Friction-free Homeschooling (Free webinar)

Video Transcription

Jeff Korentayer
Well, good afternoon! And welcome to one of our periodic presentations. My name is Jeff Korentayer. And with me is Allyson McQuinn. And today’s topic is going to be something we thought would actually be quite relevant. Given a lot of what we’re talking about with our patients, and just what we’re seeing on social media and so on, what’s going on in the world and what’s going on with people these days. We thought a topic on homeschooling would be really, really helpful. And, of course, we are going to be taking this from a very Heilkunst perspective. You know, as we do at Arcanum Wholistic Clinic, we practice Heilkunst medicine. And that’s very elaborate. And there’s many things we do. But we’re going to really extract out this one concept around constitutions, and how that applies to helping you have a better experience with your homeschooling child, or how that all works between the two of you. So we’ll get into our slides in just a moment. But, Allyson, do you have any sort of general thoughts or introductory remarks to get us into the topic?

Allyson McQuinn
So just for those of you that are new to the term “Heilkunst”, it actually means “the whole art of healing and curing disease”. And it’s a science, and it’s both an art. And what we do really, in a nutshell, is we take patients like an onion and peel the emotional and physical shocks and traumas off in the order in which they’ve been assumed. Constitutional prescribing is really something that homeopaths have talked about for years and years and as Heilkunstlers as well. It really is about giving a remedy that helps to boy up a person’s lifeforce, makes them stronger, have more energy, sleep better, feel more balanced, just more in a state of grace. So that’s just a little bit about what we do and who we are and how we use the jurisdiction.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, and I like what you were saying there about how we use the remedy that it not only boosts their immune system, but it rounds out the rough edges around where they might feel stressed or anxiety or those kinds of things. And it’s like getting a vitamin of your personality, if that makes sense. Like you’re getting a boost of what your strengths are, what your natural abilities are. And you’re just getting more of your natural self pumped into you. So that’s one way of thinking about it. Anyway, so let’s bring up the slideshow here. And actually, I’ll stay here on this screen. I’m just talking to myself in my computer, getting oriented here. Okay, are you ready computer? Yes. Yes, Jeff. We’re ready. Okay, good job.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, so as we already mentioned, we’re talking about the Homeopathic Constitutional Type, which is a personality type. It also gets into physical characteristics. We’ll mention those a little bit. But we’re mostly going to be focusing on the state of mind and the learning style of each of the six types. And I guess I do actually have to talk to my computer again, for a second. I do need to move my screen here.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay. So, oh, yeah. So as we’re going through, if you’re watching this on Facebook, you can type your questions or your comments right there into the comment box. And we will incorporate those as we go. We’ll weave them into the topics we’re talking about, or we’ll bring them up at the appropriate time in the presentation. But just feel free. Just type your comments there. And we will see them on our end to the other control panel here and we will be incorporating all those.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay. So, Allyson, do you want to speak a little to this opening question, What are the benefits of knowing your homeschooler’s constitutional typology? So specifically to the homeschooling learning kind of situation.

Allyson McQuinn
Yep, I will talk about it as a mom and as a mother who homeschooled her babes. I found that it was advantageous that depending on the personality or characteristics of my child, that I really fashion the learning around how they think, and how they like to absorb their information. So my son was a very IQ personality, got his energy more from being alone. And he really appreciated getting information more slowly in a way that he could digest it more working independently. And he had to really pick and choose what it was that the activities were going to be. He had to be invested. He was not interested in me being his false authority, whatsoever. That was not going to work. So I would drop hints and such or leave little nuggets of information around, but it really was for him to pick up what it was that he was resonating with. And not my hidden agenda at all. My daughter was a totally different party. She was an EQ, so she got her energy from being with people. She’d be like, “Mama, what are we doing today? Are we going to a museum or going to a park? Can we go for a hike? Can we have a bonfire tonight?” Can we, can we, can we, can we. So it is a very different approach to learning. And so both of them have absolutely their merits. It’s just that once you know what kind of babe you have, it makes it a whole heck of a lot learn easier for the parent to fashion the tools around what they’re interested in.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. And as I’m listening to you say that, it’s like, when we give you the description of each of the six types, it’ll be like getting that instruction manual for your child which was missing when they were born. You know, somehow they didn’t show up with their instruction manual. Well, this is a lot of what the knowledge of their constitutions really helps parents do. Obviously, we all have intuitive understanding of our children and ourselves and each other. But this really formalizes the knowledge in a way where you can get a lot more practical with how you work with that understanding of who a person is, and what makes them tick and all that. So thank you for that, Allyson.

Jeff Korentayer
Yes, so I’ll just read through this slide. We’re not gonna do a lot of slide reading. But there’s some nice points here. So, “How knowing your child’s type makes homeschooling flow. Work from their strengths and natural learning style; sidestep avoidable conflicts and personality clashes; propel their learning forward from the inside out (or from their natural desires rather than a “voice of authority”); and show them how to love life-long, organic learning, rather than a ‘curriculum by numbers’.” So Allyson, is there any at least one point there that jumps out at you that you want to add an experience or an image to?

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, the last one. And the temptation is for parents to pick up where allopathic school, (state-based schools) leave off. And the idea being is that we want to foster a love of life-long learning, not the idea that a child has to have everything crammed into them from junior K, all the way up to the fourth year of university. So it’s not like we have just from age 5-6 to 24-25 and then it’s done, the child comes out fully packed and ready to go. You know, Jeff and I have done our studies in our 30s and 40s. We did post grads in our late 40s. Jeff gets up every morning at 5:30 in the morning to study, I may be a little latent at 6:30. And we study for at least two to two and a half hours every single day each. And that’s the thing is that I have a love of learning. And a lot of you do, too. And that’s what you want to foster for your kids is a life-long love of pursuing knowledge.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah. So what you’re saying, Allyson, when you graduate, and you get your diploma, the diploma does not say, “Now you know everything. So just coast through life now.” Is that what you’re saying?

