calls me back and she’s crying on the phone. She's just, you know, I can’t believe it! We gave her three tablespoons and now she can focus 45 minutes on her computer and get her work done and she’s back to getting straight A’s. And, you know, I’ve been doing this for 40 years. So consistently, we get the same positive feedback. And sometimes people talk about benefits they got that never occurred to me that would be in the ballpark.
Me: So give us one example.
Udo: Oh, there are some autoimmune conditions that I had to look up because I had never heard of them. And they say, yeah, Oh, my God this happened, and this, and this. You know, it’s almost like, yeah, we don’t really know what all they do.
We now know they’re essential. We have a pretty good idea of what is optimum. Although in the literature, there’s lots of argument. People don’t agree on how much is optimal. For me, it comes from practical experience over 40 years, working with people in 40 countries. And so I’m pretty sure of what I’ve seen.
I knew it would be a good product to bring back the Omega-3’s and -6’s made with health in mind. But I didn’t know it was going to be as good as it’s turned out to be! So it’s always nice. It makes my day. I hear a good story and think, wow, really? How cool is that?
And we never made claims for it because we’re not allowed to make claims for it. I can tell you what the research says, but I can’t make claims for the product. What I can tell you is omega-3 and Omega-6 are essential, you’re not getting enough omega-3’s, likely, and you’re likely getting omega-6’s that are damaged.
If you switch out the damaged for “made with health in mind” and you bring in the missing omega-3’s, something should get better because you’ve just raised your standard.
Your body rebuilds itself 98% every year. So if you raise your standard today for your intake of food, water and air, you will have created 98% of your body to a higher standard within one year. That’s called healing. That’s why healing is possible - because the body’s always turning over. Every atom is taken out, replaced, taken out, replaced, taken out, replaced. You don’t even notice, it’s so subtle.
Me: Yes.
Udo: Except you know you have to eat. That’s why you need to eat. Food contains the building materials you’re giving life to do the job. And so it’s been pretty interesting to be able to “luck” into this - because I kind of “lucked” into it. I was at the right place at the right time with my pesticide poisoning looking for solutions. And then this thing came in, and then this contradiction, and then, oh my god, we could help so many people.
Me: And that's really powerful.
Udo: It feels really good to be able to help people.
Me: Yeah. What's your daily usage of omegas? Do you use the Udo’s Oil every single day yourself?
Udo: Yeah, the way I use it - I’m pretty primitive. I’m a wild boy. So I eat a lot of raw foods, mostly plant based. It happens to work really well for me. And I’ve gone in that direction more and more as I’ve gotten older. I’m going to be 80 next week.
And so, what I do is I get tahini (ground sesame) - the tahini settles down and the oil sits on top. I dump the oil out because it’s only Omega-6’s, and I put my oil in it because it’s Omega-3 and Omega-6 in the right ratio and has other things in it. Then I mix that up and I dip my vegetables in it. I eat the vegetables covered with tahini with Udo's Oil.
Me: Beautiful.
Udo: It's a nice way to take it. I like the oil with food. Some people take it off a spoon by itself but I think it’s better when it’s with food because it enhances flavours and it improves the absorption of oil-soluble nutrients. So it’s always better with food.
Me: Yeah. Good. Excellent. Well, we have that is just amazing. We’ve done so much today. And there’s so much more that I would love to talk to you about. In the interest of time, mental health is something that is very near and dear to my heart, especially when we’re referring to mental health and modern times like depression. You alluded to that earlier.
Udo: Yeah.
Me: And self-destructive behaviours, and perhaps even trauma. Again, a lot of my clients are dealing with past either emotional or physical traumas and various things like that. Can we address any of that? Would you speak to, say, depression? Let’s start there?
Udo: Yeah, well, okay. I’m going to do it a little different. When it comes to the physical aspects of improving health, I would say oils made with health in mind, rich in Omega-3 and -6, provide energy for healing.
