0:00 if you're not familiar with that bar it is considered most one of the most influential cocktail bars in history thank you phillip of course cheers cheers you know an artist in a glass yeah appreciate that does god want us to make money does does god want us to help people outside the church clearly not jewish okay right who are you and where are you going [Music] what do you want together we'll find the
0:35 ideal path on the way to wow show with your host kevin bemel today's guest on the way to wow show comes to us courtesy of one of our production team members sierra barrett she thinks the world of this fellow anyone sierra thinks that highly of i knew had to be great and indeed he is we hit it off from the first moment we met and this is someone who's got deep deep deep insight into all
1:12 facets of our lives so i think you're going to enjoy it but first we're going to go talk to philip to get a cocktail our wow tender today is philip lee so philip started out life in the entertainment business but he got captivated by the whole science of mixology and got into the hospitality business he worked with several chefs at patina restaurant group and now he's the head bar head bartender at
1:49 generally restaurant in chinatown here in los angeles so phillip welcome to the way to wow show thanks for having me our pleasure so uh what are you gonna mix up for us today so today we're gonna be making a hanky-panky cocktail the hanky-panky cocktail originated out of the bar the american bar at the savoy hotel in london england around the late 19th century early 20th century if you're not familiar with that bar it is considered most one of the most influential cocktail bars in history just because it was one of the first
2:26 bars in all of europe to feature american style cocktails oh and influenced the entire world the cocktail was made by someone named ada coleman she was one of only two women who had the title of head bartender in her day and became really popular because of that she had a huge following among the likes of mark twain charlie chaplin marlene dietrich the story of the cocktail goes where one of her regulars came into the bar and asked her for something strong
3:01 because he was tired and she really respected the regular's culinary taste so she tinkered with it for hours and hours and came up with this which is a concoction of gin sweet vermouth and fournette fernette is an italian tomorrow which translates to bitter in italy with just a lot of herbs and spices like cardamom myrrh saffron amongst others oh wow okay so he she made she made him the cocktail and he drank it he drank it took a sip and it said right after that he down the whole thing
3:37 he down the whole thing and he just said by golly now that's a hanky-panky and in europe at the time hanky panky meant magic or magical so he meant it was a magical cocktail and the name just stuck on until then from then on pardon me because i was saying you know hanky-panky you know it was a little bit racy for a couple of you know clergymen who are going to talk but but so this that that's that's a much better uh twist on the on the whole uh idea so
4:12 it's always interesting how much more ice people i because i always think like don't put too much ice in it'll dilute it too much oh dilution is the key to opening a lot of the flavors which is why when you drink like let's say whiskey meat or whiskey on the rocks you kind of want just a little bit of it just to open everything up for you and that was another thing that ada coleman were like really stressed out like stress at the beginning of making cocktails was the importance of dilution and how much dilution a cocktail needs
4:50 the color is beautiful yeah it's one of the first classic cocktails to come out of post-prohibition or pre-prohibition actually there you are and it's not as popular nowadays but before it was up there with the classics like the manhattan old fashions and now it's just like cocktail nerd to order it wherever if i'm at a bar and someone calls for it i get super happy yeah i mean i i had never heard of a hanky-panky huh but i have a feeling it's going to become a favorite [Music]
5:30 oh there you are wonderful thank you of course get that on there again there you go cheers thank you so much [Music] so philip made this for us tell me what you think about yeah right that's delicious oh yeah this is fantastic thank you phillip of course cheers cheers you know an artist in a glass yeah
6:06 appreciate that so chris you're doing well i'm doing very well that's good well you're you're a newlywed so yeah right yeah november 30th last year oh last year last year okay so i guess you're technically not you're just a few weeks a few weeks beyond being a newlywed but still yeah wonderful stuff married it's great to be married yeah and i tell all the single guys out there you're married you live longer i believe it it's true men live longer women don't yeah interestingly enough so
6:43 chris is a a new friend of mine i met him through sierra our production manager he's a fellow military chaplain army yeah go army go army all right just beat the navy last night i know 15 to nothing yep you know as as someone i know said yeah but we still have rum that's what he's saying so but chris is here really to talk about um your current venture which is something called the wellness district los angeles wellness district wellness wow
7:19 wellness district l.a yeah that you started in 2018 and it's really there to help people deal with trauma and and other sort of life-altering events and move on to to living moving on to their way to wow right i mean that's really the yeah so you you were you've been a pastor you led a college youth ministry as i as i believe right um your military chaplain active duty and now reserves yep so talk about the
7:54 transition if you would from being a man of the cloth yeah right to being a businessman i i don't think people put those two together no and it was actually hard for me to put that together because growing up i grew up in the church i grew up learning about scripture learning that you know god has this path for you and i would have people say to me often like you're going to be a pastor someday you know the spirit of the lord is upon you those types of things that were said to me and i was never i was never under the mindset that i needed to work for myself
8:30 i always thought i was working for the lord and in 2017 i got hired at a church recently and i was i stepped into that role you know it's what i've been working towards for in my entire life almost i went to seminary school i led a college ministry when i was 18 19 and 20 and i had been working towards being the role of a pastor in a church and when you put on the hat of a business person they're almost conflicting right it's like does god want us to make money does does god want us to help people outside the church clearly
