A Force of Nature: Amandha Vollmer (ADV) on Laine’s Domain

Amandha: Well, it was, I was born in 1974, and I remember Christmases. I remember Easter. I was raised Roman Catholic, and my parents were… I had a mom and dad and a brother. I had, you know, the nuclear family. I didn’t have a lot of extended family. I had a couple of uncles and an aunt.

I didn’t have any cousins. My aunt never married. That was my dad’s is my dad’s sister The German side of my equation and my uncles also never had any children, so I was, you know, it was my brother and I growing up. And it was pretty typical in a lot of ways where, you know, went to school and I was very high achiever.

I was always very curious in my ways. I always wanted to know why I was here, what I was here for. I always felt I had a purpose, even from a small child. I was very clairvoyant as a small child, so I never really felt alone. I had my guide team with me, mainly my primary guide. I could see her, no one else could.

So I had the proverbial invisible child or, you know, the invisible somebody around the, the child. I would set dinner, you know, plates for her out and everything, and I thought that was normal, you know, as you do when no one says that it’s not. You just think it’s normal. So it was a little bit different in that way.

I was an avid reader. I actually believed, I don’t know where I got this belief from, but I believed that if books are written, we have to read every book. And one time I went to the one of the biggest libraries ever, and I was so overwhelmed because I’m like, “How am I…” I was doing math calculations.

I’m going, “How am I supposed to read all these books? This is ridiculous.” And I was, like, incensed about it. Like, “This is so unfair,” you know? “How could I possibly read all these books?” Fantastic. But I read a lot of them. I read as many as I possibly could. I usually had 10 books going at any given time and I did a lot of dance.

My mother kept me very occupied with activities and so I did ballet for 11 years, jazz and tap for seven years. I did some theater arts. I did some Spanish flamenco dancing and so I was very busy. I really got up and went to school and came home and did my homework and ate dinner and went to dance, and that was my growing up until really high school.

At the end of high school is when sort of, more shifts started to happen in … in my life. But that was… The, the early years were pretty, pretty simple. My brother was a little bit of a bully. So I was saving my allowance to go to Ireland, which I still haven’t done. And he would come and take my money.

He would beat me up and take my clothes. He was a hard guy. You know, that was just our dynamic. So I lost a lot of money to that guy. But-

Laine: Oh my God.

Amandha: My God But we were buddies for a long time you know, until he started splitting off and going completely different direction than I did as far as, like, knowledge and health and beliefs, so.

Laine: Mm-hmm. Well, so then when you were young, who was your greatest influence, or was there one?

Amandha: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, my parents of course. I mean, your parents are your I don’t think you can get away from it. Yeah. My dad was really influential for me because he took me to work when I was eight years old, and I started to learn that sort of very German work ethic very young.

I was very self-disciplined, and he taught me a lot, you know, about retail and business, and both my parents were entrepreneurs. So I think that modeling was really… I just thought that was normal. Like, why would you work a nine to five if you could just invent yourself and, you know, be creative?

And they were creative. My mom’s an interior decorator. My dad has been a house painter. He was working at paint, paper stores back then. So I was always exposed to some level of arts. I was very interested in arts. I started… I don’t remember when I started painting more seriously, but definitely at the beginning of high school, that’s what I thought my career trajectory was going to be like- was visual arts and so I’d say my parents definitely imprinted that, those ideologies, you know, with me. As far as outside, I had some really inspiring teachers. I had an English teacher that I really adored, and he adored me, and he was just really encouraging all the time. He was just like, “You’re such a good writer.”

I was writing children’s books even when I was little about, you know, rabbit families and little cute things like this, and I always loved animals. I was always exposed to a lot of animals. And I wrote a short story for him, and he gave me an A plus. I remember, and he came to me so excited, and he’s like, “You have to do this for your future.

You have to be an author.” And I was like, “Okay. Sure. That’s great.” So he was really inspiring. I remember him. You know, I had a… My grandparents, they were, you know, there for me. My oma, you know, they had kind of a harder life, and I really thought about that a lot because I was realizing how good I had it.

I always felt like I had it… So I was always grateful. I always thought I had it, really good. You know, we had a house. We had cars. We like, I had a bike. Like, we had things that back then in the ’90s, you know, you would think that’s really wealthy. But now it’s not the same. Like, now a lot of people have those things, but back then that was like, I felt very fortunate for that.

So I felt I didn’t squander it. I felt I was always working. For whatever came my way, I always was working to build upon it, and I think that is a natural mark of an entrepreneur. When you take something, when you have an opportunity, you don’t just squander it. You actually invest it and then grow upon the investment.

Amandha: And I always wanted to help people. I wanted to help animals, and so how could I do that? And that’s how my thinking naturally went.

Laine: Wow. Incredible. So, let’s say, as an adolescent, was there ever a period when you felt that you didn’t quite fit in the world around you?

Amandha: Well, I sort of had rose-colored glasses, and I ignored a lot of the negative things.

So I guess if I had focused on that, maybe I would have felt that way. Mm-hmm. But I just loved everybody, so I would hang out with the punks and the WAPs and the mods and the skaters and the nerds. I had friends in every group in, through my adolescence. I sort of leaned toward the skater group even though I was not good at skateboarding.

I had a banana board, that was it. And I, and maybe unique music. I was really interested in very unique like, more alternative music, you know, what it was called back then and poetry I was writing a lot of poetry, so, I leaned towards like the beat poets and things like this. But yeah I was an everybody’s girl.

Like, meaning I just got along with everybody, and adults, too.

When I was very young, I was that type of child that you might see on social medias these days that would just go up to everybody and say hi. Aw. Like, I would just go up to people and then my mom would be like, “Where’d she go?” And I would just keep going, “Hello, what’s your name?

What are you doing?” Like going up to just random strangers and talking to them. Aw. I was that kid. I actually thought, again, I had these ideas that I don’t know where they came from, but just like the reading all of the books I thought that I had to greet everybody because they’re all my equal, so I already, I, like if I’d be walking down the sidewalk, I thought it was a rule that you had to say hi and smile at everybody.

Like I didn’t, couldn’t even imagine just staring straight and not acknowledging that person. It took me a long time to realize that not everybody does that. So it was just in my nature, I think, part of it. And yeah, my adolescence was just, like I said, really busy and I didn’t feel like an outsider then.

I felt like I had so many friends. I had so many phone calls that my parents had to get me my own phone line. Yeah. That was, I was the teenager that was always on the phone, yeah.

Laine: Oh my God, this is incredible. So when did it happen that you began to realized that you think differently than your mainstream people?

Amandha: Yeah. That’s a good question. I mean, I don’t know if there was just one moment or anything like that. Yes, I think levels of awakening are just little pieces that build and then they sort of can crescendo. Mm-hmm. I would say some of the reading was really making me think about this world.

I was always very philosophical and also very interested in all world religions. I studied all the religions because I was like, “Okay, if we’re here, we came from somewhere. Somebody must have created us. We didn’t just, poof, spontaneously generate,” right? And being in the Catholic school system, this was grade 12, we had a world religions class, and that was extremely formative for me because it was the first time that I realized there were all these other religions. And like, for example, Hinduism and Daoism, I remember the moment where the teacher wrote on the chalkboard, said, “Here’s the, the idea of of Daoism,” and, you know, had this big ocean that she wrote and it said, “You’re a drop of this ocean,” and it’s all one.

It’s a oneness principle. I’m like, “I can get behind that.” I was like, “I like that.” And, you know, my curiosity was like, “Well, okay, they’re all different, but there’s also gotta be similarities.” And so I spent that year reading all the religious texts and trying to figure out the similarities between all the religions, and I found it.

I was like, “There’s a thread of same through every single one,” and that’s my belief system. That’s what I want to hone. That’s what I wanna carry. The rest of it didn’t click for me. Like, the rituals didn’t really- Yeah… you know? Like, I did confirmation. I I was… I did my communi- communion and my confirmation.

I did those processes, but they didn’t affect me. Like-… i didn’t understand them so much, you know? I’m like, “Why am I drinking the blood of some dude?”

It didn’t click for me like it would with others, so that’s where I went into a lot of these other religions.

And the ones that resonated with me the most were, like, Buddhism. Mm-hmm. A lot of Buddhism. Mm-hmm. In fact I eventually went on to formally practice Tibetan-style Buddhism for two years. That was after university. And, you know, I got what I needed. You know, I got that connection to the divine creator through those, that work that I did, just to find those connections.