Sometimes we call it the God molecule. If God is energy, these are the molecules that have the most energy. They give you stable energy, but high energy. So they make all your cells do whatever their jobs are, more effectively - maybe 40 to 60% more effectively. So when it comes to depression and anxiety and fear, and confusion, that’s mental. That’s thought based, and sometimes thought and emotion based.
So then, we have to talk a little more broadly about human nature.
The foundation of every human being is awareness - life comes out of awareness. And awareness, it’s main attribute is Peace. Because when you get into the place of awareness, there is no content. It’s really quiet. There’s nothing going on. And you have peace. That peace cannot be affected by any drama, any trauma, any situation, any change in the external world, or the mental world of thoughts.
But our focus wanders out into the world and into our thoughts. And then we don’t feel that Peace. That Peace is actually the cure of your depression and your anxiety and everything.
And you have it always within you already. So the cure is to learn to get good at bringing your focus into the Peace that is unshakeably present. That is more you than you are. I don’t know how to say it. It’s more you than you are.
Out of that comes life energy. Life energy is solar energy that goes into plants. It’s stored in bonds between atoms. Some of those become your food molecules. You break those down, that solar energy is released. And now it’s called Life. Life energy. It’s the same solar energy, but it’s inside of you and is called life energy. And that life energy, weighs nothing but runs everything.
It is omnipresent in your body, “omnipotent” in your body - all powerful in your body, and everywhere present in your body and knows everything about you. Because it’s doing the whole job. You’re not doing it.
When you eat food, you pick the food, you chew it up, you swallow it, and after that you’re not in charge anymore. After that, life does what life does with whatever you give it to work with. That energy is unconditional love. And that energy is actually your personal essence. So your personal essence is unconditional love.
And that energy that is unconditional love can be seen inside, can be heard inside, can be felt inside. You see it as light, you hear it as sound, you feel it as love, and you can even taste it. Your senses monitor energy, usually outside. But in something like meditation or a stillness practice or a mindfulness practice, you actually bring your focus inside and discover what your senses turned inward are monitoring inside of you.
That unconditional love is the second cure for every mental illness. Because that unconditional love is not affected by what’s going on in your environment, or in your head.
Me: Well, and that’s the thing. I think the majority of people live in their head all the time. They don’t live in their heart. They don’t need from their heart. They live in their head. They focus on their thoughts and they’re more susceptible to external cues and external problems. Distractions.
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Udo: Reactions.
Me: Exactly.
Udo: Yeah, and so that’s the second.
The third is, I call it, “inspired creativity." That’s the shine of your life into the world. And that too, is beyond mental illness.
Me: So, what’s your recommendation of how someone can tap into that?
Udo: Okay, so the first thing is that if you have drama and stuff going on, and you are mostly trying to deal with a world that is always changing and sometimes feels like it’s changing too fast, you have to deal with that.
But because your dramas and traumas are present in you, mainly in your head, and the Peace and the unconditional love are also present in you at the same time, at least give them equal time.
Now I’m going to deal with my traumas. Now I’m going to deal with my peace.
And the deeper you go into what is unshakeable in you, the easier it becomes to let go of the stuff that bothers you. Now, if you have trauma, memories of trauma, or were treated in a way that human beings ought not to be treated, you have to spend some time processing that. So I don’t want to belittle the necessity of actually taking on the traumas and looking at it. But, especially if you can look at them from the place in you that was not affected by the trauma, then you can bring insight into the trauma that will help you be able to process it, let it go, and do the forgiving that you need to get yourself freed. Because you don’t forgive for the other person. You forgive so that you can move on. And then, as fast as you can, go back to living from life, from Peace, from love into the world, rather than in reaction from trauma, and then putting that back into the world.
Because it won’t change, like the world will change when we change. When peace becomes really important to all of us, there will be peace on this planet.
When unconditional love is what we live for, there will be a lot of love on this planet. And everybody, everything, will be taken care of.
It’s not that difficult. The difficult thing is for us to say okay, I’m gonna give my trauma this much time. And I’m gonna give myself, my more essential self this much time. And between the two, I like the Peace and the love better than the trauma so I’m going to give that more time.
