Teach The Babies! with Dr. Pooch

In this episode of 'How Y'all Healing', host Spry Lee Scott engages in a profound conversation with Dr. Pooch, a holistic healer dedicated to educating families about health. They explore Dr. Pooch's journey into holistic health, the significance of names and identity, the essence of medicine, and the impact of education and relationships on health. Dr. Pooch shares insights on herbal remedies, cultural practices, and introduces his 'Get Well Johnny 12' series, aimed at empowering the next generation with holistic health literacy. In this conversation, Dr. Pooch discusses the importance of healing, and the empowerment of children through education. He emphasizes the need for holistic health education that is accessible to children, allowing them to become advocates for their own health. The conversation also touches on the legacy of his work, the impact of parenting on personal healing, and the importance of consistency in teaching healthy habits.

https://drpooch.com/

https://www.medicine4melanin.com/howyallhealing

Music credits:
Intro… https://www.therelaxedmovement.com/

Outro… Jarico - Island; supported by @FreeBackgroundMusicForCreators
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC9YwmlkIQlAQPz8IY6RHnPg/featured?sub_confirmation=1

Transcript

Spry Lee Scott (00:07)
Hello, and welcome to How Y'all Healing, a series of conversations with healers, leaders, and organizations about their healing journey and the importance of health and wellness for black and brown people. We talk to guests about the work that they are doing to heal our communities and find out what's in their personal self-care package. I am your host, Spreilly Scott, and this is How Y'all Healing.

What's up, what's up, everybody? Like the intro said, I am your host, Spry Lee Scott, and this is another episode of How Y'all Healing. And before we get to the actual show, I really want to show my love and appreciation for everybody that has been showing the podcast so much love. mean, from the reviews to the listens and...

Everything else in between I really really do appreciate y'all and you all are adding to the success of the show so again, I just want to Send out my heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to the how y'all healing community for making sure that we stay on top and

It's a journey that we are gonna take together. So again, I'm gonna say thank y'all. And I'm gonna give y'all, I'm giving y'all a round of applause. Y'all said y'all loved the applause. That was the feedback. And so I guess we're gonna keep it from here on out. we have a guest this week and it is a brother that I am excited to.

have here with us today. And we're gonna jump right into it because I wanna take all the time that we can to get into this conversation.

our guest this episode is Dr. Pooch, who began his personal holistic health journey in 2012. After extensive training in holistic healing systems for both children and adults, he began building his holistic health practice.

Since then, he has worked broadly with the Los Angeles School District and has been successful in the implementation of holistic approaches to addressing, correcting, and improving childhood behavioral issues, academic delays, and emotional health. He is also the creator of the world's first early holistic health curriculum, a fantastic and informative series entitled The Get Well Johnny 12,

Dr. Pooch is on a mission to train and educate families, the fundamentals of holistic health through his books and creative educational content. Please

welcome Dr. Pooch. Thank you for coming in. Hey, it's great. It's great. Thank you for having me, Spry. Yeah, we met at a health fair for black men right in Brooklyn. In a historic place in New Yes, in...

Weeksville Center, is, one of the oldest, I think it's the oldest black village in New York. Sounds about right. And so y'all can look that up. They still give tours and some of the houses are still up. Y'all can look that up on your own. I'm not gonna mess up the history of it here, but we did meet there and we just hit it off.

we found out that we were aligned with the same mission of bringing healing to the world, basically. And I just knew that I wanted to connect with you. And I think this is before we even launched the podcast, and we said that we were gonna do something. We wanted to continue this conversation. So here we are.

A man of your word. You know, that's what men do. Yes, yes. Thank you. And I want to start off with a quote from your website, because it's so aligned with the work that we do with my company, Medicine for Melanin, and with the podcast, How Y'all Healing. you say, we all want the same thing, to raise health, literate, capable, cooperative, responsible, and respectful children who will grow into emotionally healthy and authentic adults.

to themselves and their purpose. My vision is to connect and inspire families and communities so that they feel empowered to raise children who are wholly connected with themselves to others and to the earth that we live in. why?

did you choose this journey or why did this journey choose you? There you go. You know, that's what I was gonna say. Maybe the journey actually chose me. Let's start off with the name, Dr. Pooch. I'm not a doctor per se. I haven't been, I'm not a PhD. I was actually in and out of school. But Dr. Pooch.

has been a nickname that I've had before I was able to probably say my first words. I've been Dr. Pooch my whole life. And

know, people resonate with their name. Whatever you call somebody, they're gonna become that, just like this bottle of water. know, whatever I call this bottle of water, the water is gonna respond to that, molecular structure, right? This is like cutting edge science, but it's also ancient, you know, science. And so, you know, like...