So, that was a big shift, obviously spiritually shifting for me and then I do remember, I think it was my first year of university, reading Buckminster Fuller, and Bucky did it to me. There was just something that woke up inside of me when I remember I was on the bus. I don’t know where I was going, if I was going to or from school, but I was on the bus and I was like There’s the people of the sea and the people of the land, and that, and it, he started explaining it in this legal framework, and I’m like, and then that’s when I really started to pivot into studying law ’cause I’m like, “Okay, I’m seeing some, I’m just understanding there’s different sets of jurisdictions here.

Oh,” you know? And so it went from the study of religions to the study of philosophy bleeding into law, and I kinda started geeking out there for a while, for quite a many years starting around that time. So I think my shift really was happening, through those, those years, right into the end of high school into early university years.

Laine: Oh my goodness. I really wish we had a, had a class like that in my Catholic school.

Amandha: Oh, really? You didn’t? It was fascinating…

Laine: 12 years of it, but nothing. They would never have told us anything about other religions. … just didn’t happen and when I did the whole, the communion, I always pictured they’d give us that host and they’d put the host on your tongue.

And I’m thinking, “I’m… They told me not to chew it. I’d be chewing Jesus’s body,” you know? Yeah. Oh my God, I was so scared.

Amandha: I know. I remember the stations of the cross. There was one, one Palm Sunday, and something happened. And I just, I had a meta moment where I was, like, watching myself and watching everyone else, like, I had, you know, where I was, I had the second attention.

I was looking in this meta way of everything- yeah… and I’m like, “What are we doing?” Like- Yeah… ” why are we doing this?” You know? It just… I was watching the motions. I was going through the motions, but I said, there’s something wrong here. There’s something missing here.” Yes. You know?

And my parents chose this particular Roman Catholic Church because they really liked the priest. He was a really good man, you know? And I totally understand their reasoning for doing that because I liked him, too. He was a solid man, you know? And but then they, he died, and then the new, when the new priest came, it just sort of fizzled out.

I don’t know. It just wasn’t the same. And … we kind of we kind of dissolved away from that routine, the church routine, because of that change. Plus I was off to university by that point anyway, off to Alberta, so.

Laine: Wow. Wow. So it wasn’t really a harsh environment for you that schooling?

Amandha: No, I wouldn’t say.

I mean, I felt a little bit… I think looking back I definitely was different, but I didn’t know. Like, I wasn’t aware of that back then. I was always well, I never really had a boyfriend, and I kind of thought there’s something wrong with me there. Like, I was taller than a lot of the guys.

There was, like, a few guys who were really interested in me that I thought were gross, that I wasn’t interested in them. But there was no dating life for me, really. I had one boyfriend who didn’t, wasn’t, he was public school, and he was a little bit older and that didn’t last longer than a year really.

And then it wasn’t ’til university when I even started dating. So I kinda, it wasn’t that I thought anything was wrong with me, but I was just kind of, I don’t know. I was getting the idea maybe I’m too intense, maybe I’m too… I’m not that soft, demure. You know, I laugh big, I play big I, I act, I have fun, I work out at the gym.

Like maybe- Wow… they’re scared of me. I don’t know.

Laine: Wow. Wow. Could have been. A force of nature even then.

Amandha: Even then. But I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it.

Laine: You didn’t. Oh my God, yeah. Would lend- Yeah… a lot of confusion there. So, so was there anything that you believed about yourself at around university time that you no longer believe about yourself now?

Amandha: Well, university tends to lean left with a lot of its belief systems. Mm-hmm. It’s very… There’s a righteousness sort of imprinted in a lot of it because there’s a lot of young energy, and the youth… Well, I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying that the youth are more optimistic. They want changes.

They think they can bring about changes. It’s the right energy for youth. I think that’s the time where we dream big, we wanna invent, we wanna change the world. We see… We start to see the injustices. We wanna take actions on those injustices, and I was full on in that. I was as involved with as many things as I possibly could for my schedule.

Mm-hmm and like, I was involved with Greenpeace. I was involved with, like, the rights for the Tibetans, what happened with, you know, the Chinese takeover of Tibet. Mm-hmm. And I mean, I was really vocal. I was really political. I was very interested in all of our policies. I started to not like the government very much around that time.

You know, when you see corruption over, and over, you’re like this isn’t good.” I started to question medical ethics. Back then it was around the time I actually took a class on medical ethics- Mm-hmm… and compared and contrasted to what the book said ethics was supposed to be, and then what the reality- Oh

was. and I would say my views, as happens as we mature we don’t… That optimism, that idealism sort of changes. We get really into realism. So the way I was then, I’m not the way I am now with my approaches, right? With the way I want change or wanna make change. I’m not as loud and proud as I was back then, right?

But it was important because what I started to see around that time is the way my life archetype was. My life archetype, and everyone has one, and they’re all kinda different my life archetype always put me into coup, counter-coup. So it put me into, like, a swing of a pendulum into one side of the spectrum.

Mm-hmm. Then it would do a full swing for me into the other side of the spectrum-… so that I would really get an immersion into both sides, if you would, until I found this, like, neutral place which was a transformation place where I’d walk through the door into sort of the next, pendulum swing.

Sometimes they were little. Sometimes they were massive. Sometimes they took months. Sometimes they took years. It was always a surprise of how I would feel and I did notice, and I did start to realize probably in grade 11, grade 12, that I was really sensitive to stuff and it, I read a book by Judith Orloff, and it was called Second Sight, and that was also a very formative read for me because I realized that I wasn’t just weird in that way, that I was actually very empathic and very sensitive.

And I was picking up energies all over the place-… and embodying them, you know? I remember one day I was walking through a mall, and I must have had five different medical conditions just walking through this mall.

Laine: Oh my

Amandha: God. And I’m like, “I don’t have arthritis. Like, how am I limping right now?”

Or, you know, I felt like I was having a heart attack at one point. I had neck pain and back pain. I had knee pain. I was like, “What?” And then I left the space-… and it all went away. And I was like, “What’s wrong with me?” Like, the first thought is always like, “What’s wrong with me?” Not, “What’s going on out here?”

Right. Especially for women. Women are very trained in the culture to internalize the thing, right? Mm-hmm. Like, it must be something wrong with me, not anybody else. And so I did that, and, And I started to search and put out my feelers and ask my guides to direct me to some information because this…

something’s up and when I read her book, I went, “Oh I’m this person that she’s describing in this book.” Yes. And there’s a lot of us. Okay. All right. It’s called empathy. It’s called being an empath. I understand. So I started to learn a lot about energy work. That’s when it really started for me, like hands-on healing.

My dad was always really naturally doing that. Like, when someone was sick, he would just put his hands on people. They would get hot. He knew naturally what to do. He didn’t have to have training. He just knew that’s the thing you do, and I just watched him do it time and time again. So I already had that, and then throw the empath part in, and throw all the other little things I was learning, and I’m like, “Oh, this is a…

There’s an actual term for this. It’s called Reiki,” you know? It’s called- Yeah… magnified healing. It’s called… There’s all these different you know, formal training for this, and I started right before university learning some of that formal training. But most of it happened after university the majority of it.

Right before naturopathic colleges when I really ramped up all that sort of training because I knew that I also had that ability. My hands would get hot around people that were sick. And mainly for me it was animals. So sick animals would find me. They would find me everywhere. They would find me to cross over in my hands, or I would rescue them, heal them, whatever.

So I was doing that. Again, I just thought it was a normal, natural thing to do. But not everybody does that, I found out later.

So, that was another big sort of layer, I think, towards this healer trajectory.

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: Even though I was still planning to be an artist, even though, you know, I had decided, “Okay, maybe I’m gonna be a veterinarian now,” and I had to change my major in high school.

That was difficult to do. And but I was still gonna be a vet even through university. I thought it was just gonna be a veterinarian. I wanted to be a holistic veterinarian, but I still wanted to be a veterinarian because of this connection with animals- Mm-hmm… that I had found through, you know, understanding about energy healing and empathy.

Laine: Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. You floor me. So before you knew what your career was going to be, what problems in the world, were you already trying to understand, if any?

Amandha: All of them. I didn’t understand poverty. I didn’t understand why we had to have poverty. I didn’t understand why we had to have war.

I didn’t I didn’t understand the political takeovers of countries.

I cared about I was a vegan for a long time because I refused-… to eat animals because I thought it was disgusting how we treat animals. I wouldn’t even, I didn’t even wanna use paper products cause the way we deforest.