Allyson McQuinn
Right. And it’s about fostering love. So you already do that as a parent, right? You love things, you love your children. A perfect example somebody asked me about this morning and I was a bit of a trickster with my kids, like I would get dressed up and like fun clothing and putting music on really loudly that I knew they liked. And I was cleaning out the cupboards in the kitchen, for example. And I would get a like a stool. And I had Jeff’s labeler and so I was labeling the jars as I was pouring a stuff out of plastic bags, and I was cleaning out the shelves and mundane job. Like if you ever said to your kids, “You want to help me clean out the shelves in the kitchen today?” It’s not going to work. They’re not going to be interested. But if I made it look like it was really fun, and I was putting labels on the jar, ‘Large Oats’ or ‘Mini Oats” or just making up fun names, they would come along and go “Mom, what are you doing? Like looks like fun.” And then next thing you know, they’d be like, “Can I use the labeler?” And I’d be like, “Yeah, sure.” And my son would be like, “Oh man, can I climb up that high on the cupboards?” And I said, “As long as you take the up with you,” and he’d be like, “Yeah, that’s fine Mama.” Next thing I knew, they’ve taken over the project and we’d be singing and dancing and just fooling around, hacking around. It was the best thing. We do that same thing, I’d yell “laundry party” in the living room in 10 minutes and everybody come running, because we’d be flinging our clothes at each other, somebody be putting a pair of underwear on their head. As long as things got reasonably folded, or at least put in their basket and taken up to everybody’s rooms, I didn’t really care how neatly they ended up in drawers. They were neat in my drawers because that was important to me, but not to the kids. But again, just to make things fun and foster a love of being in community and a love of learning.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. It’s super important point. I love that story that you’re telling. And yeah, that’s a very true general principle, the love of learning and how to you infuse life and fun into what you’re actually doing. It’s not supposed to be a deadening activity. We’re not just doing it to check boxes and get a diploma, but we’re actually trying to become more alive and more engaged with the world and figure out who we are. And yeah, there’s a whole lot more to learning than just say the basics of what’s on the official curriculum. Right? So yes, bringing life into it is a really good point.

Allyson McQuinn
And the other thing you mentioned, when we were raising the children from the time they were really little, you being their stepfather is that you said, “Ally, I don’t think the burden should be falling on any one parent shoulders to do all these tasks in the house.” Like how can we make it so that everybody wants to be involved, not that they are forced or coerced to be involved? Or if you don’t do this, you’re not going to get this privilege. That’s not the way we wanted to raise our kids. We wanted to create a voluntaryist society or community within the micro community of our home.

Jeff Korentayer
Now, what I have here on the screen is actually Allyson’s book. Well, one of her many books, but this is one she loves quite a lot. She put a lot of her life and herself into this. This is such an important topic for you, Allyson. And now we’re going to not be talking about this whole book, there’s many things in this book. We’re going to be focusing on the constitutions today. But I just wanted to mention that just in conjunction with this webinar today, we’ve put the book on sale for 50% off, or at least the Kindle edition. If you download that onto your computer, or your iPad, or anything like that, the Kindle version will be 50% off this weekend. You can find that at the link down below, the selfeducation.me. The price may not have quite been dropped yet. It’s in review with Amazon. But if you go back later this afternoon, or definitely tomorrow, you’ll see that usual price of 999 has been dropped to 499. So anyways, we have a 50% off sale this weekend. I just wanted to let you know about that. And that this book is more of an expanded version of all these ideas about homeschooling and education and life-long learning and all these really juicy topics. So, as I say in conjunction, we just dropped that price this weekend.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay, so we’re gonna get now into the details, the nitty gritty. What are the six homeopathic constitutional types? And let me just end the suspense instantly.

Jeff Korentayer
So yeah, now I’ll name these in a second. Anyone can read the screen along with me at the same time. But all homeopathic remedies, we have thousands and thousands of homeopathic remedies, but only six really translate to these basic constitutional types. Right? If you get into a whole bunch of the other homeopathic remedies, those are not constitutions. And actually, a quick little bonus point here. You’ll often hear a lot of the classical homeopaths misspeak. They don’t understand. They make a mistake about that. They refer to anything as a constitution. And that’s not correct. I’m not going to go into that here. But just what we need to focus on is there are six natural personality types. Babies are born as one of these six. And as it happens, four of these are minerals (mineral elements from the world)—Silicea, Phosphorous, Calcarea and Sulfur. And then the remaining two are plant-based remedies. So the Lycopodium is in English what’s called club moss. And the Pulsatilla is a wind flower. It’s an anemone. Is that the correct word for it, Allyson? And so yeah. So there we go. Here’s our six types.

Allyson McQuinn
And before you go on to the next screen, I just want to say that what’s interesting to note about the fact that we have four minerals and two plants is that Lycopodium, Pulsatilla are much more labile, there are much more changeable characters. Whereas Silicea, Phosphorous, I would say Silicea is dependable as the silicon microchips in your computer. Right now, it’s 1:15 in our timezone. And if you’re in the Central Time Zone, you’re going to be at that same time or 2:15 Eastern Standard Time. That’s because of the regulation of the silicea microchip. So they have certain characteristics that are also very almost standardized and consistent. So again, as we start to unpack this, you’ll see the variability in the two and the consistency in the four others.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. Yeah, thank you for that. That is a very good point. And so a general question, “How do you figure out which one your child is?” As I said a moment ago, all babies born is one of these six. We grow up as that one, we kind of develop within that personality type our whole life. But how do you know? Well, obviously, for Allison and I, it’s easy. We’ve been around these six types for a couple of decades now. So we can pretty much spot them walking down the street. But we’re going to do a little bit more of a formal explanation of what makes up a constitutional type—what can you recognize, what characteristics, and so on. And in the next few slides, we’re going to talk a little bit about some more of those formalized details. So let me go on to that each one of those is broken down.