Say if I say, I love you water, right, it's gonna change the molecular structure of that water to become, if you flash freeze it, it's gonna become a beautiful crystal. If you say, I hate you, to the water, to the bottle of water or to a body of water, the molecular structure is gonna change to form a non-geometrical shape, like a very ugly shape. So, back to the name, I was called Dr. Pooch.

for my whole life and it made an imprint on me. in my bloodstream, in my genetic code, I literally embody Dr. Pooch and still am learning in my conscious mind of what that means. But the imprint is already there. It's this Dr. Pooch. And doctor is a Latin word that means to teach.

And a lot of our doctors in our current society, they're not teaching anymore. They just talk over people and they, you know, they're very authoritarian. And I think that the teaching is what's missing. So I've always resonated with children, with I'm just a natural educator. It just, I guess it goes back to the name. I have to go back to the root of it. And

I've always been in schools. always, even as a youngster, I moved abroad. I was born in Los Angeles, but I moved abroad. My dad sent me and my brother away to go to school in Senegal, for the most part of it. We were in Senegal, and that's where he's from. And even then, I was tutoring in English. I had like, kid, I was like what, 12 years old? I'm tutoring

16, 17 year olds just to get some little side money. So I've always been an educator, natural, just teaching. And not just side money, but it was also a part of your preparation. were aligning with what...

your ultimate task here on earth is supposed to be, which is again, going back to doctor, doctor meaning teaching, you were teaching, you were already the doctor. That's what, you know, so that's, I'm still kind of trying to understand what this name means and what does Dr. Pooch represent to the world. You know, I know what I've done already is pretty impactful, but.

I'm still learning different aspects of myself and learning to incorporate those aspects. Cause I used to shy away from the name. wants, you know, nobody outside of my immediate family really called me Dr. Pooch. Like that was, that was the family name. And you know, early on, like in my rap career, I didn't, I didn't choose that name. I was running away from that name. Cause I couldn't, I didn't understand the

the full impact of what that was. So I was running away from it and I had a real, I guess, identity crisis. So when I fully embraced the healing aspect of it, that's when I said, okay, I know what to call myself.

and now I'm so proud of this name and I literally wear it.

I'm sure when people hear doctor, immediately they go to medical doctor and they're looking for that kind of, I guess, relationship with you. But it's more so like, I'm a...

I'ma teach you for real, like we gonna heal. And one of the things I've heard a while ago is about healers, a true healer is going to teach you how to heal yourself, where you're not dependent on them anymore. And when you look at Western medicine, a lot of times is about continuing to depend on the doctor.

You know, that thought came to me earlier before I left home. My wife is Ethiopian. Her mother's name is Medhin. And that is the origin of the word medicine. Medhin. So there's a prayer in Amharic. They say, Medhani yalam. Right?

And it's a prayer to God because that name, Medhin, is actually an attribute of God Medicine is actually a spiritual word.

So there's a spiritual aspect to healing. sunlight and these other attributes that are healing us and that our body resonates with and responds to. So this is a...

divine practice. Wow. Yeah, and we could go down a whole rabbit hole with that, but I want to get back to you. So you started your healing journey in 2012. What prompted that part of your journey? Well, it was a lead-up to 2012. Prior to that,

I was in and out of college, right? I went to community college and I literally was trying to find what I wanted to do. So I would open up the catalog in school and say, this class looks nice. this botany class looks interesting. this biology class. this guitar class. this English class, right? And I would just tailor my own curriculum.

I took all of the English courses that I could take, all of the creative writing, all of it. And I was excelling in those classes. The teacher would turn the lights off and, Hassan, can you read what you, it was like that type of thing. And it was just life that,

put me in a certain position and I wasn't able to follow what at that time I wanted to do, And then I fell out of school. I just got a job in schools, working with autistic children. That was interesting in and of itself.