And when you give all your time to your Peace and your love, then the trauma basically gets no energy and eventually resolves itself.
Me: Beautiful. I love that. And it is doable. It is something that everyone can do.
Udo: Yeah. I’m a war baby. I have peace.
I had trauma in my childhood. Everybody has trauma in their childhood. There is no perfect children. There’s no perfect parents. There’s no perfect situations. Growing up is hard. Life has challenges. That’s a fact for everybody. Right?
Me: Yeah, very true.
Udo: And at the same time, life has peace and life has love and we get to choose. To some extent some things happen to us where we didn’t have choice or feel we didn’t have choice.
But we have choice, as adults, to create the kind of life we want to live that we want to be an influence into the world. We have that choice.
As for the question of how, we had to learn how to externalize our senses. When we were babies in the womb, we didn’t externalize our senses because there was no place to go and nothing to do. Everything was done for us and we were relatively safe. We were just hanging out. You could say we were in deep meditation - in a little “Buddha tank.” I call it the Buddha tank. Deep meditation for nine months, and we weren’t bored. We had no words, we didn’t know who our mother was, we had no culture, and we had no religion. But we were alive.
And so we come into the world with our focus at rest, inside, in its source, in life, in awareness. Then we come into the world now we got to start to get to know the world. So we learned to externalize our senses. And we’ve become very good at it because we do that every day all the time. And we’re geared to
externalize our senses. Anytime something changes, we have to assess it and respond to it. Because it’s about survival. So we became really good at this and we completely neglected coming home. So what do you do?
Okay, you, create a safe place where you don’t have to worry about a dog coming to bite you or somebody stealing your doorknobs or whatever, right? So you created a safe place. And then you just sit down, and see how quiet you can become. See how still you could become. See how deeply still you could become. See how long you can stay there.
And while you’re doing that, breathe lightly. Slow it down a little and try to be present to what you experience inside the space that your body occupies.
It’s going to take time to get good at it because we haven’t practiced. I’ve been doing this for 50 years, so I’m pretty good at it. And then literally, you find your Peace, because it’s already there. You find that unconditional love because it’s already there. You find that inspired creativity, or purpose or whatever you call that, because it’s already there.
And the more you do that, the more that becomes where you live from.
Is it worth it?
Me: 100%!
Udo: Unbelievable. If we don’t do that, then we’re always going to drift towards crises and problems and wars.
There wouldn’t have been a Second World War for me to be a child refugee in if people had cultivated peace between the first and the second world wars. But they didn’t.
And that’s living ignorant of the Peace and the love that we have, that we own, that we are, means we’re going to be doing something else.
And then, when the doodoo starts hitting the fan, then all of a sudden, we cry oh God, oh, God, give us peace, give us peace. And then we think peace should sort of drift down on us automatically without any effort on our part. And at the same time we’re putting in a lot of effort building missiles, designing screws, designing fins, designing fuels, and designing targeting mechanisms in order to hurt people.
But we don’t want to do anything for peace. We want to leave that to go Oh, God, please bring me peace. You know, they say there are no atheists in foxholes.
Me: Right. Well, and I’m sure a lot of people don’t go there because it takes work. It takes effort.
Udo: Yeah, well, it actually it doesn’t take effort. It takes time.
Because, in a way, it’s like the effortless effort. When you sit really still, you’re actually trying to do nothing. But you're still breathing. So the breathing is your first doing. But you’re trying to do nothing.
So it's actually the least amount of work. Because being is not doing.
Me: It’s true. Yeah. Yeah.
Udo: So and being is more important than doing because you can be without doing, but you can’t do without being. So being is your foundation.
And if you’re not doing some kind of stillness practice, you’re living without foundation. And when you live without foundation, things get crazy. Because there’s no more values. But peace is a value. Unconditional love is a value.
So, that’s a pretty deep way of addressing mental health.
The point is that in everyone who’s mentally ill, there’s mental health living right next to the mental illness.