Jeff Korentayer
So the first vector we can look at is the Doctrine of Signatures. Now, what the heck is that? As Allyson coyly asks on this slide here. Well, the doctrine of signatures is a basic principle in medicine, or maybe some other fields, where this relationship between what something is—a certain plant, a certain mineral, something from nature (the way it appears, the way it behaves in nature, these kinds of things)—and what is that relationship to what medicinal properties it has when we take that as a medicine. So, for example, actually, let’s use one of our six homeopathic constitutional types. If we take the Calcarea constitutional type, the doctrine of signatures applies to them, is that Calcarea is calcium. That’s what that word means. But even more specifically, the cow Calcarea or the calcium for the homeopathic medicinal purposes is taken the calcium from the inside of an oyster shell. So not just you’re taking any calcium from anywhere. But what is that calcium from the inside of an oyster shell? Well, that gives us this doctrine of signatures. If you understand (we’ll get more into this) the personality of the Calcarea constitutional type, they are very much like an oyster or a clam in the sense that when they are under stressed or not happy with how you’ve treated them or something like that, one of their go to defenses or go to behaviors is just a clam up. You know, they just close up shop, and there’s nothing going in or out. The store is closed kind of thing. The sign gets flipped to ‘closed’ for the day. So it was this idea of clamming up. And this idea of the calcium or the Calcarea which comes from this inside of the oyster shell, we get this clamming up behavior. So just I’m using that as an example of the doctrine of signatures. So, let me see. Allyson, do you have any additional point to make about the doctrine of signatures or another example? Or do you think that wraps it up nicely?

Allyson McQuinn
Well, and even just looking at the walnut, it’s noted that walnuts are very good for brain health and heart health. So the fats and walnuts are very beneficial especially if that’s in your blood type as O blood types, for example, they do very well with walnuts. And it really helps to improve their mental acuity and their heart health. So just to note that that’s how it really gets applied on the regimental side.

Jeff Korentayer
Exactly. Yeah, the walnut with all those nice curve. What do you call all the…

Allyson McQuinn
Well, hemispheres and the curvature of the walnut really mimics just the shape of our brains?

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah. Hopefully our brains are bigger than a walnut. But yeah, the shape is about the same. I’ve met some people where it’s questionable, but anyway.

Allyson McQuinn
Some of them I’m related to.

Jeff Korentayer
Now you’re getting a little too personal. Okay, the next vector or characteristic that we try to tap into to identify the constitutional type is something called State of Mind. Now, that is a very broad concept. The whole system of Heilkunst medicine, it’s really a state of mind based system of medicine. But we can filter that down into this more discrete topic of the constitutions. And yes, we have certain personality characteristics, but underneath all of that, within each constitution is a very unique state of mind. And the state of mind, I guess I’ll use an analogy here. It’s almost like if you use different computer systems. Some people use Mac, some people use PC, some people use Linux, and so on. And each one of them has a different operating system. Yeah, they do some similar functions in the end, but they’re going through different user interfaces, different channels, just a whole different way of organizing how that particular computer or person kind of goes about interfacing with the world. Right? Again, and you’ll see that in personality characteristics and other things. But this state of mind is very unique and distinct to each constitutional type. So, Allyson is there a vivid image or an example that you were..

Allyson McQuinn
What we were talking about when we were in bed this morning?

Jeff Korentayer
I don’t remember that part.

Allyson McQuinn
And I said, “Oh, my gosh, I got to go out this afternoon. I have to go for a big walk. And I’m going to go to my aesthetician. And I have to pick up my new glasses.” I need to move because I was fasting for the last two days. I was quite sedentary, especially yesterday. And Jeff says I would think after being really busy all this week and doing your fast ,you just want to stay home and relax. So that’s a perfect example of the state of mind of either of us—as more as an EQ, and you more as an IQ. We have different states of mind based on our typologies.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, that’s fascinating. And the more you get to know the constitutions and you see them in everyday life around you—the way people act and how they interact with you and other situations—you see these states of mind. And I guess it’s like all the different characters in a play or something, whether it’s a comedy or other kinds of drama or whatever. That’s what really good writers do. They play with these different characters, these different states of mind, and how they interact with each other and how they interact with situations. Actually, even there it is in the word “sitcom” (situational comedy). It’s all about different characters and how they behave in different situations. If it’s a comedy, we laugh at them. If it’s a drama, we get into the storyline and the drama of it all. But it’s through these constitutional types, these states of mind, that we’re all living in the same world. Even the same room, sometimes. We’re sitting across from each other or whatever. But yeah, we may be experiencing through very different state of mind than the person right next to us. So there we go. That’s state of mind.

Jeff Korentayer
Characteristics. Okay. So, Allyson, do you have something? It looks like you’re about to say.

Allyson McQuinn
No.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay. So the Characteristics. I’ve mentioned them a little bit. You get certain personality characteristics. Allyson has talked about this. There’s someone who’s more extroverted, someone who’s more introverted. We also get physical characteristics in each of the constitutions. Some who are more very warm body types, some are more cooler or chilly body types. And you’ll see that. People who are the first to put on an extra sweater or the first to open the window to get fresh air or all those. You see the ones who kick off their blankets at night because they get too overheated. So all these physical body characteristics. And that’s part of this more general sense of, How does the person interact with their environment and the people around them? But yeah, these physical characteristics, the personality characteristics. What else would be a characteristic? I guess the others.

Allyson McQuinn
Tall or slim.

Jeff Korentayer
Exactly.

Allyson McQuinn
And the Phosphorouses, they are usually quite tall and slim, because they’re being more formed from the cosmos through thinking. Where as us, being more in the lower triad, are much more sick bodied, more muscular, more dense, short, we tend to put on weight easier. It’s just a function of the lower triad. Meaning more Sulphur and Calcarea.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. And also similar to that, other characteristics are just basic preferences. Well, I mentioned some of the weather and temperature preferences. There’s also food preference. Some people just have more of an innate relationship to the salty end of foods, the salty end of the spectrum. Some are more naturally sweet tooth. There are people who like spicy. So all these kinds of characteristics along with, of course, the basic personality and the state of mind. You get this whole picture for each constitutional type. So is it just like the actors or the characters in the play. There are a whole living dynamic person or character that really embodies all of these different characteristics.