The school, was like about 18, maybe 19 years old. The school developed a position for me and gave me my own classroom. That's how effective I was helping these children. When they had outbursts, they literally had these security guards, of big football looking player guys. They would be in this little room. If a kid had a crisis, they would sometimes have to, you know.

hold that kid down, right? So instead of doing that, they would just send him to Mr. Hassan. Mr. Hassan would change their day around, and I was always cool, calm, and collected, and get them to do their work and send them back to class. It's funny, I had a very similar experience because I worked in...

school system with at-risk youth straight out of high school. And it was the same thing where the young people there, when they got out of hand, they would be restrained. And I was able to build a relationship with them where we didn't have to go that route.

most of the time. And it's about relationship and being able to have an understanding with these young people and think, essentially, that's what young people want. They wanna be seen, they wanna be understood, they wanna be heard. That's it, that's it. Some of these kids, you wouldn't believe me, and I don't wanna put some of these kids on blast.

but there's kids that were in that school, supposedly at risk, supposedly on the spectrum, supposedly, you know, all these labels that we put on the kids. Some of those kids are actors and directors right now. They've been on the big screen. Some of those kids have, won a Grammy. Wow.

You know, and these are the kids that the system throws away. There's genius in them, you know, and I was able to see that and help harness that within them and make them feel good, make them feel, you know, like they were worth something. So that happened. And I was still trying to, you find my educational path.

I was looking into Chinese medicine. So I was like, all right, I need to take Chinese. And I took a year of Chinese and learned hundreds and hundreds of characters. And I was having a good time. Then I was, the more I studied, was like, this doesn't really speak to my soul. So I diverged again, sought another path. And it was my sister actually who found a holistic...

health coaching program. And that's why I put the marker of 2012. It's not, you know, the Mayan calendar or anything like that. It just happened to be, that was the turning point. That was the year actually that I graduated. So it was like 2011. It was a one year program, but it put an entrepreneurial spirit behind this passion that I had for health. And it exposed me to

a range of modalities and different people in the field, people that incorporated different dietary theories and plans, people from all around the world. Even Deepak Chopra was one of the teachers. David Wolf, they had all these different modules and I learned from all of these people.

Then I went back to school to another community college, And I met a brother there that, he's a doctor, but he was the anatomy teacher. And we hit it off, like we became friends. To this day, we're friends. And...

He would always start the class off with real revolutionary spirit. Just like, this is the latest in the news, and this is what's happening in Africa, know, woo, woo, woo. And all right, back to class. And then we get into the physiology or anatomy or whatever. And so he's really impactful. was like, wow, this is, I like that. I could do that. could see a black man strong. And it's like, I resonated with that. And he would always give us.

supplemental information, just handouts. And he gave us Dr. Sebi's information one day. was like one of the names of different healers. And bam, that put me down a rabbit hole, you know, because I was in LA. So.

pulled up on Dr. Sabie and just started, I would go to the office regularly and just experience the herbs and then look on the back of the label and start studying them and then go to where he was copying the herbs from and then build a relationship with them and buying these things wholesale and then building my own clientele and helping people. It was just one thing unveiling into the next, one thing unfolding into the next.

I really became overly passionate about cracking Dr. Sabie's codes. Really, that's what it was. I was like, I gotta crack his codes, because I can make these herbs. And you know, this speaks to me. I know that herbal, food, herbal remedies work. And now it's about...

how can I put these compounds together and help people? And what other compounds are out there in the world? That was something, since a youth, that always fascinated me. The Amazon forest, you know, I lived in Africa, so I was a sickly child. I got malaria, numerous times,

I was...

very undernourished, malnourished. And I would get sick a lot, because it was in an area in Senegal that, I don't know, those mosquitoes were crazy. I call them tiger mosquitoes. They had these stripes on them. you have a sweater on, they'll get through it. So I was living at a pharmacist's house.

He had a pharmacy in my grandmother's neighborhood actually in Senegal. I remember with the medicine that he would give me.

