Mental Health Champions: Why & How Malakhiyah Of the Karmatic Diet Is Helping To Champion Mental Wellness
An Interview With Michelle Tennant Nicholson
Meditate so the mind is relaxed and not in a state of dis-ease. If you never practice mental focus, then your mind will basically run amuck hence the term monkey mind. Taking the time to learn to focus the mind, quiet the mind, direct consciousness, being in mindful awareness as a few practices.
As a part of our series about Mental Health Champions helping to promote mental wellness, I had the pleasure to interview Malakhiyah.
The author and coach Malakhiyah is renowned for his dedication to teaching the knowledge and wisdom developed from his collective training with multiple masters from different parts of the world.
His system within the Karmatic Diet book series incorporates various cultures, practices, and disciplines from internal and external arts such as martial arts, yoga, qigong, meditation, breath, withdrawal of senses, plant medicine, gnosis, emotional healing, and more.
Malakhiyah imparts his wisdom while paving the way for others by laying out tried and true practices and techniques for intentful mental, physical, and spiritual evolution. He is now working to illuminate the seeker’s innate hidden abilities all humans have available to them, the wisdom of how to be in the world of the mind, emotion, and senses, yet, not of it.
Accompany Malakhiyah in putting the bigger picture together so the path ahead may have a stable and true foundation from which to build.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?
I grew up in Los Angeles during the 1970’s and 80’s. It was a bit of a rough start, from birth I came into the world with brain damage, from lack of oxygen, resulting in “conductive-aphasia”, generating speech problems and a host of learning disabilities.
By age four I was diagnosed and started treatment for ADHD (attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder), in which I was a part of a large case study and ended up on local and national news segments because of it. Later on, I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder, (otherwise known as manic-depression), with major-depression and explosive disorder.
From an early age, I had an insatiable, deep curiosity about what we are a part of, and determination to put the puzzle together. My training in internal and external arts started around age three, as my father was my first martial arts instructor. He was a retired marine who trained in internal and external self-mastery arts and passed many gems to me.
My mother a Catholic was an intellectual, one of the most intelligent women I’ve known.
She wanted to make sure I was cultured so I knew plays, opera, and other various arts.
From kindergarten through 7th grade, I went to a Christian Baptist private school.
My parents owned a day care center/summer camp while I was growing up, so I had the benefit of having my loving parents around me a lot until around age 11 when my parents got divorced.
As a teen growing up in Los Angeles during the 1980’s it was a bit of a jungle, and I was one of the wild animals. As I recall I was not working in any good sense.
You are currently leading an initiative that is helping to promote mental wellness. Can you tell us a bit more specifically about what you are trying to address?
I am working to address and promote mental wellness through addressing much of what is considered mental illness within our current society today, emotional ineptitude, from a lack of taught and developed emotional intelligence.
Emotional ineptitude is first triggered from mental poisons, addressing these mental poisons is key, unfortunately in today’s society these mental poisons or also known as states of ego are perpetuated and often prized traits in the environment of this largely mentally sick society.
There are 108 mental poisons or states of ego. These are in a form demons that we allow to live through us, and why the race of man can be the most vicious monsters on the planet.