Allyson McQuinn
My daughter’s a Phosphorous. And I couldn’t figure out was interesting because when I was pregnant with her, I would actually crave really spicy foods and pickles and things with a lot of vinegar in it that I didn’t actually really go to regularly. And so after she was born, I mean, she would be barely walking and she’d be pulling the the cupboard open to get the ginger from the health food store. I see the crystallized ginger and I’m like, “Holy cow, that’s got to be hot for your mouth, baby.” And she loved it. And kung pao chicken, the hotter the better and moussaka. And I’m like, this is amazing. My son, when I was pregnant with him, all I thought about I didn’t eat it but doughnuts and ice cream. And of course, he has a sweet tooth like crazy. And so yeah, I was never again to that extreme. But interesting that even while you’re pregnant and carrying them, you can often have take on the characteristics temporarily of what they are.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, the great guessing game of what constitution is the baby inside the belly? Hmm. Of course, some people just do the old fashioned thing of wait for a dream to come and tell them. But yeah, now we can be more scientific about it.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay, so Strengths and Weaknesses. So yeah, as we’re starting to get these feelings, these images of all these these six different constitutional types. And we’re going to get more into the details of this around the homeschooling context in a couple of minutes. But yeah, this is what we start to learn about ourselves and our children, all the constitutional types. Everyone has their own natural strengths and their own natural weaknesses. Now in the learning context, there’s different learning styles, there’s different ways people acquire knowledge and information, different ways they process it, different ways they remember it, different things that get them excited in the first place. So all these strengths and weaknesses of the constitutional types in general will filter through into this more specific homeschooling or learning context. So we’ll see those as we get through. And also, as noted on the slide here, “Also, knowing aspects of yourself will help you to recognize what triggers you in ‘heated’ situations with your child.” So again, that’s where not only knowing our child’s constitutional type and their learning style, but being the parents, being the person in charge of the house and the learning and all these kinds of things. What are going to be our own triggers. And where do we need to learn to cool our heels a little bit if we’re being unduly triggered in situations that aren’t really helping the situation.

Allyson McQuinn
Right. A good example of this: I was talking to a patient this week and she said, “Ally, I think I have a Sulphur son.” And I said, “I think you do, too.” And she said, “Oh my gosh, we trigger each other all the time. Because I would like him to do certain things on a certain timeframe. And he’s not having any of it. And sometimes he just digs his heels in he looks at me and says, ‘Mommy you don’t really know me.’ (He’s three years old.) ‘You don’t really know me and you don’t know what I like.'” And she’s like, “You know what, buddy? Tell me what you want me to know about you. And tell me what you like.” And he takes apart everything and sometimes even puts it back together. And she’s like, “Wow, way above his capacities for a three year old.” And I said, “For Christmas, the best present you could get him is a little tool kit.” And not the fake stuff, not the plastic stuff. I mean, a real little hammer and a real little saw because they love to build things and that’s a perfect gift for a Sulphur child.

Jeff Korentayer
You’re just reminding me of our Sulphur friends back in Canada who lives down the hill from us. And she has a whole tool shed and she’s brilliant at everything fixed and everything mechanical. And I always suggest and tease her she should do a YouTube channel just on fixing things around the house. I’d watch that. I’m amazed. How does she know and figure out how to do all that?

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, I look over the yard. She’s got a welding mask on and she’s welding the lawnmower back together. And I’m like, “How do you know how to do that?” And then basically her answer is, “How can you not know?”

Jeff Korentayer
Right. Well, that’s the thing when we have our natural strengths, whatever they are, they seem so obvious to us. We think, “Well, everyone is like that. That’s easy for everybody.” But no, of course not. What’s easy for us is difficult, jaunting for someone else, and vice versa.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, she makes a mind blowing spaghetti sauce, too. And soup. Oh my gosh. So yeah, I made her the godchildren of my children because I wanted them to know people with very many skills and talents.

Jeff Korentayer
Exactly. So yeah. So maybe here’s a lesson for all of us. Don’t take your own skills for granted. But really love yourself. Love those skills, love that you have that talent. And vice versa, don’t get confused and upset and disgruntled with someone else when they don’t seem to do things as easily as you do on whatever particular skill that is we’re talking about.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay, so now we’re going to get into the actual nitty gritty. I think we’ve laid down a good foundation, a good general context. So we’ll go through all six. This slide is called the constitutions at their best. So what we’re just saying now with the strengths and weaknesses, these are more giving their natural strengths. In the next slide, we’re going to flip this around. We’re going to see the the worst of each constitution so we can get a full spectrum picture of each one. So we’ll just why not start at the top and work our way down? Or, Allyson, do want to start in the middle and go in random directions?

Allyson McQuinn
I want to do all the Phosphorous, you can do the IQ.

Jeff Korentayer
I’ll do the IQs, you do all the EQs. That’s a good choice. That’s a good choice. Okay, so I’ll do the boring ones. You’ll do the fun ones. Speak for myself, right? Okay, so yeah, starting at the top. Silicea. Well, I’ll just read the slide and then we can weave extra thoughts and examples off. But, Silicea. Their capacity for the higher capacity for reason, fascinated with the principles of life and human nature, driven by fairness and justice. And actually, that’s a huge point for Silicaes. Now actually, I’m gonna interrupt myself right here. I’m going to add one more general point about the constitutions that I’m just being struck with as I’m talking is that ultimately, every person contains all six of these inside. This is the full human anatomy, we’re made up of all six of these things. The idea of the constitution is that for any one person, one of them stands out as their dominant personality, their dominant characteristics. So just bearing that in mind, as I’m talking about the Silicea being driven by fairness and justice. Well, obviously anyone is upset if something really unfair happens to them or someone next to them, or something like that. But in general, that is going to be at the center of the Silicea. And, in fact, Silicea is normally quite an easygoing person. They don’t judge people, they just get along with just about anyone, they blend in with anyone. But if somebody crosses the line into the zone of unfairness or injustice, you’re going to see a very different Silicea than you just did 30 seconds ago. You’ve now unleashed the righteousness monster. Okay. Now, I said, that’s good. We all have this sense of righteousness and justice. But yes, Silicaes, they wear that cape in life, if we want to put it that way. And the last point, more on the learning (the homeschooling) context, anything related to humanitarian projects. So for the good of humanity, whatever it is for them—environmental issues, social justice issues. Whatever it is that they naturally want to plug into. Their energy is going to just pour right into whatever that is. You’re not going to need to find motivation for them. That will be a really natural flow for them.