There was, there were a lot of them.

I started to become disgruntled about a lot of things in the world that we did. I would ride my bike instead of taking a car because I didn’t wanna pollute. Mm-hmm. You know, I would try to… I thought, back then I thought recycling was, like, be all, end all, you know, to solving the world’s problems.

But you know, I would be very diligent in my footprint and, like, even literally my footprint. Like, when I would walk, I’d make sure I didn’t step on ants. Like, I didn’t wanna kill anything. I didn’t wanna harm anything. It was just the way I was of being sensitive, I guess and yeah, I really remember that time as being getting a little bit angry.

Started getting a little more angry by the end of university because I started to really see the injustices. And I was angry because I was like, “Why doesn’t anybody else care?” You know?

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: Even when I tell them, this is my first realization that there’s conditioning and that you can’t just tell somebody the truth.

It’s not gonna be enough. I didn’t know that. But I was like, “Manja”. Well, like, what… Eat the knowledge, man. Like, why are you not absorbing this? Why are you not processing this?

I don’t understand that, yeah.

So it gave, I started to get frustrated and really out of alignment. By the time I graduated university,

I was pretty pissed off and unhappy from all of it and didn’t know what to do with myself really, because I had this degree that didn’t really line up with my beliefs, again, it was this interesting thing where, you know, I may have a degree in agricultural biotechnology. I was so against genetically modified organisms, you wouldn’t believe it.

Like, I was literally protesting that while I’m taking this degree, because, and I knew full well the problems, ’cause here I am, in the lab making these problems.

Laine: Oh, my God.

Amandha: But I knew my pattern already, so I’m like, “Okay. I think I’m here because I need the experience of really immersive, you know, realizations, and that’s going to bring weight to when I do make changes and when I do educate,” right?

Because when you have the experience, it brings that weighted energy-… with it, right? And like I remember how I never got a job with any of those big ag corporations because I hated them all. And every time I was in an interview, I would be like on their asses. I’d be like, “So how do you get up in the morning?”

Like, you know, how do you live with yourself doing this?” You know?

Laine: Yes. I’m like…

Amandha: Like, that’s the interview. So needless to say, I wasn’t getting jobs in my field because, you know, this was the prerequisite that I needed to get to go to vet school. And in the meantime, I had to work, but I couldn’t use the thing.

And so I remember one of my ag biotech actual classes, and we had a representative from Monsanto come in and give a lecture. I wish I could… I wish there was, like, video… I wish it was like, you know, how it is now where everything’s videoed, ’cause my face would’ve been priceless. So I’m sitting there, you know, like- Yeah.

I smell a big fart coming off of you, buddy. You know? And he’s telling us how GMO’s gonna save the world and- Ugh… feed the poor, and this spiel of propaganda coming out of this guy’s mouth and my teacher, I put my hand up at questions at the end, right? My teacher just goes like this. “No, don’t do it.” He’s like, “Do you want to?”

I’m like, “I don’t fucking care. I’m doing it.” And I stood up and I just broke his entire… Like, with logic, I broke him. Like, I picked on every illogical statement that he said, and he… You could almost see him shrinking as I’m speaking, and the whole class is like.

Laine: Oh my God.

Amandha: And I tore a strip of that guy.

And I still passed my class, but needless to say, I think they knew where I stood … genetically modified foods. You know, I’m like, “Oh, so that means you have to make the farmer buy the seed every single time because you have you know, non-determinant seed, and that’s interesting and what about when it drifts into other farmers’ fields, and then you sue them because they’re growing your GMO crop all by accident?

That sounds really like you’re feeding the world and caring about the world, you know?” I just it was

Laine: on and on. Oh, my God.

Amandha: It was good.

Laine: Classic.

Amandha: I wish it was recorded. Yeah.

Laine: Oh, my God, so do I. This is just absolutely every, the moment that everybody wants who hates genetically modified anything. Yeah

so how did you then segue into going to homeopathic college?

Amandha: Naturopathic college, yeah.

Laine: Oh, I’m sorry.

Amandha: That’s okay. I also was gonna do homeopathic college as well because that was really one of… Energy work, energy medicine was all my first loves. It was homeopathy. It was color therapy. It was hands-on healing.

It was Reiki, that was all my first introduction into holistic medicine and then of course plant life and so forth. That, plants happened a little bit later, but it happened because of one of my mentors my main mentor I would say. So what happened was once I graduated from university, my boyfriend, who was my fiance at the time, he hadn’t finished his degree at Lethbridge, and I had to find work.

And he was living in Calgary. He’s from Calgary. So I was sort of following him around. Wherever he was, I would go and you know, while he finished. And so I went to Calgary. I stayed there one summer. Then I moved to Edmonton after that because that’s where he went for one year, and then I also was living in Montreal area for a year cause he did a visitor year at Concordia.

So I just followed him where he was going until he was finished and in Edmonton I met… Well, first of all, I got a job at University of Alberta. I was KLAS registered, and that is basically a lab assistant position, and it’s in vivisection. It’s vivisection and lab animal sciences. So, again, that’s that pendulum swing where I am in a place I do not wanna be, where I see, though, but I see and I saw how absolutely fraudulent the majority of science that’s being done.

I saw what it was firsthand, you know? And I don’t think anyone could have told me. I think being in it like that really, I was like, “Oh, so I see how you guys, I see how this works. Okay. This is one scam after another. This is one… This is all about how can we get a drug to market. This isn’t real pure science.”

“This is where can I, what can I hypothesize to get grant money, not what does the world need,” you know? It was just massaged data excluding data when you don’t like it. That’s not science. I was in where they had, you know, this is ironic too containment level three.

I was in a containment level bio unit three. Which means when you go in, you have to shower, you have to put on the whole kit, you have to have a breathing tube, right? You go and do the work. Then when you come out, you gotta shower, you gotta change everything. All the scrubs have to go, you know, in the incinerator or whatever.

Like, the amount of waste also, as someone who was really environmentally, you know, astute, pissed me off. It just, the amount of death, the amount of waste, the amount of… The whole industry just turned me off. And there were techs there, technicians there, who were traumatized because they had to euthanize the animals when the experiments were done.

I had to euthanize a ton of animals and it’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking and it’ Yeah, that’s a whole other thing, but that really woke me up to science being not quite what we think. Broke that illusion and then but I also got a volunteer position at a veterinary place just down where I was living, and it was Dr. Steven Marsden and his wife and she was also a veterinarian, but he was a veterinarian and a naturopath and a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. Like, he was so smart. He went to China to learn. Like, they couldn’t have had a better mentor, honestly. And when I didn’t get into veterinary college because, you know, I’m a bit of a big mouth without a filter, so when I see

when I see big, fat bull crap sitting in front of me, I’m like, “Hey, there’s big, fat bull crap.” And they’re like, “You can’t do that.” So I didn’t get in because of that. I was apparently a quack. I think that was the only time really in, like, in my face somebody actually called me a quack, and I was like, “You know where that term comes from, right?”

Like, like, they don’t even know the history of the terms they’re using. I’m like, “It came from MDs using quicksilver on their patients, which is mercury.” Oh. So actually, MDs are the quacks. I’m a holistic practitioner.” “I want to be a holistic practitioner, opposite of quack, so you don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

But anyway, I got to the interview process for vet school. They only take about 100 for interviews at University of Guelph, and it was a good cop, bad cop routine that they had going and the guy who was the bad cop, he was the one who called me a quack, and he thought that I was going to ruin veterinary medicine by going in a holistic direction.

Meanwhile, in my innocence, I was like, “Aren’t you excited? We’re gonna expand veterinary medicine into all these different fields. You could have, you know, acupuncture-focused veterinarians. You could have herbal medicine-focused veterinarians. You could have homeopathy-focused veterinarians. It’s so exciting.

You could expand your entire college, your entire industry.” You know? I thought, “That’s great business,” but he didn’t think that. So I was like… I went to Steven after, ’cause I’d been volunteering there for about a year. And I was sad, you know, that I didn’t get in. And he said, “Why don’t you go to naturopathic college?”

He said, “That’s what I did.” And he’s like, “You could do it.” I’m, and I’m like, “Human medicine? You mean dealing with humans? For real?” He’s like, “Hey, children, elderly, babies, they’re innocent. You can specialize. You know, you can even do animal medicine in naturopathic college.” I’m like, “Okay.” So he convinced me to apply and go through that process, and that’s what I ended up doing, just really cause he was the one who said, “Pivot.”