You know, there was some bitter compounds that were effective for malaria, and that was made from certain herbs, like quassia, like the quassia chip, right? Those range of herbs. And then, I would get these charcoal tablets, and the charcoal tablets, like, they worked.

I was like, yo, this is amazing, this is natural. so this is my earliest relationship health and healing, and even my grandmother. she did cupping.

So this is actually even an African practice of what the Chinese people do, of cupping and sucking.

the toxins out of the back, out of the lungs and stuff like that. And so I was exposed to all of this stuff. And then imagine, you know, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, finally like 16 years old, I come back to LA, my mind is like, you know. And then to just being around Dr. Sebi, I think it was also a part of what was already ingrained in you So I'm sure that a lot of

the herbs and things like that that you were introduced to with Dr. Sebi, you had somehow one way or the other had come in contact with it before. yeah, yeah. Maybe not those exact herbs, but.

Senegal definitely has, you know, they have their herbal remedies, the kinkaliba, the baobab, you know, all of these things that we just use on an everyday basis. Right, and just with a lot of the indigenous practices.

These are our practices that are ingrained in us. And so the same way a child now is born knowing how to use an iPad because it's in their DNA is the same way that we are born knowing.

how to interact somehow or the other with certain herbs and things from the earth because it is a part of our culture. Yeah, our environment. Right. So, I want to get to this series. because this series is pretty much all of your, not all, but a lot of your knowledge in the books now. And the same way that you were trying to get this information and crack the codes,

of that Dr. Sebi, you know, from Dr. Sebi, you...

are sparking a new generation that's coming up that doesn't, they don't have to crack the codes, because the codes are being given to them. So let's talk about the Get Well Johnny 12 series. How did that start? I got certified as a holistic health coach, and it put an entrepreneurial spirit behind the passion that I already innately had as a...

you know, an amateur healer. so I would go out into the community. I would go out into the Crenshaw district in LA. And we would, there was like a park right across from LeMurte Park. And we called it the Triangle Park. And every Friday, that would be the meeting. And it started with three brothers, five, seven, till it was like 12, 15, know, black men.

and I would lead a discussion. And you put black men in a space together, they're gonna find some way to, know, hustle and make money especially with the knowledge going around. So.

I ended up working with this one brother.

we were brainstorming a ton of different ideas, we were doing a ton of different things. one day, I was in like a meditation and I heard mustache, right? And I was like, huh, mustache. That's a good character for a book.

And I was already thinking about books. was with my wife and we're thinking we're gonna write books about African tales. And within this brainstorming session, it just hit like health.

Books, Doctor, Then I was like, okay, mustache, Johnny Mustache is the main character. So this book series, Get Well Johnny, started off as the adventures of mustache. And so later on I was like, no, Get Well Johnny sounds more of what this encompasses. And the floodgates opened, the intuition just came.

and I'm a creator, this never really happened to me where just what people would say a download, I was in the shower. And I got a whole book, just boom,

Water is powerful too. It's amazing. need to manifest some things in water. Right, right. So I'm coming out the shower dripping wet and I just wrote it all down, that whole book. then from there, I hopped on a school tour.

being on the school tour, showed me the needs that the schools were missing. it just, it consumed me. was like.

bullying is a big thing. Okay, I need to talk about bullying. I need to talk about whole foods. these kids are dealing with allergies. and it's like one after the next.

so I developed 12 books between 2011 and 2012. and I looked back at it, I was like, it's complete. these are the major pillars.

and I cannot add anything else. I can, and I will, be releasing more books in the series, but these 12 are

the pillars of holistic health, nutritional health, social, emotional health, and environmental health, like it was it. And I sat back, I was like, whoa, that's...

This is it, this is the future. The holistic approach. The holistic approach. But your focus is young people. So why young people instead of the parents? as I was trained at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, we would take clients on a six month journey.

Most adults, especially in our community, in our neighborhood, they're not gonna stick with the six months. They'll get some information and be like, all right, yeah, that's okay, I applied that, that worked, thank you, I'm good. Only a few of my clients actually went through the full program. I saw adults dealing with diabetes, with stroke, with obesity, with...

a range of issues, not knowing how to shop, not knowing how to cook, right? And I helped them. But I saw the root cause of the issue was their inner child. It stems back from their childhood, that's what...