Let’s meet the 108
1) Abuse
2) Acedia
3) Addiction/Dependance
4) Aggression
5) Ambition
6) Anger
7) Arrogance
8) Baseness
9) Blasphemy
10) Callousness
11) Capriciousness
12) Censoriousness
13) Contempt
14) Cruelty
15) Cursing
16) Debasement
17) Deceit
18) Deception
19) Delusion
20) Derision
21) Desiderium
22) Desire for Fame
23) Discord
24) Disrespect/Disrespectfulness
25) Dissatisfaction
26) Dogmatism
27) Dominance
28) Eagerness for Power
29) Effrontery
30) Egoism
31) Envy/Enviousness
32) Excessiveness
33) Faithlessness
34) Falseness
35) Furtiveness
36) Gambling
37) Garrulity
38) Gaudium
39) Gluttony
40) Greed
41) Grudge
42) Hard-heartedness
43) Hate/Hatred
44) Haughtiness
45) High-handedness
46) Hostility
47) Humiliation
48) Hurt
49) Hypocrisy
50) Ignorance
51) Imperiousness
52) Imposture
53) Impudence
54) Inattentiveness
55) Indifference
56) Ingratitude
57) Insatiability
58) Insidiousness
59) Intolerance
60) Intransigence
61) Irresponsibility
62) Jealousy
63) Know-it-all
64) Lack of Comprehension
65) Lecherousness
66) Lust
67) Lying
68) Malignancy
69) Manipulation
70) Masochism
71) Mercilessness
72) Miserliness
73) Negativity
74) Obsession
75) Obstinance
76) Oppression
77) Ostentatiousness
78) Pessimism
79) Prejudice
80) Presumptuousness
81) Pretense
82) Pride
83) Prodigality
84) Quarrelsomeness
85) Rage
86) Rapacity
87) Ridicule
88) Sadism
89) Sarcasm
90) Scheming
91) Seducement/Seduction
92) Self-Denial
93) Self-Hatred
94) Sensuousness
95) Shamelessness/Conscienceless
96) Sloth
97) Stubbornness
98) Tormenting
99) Tyranny
100) Unconscientiousness
101) Unkindness
102) Unruliness/Incontinence
103) Unyielding
104) Vanity
105) Vindictiveness
106) Violence
107) Violent Temper
108) Wrath
This is one aspect regarding mental health I am working to address, hence my creation of the Karmatic Diet, the diet for mind, body, and spirit.
Karmatic Diet — Karma(tic)
Karma — the action of cause and effect
Tic — a persistent or recurrent behavioral trait
Diet — lifestyle change of a series of activities in which one participates in that improves overall health.
If anybody is looking for the definitions from the 108 that I’ve listed above, they can be found at https://www.karmaticdiet.com/108-defilments-glossary
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
I am passionate about this because like all humans I too have lived in states of emotional and mental suffering, for myself to levels of hell! As well as seeing loved ones consumed to degrees by emotional states of possession, or mental illness.
When I had hit my bottom in emotional and mental suffering, I fell to my knees and prayed for answers. I expressed to God in my prayer that if I was shown how to remove suffering from my life that I would share it far and wide, so that the information would be used for the betterment of all.
Well, I was given what I asked for, the tools and wisdom. To achieve it takes work, it is not some mystical answer that magically changes things just with the words without action.
Now, here I am sharing what was shared with me.
I have found a lot of people don’t yet grasp that suffering is a choice, or that there are other choices that can be made. But in a state of suffering, it can be hard to know, or even see choices, it can even become easy to wallow in. But if there is a plan and method with proper support it can make it easier to make a different choice. Especially when the truth of it all is so simple, yet no one seems to teach it to us these days. Hence why I felt this void needed filling.
Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions, but never manifest them. They don’t get up and just do it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and do it? What was that final trigger?
I have had several big Aha moments on my journey so far. Here is one such aha experience that I share in my book The Dark Kingdom 108 Monsters Within;
“I was a different person, desperately seeking a character change, purpose, and direction. I wasn’t a very good person either and my words were like daggers. I was not familiar with virtue, nor was I in tune with my moral compass. I was, however, continuously seeking out knowledge and applying and trying different things!
I didn’t even know how to be honest with myself or anybody else.
Frankly, I was emotionally inept.
I was married to the most amazing woman; she was my angel. But I had a vacuous pit in me, the overwhelming feeling that something was missing. I did everything I could think of to try to fill it, but nothing worked. Nothing helped alleviate my feeling of great emptiness, a bottomless void.
I and the people around me suffered, most regrettably my wife at the time.
I prayed for help!
Then one day, I was with a couple of friends and my wife at the time, and one of my friends pulled out this dried plant called salvia divinorum. He asked me if I wanted to try it? I was curious as to what something from a tobacco store could do!
So, I tried it.
There I was, smoking this stuff out of a pipe. I took a big inhale, and held it… It was harsh on the lungs and not very pleasant tasting, though that thought disappeared quickly as the next thing I knew, I had gone astral. My spirit had been ejected out of my physical body like someone, or something had hit the eject button.
(I had experienced it before purposefully, so I knew what the experience was.)
This time, however, I was not at the wheel as I was astral projected far from my physical body as I took off into space quite literally.
It seemed as though I went past several galaxies in seconds, appearing abruptly in a hallway with a woman standing with her back to me.