You know, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So you’re being guided in a different direction, so do it. So that’s what I did. I don’t think I would’ve made it through vet college anyway. I hated pharmaceutical medicine. I saw what it did to all my grandparents.

I was like, I was not a fan of vaccines. I was not a fan of any of those things, right? So I was like, yeah, it probably would’ve killed me or gave me ulcers to try to shut my mouth through, through that four-year, process, you know? Oh, my God. It was probably a blessing that I didn’t.

Laine: You’d have to have a gag order on you.

Totally. So, I guess I just wanna ask you, and you may have answered it, I don’t know, but was your movement toward natural medicine, was it gradual or was there a defining moment?

Amandha: I don’t remember a defining moment. I remember, like I said, the hands-on healing as the opener, and then of course, I told you, you know, I read a lot, so I would go find books on all these topics.

I would go to old bookstores. I miss old bookstores. The, you know, the world now doesn’t know what we had and to to walk into an old bookstore, just the smell, I loved the smell, I loved the ambiance. I would come out with stackfuls of used books, and I would find every type of alternative health book.

Whatever said alternative health or we, or was about a supplement, or was about anything that was natural medicine relevant, I started reading and I think, by then I started to, Well, my one grandmother she had ovarian cancer, and it was around that time when I started to actually do research and try to help her.

Like, I was a little too late because it was way on the tail end of everything but I started at that point, you know? And then I just became naturally sort of inclined to it. I was really into health and fitness and, you know, food and food as medicine, and I was, you know, already like that and it really, that whole thing started because I went to a doctor, actually, an MD, and he explained to me why I had IBS.

It was the only doctor I ever had that sat with me and drew the intestines on a a little pad and showed me what was going on in my bowels. And I was like, “Okay.” So he said, “There are foods that are triggering.” He was the only doctor ever that told me that food was affecting my gut, you know? Wow. And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that makes total sense.”

And so that’s when I couldn’t digest meat. I really just couldn’t digest meat very well. It was just too hard on my gut at the time. Mm-hmm and so that I didn’t need any other excuse to go vegan ’cause I was already like, you know, meat is murder. I was already listening to music about that, like Morrissey and stuff, you know?

So, that’s all the excuse I needed to, to do that. That was around when I was 16. And I did end up healing my gut eventually. It took some time, but I learned a lot through, you know, my own experiences, my own health experiences off as well as, you know, with my grandparents and then I just became kind of known as the girl who, you know?

Like, I don’t know where they came from. They would knock at my back door,

“Hi, Amandha. I’m sick. Help me.” I’m like, “No problem.” I would pull out my books. I had, like, some really cool guides, books, one that was, like, a guide to homeopathy. I would just find their condition. I would read… I would interview them a little.

Okay, here’s the homeopathic. I had the same kind of one, but it was for herbs. You know, find their condition, read the list of herbs, this one matched, and they would walk away with a little, like, doggy bag of little medicine and stuff. I was like the local witch doctor, especially when I was in Edmonton.

That was, that… I was very known for that just locally. People would come to me for that. And that was before I started naturopathic college. So I’d already been very interested in that, which is what drove me toward, you know, Dr. Marsden and his holistic clinic, and then I learned a ton from him. He had a whole wall of Chinese herbs, and he said, “I want you to go…

I want you to stay in this room, and I want you to taste every single one of these herbs, and I want you to identify the temperature, the taste. So is it bitter? Is it sweet? Is it sour? Like, what does it do? Is it astringent?” And through that taste testing, it really clicked for me the properties of the herbs, how we understand them through how they taste and what they do on the tongue.

And then I’m like, oh, so that’s how they figured out a lot of this stuff you know? Before-… biochemistry kind of happened, this is how we knew what a lot of these things did very intuitively, you know? Very clairvoyantly, I would argue. Right. We didn’t need the books really then. We just connected to the plants.

And I was interested in plant spirit medicine. I actually saw a lot of different lectures on that, too. So, we really just started to just branch out, and I was just curious and consuming as much as I possibly could during that time.

Laine: Wow. So you were already a healer for people coming to you.

I mean, somehow or other you projected a, some energy out where people were drawn to you to come for help.

Amandha: Yeah. I mean, I would go on the buses, and it would be empty bus, and they would always sit right next to me. And I was always like, “Why are they… Like, go sit over there.” And they would fall asleep.

They would sit next to me and fall asleep every time. I’m like, “What is this?” And it’s because whatever I was carrying in my energy field, you know, they were getting healing. And that’s why I understood when I went to India for the first time where I… There, like Swamis are a big idea. Like, you know, going to your guru is a big deal, and you don’t do anything with the guru.

You sit and talk about your family, and how are you doing, and how’s the weather. And at first I’m like, “What is this about?” It’s like, oh, I’m sitting in the energy field of the guru. There’s a transfer taking place. Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. Right? There’s other ways of energy being transferred here, not just through words.

Ah, you know? So yeah, I think I had that encoding pretty young, or maybe I came with it ’cause I always felt like I came here to serve. I came here specifically to do this type of work. My guides told me that. The moon used to talk to me all the time. The moon-… used to look completely different, multicolored, five-dimensional, conversational.

I didn’t think of it any other way until I was maybe 10. between eight and 10 a lot of things changed.

I did get an abandonment wound, though, at that time. Definitely got an abandonment wound when my main guide, who I could see with my eyes, and the moon, who I could see with my eyes- Mm-hmm

they were like, “Hey, we have to talk to you. Like, it’s time we just skedaddle because you’re getting older, and people are starting asking questions, We’re here. Just know you, that we’re here for you. You know, you can still speak to us, but we can’t communicate like this anymore.” And I cried, and I protested.

What? Oh. I was so angry.

Laine: Oh, my goodness.

Amandha: But you know, that- that’s why I, that’s why I know that, I’m pretty sure that this particular incarnation I decided specifically to come back to do this. That’s how I felt, you know?

Laine: Wow, what a special soul. My goodness. So how did you enjoy naturopathic college?

[Amandha laughs.]

Amandha: Well, I mean, I love learning, so I love that environment. I loved a lot of the people there. I just, I loved the topics. I, you know… but I felt as if I was there… I’m very loyal in a lot of ways, and I, like, I’m a Leo, so it’s a gift and a fault. But when I read the Hippocratic Oath and I read the Founding Fathers’ statements, and mothers, Founding Fathers’ and Mothers’ statements, I wanted to honor the original intention for naturopathic medicine.

That to me spoke to me. That was like, I get that, and I felt like I was that. And when things started to become elucidated that- It’s not really going in that direction anymore, that it’s becoming more medicalized, that we have government interference… that we’re talking about, like, numbering systems and limits, on access to medicine and prescription rights.

I and things like they’re still promoting ideas like immunology germ theory, which our founding fathers and mothers knew was not true where we, already lost iridology as one of our modalities, and I could feel that the energy medicines were being phased out, like homeopathy. As it is now, it’s an elective now, if you can believe it.

Laine: Oh, no.

Amandha: It’s an elective, yep. And I very much connected with my elders. So all of the professors who were, you know, the more old school elders, they resonated with me 100%. Mm-hmm. And even a couple of them said, you know, “You’re like…” They’re like you’re like us. You’re like an old soul in a young body.”

” You get it.” I’m like, “Yeah,” you know, because this is why we differentiated. This is what made us special. This is what made us eclectic. We can pull from all of these wonderful places to find the remedy for that individual because it’s individual medicine, right? You treat the patient. You don’t treat the disease.

Right. So that’s very important when you’re gonna be successful in this type of, Well, in any medicine, really. That’s when you’re successful. And I was always interested in doing it the best, doing it right, like, getting results. Like, I wasn’t ever thinking about my career or making money or business.

Like, business classes, big yawn. It was like, you know? As if. Like, my beliefs on abundance were, like, if you stay in alignment and in integrity then you will be rewarded. You don’t have to go for it. You don’t have to scheme. You don’t have to manipulate and push. And you, it’s really your energy that’s allowing for abundance.

Yep and when you stay heart-centered and you stay in alignment, that’s when it just comes, and that’s how my life was. You know, my mom always said, “Oh, you’re just so lucky.” I’m like, “I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s luck, but okay.” But I don’t think it’s luck. I think- It’s energy, you know? Which is also why they use a lot of energy weapons now, because they know this about us, about the way that we attract, the way that we carry light, the way that we create.

