Our Nature: Conversations about the relationship between nature, spirituality, and well-being - EP 12: How To Sleep Better With Buffy Co-founder and CEO Leo Wang

EP 12: How To Sleep Better With Buffy Co-founder and CEO Leo Wang

Explicit content warning

09/18/19 • 70 min

Our Nature: Conversations about the relationship between nature, spirituality, and well-being

Each of us, at some point or another, has struggled to fall asleep, to stay asleep, or to feel rested after sleeping through the night. This week, we talk all things sleep with Buffy co-founder and CEO Leo Wang. Leo shares his personal journey of dealing with insomnia and the surprising way he resolved his sleep troubles (it’s not what you might think). You’ll learn some practical tips for how to get a restful sleep, how the teachings of Daoism can help us sleep better, Leo’s rituals for getting more rest, and the biggest misconception about sleep according to Leo. This episode is so incredibly rich and unexpectedly profound. I know you’ll take away universal lessons for how to live your life in a more harmonious way regardless of your relationship with sleep at this moment in time.

Resources:

Connect with Leo Wang:

Connect with The Our Nature Podcast:

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Say hi! [email protected]

“The consumer is not even aware that they’re just bringing synthetic and chemical dyes into their bedroom and wrapping and cocooning themselves into them every night. What if those dyes were made from things like walnut peel or geranium husk or other things that you wouldn’t mind bringing into your kitchen?” - Leo Wang

“It is a belief that we have a natural programming that will correct for imbalance those things that need to be fixed, without the help of melatonin, without the help of binging on sleep, without the help of spending hours and hours into the night reading about sleep on Web MD...” - Leo Wang

“We are very busy, we live fast paced lives, we’re all highly educated and we think a lot, we’re in our heads a lot...try to contact your body a bit more. Whether that means sitting down and feeling what your body sensations are telling you or meditating or dance or yoga...” - Leo Wang

“In Daoism, or most Eastern thought, everything is about balance. It takes darkness to see the light and light to see the dark. A candle lit is a shadow cast, and the origin of everything is in its opposite.” - Leo Wang

“Sleep, and your quality of sleep, is nothing more than a manifestation of your overall health.” - Leo Wang

SHOW NOTES:

What Buffy does and why it’s changing the sustainability industry
Why Buffy uses Eucalyptus in its comforters
Why what you sleep in matters
How Leo’s childhood shaped his personal and career trajectory
How a common case of insomnia brought Leo to a surprising discovery
The Daoist concept that says “do not doing” or “wu wei,” which means achieving without achieving
Ying and Yang and why they matter when it comes to sleep
The different elements in traditional Chinese medicine and how they can help you sleep better
Why doing less helps us return to ourselves
How acupuncture can help resolve sleep issues
Why diet matters when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep
How eating late at night inhibits the restorative state that the body needs to be in to rest
How to create more Ying (calm) energy in your bedroom
Leo’s rituals for great sleep
The biggest misconception about sleep
The Last Five Questions

THE LAST 5 QUESTIONS:

What is your favorite place in nature? A cornfield.
What is the animal, mineral or plant that resonates with you the most? Dogs!
What is one thing we can do right now to connect with the natural world and bring more harmony into our lives? Embrace the fact that everything is part of the natural world and stop looking for it. Even us – man, and the ugliest inventions of man, are part of nature. Everything is nature, and we can try and accept that more I think.
What’s the greatest lesson nature has taught you? The most valuable thing in existence is life.
Nature brings me... Nature is trying to bring me, me. Nature is trying to bring you, you.

Resources:

Connect with Leo Wang:

Connect with The Our Nature Podcast:

Follow Our Nature on Instagram
Get Our Nature in your inbox!: www.ournaturepodcast.com
Say hi! [email protected]

“Sleep, and your quality of sleep, is nothing more than a manifestation of your overall health.” - Leo Wang

SHOW NOTES:

What Buffy does and why it’s changing the sustainability industry
Why Buffy uses Eucalyptus in its comforters
Why what you sleep in matters
How Leo’s childhood shaped his personal and career trajectory
How a common case of insomnia brought Leo to a surprising discovery
The Daoist concept that says “do not doing” or “wu wei,” which means achieving without achieving
Ying and Yang and why they matter when it comes to sleep
The different elements in traditional Chinese medicine and how they can help you sleep better
Why doing less helps us return to ourselves
How acupuncture can help resolve sleep issues
Why diet matters when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep
How eating late at night inhibits the restorative state that the body needs to be in to rest
How to create more Ying (calm) energy in your bedroom
Leo’s rituals for great sleep
The biggest misconception about sleep
The Last Five Questions

THE LAST 5 QUESTIONS:

What is your favorite place in nature? A cornfield.
What is the animal, mineral or plant that resonates with you the most? Dogs!
What is one thing we can do right now to connect with the natural world and bring more harmony into our lives? Embrace the fact that everything is part of the natural world and stop looking for it. Even us – man, and the ugliest inventions of man, are part of nature. Everything is nature, and we can try and accept that more I think.
What’s the greatest lesson nature has taught you? The most valuable thing in existence is life.
Nature brings me... Nature is trying to bring me, me. Nature is trying to bring you, you.