As she turned around, I could see she was very appealing, tall with platinum-blonde hair, a kind, warm and loving face.
She looked at me with an expression of surprise, and said: “Greetings, you don’t belong here yet! But, since you are here, I will share with you something. You’re doing it wrong! You went there for a purpose, and you need to figure it out! Take this! Truth, respect, and nurture life, understand the polarities! You only have two chances left!”
I was speechless. She then smiled lovingly and moved her left hand up from her side and waved it right to left in front of me, and just then, I was propelled back into my body so forcefully that I fell back from where I had been sitting!
Needless to say, that was the day my perception changed from whimsically going through life practicing different arts and self-disciplines, to where I felt I had to dedicate much more of my time to understand what I was a part of and what might be my purpose here.”
That experience is one of many that has driven me forward on this venture.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
The whole process of building the Karmatic Diet system has been pretty interesting. I would say the most memorable is when students or readers come to me telling me about their experience with a certain practice, especially when they achieve what is thought by most to be impossible. So, for me it is seeing these life changing Aha moments.
Something interesting I can share with you is, during the process of getting the first two books edited and formatted, while developing the website for the brand, the trademark, copyrights, etc.. I simply did not have the funds to get all of that accomplished.
So, I put out a little prayer saying “It would be nice if the money that I had paid in taxes over the years could come back to me, as I could use it. And I really didn’t morally support those things. So, Source of Creation; it would be nice if I could receive that cash back so I could pay for these things we would like done. Thanks.”
I kept writing and working on the project and a couple weeks later I started receiving money from multiple different places, one of which was the government. I don’t believe we would be here having this conversation at this time had that windfall not come as it did, as it made it so I was able to get the first two books of the series released.
I am not surprised, but I never cease to be amazed at how interesting it is how things play out.
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
I have had a few cheerleaders along the way, and the influence was great because it gave me confidence, confidence in writing because I was nervous as frankly, I didn’t do well with the education system.
So, in the beginning of my writing journey I only knew how to write in run on sentences. And with dyslexia not knowing the rules of writing having a couple friends that had those basics down where vital and I’m so very grateful that they were there for me in the beginning to assist me so that when I did give the actual editor the manuscripts, they were legible. Thank you to my support Indica Ballard, River Jean, Jamie Valentine, and Danial Garnett.
I am a firm believer that we should lend each other a hand, as it’s easier to be successful with some help along the way. The Karmatic Diet project is a project of love and charity so I made all of my books available for reading at our website karmaticdiet.com free of charge, as I believe everyone should have access to this information regardless of finances.
According to Mental Health America’s report, over 44 million Americans have a mental health condition. Yet there’s still a stigma about mental illness. Can you share a few reasons you think this is so?
I believe mental health isn’t properly addressed. Instead, I see negative mental health being fueled by media, entertainment, and education, in addition to a lack of tools that should be taught through adolescence that are not.
The link between emotions and mental health is simply being overlooked or not linked for some reason, even by Mental Health America on their own website with a search of “emotions linked to mental health”, where you will find not one single link for information between emotions and mental health, except in relation to an article on substance use disorders.
Generations are being raised with a lack of insight and knowledge on emotional intelligence perpetuating a wave of emotional ineptitude which has been misdiagnosed as mental illnesses. This alone will lead to a stigma about mental illness because it’s mostly misunderstood, and most of us are proponents of it so we would need to face ourselves, not always an easy task.
Something that needs to be directly addressed is that parents can’t teach children something that they were never taught, nor something that they never developed themselves. And there is a big stigma around this.
And just to clarify, I do not believe all mental illness is emotional ineptitude.
In your experience, what should a) individuals b) society, and c) the government do to better support people suffering from mental illness?
From my view individuals and society as a whole would benefit those suffering from mental illness is by becoming more emotionally intelligent themselves. Being the change, they wished to see in the world.
This direction of first focusing on our own personal mental wellness. If we live in a sick environment eventually you get sick, making this a clear sign we need to address the environment. So, we each need to play our part in this.
The benefits if people learned to become more aware of their emotions and less reactive, with no longer identifying with emotions could start paving a way for a new Golden Age of humans strong in mind, body, and spirit.
I have found a lot of people identify with emotions, such as I’m angry… rather than what it really is, just something that is being experienced, but instead the get possessed by it. Allowing it to control them to different degrees.