And if they can keep that dampened and keep us really sick and keep us stewing in our heads, then we can’t create like that. We can’t get out, you know, break free from that, you know, suppression and that control and so they do all these things in this world to keep that from happening, and I saw through that really, you know, early on, and I saw through that in my own college.

And I was like, “Me and my big mouth again.” So it just so happened that really interesting things happened to me in my first year. So, I realized that there was a really big thing going on in Ottawa where there was government consultations about restricting natural remedies to the population, and the Codex Alimentarius discussion was happening.

And I said, “Oh,” like I was asking around, like, “Who’s going as our naturopathic representative to Ottawa?”

Laine: Yeah. “

Amandha: On what? What are you talking about?” I’m like, “What do you mean, what am I talking about? I’m talking about our future.” “I’m talking about natural medicine and how we can, you know, make sure that everyone has access.

Like, what are you talking about?” And nobody was going. I found out that they were not even gonna have the conversation. I was pissed at that. And so I didn’t even have a car at the time. I took my ass on a bus, and I got myself to Ottawa, and I just showed up. I showed up late too, so everyone was, everyone is in the room.

I’m sweating, cause I’m, like, running, trying to find the room and stuff and I bolt in this door, and sitting in this semi-circle, like, huge table are all these, like, government representatives, and half of my heroes in natural medicine, like Abraham Hoffer, freaking- Whoa… Carolyn Dean.

Laine: Wow.

Amandha: Like, I Oh, yeah.

Carolyn Dean. I was like, “Whoa.” Like, Oh, my… Karl Schaeffer, like, ther- or Pipe- Pfeiffer rather. Yeah. I was, like, blown away Oh, my God… who was in that room, and they all were so happy that I had elected myself to be a naturopathic representative, cause I spoke on behalf, They didn’t even know.

They didn’t know. I don’t even care they didn’t know. I elected myself to be a naturopathic representative, and I went as a student body person to say, “This is bullshit,” you know? We don’t want it, and we wanna make sure that whatever you do, if you’re gonna do this NPM stuff, that there are no restrictions,” right?

That people have access to this medicine, that they can go in a store and get it, that you’re not going to treat anybody like a criminal for having access to, say, high-dose vitamin C. And at the time, in Germany, they were restricting, and they, and to this day, you can’t buy high-dose vitamin C in Germany, right?

You need prescriptions for this stuff.

Laine: Oh, my God.

Amandha: There’s a lot of countries that adopted the Codex that you can’t get these remedies anymore, and I was adamant that doesn’t happen to us. Anyway, so after that, we went… So I didn’t know this, but the Orthomolecular Conference was also that same weekend in Ottawa, and they all invited me to attend, and I had nowhere to stay. I was pretty much a broke student, and Carolyn Dean, she’s like, “Come stay with me in my hotel room, and we’ll get you in.” And it was amazing. It was totally life-changing. I didn’t really know a lot about high-dose vitamin nutrient treatment as a therapy, cause I was leaning more, you know, energy work and remedies such as plant remedies.

You know, I didn’t know a lot about vitamin and mineral high dose or IV, which once I learned that, I went to school for it. I learned all IV on the weekends. I did extracurricular activities at the time-… to learn it. So it was a magical time, honestly. To meet the Gersons, to meet Charlotte Gerson there and her son, Howard, you could not believe the aura on those two.

I mean- Oh… eh, they both had this striking white gray hair, but their eyes were so crystal clear and blue. You felt like-… you were meeting aliens. Like, you couldn’t even believe. I’m like, “Well, I guess juicing’s working for you.” ‘Cause, wow. I mean, to sit and talk with Abraham Hoffer, and then he had died, he died the, like the following year pretty much.

Wow, mm-hmm. It was… Yeah, it was quite the experience for me to meet all those people, and it was very formative. And then I met, through Carolyn, I met Truman Tuck. Truman Tuck was a lawyer, and they “Oh, a naturopath.” They gravitated towards me, like, “We need you. We need you to take this big binder full of the law and present it to your naturopathic… to the board, to your… Like, we have the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors and the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Doctors, right? We you need to go present to there.” So I was like- They did not like me. They did not like me. Okay, you wanna talk about, oh, do, you know, do people treat you different?

Like, now they did. Now they did. After that, a lot of things changed ’cause they’re like, “Oh, you’re one of those, change maker types. We don’t like that.” A lot of teachers found out… A lot of the teachers and professors were writing… Like, one of my professors, Saunders, he was writing the NPN code for Health Canada.

You know, I remember going into his office challenging him, going, “What are you doing? Like, what is this bullshit? Why are you complying with evil? Why are you complying with Health Canada that allows vaccines that kill children? Like, why are you working with them? They’re the enemy. They’re the enemy of naturopathic medicine.

Don’t you remember what they did to the chiropractors? You don’t remember what they did to the chiropractors?” You know, and he… That wasn’t good. Yeah, I, again, I was very non-filtered then as… I’m a little more filtered now, but not then. So I called out the crap and got, really got blacklisted, and that was year one.

I mean, that was year one.

Laine: Wow…

Amandha: me just going against the grain. I was a fringe of the fringe.

Laine: Wow. So. Year one, so you had three more years after that?

Amandha: Mm-hmm.

Laine: Oh my God.

Amandha: Yeah.

Laine: So that’s incredible story there, how you became the representative and just… Oh my Lord. So how… Oh my God. So how did you segue from naturopathic school to…

Did you start a healing practice first, or did you start your store?

Amandha: So this is how it works. This confuses a lot of people. There are two colleges. You, there’s your training college, so that’s the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, okay? So you take your, the curriculum, and you have to graduate.

You have to write all the tests, you have to do all the things, you have to graduate. But then there’s the other body, and it’s called CANO now, which I think is so suiting. But they used to be called the BDDTN, the Board of Drugless Therapies, Naturopathy, whatever, okay?

They, really a mouthful and they hated my guts, all of them, cause I challenged them all on this stuff. But that’s a licensing body. So that’s, they’re called a college, which confuses people, right? Like, people will look me up on the internet and find some slander or some, you know, find that, like, where they’re like, “She can’t call herself a naturopathic doctor anymore ’cause she’s not licensed.”

I’m like, “Yeah, thank God I’m not licensed.” But that’s the licensing body. And so what you do, in second year you take licensing exams, and then the fourth year you also take additional licensing exams, and you have to obviously go through all the hoopla for that which is the most annoying test for someone like me who’s slightly dyslexic.

Those you know, bubble-in ABCDE tests are a nightmare, by the way. Ooh, ooh. A nightmare. Ooh. It’s very standardized testing. It’s definitely not for the empath brain. It’s the very… There’s a select type of people who think very linearly- Yes… and very cognitively. Yes. And they do and they just memorize stuff, and they do great, and that’s most doctors.

Most doctors that you meet, they’re not really thinking like… there’s very rare ones that think outside the box. They’re just more automatons in, you know, “Here’s the, what you do. Here is the protocol.” Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. “I’m gonna follow the protocol. I’m gonna memorize the protocol. I do the protocol.” Yeah.

But then there are people who are embodying the nuances of life and see outside the box, right? And it’s difficult to go through training like that. So anyway- Oh my God… it, and it is run a little bit like, not a true cult, but there is a cult aspect where they, the structure of it is still Rockefeller training, Rockefeller-style training.

Yeah. And Rockefeller-style training has a way where it’s trying to wear you down- Mm-hmm… so you don’t question, and it’s also there to tire you the hell out. Burn out your adrenals. You, so you just become rote, that like you don’t, right, you’re not gonna… You don’t have time for anything else anyway.

You certainly don’t have energy for it, right? Yes. So I just wanna clarify, like I actually don’t call myself a naturopathic doctor. Mm-hmm. I don’t use their title. I’m not allowed to use their title. I’m a graduate. I actually have a degree of naturopathic doctor, so on my wall- Yeah… I have a degree that says naturopathic doctor.

Yeah. So I just say it’s a doctor, I have the doctorate for that. Gotcha… so that people understand, you know, the difference, and that I rejected the licensing aspect because of the way they came at me, the way that they challenged me, the way that they brought me into lawsuits and stuff, the way that they entrapped me.

The way, the games they played with me were, just showed me a whole nother level of the game that- Wow… grossed me out, that I didn’t want anything to do with them after that. I’m like, “Why would I beg to be licensed by you so that you could silence me?” ‘Cause that’s an anagram for silence, license-

Laine: Oh… by the way.