Allyson McQuinn
The other thing to note about Silicea is that when you ask them, “Would you prefer to go to school? Or would you prefer to be home and homeschooled?” They often will say, “I want to go to school.” Because they’re actually one of the only constitutions that does really well with that kind of structure. They’re logical and rational. They love to do well. Like I can sort out a constitution in a patient a minute. And ask them, “How well did you do in school?” And they’ll bashfully bring their eyes down and say, “I was straight A student.” I said, “Do you have to work really hard at it?” “No.” Just came naturally.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, there you go. Thank you. That’s a really great example. That’s right. The school system, the standard school system, we can almost do a whole little follow up webinar just on that. How does each one do in the school system? And when necessary, How do you help each one of them adapt to do as well as possible? And then some are going to really struggle, Siliceas are going to find it really easy. But we can go through the whole spectrum of that perhaps as a whole side presentation one day.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, and the Sulphur was pure hell for me.

Jeff Korentayer
Yes. Yeah. Well, the Sulfur are the opposite of the Silicaes. I won’t say they’re not structured, but certainly they do not take to somebody else’s structure being imposed on them. That goes completely against their grain. What’s that expression about pulling teeth? Well, it’s even worse than that, basically.

Allyson McQuinn
Well said. So for the Phosphorous, they’re sunshine embodied, radiant, very sympathetic individuals, expressive in every way, and a real artists mind. They love animals. Like if the doctrine of signatures for Phosphorous is that when you shine the light down in the ocean, it’s the iridescent green that’s lit up. And it’s interesting, because you, “Oh, that’s not really a mineral, Ally.” And in fact, it is. Even though it’s very ethereal. And that’s what you see in a Phosphorous character. So same thing when you strike a match, you see that green iridescence or the butt end of a firefly. They’re interesting in that a firefly isn’t able to plug in and rejuvenate their batteries. They’re also quite cold. So their hands and feet are cold and Phosphorouses will over commit to everything. Because they’re a party. They love, “Oh, we’re going here, we’re doing that.” And then, “I have to get this done.” And, “I’m taking a course to be a travel agent. But I have another job where I’m actually working as a server in a restaurant.” They love change. But you have to be careful with Phosphorouses because they can be kind of delicate, too. Same with Silicea, they need to rejuvenate and have some downtime. Phosphorouses, though, rarely take it.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, the Phosphorouses, if we’re doing this division of introverts and extroverts, the Phosphorous is one of the three extroverted types. But the way you’re talking reminds me they are on the lower end of the spectrum of extraversion of all our types here. So, so yeah, what you just said about being delicate and the rejuvenation, yeah, the Phosphorouses, you’re right, are much more like Silicea. And they’re a little bit on that cusp closer to the introversion-extroversion divide there. So they’re not the well, “spoiler alert”, the Sulphur are the most naturally extroverted. And as we’ve already hinted at, kind of opposite the Silicea. Oh yeah, on one more thing, Allyson, when you were talking about the Phosphorous, and everything is a party. And that’s a clue for which type is somebody, if we’re trying to figure out their constitution. The Phosphorouses, they’re popular, everyone wants them at their social event at their party and all of this. The Phosphorous never gets invited to one party at a time, they’re always invited to at least three or four parties at a time. And that seems to be their perennial life dilemma is, “Well, which party am I going to go to?” or “How am I going to go to all of them in the same night?” And they have this whole plan of, “Okay, I’ll spend this long in this party, and then will go here and there.” That’s just their natural personality. They just seem to draw that experience to them and around them. They are the spark. Like Allyson was talking about the butt end of the firefly, they have that spark that lights up a room, lights up a party, that kind of thing. So people just naturally want to have them at their social events.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, they have sparkly eyes, bright eyes. They’re very beautiful, typical, they can’t help it. They’re the sweetest looking little kids. And they’re looking for trouble. Like you can almost see the mischievousness in their face. My daughter is a Phosphorous. And as a kid, she’s just a going concern. She was always making something. She loved music and art. She’s a phenomenal artist just naturally. She could care for all the animals on our farm. She just knew what they needed because she’s highly intuitive. And Phosphorouses are one of the most psychic. So if your child comes to you and says that they have seen apparitions or ghosts, or they see the cat’s heads going like this (and the Phosphorous head is going like this). They’re often seeing, even ghosts and other worldly presences. Because for the first five or six years of their life, they’re not really wholly here. They’re still kind of straddling the divide between being beyond the veil in a more cosmic incarnation. And then as they grow older, they tend to land more. But you really have to watch their diet quite carefully and make sure they’re getting the right foods for their blood type. Because they can be very ungrounded that time.

Jeff Korentayer
It’s a very important point. Yes. And it’s very similar for this both the Silicea and the Phosphorous as we’ve said. Yeah, they need help, the grounding and the proper buffers in life, the proper amount of rest and nutrition, and all these things. Yeah. Of course, everyone needs all good nutrition and all the good stuff but especially the Silicea and the Phosphorous. They can be the first to be knocked off their state of balance if they’re not getting all the proper supports in their life.

Okay, so let’s move on into the next introverted type. So we’ll bring our tone down from the front of the Phosphorous. And we’re going to get serious again now. The Lycopodium. Yeah, I’ll just read the words here: sharp, logical thinker; natural leader, with a bent towards business, and all things that make society tick, such as how money works, how the law works, the general structures of society. That’s where their mind is really rooted. And back to what we were saying earlier about the mineral types and the the plant types, as far as the remedies, Lycopodium is one of the two plant types along with Pulsatilla. And being a plant type, along with the Pulsatila, they’re both the most social and adaptable of all the constitutions. Now, the Lycopodium has social in the sense of social hierarchy (I’m talking about grownups here, of course), climbing the corporate ladder, and who fits in where, who’s the boss of who, and all these kinds of social hierarchies and social dynamics. They come into to it from that side, where the Pulsatilla (we’ll come to in a minute), they come in and more from that you’re one on one direct emotional connection, the emotional glue of what keeps society together. Where Lycopodium is more kind of the logical rational glue that keeps society functioning in a certain way. You know, the lawyers and the civic planners, and all these kinds of things where they put the building blocks together—what makes society tick. Now, I thought of another point, but that was kind of in one ear and out the other. I just have one mouth. So sorry, only one point at a time, guys.