I was really attempting to heal with these adults. And if you've worked with adults in that capacity, you know, especially black men, you know, especially, but, you know, women are more so open to change, you know, but the men are staunch. They're just like, nah, this is what I do. Just help me with that. And that's it, you know? Right. And so I said, what am I doing? Like, if I want to get back to

Who said that? Frederick Douglass? Was it Frederick Douglass that said that? Give me a child and I'll build him into a great man, but give me a broken adult, a broken man, and I can't do anything. Something he said way more eloquently. essentially it was that, a broken adult.

more than likely will remain broken because it's deep within them. But a child, even a broken child, you can heal that child and give them another perspective and another experience in life and plant that seed that can grow into a strong tree. Right, I mean another way to say it is just that as grown folks we get stuck in our ways.

And you can't, you know, can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink But they also need to understand

how it's going to help them. And sometimes they're again so stuck in their ways that they can't see past what's in front of them to realize the benefits of that long-term healing. And so when we go back to Western medicine and easier to take an aspirin for a headache than to kind of like wait it out and drink some water and.

Things like that. think especially with, as it relates to medicine and melanin, A lot of us are brainwashed by white supremacy, unfortunately, and we believe the hype. We'll look at our own people and be like, man, they still don't have nothing. Let me go with what the doctors.

prescribed, because they're better. They're real doctors. I don't think it's necessarily just because they think it's better, but it's because of what we learned. But we learned it because of what? what I try to remind myself of in this space is I had to come to a space where I was able to see it, but I also had to be open.

And even where I am right now, like there's so much more information that I know is out there for me to learn. And I hope that someone who is more knowledgeable or in that space gives me enough grace to find my own path. And that's the same thing with the people who are coming behind us.

Because we could tell people what you need, what you need, what you need, what you need. But I think the best thing for us to do is just lead by example. even with your books, teaching the young people, because now

they have less years of uninformed information, for lack of better terms, to unlearn. they've been less indoctrinated and that's what I'm saying, it's a culture of the Western way is the right way, right?

just like back to the, Medhen, these words were once ours, but we've lost the sense of the culture around these terms. So now it becomes foreign and we've adopted a foreign perspective into our own life. So we'll take the aspirin.

and we won't drink the water or we won't wait it out or we won't do breath work or things like that because we think that that's foreign. But that's really ours. a lot of our indigenous practices we've been taught that it's, bad.

or it's evil. because the people who kept it from us, they understood how powerful it actually was. And so now, what you've done is take this knowledge and put it in these books where you can teach these young people.

And I think there's that recognizes it.

So it's kind of like even though they're being introduced to it, they're kind of sort of being reminded of Reminded especially at early on. They know innately this makes sense. It makes sense that apple is better than chips. But society would tell you a calorie is a calorie.

You know, and we still have adults believing that a calorie is a calorie. Right. You know, but these, it's, they're not equal. But you don't have to convince a child that drinking water is better than drinking a soda. Like, you don't have to, but here we are, we have whole symposiums for adults saying, well, you can still have your, you know, your diet coke and your this and that.

It's okay in moderation, but you tell a child, this is good, this is bad. There's no gray area.

Right. In your books now, give them the power of choice. So at least now they have something to compare it to. Because I think that's the other part of it, is that sometimes we don't have anything else to compare it to. It's like, this is all we know, this is all what we've grown up with. So now I get to see something different and I get to make a choice.

And so let's talk about the series. Sure, so Sugar from Nature is Always Fine.

it's only a hazard when sugar's refined. So we go into natural sugar versus refined sugar. And mind you, the best way I can describe these books is like Dr. Seuss meets Dr. Sebi. That's what I tell people, and they're like, I get it. it's technically just breaking it down.

into a form where young people will understand it.

And I think that that's the way to go when we empower young people, then they're able to teach their parents help their parents on their healing journey. So superfoods. And superfoods are super fun. They're super good for everyone. Right. So I just gave you the bars

because children learn through song and rhythm. And rhyme, yeah. play, right? And you're right about what you just said. The child is gonna hold you accountable to what they just learned. They will. So you can't.

tell them, you know why these superheroes are so great? Well, because they're eating superfoods, right? And then go ahead and go to McDonald's and be like, well, you know, it's okay, just once in a while, they're gonna be confused. You have to be consistent. Consistency is key in parenting. Consistency. And they will hold you accountable. They'll be like, mom, dad, didn't you just say that? know, anyway. So whole food is better.