Amandha: Ooh. And it is. And I’m like “no, thanks.” Even if I played your game and jumped your hoops, do you know how many times I would be before CANO? Probably-… a lot. A lot. Because, and it allowed me the opportunity to speak the truth in a lot of ways, and especially during the COVID debacle, right?

Because did you see many naturopaths saying anything during COVID?

No, you know why, cause they weren’t allowed to. They weren’t even allowed to offer an alternative treatment- They weren’t allowed to. They weren’t allowed to speak out, they weren’t allowed to warn people, they weren’t allowed to say what it was or they would lose their license.

You see how the system controls you this way?

Laine: Oh, it eats up everybody. Now it’s like it’s, it’s eaten up the medical professonal, profession, and it’s eaten up naturopathy. It’s eaten up chiropractic.

Amandha: Yeah. Yeah.

Laine: That’s just absolutely sickening, actually.

Amandha: That’s how it, that’s how they… See, they offer it like a trophy.

You’re special if you get this, right? You’re different than other people.

Laine: Mm-hmm, yeah.

Amandha: Right? You’re better, you have all these letters behind your name, right? You have all these certificates. You have all these specialties. You have all, right? It divorces you from the human connection in a lot of ways, and it also is there as a measure of control, because you say the wrong thing, you do the wrong thing, right, they will come down, and they will punish you.

And if you’re established based on that, especially with the insurance scam.

So what happened is, right, so right after I graduated, I was broke, like we all are, cause it’s very expensive. So I had to just jump in and try to work right away and I had another naturopath with her license that I… You can actually do that.

You can sort of work under another license. Ooh. Until I decided what I was doing, and she also, happened to have cancer, so we were doing an exchange. I was helping her with her cancer, and she was offering me that. But she was kind of, I think the cancer was affecting her thinking, and so she wasn’t always there for me.

So I had to cover for her a lot of times, which got me in trouble ’cause I was trying to protect her, but then I got in crap with the board, because of that, ’cause I wasn’t following procedure. Oh. So, anyway, that was nasty. They basically put me out on the street. Can you imagine?

I always thought naturopaths are family. They’re my family. Yeah. Right? They’re my peeps. They wanted to end me, and it was gross, and they wanted to make an example of me. This is what happens as well when you step out, and why a lot of them don’t, not just for loss- losing license, but- Right

they come for you in nasty ways. And so they wanna make a legal example of you. Right. A precedent off of you too- Mm-hmm… which is what they were trying to do. And I happened to get pregnant around that time as well, and my… So I, the way I was fighting them had to change. It did change, ’cause my hormones changed.

I didn’t have- yeah… the battle in me anymore. I was like, “Whatever.” You know, it wasn’t like it was, It was just procedural, and it was just, it wasn’t criminal or anything. It was just, you know, “Pay us”-… “like, for this.” But whatever. It was the fact of it.

I was fighting for, you know, justice in that. Yeah and also I’d learned a lot about law, so I got the opportunity to practice a lot of law in these courts, because they invited me in, and I’m like, “Hey, let’s play.” So I did. Lot of different concepts I played with there. So that was a really wild time in my life where, you know, we have these moments, I think, in our timeline when everything turns upside down.

Mm-hmm. The things that you thought were stable, they just-… up and they flip you because it’s part of the new challenge, the new, you know, graduation time that you’re supposed to be going through on a soul level- Right… I, I believe. And, So that was a challenge, like can you be true to yourself? Can you stay in, in equanimity?

Can you stay in, your heart centered through this, you know? Mm-hmm. Can you drop any illusions through this that you once had? Mm-hmm. You know, cause we’re ever shedding illusions as we go. Mm-hmm. And yeah, it was really an interesting… I was on the street by that time, really just about, abandoned by everyone.

It’s really interesting to see who was just your friend or liked you because of your status. It was really interesting to see who abandoned me during my tough time, yeah. It’s always very, very enlightening.

Laine: Oh, my

Amandha: God… but yeah, that was pretty crazy. The NPN system ended up, you know, happening anyway, but we we did lose a lot of formulations, thousands of formulations.

Probably no one even knows. I don’t think no one even… Other than the product formulators, you know, I don’t think the world really, knew what happened when, that came online because, I was using a lot of these remedies in my practice already.

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: And the- one by one they started dropping away or getting less and less inside of them.

So essentially every formulation has to go to Health Canada, and Health Canada has to approve it or not, and it could take years to get something on the shelf. Then it comes back. It’s expensive, too. Paperwork, you gotta do all this communications, you got meetings, you got… It’s a whole thing. You have to have science backing it, you gotta do two…

Like, it’s hoop jumping. And then they send it back and they’re like, “That Vitamin C’s too high,” or, “That B1 is too high,” or, “Here’s our limit on this,” or, “Here’s our limit on that,” or, “You can’t put this with that,” right? And-

Laine: Oh, my God…

Amandha: that’s what happens. And this is what I was fighting to stop, but, you know, I didn’t have any backing of it.

In fact, I had the opposite happen like, “We want this. We we want prescribing rights. We want these things,” you know? So that was the way that went, and then when I found myself, you know, pregnant and on the street and broke and abandoned

Laine: Oh.

Amandha: I felt like Eckhart Tolle. I read Eckhart Tolle at the time, and he had a similar story, and I’m like, ” Yeah

Amandha: Okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. Eckhart Tolle went through it. It’s okay. It’s normal.” It’s normal. You’re gonna be fine. So I was like very in my very… I was probably at the highest spiritual peak I’d I had been in, thank God, during that time. Mm-hmm. ‘Cause I was just all giggly and it’s gonna be okay, even though it didn’t look like that, you know?

And then I did meet someone, and it was probably not the, the ideal meeting, but I ended up getting pregnant, which surprised me. I really didn’t think I could get pregnant. I actually thought I was infertile, believe it or not. So I was shocked, and then I it, I really wanted to have a child. I never considered it because I thought I was infertile.

I was with a man for over seven years, and we did not use any birth control whatsoever. And I was like, “Well, obviously I can’t get pregnant,” so, you know. That’s just where it was in my head. I didn’t think- Yeah… it could’ve been him or I didn’t think any of that. So I just, whatever. Surprise.

Surprise.

Laine: Surprise.

Amandha: Surprise. Okay and it ended up where, you know, he was pretty unstable. He couldn’t hold down work. He, you know, it was a pretty crazy time, and that’s when I decided I gotta get out of the city because the only way I can earn a living is not having so, so much overhead, you know?

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: So many expenses and plus I was walking around, all I could smell are those damn dryer sheets out of everybody’s house, which made me sick ’cause I was so sensitive to smell.

It made me always sick and advertising, everywhere. Like, I’m like, “How can you raise a child?” Imagine, like, walking down the street with your toddler or whatever. How many advertisements is that, that child’s eyes seeing, you know? I wanted that child to see nature.

I wanted that child’s eyes to see trees and lakes and, you know? Yeah. And turkey, wild turkeys. I didn’t want her seeing-… the turkeys in the city. City turkeys, you know? So there was just, again, there was just all of these things at play and like, okay, I there’s gotta be a way out, cause cities can trap you.

They can trap you.

Laine: Oh, yeah.

Amandha: Homelessness can trap you, too. I learned. I was close. I was close. I can see that when you get down to a certain level of poverty, it’s very hard to get out of that.

It traps you in it. I could feel it pulling on me, you know? Your clothes just get a little too dirty.

You get, start looking a little ratty, right? You might get robbed and lose some things, right? You don’t have enough money to even put a resume together. You it, your mental health starts to go downhill. You don’t care anymore. Like, you can really get, I see, I understand the ones that are on fentanyl on the streets.

I get it because that’s their mindset. They’ve given up. They’ve given up, right? And you have to … very careful it doesn’t pull you in. And I was lucky. I fought my way out. I got a job at Smith’s Pharmacy. Because I had the naturopathic degree, like, I was desired. At least I had something to offer, right, to get work.

And I was pregnant throughout that time I was working there and then a friend of mine, up north they were like, “Hey, you can move here and all you have to do is some garden exchange and stuff.” And turned out to be very difficult living there. It was, like, an unfinished basement. I, there was no bathroom.

I had four cats and a dog. It was nuts. It was nuts. And while pregnant with a man who couldn’t drive a car, it was hell. It was hell. But then a really kind family, they hosted me on their, in their really old dilapidated hunt cabin, and I remember washing with TSP and a mask and gloves all the tobacco off the walls –

Laine: Oh

Amandha: my

before I had, before I painted them. Because it was so much it was dripping yellow. It was so bad.