Allyson McQuinn
So my son, Jordan, is a Lycopodium. And what made him tick was saving money. He could put money away like nobody’s business. He knew exactly how much he had down to the penny. He knew exactly how to plan out to save for something, to purchase something. And he’d say, “When you’re ready, Mom, I’m ready to go to the store now and get this thing because it’s going to help me do something,” some kind of task. The other crazy thing was that he figured out all the passwords to all our computers and to all the safes. My daughter had a little safe that she would put all her money in. And it was like he could just figure out what it was. But we sort of wanted to send him maybe to count cards in Las Vegas because we can make tons money. So yeah, it’s just his natural bet. That’s what he loved.

Jeff Korentayer
That’s a great idea. Card counting is a great activity for Lycopodium. It’s got the logic and the rational side, it’s got the money side, it’s got the gaining more power in society and winning the game and everything. It is the perfect Lycopodium activity.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, being the center of attention and all the women and men standing around going, “Oh, wow, is he ever brilliant. He’s amazing.” Like, they love to be recognized for their acumen in the realm. And they make great financial advisors. Like you said, lawyers. Not so much judges, because law means that they’re able to shine in the courtroom and really almost like an actor express themselves at the same time as they’re really fighting for the legal rights. But even if that person’s not, so to speak, innocent they tend to be able to just blend the law in their mind to a degree where they can do things that are not the letter of the law, like a Silicea.

Jeff Korentayer
Well, the Silicea, actually I would reverse that, I’d say the Silicea follows the spirit of the law. They make better judges. They’re the ones who like to be the judge. The Lycopodiums follow the letter of the law. They parse it right down to every comma and so on. And they’re the ones who will get a client off on a technicality, that’s the letter of the law. But yeah, the Siliceas like I said…

Allyson McQuinn
But in their mind, they’re able to blur it in that even if they know the guy did it, they still will. You know, it’s not about ethics as much to the Silicea, the Lycopodium will overlook that the guy did it to get them off on a technicality.

Jeff Korentayer
Well to the Lycopodium it’s about winning a game.

Allyson McQuinn
Right.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, it’s about that higher sense of ethics.

Allyson McQuinn
Yes. Well said.

Jeff Korentayer
And, likewise, actually going back a step again. So in the Silicea, when we talked about them being interested in fairness, justice, humanitarian projects, they have this higher sense of justice. This higher sense of what the human being is in the general sense. What is the purpose of humanity? What is the purpose of righteousness, and so on? The Lycopodium, as I say, it’s more about their (well, we’ll get into they’re worse, but) power struggles, power games, winning, coming out on top, getting more power rather than necessarily doing what’s good for humanity, so to speak. They’re going to do what’s right for their client. But that may not be right as far as the higher ethical principles.

Allyson McQuinn
That was the point I was getting at. Because I know my son. Oh, my gosh, out negotiate me by the time he was three, three and a half. And he would run circles around. I said, “You have to go into law, buddy.” Because, holy cow, the means of arguing and the points that he would bring up, I was just like, “Oh, man. I hate to see what this is gonna look like when he gets older. Because, yeah, he’s out arguing me now. What’s it going to be like later?”

Jeff Korentayer
Okay. I think that’s a really nice picture of Lycopodium. So it’s your turn, my darling. So what what do we see with the Pulsatilla and their strengths?

Allyson McQuinn
Okay. Just to neaten things up, there’s A and B on the chart, and then 1-2-3. I don’t know where the numbers and the letters came from.

Jeff Korentayer
Me neither. I just clicked something else and they went away.

Allyson McQuinn
Okay. So Pulsatilla, again being that little windflower, they’re highly chameleon-like and adaptable. So Pulsatillas want to please people. They want to please their parents, they want to please their grandparents. It’s just part of their natural desire. They’re sweet, they’re doll-like, like they have beautiful, beautiful eyes. And typically, they’re lookingup at you, “Do you love me?” They’re sweet, they’re soft, they’re highly emotional. And they’re the type of person that you don’t want to say, “Did you do that?” Oh, boy, the Pulsatilla would just be crushed, their little faces crumble and they’re just like, (crying) “I did not.” Yeah, even if they did do it. Sometimes they’ll not tell you the truth. Because it’s worse than have being blamed for something is a worst thing you can do with a Pulsatilla. They’re natural connectors. They learn in context with healthy relationships. They’re the perfect homeschooling child, because it’s all about connection. They need that to learn to feel held. If you want to bake all afternoon with your Pulsatilla child, they’ll learn all about physics through measuring cups. And they love sweet things and things that are like cookies. And we always did it kind of paleo with almond flour and that kind of thing. But my daughter had a Pulsatilla side to her and she would go, “I think we all need to have butter shortbread.” And then my son would sneak out of bed at midnight and come up and sneak her butter shortbreads which would make her crazy. But yeah, amazing.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, thank you for the stories. They bring it all to life. Yeah, so I think we’ve set it all as far as getting the essence of Pulsatilla. That’s their true superpower is that really deep interpersonal connection with other people. They are your lifelong best friend. Like, you’re not just casually acquainted with them as a friend, but they’re practically family by the time they’re your best friend kind of thing.