So keep it together. Right. Right. So we got to eat whole foods. Right. And then being able to break down what some of the whole foods are. a whole food is as opposed to, I love some of the lines in here. I'll read some of my favorite lines. So.

the character, Get Well Johnny, goes through, he goes to the garden, he goes to the farmer, he goes to the neighborhood deli, and he's finding out what whole foods are, all the seeds, the nuts, the beans, the vegetables, and fruits of all kind, and he's learning all of this stuff about fruits. And then he says, on my way home, I got hungry and made a quick stop. I sat down to eat at a hamburger spot.

I stared at the menu when couldn't decide. said, what do you have besides burgers and fries? The waitress said, she said, we have milkshakes, sodas, and cinnamon rolls. I said, yes, ma'am, but do you have any food that is whole? The waitress said, whole food? Why, I don't know what that is. All of our food just comes from the fridge, right? And she shows this little patty, this little ugly thing that that's where food comes from.

in processed food, in a McDonald's, in a Burger King, in a Carl's, know, Wendy's, wherever you're eating, Taco Bell. It's just packaged, pre-packaged food that the person that's working there does not know what they are, and then he starts educating her.

This is what whole foods are, right? So. you deal with foods, but again, series itself is on a holistic approach to Sure, sure. So you talk about bullying, think is one of the topics in one of the books as well. Exactly, so this is actually book four of the series. I'm going in sequential order. Okay. So these three, this is book one, two, and three that you just heard. and just these three alone

can help a child and a family eat healthy and be mindful because it's not only stories, they're activities, they're recipes. It's a full on curriculum that we can implement in school or at home.

So it's not only telling the what, but it's also giving the how as well. Absolutely. It's holistic in practice. Right. Right. It's not just a story. There's even a tidbit for the parents. There's a note to parent in the beginning of every book where I could talk to the adult in adult language. And then I break down the same topic for children in children's language. Well, I could tell you from working with adults, sometimes we'll probably get it more in the children's side of the story than we will from reading the adult notes. Exactly.

that's what I love about the books as well because even though they are for children It's in a way that Everyone can learn from it. Everyone can understand it as well. Yeah, they're universal And so then book four we get into bullying So the perpetrator I don't like calling a child a bully. I learned that okay You don't label going back to the labels. You don't label somebody

a negative word, right? Because then that child will embody that spirit of the bully. So he was bullying in this story. We call him a Petey Peach Fuzz. top of the morning, they're on the school bus, and he's already eating junk food. So not only he have negative behavior, but I showed the children and the people reading the book that he had negative eating habits. Right?

As opposed to Get Well Johnny, who when you look at him, he has a pot belly, right? But he's actually proud of himself because he was eating very healthy at a very healthy breakfast,

and he understood that that Petey Peach fuzz's behavior was not only inappropriate but the food that he was eating was...

kind of a culprit in that behavior as well. So I'm subtly demonizing the behavior and the food as well. And then reinforcing healthy eating with the child. And then we get into standing up for yourself and we get into all types of bullying, verbal bullying, physical bullying, cyber bullying. Everything is in here and great activities in the back. I love, love, this book. Then we get into allergy season, right? He learns.

through a story that his grandmother tells him about a man dealing with allergies, right? There once lived a man that lived in a town that lived in a house so high above ground. He cried and would weep for days and for weeks, coughing and sneezing, he barely could sleep.

Right and and the other beautiful thing about is you going back to what you said about the way we learn is through rhythm and repetition and One thing with young people and reading books. These are books that they are going to pick up and read Constantly and it's just something that will stay within them. So even when

when they move on and make different choices, they always have this knowledge somewhere in the back of their head so when they're introduced to it again in the future, it's like, wait, this sounds familiar, and this feels different. The other thing,

About books when my when my son was born his doctor said one of the best things that you can do for him is to read to him every single day

The reason why reading is so wonderful is because it's nostalgic and when you read with your child daily, what they remember is love and caring and family and things like that. so with these books, when you're constantly reading it, it's making these topics safe.

for them and nourishing for them and they will always come back to this and so when they hear things about whole foods and water and you know, standing up for yourself, these are all words for them and these are also healing words for them. And so that's what I love.

about these books and there's a series of 12, we're gonna go through all of them, but y'all go and get the books and we're gonna share the information on how you guys can go and get the books because I really do think that these are, it's an essential part of learning for our young people and like you said, and it's fun.