Laine: Oh my.

Amandha: So they must have been just sitting there in their hunt cabin smoking and drinking or whatever, right?

Laine: Were you still pregnant during this time period?

Laine: Oh, wow. Wow.

Amandha: Yep, seven months pregnant, moving twice. Oh my gosh. And I gave birth to her in that little cabin that I fixed up in a in a water, The midwives had loaned me their tub. Oh wow… warm water birth and yeah, it was amazing. Full moon. You know, born on a full moon and

Laine: Oh, wow

Amandha: yeah. it was a very powerful birth experience, for sure.

Laine: So, so how has motherhood changed you?

Amandha: Motherhood is a wild ride. It is a wild ride. Well, you’re basically opening your womb, opening your portal-… to the divine to allow another soul to enter your body and form itself inside of you. If you think about that it’s something.

And I had a, you know, I had a pretty decent pregnancy. I carried small. She was kind of small. She had a single umbilical artery, so she was a little on the smaller side. She made up for it, I’ll tell you, just like I was bald for two years and then I made up for it with lots of hair. We make up for things, yeah and then he kind of left. He couldn’t handle it. He was really bred and born city. He couldn’t deal with fatherhood. He couldn’t deal with any, much of it. And I was done, too. Like, you know, it comes a point in a relationship where you know it’s not working and you have to choose yourself and choose your child, and I felt like a single mom with two children instead of a husband and one child. And it was interesting because in that hunt cabin after he left and it was just me and this infant I was praying. I was saying, “Okay. All right. Here we are. We, we’ve landed, okay? This is all this chaos part moment, all this change, it’s over now.

Now I’m building, so show me. You know, show me how you’d like me to proceed.” I’ll just wait. You just let me know.” And it I was going to this mom and baby group, ’cause in Ontario in Canada where I am, they have these, you know, free support groups for new mothers and I’d figured out the latch.

I’d figured out the breastfeeding. I had my midwives help me through that, which it takes a while to figure out breastfeeding. I think a lot of moms don’t have that support and give up, but it is so valuable.

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: It’s so important to just push through that really tough transition period. I didn’t…

My milk didn’t come in for seven days Seven days. So I had donor milk.

The people that I was renting that cabin from, they had 600 acres, and up the hills where they lived, and their daughter lived in another house on the same property, and she had also had a baby not too long ago, and she still had some of her breast milk in the freezer.

And after day five, like, the colostrum will come in, they’ll get their first feed, and then nothing. Wow. And I know that, and I was like so mad. I’m like, “God, what is this? Why would you starve a baby?” Like you know? I was so intense about this. Like, what is this, man? And I was drinking the de-alkalized beer to get the hops, to get the everything going, but when a mother, a new mother is not supported and nurtured and in her rest and relax mode, it takes a lot longer for the oxytocin-… which is a requirement for the milk to come in, right? So I was so stressed, and I didn’t have a lot of support, and that’s also the postpartum discussion too. I mean, I was…

I had a little bit of that too because I wasn’t supported, ’cause I was stressed. And we’re not meant to be like that. We’re… I think it’s in, is it in North Korea, I believe, once you- a woman has a baby she is in this wonderful suite. She’s pampered. Everything is done for her, and I think it’s, like, I don’t know if it’s the third the fourth trimester period or how many months it is, but it’s a good long time- to, so that she is chill. She can just focus on baby and her healing and I bet you, I haven’t looked at the stats. I was gonna write an article about it, and I bet you when I look at those stats their postpartum depression probably is nonexistent. I will bet. I will bet. You know? Because I’m running around trying to figure out a new person in my life for the first time, right, and plus I’m broke, and plus I had to do all this labor, ’cause that was the agreement, the, for the property.

I got thrown into gardening. I got thrown in. I was gardening at the other property as exchange, I was gardening at this pro- I was new to gardening, okay? And I still feel like I, it’s 10, 12 years in or however it is now, since 2011, and I still feel like I’m new at gardening.

Every year I feel like I’m a newbie, every year. I do it anyway, but I still, I’m really good at wildcrafting. I’m really good at the wild plants, at the trees, you know? That calls to me. I know what to do with it. I know when to harvest it. It’s, like, natural to me. But the gardening, the cultivation part-

Laine: Yeah.

Yeah… it’s a whole nother level. I get verklempt-… with that.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Amandha: Talk you, I don’t know if you wanna be next to the basil or not tomatoes, but I’m gonna do it anyway.

Laine: Oh, Baba.

Amandha: figure it out.

Laine: Figure

Amandha: it out. And I do have a wild garden. It is wild. I’m like, “Weeds deserve to be here too.”

So, you know. Yes. Whatever. But I do get- You’re gonna- I get some food anyway, but it was a it was like… But the business started because I was sitting there asking for that support, and when I went to that mom and baby group, they saw that I was cloth diapering my baby And they saw that she had an amber teething necklace on, right?

Because that girl was having a hard teething. So by the time, you know, two, three months, they’re already starting teething. So around the two, three-month period, I had enough government money, a little bit, so I was still getting some support there. I was working on the land, so I didn’t have a lot of overhead, you know?

But I knew that was gonna dry up and then they started asking innocently, “Hey, where’d you get that? Where’d you get that?” I’m like, “I’ll get that for you.” And I took, I had I think $700 from taxes, tax, return, something like that and my baby bonuses and I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to buy this Lithuanian amber which costs $700.”

Wow. I’m gonna spend every penny because I feel called to do this and I bought it wholesale, and I put… On Facebook, I started a Yummy Mummy page. I just made it up. Yummy Mummy Emporium. I put, started that page. Then I put all the amber up for sale. And I also started, after that, I started to get them diapers and did wholesale diapers after that.

That’s how it all started. I sold that amber in three or four days. I tripled my investment, and I got tons of great feedback because it was actually helping babies. And I’m like, ‘I can get behind that.’

Laine: Yeah…

Amandha: If this is helpful to babies, then that’s the right darshan, that’s the right energy. You know what I mean?

Laine: Yes.

Amandha: And it just snowballed and then they wanted the cute leg warmers, and then they-… they wanted the cute hair bows, and then they wanted the little bow ties for the boys. And then I’m like, “I need a place.” And actually my daughter’s dad, credit to him he was in the little town where, you know, I was near, and he said, “There’s a place for sale that I think you should check out because it…

ever since we’ve moved here, it’s been sitting for sale. So something’s maybe up with it, or maybe you can make a deal.” I’m like, “Okay.” And I went and checked it out, and it had a grandfathered commercial zone in the front, and the rest was residential, so it was a mixed com- zoning. Mm-hmm.

With a little parking lot in the front, right in this little cute town, and a library next door and I’m like, “Yeah, this could work,” you know? And the woman who owned it, I know why they couldn’t sell it now. Because it was like somebody, somebody must have gone to the dump and found some, like, materials and built that house, honestly.

Like, it’s amazing. It’s amazing it was still standing, but whatever, you know? If it wasn’t for that, nothing would’ve happened. So it was divine. It was supposed to happen, and she held the mortgage for me. I didn’t have the money. She held the mortgage for me for two years before I could then get a private mortgage and take over the house.

And that’s how I rebuilt from there, because I had the idea, I had the dream, and I had the training behind me.

Laine: Yeah.

Amandha: And she’s kept calling me her angel. I was her angel. She’s like- Aw… “I believe you. I know you can do this. I believe in you.” I’m like, “Yeah, you better believe I can do it.”

Cause I already had the receipts, you know? She already saw my business acumen. She already knew that I was connected to other mothers in the community and that sort of thing. Right?

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: And then I built that store. I moved in, and I put that store together- Before my bedroom, before anything else. But my daughter’s space together and my animals, you know, together, and then I just got that store going as fast as I possibly could.

So that was the beginning.

Laine: We got to see the store in your earlier live videos from the store when you would do lives.

Amandha: Yep…

Laine: And I was looking behind you going, ‘Oh my God, what would it be like to have a store like that, that I could actually walk into, and touch, and feel, and pick things up?’ Fabulous.

Amandha: It was wonderful. That front, there was a little front room that was the playroom that later turned into my healing room. But when my daughter was young, I would have mom and babies come in and just get relief. Like, I would hold babies every day. It was fantastic.

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: My daughter had interaction with all these children and all these babies and there was a real sense of community before the whole COVID thing destroyed that.