Allyson McQuinn
True.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay, so now we come to the second last, which is the Calcarea. We’ve already talked a little bit of about that with the clamming up when we were talking about the doctrine of signatures. And I’ll just read the words here (and we will launch from the words): projects started and completed. And actually, I’ll pause there already. I’ll make a comment. That’s one of the things about Calcarea. They have this focus, this determination to take on whatever task they’re doing, whatever project. And they want to get all the way from point A to point Z. There’s no doing a little bit of this and jumping over to that and jumping off to that. Some people really pride themselves on being multitaskers, but it’s the opposite with Calcarea. They pride themselves on being completers, they finished off something all the way to the end. And knowing this, if you have a Calcarea child, that’s one thing you don’t want to do. Or let me put it this way, is when there has to be a change in the day such as you have to go off to the store and get groceries or it’s time for another activity or whatever, you want to give your Calcarea child a good, fair heads up and a good warning. You don’t just yank them from whatever they’re doing, “Oh, no. Let’s go over here now. It’s time to do this.” They will hate that, they will hate you, they will hate making the change, there’ll be stubborn, they will refuse. So as long as you say, “Okay, you’ll get ready in an hour. We’re going to be going to the grocery store.” And then you say it again in half an hour, “Get ready. We’re going to be getting our shoes on in half an hour. So start wrapping up what you’re doing.” You kinda have to lead them to that point where they can be ready to either finish or let go of what they’re doing and actually be ready to shift to something else. So anyways, I’ll go back to my reading the notes here: projects started and completed, reliable, can absorb large number of facts on a given topic. I put the phrase here “walking encyclopedia”. And that’s their nature, their strength, their intelligence. They are big fact gatherers. And we’ll see in a later slide, they’re great collectors as children, whether that’s collecting a certain kind of toy car, all the Hot Wheels or something, collecting stamps, or anything like that. Just this collecting things, collecting details, collecting factual knowledge—that’s where they really shine. So again, to do a compare and contrast, the Silicea, as I said at the top, they’re fascinated with the general principles of life and human nature, what drives people, what’s fair, what’s just—all these big principles of the human being unfolding in this full picture. The Calcarea is much more kind of small detail focus. If you’ve ever had a school assignment like you have to memorize all the capital cities of your country or anything like that. It’s that kind of factual, fact-based information that they have that knack for. They will spout off something they read, facts they read. That’s their natural strength. Anyways, Allyson I’m kind of giving a picture there. Do you have any points or principles or images of the Calcarea to throw in?

Allyson McQuinn
Just systematic. They really love to be able to walk through a system. So they’re highly structured individuals, and they don’t like a lot of spontaneity just thrown at them. So you can get into challenges with an EQ mom and Calc child, because an EQ mom will have a hard time understanding, “Why is this kid so ploddingly systematic? Can he not hurry up? Can she not hurry up? Why are they so fixated on getting this thing from beginning to end, following these very systematic processes they’ve created for themselves?”

Jeff Korentayer
Yes. And I’m going to actually do a little bit of foreshadowing from the Calcarea when you talked about them liking systems. And in a sense, they also like conceptual systems. Like we were talking Lycopodium, how does society work and all of this. But they are more the schematic version, where the Lycopodium likes the practical side of, “Okay. Well, you come in this door and you meet this person. You kind of get an ally, and then you can do this project with this person. And you move this city project,” or whatever . The Calc, they like to send back. And as I say, the foreshadowing into Sulphur, let’s use this analogy: the Calcarea may like to study a whole architectural blueprints of the structure of a building and everything, whereas the Sulphur will actually want to take it apart and put it back together, like hands on. The Calcarea will appreciate more of that conceptual part of that systematic aspect of how it’s all put together and things like that. So they’re two sides of a coin there in a way, but one is a lot more hands on and one is a lot more like a mental model or thinking model about it.

Allyson McQuinn
Well said. So the sulfur is grounded creativity, very inventive, big picture, knowing which leads to tangible outcomes, learning by doing hands on projects and building. I was talking about a Sulphur constitution, a woman that I knew and she was an architect and designer. She didn’t like her family very much. And at the age of six or seven, she built a little hut for herself in the backyard way down at the bottom of this large property. And she actually never moved back, which is interesting about a Sulphur. she never moved back into the main house. She slept, she take her meals down there, she bought her own food, but that time she was little. She thought they were crazy, and they probably were, actually. Sulphurs are incredibly big energy. And they come pre loaded, knowing who they are and what they want to be. They’re often the first child out of the nest. So at 17 or 18, you get them a George Foreman grill and fill the freezer and they’re happy. They’re very autonomous, very independent, they’re big energy, they know who they are, they know what they’re here for. And so you cannot rein them in or use false authority. You have to run up beside them, and really say, “Oh, what are you doing?” or “What happens if you look at it this way?” You have to do it as a compatriot, not as a false authority, because you’ll never get anywhere with yourself ever, ever, ever. And you will be in battle and loggerheads with these characters your whole life. They’re very strong personalities. When a sulfur comes into a room, you never not know they’re there. They’re not creeping in and scaring the devil out of you because they’ve just come in on little cat feet, ah-ah. Sulphurs are usually screaming. We have a sulphur living upstairs to us right now. And this child comes and lives with his grandparents on the weekends during the lockdown. And we always know when this little guy has arrived, because the whole house feels like it’s lit on fire. You know, he’s just a happening dude and lots of fun. I mean, he yells out the car window, “Hey, Jeff. It’s me.” And he says his name. And he’s really interested in rockets and fuel. I mean, the child’s only five. And he wants to know what type of fuel they use and what kind of suits they were, and he wants to know all about anti gravity. I mean, just fascinating little being.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah. So now we’ve gone all the way to the bottom. And now we can see in living color, this polar opposite to the Silicea where we started at the top. And now, as I also said at the beginning, of course, we all have all six of these but you’d certainly see this one dominance really shine through in any given person.

Allyson McQuinn
And just so you know, there are resources on arcanum.ca where you can look up the constitutions and studying them at your own pace, as opposed to the fact that (Boy, the dogs are having a party out there today, aren’t they?) instead of trying to take this all in and keep notes and everything. All right, let’s go to constitutions at their worse.