Previous Episode

EP 11: Honoring Our Past and Hopes For The Future

Hi ! Welcome to a very special and very short edition of the Our Nature Podcast. The date this episode will air will be on Wednesday, September 11th, which is the same date and day of the week that New York City experienced the worst terrorist attack in American history. It was a day that marked the end of innocence for many people, including myself. And although it has been 18 years since 9-11, the event changed the city and our collective sense of safety forever. For these reasons, and especially because this podcast is based in New York City, I wanted to do something different for today.

September 11th is an important reminder of our universal connection, how we are all part of this beautiful planet we call home. How one person’s pain is our collective pain and how one person’s joy is our collective joy. If we have the capacity to create devastation and discord, we also have the capacity to support life, encourage compassion and spread love. I hope you continue to honor the victims, survivors, first responders and anyone else directly affected by 9-11. Let your actions be a seed, a singular event, that grows and helps to shape this world for the better.

Resources:

How The Wolves Changed the Rivers

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Next Episode

EP 13: Mushrooms, Mycelium and More with Andrew Carter, Co-founder and CEO of Smallhold

Mushrooms may be one of nature’s true mysteries, which is probably why we can’t get enough of them. In this episode, I talk to Andrew Carter, co-founder and CEO of Smallhold, the only mushroom farm and organic farm in New York City. His company installs mini farms, or space-like growing units – in grocery stores such as Whole Foods, restaurants like Mission Chinese, and hotels like The Standard Hotel – that grow mushrooms in controlled climates from bags of sawdust so they can be harvested at their freshest moment. Smallhold's mushrooms look like organisms from another world - some resembling pine cones, others flowers, some look like heads of cauliflower. And, not only do they appear extra terrestrial, they have names like deer butt (aka Lion’s mane), hairy nuts disco, and cinnamon jellybaby. Their spores can survive extreme temperatures, radiation, even outer space. And, scientists have yet to fully understand how to mimic nature enough to cultivate some varieties. While we may never fully understand mushrooms, in this episode we try to get to the bottom of what’s going on with these wild fungi.

RESOURCES:

Connect with Andrew Carter:

Connect with The Our Nature Podcast:

Follow Our Nature on Instagram
Sign up for the Our Nature Newsletter: www.ournaturepodcast.com

SHOW NOTES:

What Smallhold does and why it’s incredibly unique in the growing space
The ins and outs of organic farming in New York State
How Andrew’s background in permaculture prepared him to work with mushrooms
Why ayurveda doesn’t support the consumption of mushrooms
Why people don’t like mushrooms and how Smallhold encourages people to give mushrooms a second chance
The mushroom craze - why now?
What are mushrooms tho?
The process of growing mushrooms the Smallhold way
Mycelium explained
The function of mushrooms in the natural world
How Smallhold curates their eleven varieties of mushrooms
Mushrooms - wild vs. cultivated, which are better?
Andrew’s favorite type of mushrooms
How Smallhold addresses the reality of accessability when it comes to fresh, organic produce
The future of Smallhold
Where to learn more about the mysterious world of mushrooms
Mushrooms powders - why knowing your dose matters
Why should you know your source if you’re taking Chaga
Where to find Smallhold mini farms in New York City
The Last 5 Questions

THE LAST 5 QUESTIONS:

What is your favorite place in nature? Ocean.
What is the animal, mineral or plant that resonates with you the most? Citrus Trees.
What is one thing we can do right now to connect with the natural world and bring more harmony into our lives? Go outside. Turn off your phone. Try to disconnect. There’s so much more to look at.
What’s the greatest lesson nature has taught you? There’s no real way to control it or understand it, and you don’t really have to.
Nature brings me...Everything. It is everything.

QUOTES:

“I like to understand ecology enough to try to imitate it, but it doesn’t have to be for us. It’s not made for us. I don’t know if we need to figure it out.” - Andrew Carter

“I think that anyone farming anything that says: this type of production is the way that everyone’s going to be farming in the future, just doesn’t understand how it’s going to work.” - Andrew Carter

Gratitude List: This podcast would not be possible without the group of talented individuals below. I offer them my sincerest thanks and love.