9:05 not jewish but okay right that's a good word and so for me transitioning from a a pastor who was essentially living off the generosity of a congregation um to a business person who had to go out and you know earn a living on his own uh it was really challenging for me and i i embraced it i said you know what i think this is the next step in the journey and i'm not i'm not discarding what i learned as a pastor or in ministry but i'm taking that and expanding on it and what i found was that i love
9:43 working with people individually and praying for them and helping them through crisis situations as you said trauma life events but i also knew that i was missing a major piece and so when i would pray for somebody they would leave my office or they would they would go back to their normal lives and their normal routines and they would often come back with the same issue and i started to question what is the root cause of this issue and in order for me to help them explore and for me to explore it myself i had to step outside the framework of the church context and look at things like diet
10:18 exercise nutrition upbringing trauma things like their mental health things like whether or not they were have a mentality that was given to them at a young age that they haven't broken free from and so it led me to look into things like psychology and psychiatric care but also brain mapping and so i started to discover all of these different modalities of helping people heal and when you open that door does it swing open it swings open pretty wide and so it opens up this floodgates of information that you
10:54 can get in the wellness industry and so what i do is i try to help people through that wellness industry so i mean it's so interesting when i was deployed on on shipboard i would say probably half the counseling i did was actually financial counseling yeah because people would come to me and they would you sailor would come to me or maureen say you know i feel awful chaplin and when you peel that onion back what it came down to was they were in debt you know up to their up above their ears and so i ended up teaching a class in personal finance
11:29 yeah and funny enough the the ship's chaplain uh so he's he's like you have more people at your personal finance class than i get for church services yeah and i said well you know i'm i'm not sure anybody really wants to talk about god when they're worried about where they're going to live and how they're going to eat that's exactly right and i was finding the same thing when you're talking to somebody who is suicidal or has some marital issues there's usually a root cause and sometimes it is finances and if you can help them through that if you can help them navigate through that difficult forest
12:05 of everything is closing in on me and then help them open that up that is a a very different conversation and sometimes it's not very spiritual right and so as a chaplain myself i've walked with people through those conversations and found that i was actually very interested in why they were suffering the way that they were so and and i this is interesting and maybe this is you know a cultural thing i don't see money as being not spiritual or even a spiritual i think
12:40 money is a tool just like anything else it can it can be used to support our spirituality or it can be used to separate us from it um so i think i think i think it's it's somewhat contextual but but but i i absolutely hear what you're saying and then a lot of a lot of people definitely see the way so bridge for us going from this recognition to then starting um starting your business um wellness district la where where was that that that spark of of um sort of i i don't know
13:16 entrepreneurial zeal perhaps yeah so i was actually i can pinpoint the day that i've i felt that spark and it was on a drive up to the northern california era i think it was um santa clara valley we were going to visit one of my um relatives and my wife and i were just sitting in the car and we were both just kind of reminiscing on our lives and understanding like how did we get to this point and i had just been to the doctor just probably weeks before that and the doctor said listen you're going to struggle with this neck pain that you've been having chronic neck
13:52 pain for the rest of your life and i was expressing my frustration with that prognosis right somebody's telling you you're going to struggle with something for the rest of your life and she said well what do you think would be better what would what would make that experience better and so we started to brainstorm and i said i wish there was a place where you could go and somebody was caring after your physical mental and emotional and spiritual needs all in one place that you had somebody who's a spiritual director a spiritual coach that you had somebody who was helping you with your diet and exercise that you had somebody that was helping
14:27 you make important life choices and so we just really dreamed up what it would be like to have a service like that and she said i think this is where you should head in your in your life and i said wow i never thought of that before never thought about leaving the church in ministry to pursue something else but it was a deep it was a deep calling that i felt in that moment and she helped me unpack that in that moment and i just loved her support i loved her enthusiasm around it and that kind of got me excited about it too and so after that trip you know i
15:03 started looking into holistic term holistic forms of healing so things like sound healing um nutrition things like neurofeedback therapy and found that a lot of people are actually moving away from the traditional western medicine because they've had that experience that i had right somebody's sitting there and telling hey you need to take this pill for the rest of your life or you need this surgery in order to be well and a lot of people aren't buying it anymore so where do they go next yeah so we actually the first episode of the show we had a woman by the name of
15:39 by the name of megan rederath she's the chief medical officer for next health and what i find so interesting about next health is there up until i met megan and her team medicine was always reactive but it seems to me that our well-being should be proactive and and that that sounds like the philosophy that you're that that you're pursuing with wellness district absolutely when you have us reacting to life