The identification of an emotion such as anger, in itself holds the anger emotion prisoner, and in return the anger emotion ends up holding the individual who identifies with it prisoner, making the person holding it sick mentally and eventually physically. This is an emotional experience held for an extended time internalizing and metastasizing in the mind, hence the term mental illness.
Development of emotional intelligence has the ability to break the bonds related to emotional turmoil, taking each person in the direction of being in less dis -ease.
From my observation governments would do better helping people suffering from mental illnesses by first addressing the long overdue elephant in the room, all the closed federally funded mental institutions and programs.
These institutions and programs need to be reopened and mental illness and drug dependency needs to be fully addressed once again in this country.
Next would be doing what’s necessary to prevent mental illness or emotional ineptitude in future generations by redesigning the education systems to teach NVC nonviolent communication, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, and practices and disciplines such as qigong, meditation, and different aspects of yoga. This is where many studies show improved mental and social health benefits… Without negative side effects!
What are your 5 strategies you use to promote your ow and mental wellness? Can you please give a story or example for each?
Five steps I use to promote my personal mental wellness
1) I stretch and do static tendon holds regularly as preventative maintenance so that I have little to no muscle or tendon dis-ease.
If you allow your body to become tensed and then you don’t take the time to stretch yourself out or pay attention and take care of your muscles and tendons overtime this creates dis-ease to injury and the more dis-ease that you have going on in your body the more irritable you are. This irritability transfers into how you relate with others.
So, relating to yourself and having a good relationship with your own body and taking care of it is preventative from being in states of dis-ease. This is also a preventative means from physical injuries that normally occur from aging.
2) Meditate so the mind is relaxed and not in a state of dis-ease. If you never practice mental focus, then your mind will basically run amuck hence the term monkey mind. Taking the time to learn to focus the mind, quiet the mind, direct consciousness, being in mindful awareness as a few practices.
This makes it easier when relating with others and dealing with situations, coming from a calm and collected state because you practice having your mind in that state, which ultimately becomes your state of being.
3) Breathing and posture as this brings awareness to whether I’m engaged with life or receding from it and into the mind. The breath in states of anxiety starts to pick up and become more rapid and shallow, if you are aware of your breath, you become more aware of emotional or sensational states that may come on.
Posture, when your shoulders are pulled back, your chest forward, standing upright in good proper posture, you’re opened up and engaging the world around you. When you go into poor posture with your shoulders rolling forward into a fetal-like position, it’s like you are sick and receding from the world. In this fetal position you have shorter breath, and your organs are compressed. A healthy body posture is upright, so you don’t have that organ compression and you get full breaths.
4) Remaining non-reactive to emotional or sensational experiences/triggers. Instead, allowing the emotional or sensational experiences to be simply witnessed without judgment by making my first priority to identify, not react to the experiences so that I may act from an intentful state of action, rather than an emotional state, or that of a state of reaction.
5) Seeing everything that happens as a gift. In so, living in the state of gratitude.
If ever I find myself wanting to complain or I feel ungrateful about anything, I pay attention to the witnessing and then instead turn it around and express gratitude for something I feel abundant in and am appreciative for. This helps keep my electromagnetic marker set to the state of abundance.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that inspire you to be a mental health champion?
A couple of my favorites are Alan Watts, Marshall Rosenberg (Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life), Samael Aun Weor, Whim Hoff the Iceman, Jordan Peterson. A great resource is the non-profit Dhamma Vipassana Centers https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/vipassana
If you could tell other people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
Whether we know it or not our environment and society is an extension of ourselves. Contributing and stepping up to the task of addressing current environmental and social issues supports the prospect of a better future for ourselves and future generations, along with the fulfillment of being a part of something much larger than our individual selves.
How can our readers follow you online?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/malakhiyah
https://www.facebook.com/KarmaticDiet
https://www.instagram.com/karmaticdiet/
https://www.pinterest.com/karmaticdiet/
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
About the Interviewer: Inspired by the father of PR, Edward Bernays (who was also Sigmund Freud’s nephew), Michelle Tennant Nicholson researches marketing, mental injury, and what it takes for optimal human development. An award-winning writer and publicist, she’s seen PR transition from typewriters to Twitter. Michelle co-founded WasabiPublicity.com.