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: But, you know, they could change their babies, they could use the washroom, they could get advice, you know? They could find what they needed for their baby. Wow. It was, that was my service, you know? That’s what I wanted to do and, you know, there would be kids and laughter and stuff playing, playing in that little playroom and I’m, you know, ringing people up and then I started making stuff because…

Well, I started almost right away because my daughter needed things and she needed a diaper cream. She needed a diaper cream, and I looked at all the diaper creams. I looked very closely at every ingredient being who I was, being my training, and knowing what’s up, right? I was not happy. I was like, yeah, especially with babies. Mm-hmm. Especially with babies. So then I, that’s when I began making my own.

Laine: Oh my God. Well, your products are… I mean, my whole bathroom is covered with them. There, there’s nothing like them. I mean, you cannot… Your ingredients are perfect and precious and just the, the fragrances, and they work.

I was I know I we have this, this bug bite salve of yours, and we have so many mosquitoes here now, it just isn’t even funny and my partner is a mosquito magnet, and whenever he goes out, he’ll come back in with a giant mosquito bite on his forehead. It looks like a tumor. Or, you know, we’ve got ’em on our arms.

Where is that Amandha Vollmer stuff? Where is it? Here it is. All we do is take a little of that salve, put it on there, and there’s no more pain. There’s no more pain. I would do free commercials for you for your products. Because I am so particular. I read every ingredient of everything, and I will not put anything on my skin that I would not be willing to eat.

Yeah. And I’d be willing to eat all your products.

Amandha: Nice. Well, we are gonna have an affiliate system very soon. We just updated all the websites. They all have a new look now. They’re faster. We had to get our own servers because we just keep expanding.

Laine: Yes.

Amandha: And a new search function is amazing.

And now it can hold the affiliate system because, you know, as you keep growing, it needs more server space, and we just needed to get away from the existing host, and now we have and built our own stuff, and it’s really great. And yeah, we’re gonna have affiliates. So you can be an affiliate, and then you can do your commercials.

Laine: Oh, my God, I will. And then, okay, so you have expanded out. All right, we had COVID. It destroyed a lot of mom-and-pop stores, retail stores. I actually first heard you on an interview with Crow777, and I’m like, “I really like that chick. She is irreverent. She speaks out. She’s, you know, cool.” But then I didn’t think anything of it.

And then a year later or something, I heard it you again, and I’m like, “I gotta find out who she is. Who is that?” And I had never even been on social media, but when I found out that you had a Telegram group, I’m like, “All right. Well, maybe I will join some social media just so I could get in there and learn more about what she does, cause I have been into health for my entire life and always researching it.

And, you know, your Healthy Dose of Truth was an amazing experience for me and, you know, obviously you’re on Facebook. I’m not on Facebook.

Amandha: No, I’m not on Face- I’m personally they got rid of my 25-year Facebook account just last year.

My marketing team, we have pages still that they manage that I don’t touch.

Yeah. But my personal Facebook and my other the, all the original pages are gone. Same with Instagram. Meta got rid of me.

Laine: Oh my God. Yeah. Well, they’re not gonna get rid of you. They cannot. I mean, they might, but you are a force to be reckoned with and what you teach a doctor yourself course, a year-long course where you can learn how to heal yourself and use those same tenets for your family and friends.

I mean, I am so excited about that

Amandha: Yeah. Yeah, I’m on the third principle right now, so I do a structure where I teach a free webinar so that people who don’t know can feel comfortable, you know, understanding, and they’ll always get some takeaway. And then I’m doing, then after that I do the paid masterclass version of that, which goes deeper into the principle.

And then for each principle I create a workbook, and then once all 12 principles are done in this way, then I write the entire coursework and so it’s a long process to get there. But I always knew that what was happening was toward this. Because the model of, you know, going to a practitioner and just being told what to do, you know, getting healing, that’s fine.

But I found as a practitioner wasn’t sustainable to me because it can lead to a lot of burnout. A lot of holistic practitioners die young and get sick from this constant, you know, giving and energy being poured into people. And really, it never was like this. It, we always would have our shaman, of course, and our, you know, or a medicine woman or someone to have correction.

But mainly it was that we never went out of alignment with nature in the first place. We didn’t have the same problems that we have now. And it’s become such an industry. And the goal is to learn how to doctor yourself because ultimately what you wanna do is find that alignment again and listen to yourself, listen to your body, understand health from the corrected physiology, anatomy from the proper lens- Mm-hmm

and biochemistry and all of those things. Because there’s so many lies that have been made about our bodies and about health and like COVID was one big, you know, psychological operation because that is just not how it works. Like, it’s you’re toxic or you’re nutrient deficient or you’re blocked, and that’s only three causes of all disease.

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: There’s no other contagion. There’s no other… That’s not how it works. It’s the terrain that’… is what matters. And so I teach people that corrected lens, so that’s empowering because if everyone is empowered to their own health and their own healthcare, then this industry can fall away. We don’t need it.

If we prevent our own sickness by not accepting the products from our enemies, basically, who want to make us customers for life-… then we’re not part of that paradigm anymore, you know? And to me, that’s the grassroots work Rather than, again, my mind was always on bigger solutions, more people that are helped.

Like, not just this one-on-one wasn’t sustainable. Like, it was important for a while, and obviously, but once I got burnt out, I was like, “Ah, it’s showing me that I have to pivot now. I have to build something different-

Laine: Mm-hmm…

Amandha: and teach differently.”

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: And it, and that’s Yummy. Doctor now. That’s my platform there, and helping to structure it into something that’s very practical.

Laine: Mm-hmm.

Amandha: And then people can run with it. People can also become ambassadors to the program so they can help other people. Mm-hmm. It’s not to say that others don’t need help or support or coaching or whatever. It’s just that it should be more of a reflection back to them to help them with their clarity, not to dictate to them, “Do this, do that.”

Like, you know, “Listen to me. The doctor said…” Like, this kind of crap, you know? That’s very disempowering, and that’s opposite of what I’m building.

Laine: Well, that is opposite of what the system teaches. You know, we give our power over to the white coats, and sadly, the white coats you know, I could go on forever about it, but you are a bright shining star in that world of healthcare, that you take care of yourself.

And, you know, I really feel like more and more people are turning away from the system because there’s so much truth coming out about all the falsehoods that we’ve been told. And, you know, anyway, I could go on and on and blathering on, but this is about you. And so what I wanted to ask you is before we close up, could you please share all the places that people can, you know, find your stuff, find you, find, Everything Amandha Vollmer

Amandha: Any of my four main websites, if you look at the top, will have all four websites there, and they’re all clickable.

We really tried to make it streamlined and easy for people to find me because of the way we had to segment the sites just for server space and for you know, focused marketing and these kinds of things. So, so YumNaturals. Store is, was the, is the flagship. So that I changed that. It used to be Yummy Mummy Emporium, and then we went to Yum Naturals from there.

And yum is one of the meditation sounds for the heart, so it’s spelt yam, but it’s pronounced yum. So yum, right? If you wanna activate the heart center. Ooh. Because people ask about, you know, how I morphed from Yummy to Yum, and the Yummy aspect of it, and it was… It’s all because of the history of when I was developing, you know, what I’m gonna name my business, right?

And I have, like, a funny bone as well, so I like to be playful and bring playful words into things, not make it so serious, you know? But so YumNaturals. Store, then DMSO. Store, so you have to put the dot ’cause the store is the domain name. So Yum DMSO. Store. And that’s it. And then I have my book, HealingWithDMSO.com.

And then I have my teaching hub and basically all the resources. My membership is there, private membership, the, the library I’ve been building there, all the protocols and courses and everything is there, and that’s Yummy. Doctor, and doctor is the domain in that one as well. So that’s mainly the hub.

Then I have other social media and so forth, but you can find that through those four websites.

Laine: Whew, incredible. I could talk to you forever, but we’re gonna have a final question here. So if you could sit beside the young Amandha that we met at the beginning of this conversation, knowing everything that she would walk through, what would you tell her?

Amandha: Well, I would probably remind her that no matter what happens, no matter the difficulties or the challenges, just to remember that I designed this life, as we all do, that we’re not victims, that it may hurt, we might feel hurt, we may cry, we may have all those emotions, but that we are eternal beings having a limited experience, and just to enjoy every moment.

Laine: Oh, that’s beautiful.

Thank you so much for being here, Amandha. You are a precious soul.

Amandha: Thank you so much, Laine. It’s been lovely speaking with you.

Laine: Thank you.