16:15 right we go to the doctor when something is wrong i don't feel well i feel like my heart is beating faster than it should or i feel stressed and ultimately we come to a crossroads a crisis moment when that doctor says you need intervention and it needs to be now how can we prevent people from getting to that place of of crisis and it's interesting that the western medicine model actually is supposed to help you live a healthy life before you get to that point of needing surgery but they don't you go to see your doctor who says oh i
16:51 have an ache i have a pain i have this ailment and they're going to prescribe you a pill what they should be doing is saying hey what's going on in your life what's causing you what's causing you stress what's causing you to lose sleep how's your diet how can we mitigate some of those changes now before you end up on the operating table and most people will tell the doctor what they need to say and then they just need to move on with their day so what i would love to do is help people right before they get to that point and say listen you don't need to get to this point of being on the operating table or needing
17:27 needing a prescription drug for the rest of your life you can intervene now and start making some changes and those changes are very difficult we find because people have been living in their habits for their entire lives they've been eating the same way they've been exercising or not exercising the same way they've been sleeping the same way these patterns are very hard to break and so what we do is we come in and we help break those patterns that cause them that that would cause them to lead to that position of i need help immediately and i need an emergency intervention so as you were saying that a thought
18:02 kind of you know streaked through my head i've said for quite a number of years now the military is extremely good about taking civilians and turning them into you know soldiers marines sailors airmen they give us the military gives civilians a new identity and an identity that we can really grasp and it changes us so in many ways it seems to me you're looking to do the same thing am i am i coming to the heart of it or am i off in
18:38 left field somewhere no you're exactly right we approach it like a journey and going through boot camp as you went through i went through boot camp is a journey it's kind of a breaking down of the old paradigm of the way you used to be so in the military context they have to rid you of that civilian thinking mentality in order to make you a soldier or an airman or a marine and they put you through a a process of tough tasks challenges mental stress emotional emotional stress and they do
19:13 such a meticulous job of breaking down those those things that would cause you to react the same way you've always reacted they need you to react a certain way to achieve the mission and that has to a lot to do with team and it has nothing to do with your individual survival it's about the mission and the survival of everybody around you but that takes some undoing so we'd like to pay take people through a journey and we call it three phases of the journey the first phase is the discovery phase and so that's discovering the connections between the body the mind and the spirit
19:48 and we understand that they're all connected but most people don't know that and they they have these things operating independently of one another they don't realize that what i eat affects my mental health we're just now discovering that in mainstream science and then the second phase is uncovering uncovering the subconscious and unconscious roadblocks that are preventing me from healing so i like to believe that healing is a natural flow like a river but sometimes there's boulders and rocks in the middle of that river that's causing the healing to have to flow or work harder to get to the place it needs to
20:24 go so we help them uncover these rote unconscious roadblocks and then the third phase is recovery right it's recovering a new ethos similar to in the military how they give you a new identity a new mindset but this has to do more with your your spiritual belief your ethos about your life and how you what your purpose is in life and how you move and interact with other people and in your community and that has a lot to do with your mental health spiritual health and physical health as well so we have to take people through that journey of physical
20:59 mental and emotional but it is a journey so we serve as a guide throughout that journey last question for you because we could talk for for hours but how how does someone get started what what's what's your you know call to action to use an overused phrase so you can go on our website wellness district la and all of our information is on our website but the biggest thing that we have people do is as far as their starting point in their journey when they sign up with us we have them do three things we have them do a brain mapping so
21:34 similar to an ecg for your heart electrocardiogram for your heart they can do that for the brain so we want to understand how your brain is actually functioning so that we can navigate the rest of the plan around some of the roadblocks you might already have in your mind then we have them do a spinal exam you know your spine is often compared to a cell tower if the signals from your brain aren't getting to the rest of your body because there's a a break or something that's not as strong as it should be in the spine then you're not going to heal the way that your liver or kidney or
22:10 intestine needs to heal it's very important that we look at the spine and then we also have blood work done so we go through integrative medicine doctors such as forward health or places like next health to get a full blood work panel once we have all of those three things done we have a full picture of what's going on in your body mind and spirit and then we design a tailor-made wellness plan specifically for you so in essence we are gathering all of these professionals that are caring for your specific needs in one location fantastic well you know we'll put a link
22:45 to wellness district la in the show notes and and if people want to learn more they can they can contact you through your website absolutely yep terrific chris cheers my friend thank you thanks for watching this week wasn't it terrific just relaxing and hanging out with chris forman he's such a wealth of knowledge on how we can get to a place of holistic health and if you want to pursue that check out wellness district la just give it a
23:22 google search or check the link in the show notes and chris will help you on that path next week tune in when i have cassandra carter as a guest and she's gonna help us better understand how we can really help our children courage at all times my friends marie you're still my belle [Music]
24:29 you