I know that with this series, you created this series with...

Is it cousin Dave? Yeah, cousin Dave. He wasn't the original artist, and he actually passed away of cancer during the making of this series.

Then I got another young girl, like a year later, maybe even more, I got all of the sketches that I thought were once lost, they were buried in his garage and with his belongings. And I got literally the pencil sketches that we would draw together at a deli in Long Beach. And I got those back.

then I commissioned another young artist who had just finished art school and she was able to help me with, you could see the difference of these books now that we're past, that's the six.

six books that he completed fully. And then this book from book seven on, you see a different feel to the illustrations. It's a more like modern kind of look as opposed to the classic look. So yeah, and even before Cousin Dave, there was another brother who...

helped me develop the character. We developed one full book, but then I got Cousin Dave to even redo that book, because I wanted a cohesive feel, but unfortunately, things happened how they happened. Right, so how important is it to continue to push and get this message out there because again, this is something that you were working with Cousin Dave on for a while, and then he passed before the

series was done, but he's still a part of it. He's still a part of this. This is now a part of his legacy of just continuing to keep his name and his spirit alive. So how important is it to take that with you? It's a huge part of my childhood. Cousin Dave worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He worked on Charlie Brown. he's part of our childhood. We don't know him.

I want him to be known through this. he put his life into this. This was his last project. So this is monumental because in the children's book space, children's publishing world, out of the millions of books that are to market, they're

is not a comprehensive series like this ever. There has never been a children's holistic health series that teaches children from A to Z on how to manage their own health and be their own health advocates. This has never been done. Usually it's, hey mom, can I have this? Hey dad, can I have? But adults are health illiterate. Now we're teaching a generation of children to be

health advocates, we're teaching children from kindergarten how to identify red number 40, known carcinogen that we're selling in America. Other countries are not, or they have totally banned it, but we have to arm ourselves with this information so we can actually change something because look at the state of children right now.

So. Right, and this is a great book, not only for just to have it in your house. But it's also important to have books like this in schools as well.

How do we get the information out there? How can we help you get the information out? So I have a nonprofit organization mm-hmm if you would like Donate if you have a school that's in your neighborhood donate to the dr. Pooch foundation at dr. Pooch comm that's dr. P o o ch Comm you can also purchase your own series you can

Let your neighborhood school know or any youth center that you're connected to, daycares, anywhere where children are, local libraries, and advocate. Say, where is your health curriculum? Where is your health books on children's health? And they will have none, but you have the solution. Tell them, get some Dr. Pooch books in here. Get the Get Well Johnny book series.

That's what you can do. I need advocates. need the books work. The children, literally all across this nation, in little pockets around this nation, are utilizing my curriculum in home schools, in private schools, in charter schools, in public schools. They're utilizing this curriculum because it's so needed to have this conversation. And like you said,

the adults need it as well. The adults need to be reminded of the simplicity of health and just taking it back to the simplest form, to nature, what nature has already provided and having a relationship with.

not only nature with themselves and opening and developing that relationship with the children that they're caretakers of. So, you know, it's very, very important work and you can just help by supporting and sharing a story online. This needs to go viral. I've yet to go viral.

as of lately, I'm trying again because... Well, it's coming. Before we got onto the... Before we turned the mics on in the studio, we were talking and I was just telling him how I am a parking manifestor. I said that the reason why I... Like anywhere we go...

we can manifest parking. We always find parking. Parking is easy. And this is something that has been ingrained in us. So now we believe it. But the other part of it is that we've...