If you know that, this will be the first thing, once you know that, then you can look for the peace, so that you actually begin to have a choice of whether you go into the craziness or whether you go into the Peace.
And we’re not victims because, by design, we were given the mechanism for mental illness or, you can say, mental overstimulation. And we were given the mechanism for being able to step out of that into something where the the mind can’t go. You can’t be mentally ill in an area of your nature, where the mind can’t go. And that’s why it’s really powerful.
Me: Very true. Wow. That is pretty deep. But again, a really important message. Just that understanding that it is within each one of us. And we can choose. I use that word “choice” all the time with my clients. We can choose which brain we want to listen to. We can choose how we want to live.
Udo: And if you don’t know how and you don’t have choice, then you can choose to find out how. And practice and get better at it. And it’ll take time.
Me: Yeah, absolutely. Very good. Well, is there anything else that you would like to say to wrap up today, Udo? Anything you’d like the listeners to know?
Udo: Yeah. What people are looking for in the world, they already have inside.
If you look inside, if you take that time, if you want to make the world better, you don’t like the way things are going on in Europe these days, or what’s going on wherever like among governments or people trying to take your freedoms away, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what? What you want - that fulfills you is built in. How incredible is that?
Discover it. Enjoy it. Be grateful that you have this setup, made out of sunlight, air, water, and dust, yet to be a human being. Separate, they’re not that interesting. They’re okay. They’re interesting, but not that interesting. Now, this has all come together in this form. And you can have everything that a human experience is capable of, whether it’s singing and laughing and dancing and, running around, and thinking things, and being stupid, and making mistakes, and getting hurt. You know, all of this is possible because of the way it was so immaculately put together.
And the greatest gift - the greatest gift you could ever have is the one you’re sitting on.
I don’t mean your bum. I mean, literally, you’re sitting in the gift. The gift is sitting in you. And the more you do that, the more incredible the quality of your life is going to be. No matter what your past is, your history is where you come from, what your culture is, that is biological. And that’s the most incredible thing that you’ll ever have.
Me: Well, I couldn't agree more. Thank you so very much for sharing your time and your expertise with us.
And as promised, I would like to invite listeners to click on the affiliate link below to access their very generous free gift from Udo. It is a free online course to total mental health. So you can try to learn how to live your best self. Click the link and enter the code “your gift from Udo” to gain complete access to that course.
And I will also include your contact information and social media channels if I can, in case anyone would like to contact you directly. So thank you, again, Udo for being here. You have an amazing story. I’m so glad that you were able to share it with us today, nd I really appreciate it.
Udo: Thank you, Kelly. I really appreciate you putting this out. Otherwise I’d be in the bathroom talking to myself in the mirror.
Me: Very good. Well, thank you so much and stay well!
Udo: Thank you.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this interview I had with Udo Erasmus and that you found it helpful and informative. I also hoped you learned something that you can apply to your life or share with others.
If you’d like to contact Udo, check out his website at http://theudo.com. You can also find him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/udo-erasmus-78949314, Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/theudoerasmus/, and on Instagram at https://instagram.com/udoerasmus.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and value your feedback. Let me know what you think by dropping me a line or commenting below.
If you haven’t already done so, please sign up to receive my newsletters for more information about brain health, neuronutrition, lifestyle tips, and nutritional advice. Of course, if I can help you or a loved one with your nutritional needs, make an appointment to see me today!
As promised, here is the Affiliate Link to access the free online course “Total Mental Health:”
https://udoerasmus.com/NutriNerd
Click on the “Yes! I want to Save” button and enter the code YOURGIFTFROMUDO .
This code will expire on October 15th, 2022, so get started today!
[Medical Disclaimer]
Please consult with your doctor(s) before starting any new mental or physical health improvement program. The advice I offer is not intended to replace that of your medical practitioner. I am not a medical professional, nor am I qualified to diagnose, cure treat, or prevent disease. The advice I provide on this website is intended for a broad and diverse audience, and as such, deals with general lifestyle concepts, not specific healthcare advice. This material disclaims any liability or loss in connection with the advice expressed herein.