Also, we're also able to let it go and understand that if we don't get parking close that's not where we're supposed to be and that walk from wherever we parked to the venue or to wherever our destination is There is something within that journey that is supposed to happen. And so it's the same thing here you are exactly where you are supposed to be and when we talk about

not going viral. And I think that we get so caught up sometimes in that part of it. you're not viral because there are other things that are happening right now that are falling into place that are lining up exactly the way they're supposed to be. And there are things that's happening within this journey, because had you gone viral,

years ago, we might not have met. and not just you and I, but so many other things that's happened along the way, with so many lives, so many young people that you're able to touch, so many lives that you're able to heal, so many families that are healing from.

this opportunity to get you one-on-one with them. with all of that said, the name of the show is How Y'all Healing. And I definitely wanna ask you, how are you healing? You know, it's amazing to be a father. I have two boys.

so I have an eight-year-old and a one-year-old. And so that is just such a beautiful spectrum, engaging with the eight-year-old. Today, we just went to the park, I picked him up from school, and I wanted to start homeschooling, though. But I picked him up from school, and we went straight to the park. That's our routine now. And we hit some pull-ups. And today...

he got well over the bar, which is a crazy accomplishment, because he's been trying for little over two months now. And he's finally up there. He just jumps up on the bar and pulls himself up. Like, wow, look at this. Playing sports, playing basketball, playing soccer, I'm like, this is me. You know, this is the...

the guidance that I needed at that age and that motivation and I'm able to dump that in him and fill him up with everything that I feel that I didn't have, right? And then I look at...

his younger brother, who's a wild card. And that just shows me a different aspect of myself. He kind of has my father's build. He's really, you know, already like has shoulders and you just buff, you know, he beats up everybody in the house and then he'll give you a kiss after he beats you up. So it's another aspect of myself that's more rough and, rugged. but he's my joy.

was talking with my wife and we love talking about our kids, right? Just how amazing they are, I try not to be that parent but I am clearly that parent. can't help it, because we see the... We love ourselves, you know? We see that reflection in them. And so I said, the oldest one, I feel like I just want to be his protector.

but the youngest one, he's like my joy, my happiness. And so that's how I'm healing through them. And everything I'm doing, taking care of myself, I have to, I see this younger one, this wild card, and I'm like, yo, this guy's built different. I have to maintain a level of health and, you know.

endurance and strength. And he's watching you, because I know you've been working on your pull-ups and your, the. Muscle ups. Muscle ups, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all of that. And now that's his goal, the older one. He's like, we were just talking about that after we left the park. Like, hey, if you could do five, because he's going to his chest, way above his chin.

And so I said, hey, if you could do five of those, then you could do one muscle up. And so now that's the next goal. And we just keep pushing the bar. We just keep succeeding. And those step by step, every day is a success. And we're goal oriented. And it's just such an amazing process. I am in love with being a father. And it's so rewarding. I didn't know that...

it's so impactful, because I didn't have this relationship with my Right, but what I see is, and I go back to when we started and you talked about growing up and how you were almost like a sickly kid growing up, and so I don't see that kid, that younger you doing the pull-ups, but now you get to show up for your son the way you said.

You don't have a relationship, you didn't have that kind of relationship with your father. But now you get to show up for your son the way that you needed someone to show up for you. And I've said this before in the show I've learned that our first child is here to help us heal our wounds. And our second child is a representation of our unlimited selves and who we could have been. that's the healing.

That's the healing that's happening. I think we can close on that. Let's tell the folks before you get out of here how can we follow you? And we will have, if y'all go to the show notes, all of the information is there, but just. Drdrpooch, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Instagram.

Twitter, everywhere.

join my email list. I'll be sending you emails. I'm doing a lot in the background to keep the community engaged and keep the community growing. So thank you so much, Spry for having me. Absolutely, and thank you for joining us. Make sure y'all go out and get that Get Well Johnny 12 series. I am gonna go through this. I'm ready and excited to introduce this series to my children and for us, and not just to them, for me.

excited about learning from this series as well. again, thank you for being here. Thank you everybody for joining us as always, please, please, please follow us. If you have not started following us yet or at how you are healing on Instagram, follow us there. Please review, like, share all of that. This podcast.

Thank you for being a part of the family and thank you for helping us continue to help it grow and as always I want to leave you with continue to choose joy Lead with love and find your peace. My name is Spry Lee Scott and this is how y'all healing peace out y'all