Jeff Korentayer
Let’s do that. Okay, well, let’s do the same. So I’ll start at the top. So with the Silicea, they withdraw or hide, at their worst forget to eat or take care of themselves, obsessed with details the head of a pin, performance anxiety. And another word I can throw in there is overly perfectionistic. Like when it comes to school and assignments and things like that. They can be the ones who don’t hand in and don’t finish because (excuse me) they can’t get their assignment up to the level of perfection that they imagined for themselves. So, again, you know that expression ‘if someone who says they’re harder on themselves’ or ‘they’re their own worst enemy’ kind of thing? Well, that’s the Silicea. They’re so hard on themselves, so perfectionistic So now I say that there’s a good side to that. They do produce very highly polished work and beautiful work, and things like that. But yeah, they can really fall down the chute of that side of the perfectionism.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, well said. Phosphorous, they have imaginations that can go wild. So if the parents are out and they say they’re going to come back at a certain time and they’re half an hour late, a Phosphorous will have imagine them splattered all over the road and be very, very upset. Their imaginations are their greatest gift and their greatest difficulty in the realm of endless fears and what ifs. They can be scattered, feel ungrounded, sometimes have difficulty filling finishing projects that they start. Again, regimen is really important to them, so they’re night owls. So they’re up till midnight. Often even as little kids, I’d go in and kiss my daughter good night at 10:30 or 11. And she flipped her eyes open, scare the dickens out of me and go, “Hi, mommy.” I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? You’re still awake?” And I’d see that she’d have earbuds to be listening to Harry Potter until all hours. And they are really difficult to get out of bed in the morning.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. Yeah, very good. Okay, the Lycopodium. So their worst, they can become bossy, abusive or blaming, insensitive to needs and feelings of those around them. And also a big issue for them, they can have huge self confidence issues where they can feel really… Well, I guess back to when we were talking about them earlier, they have this drive for power and to win and all these kinds of things. Well, underneath all of that, when they’re at their at their worst, what really comes out from that is this. As I say the the self confidence challenges, which is really for them, it’s really this feeling of a lack of power. You know, that somehow their power has been dissipated, they’re not plugged into their energy source or their power source. So, yeah, that’s the Lycopodium at their worse. You start seeing their stress come out in those ways.

Allyson McQuinn
Pulsatillas can be extremely needy, clingy and emotionally insecure. They’re the babe that’s often in mom and dad’s bed in the middle of the night. They’re the ones that need to be snuggled and held or carried for inordinate periods of times, they get easily overwhelmed, and they can be very indecisive. Chamomilla is a homeopathic remedy we often use with Pulsatillas if they’re feeling like they just don’t know what they want anymore. They’re just like, “I need this. I need this.” You to give it to them and they’re like, “Oh, I don’t want it anymore.” Like parents can go, “Oh my God, I’ve given you everything. How is it that you need something else?”

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, how could you need more love and more cuddling? Like, when is the end of that rope? Okay. So at their worst, Calcarea can be stubborn, inflexible, oversensitive and feeling inferior, couch potato needing more outdoor time, and inertia which prevents starting projects. So like what we said with Silicea, they can be overly perfectionistic and they can’t quite get the project where they want. But yeah, the Calc, it’s more of an inertia problem. Normally, we said in their strengths, when they do get going, they want to get all the way to the end, they don’t want to be stopped. Inertia doesn’t want to be interrupted there either. But at their worst it can be at the other end. They can’t get started, where the inertia just becomes not moving, basically, not starting. So that’s where you see the weaknesses in the Calcarea.

Allyson McQuinn
Sulphur makes a lot of noise and can be extremely messy. They’re drawn to excessive attention to themselves or their plight, and they can leave much unfinished. So their places can look like a complete disaster. There’s space, I’ve heard of parents saying, their Sulphur child can have almost three or four inches of mess in their rooms. And they don’t get the whole cleanup thing. Like they will drag you into that mess and you end up doing it while they end up putting together and taking things apart.

Jeff Korentayer
Yes, I’ll just add a little footnote to all that. So they can tend to be the child in the house or whoever in the house that draws a lot of people’s energy. Like you say here, they make a lot of noise and mess, draw excessive attention. Yeah, the parents of Sulphurs can be the most drained of all parents. And we almost need a special support program just for parents of Sulphur, sometimes.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah. I was telling a patient this week, she’s had a Sulphur son. I said, “If you heard a group of us Heilkunsters sitting around with you, we’re sorry. Your life is never going to be easy with this child.” Yeah. And my daughter even says, “Mom, unless I can have Silicea babies, I’m not having kids. I’ll just stick with it.”

Jeff Korentayer
Well, Silicea babies are fine up until they get to around the change into adulthood. And then you can’t get them out of your house.

Allyson McQuinn
That’s true.

Jeff Korentayer
So it’s a toss up. Would you rather…

Allyson McQuinn
Well said. They’ll go to a university and then they come back and move back in with their parents again.

Jeff Korentayer
I know. With all their degrees, diplomas and textbooks now. Yeah.

Allyson McQuinn
Well said.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay, actually, this is a quick series of slides. It’s sort of parallel to the idea of the doctrine of signatures. We did this fun little game. Just by analogy, what if we were looking at the characteristics of each constitution and describing them as a car. So for Silicea, they would be a smart car. They’re small, compact, take up very little space. They’re the ultimate in fuel efficiency, pure functionality—getting from point A to point B. You know, like the logic of Spock from Star Trek, it’s pure, pure, pure logic. And functions like, “Well, why would I go to a party to socialize? I don’t see the function of that.” Like, “Nobody is building something.” Or, “If you’re making something for society, but they’re just standing around talking? I don’t understand.”

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, who is it that show where they’re all computer geeks? And it’s the lead character? I don’t know if his name is Simon. You guys probably know who are watching. But yeah, he’s the main character really highly groomed and just really bright.

Jeff Korentayer
I thin I know that you’re talking about. Was that called Big Bang Theory?

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got it.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah. There you go. There’s a Silicea.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, I’m just watching this hornet in my room. Because the window is open and we don’t have screens here in Mexico. So yeah, I’ve just got one eye on it. So if you noticed.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah. Well, thank you for the heads up. If you get stung, I’ll rush in there with the first aid kit.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, you’ll hear me scream.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay. If a Phosphorous was a car, well obviously, Pink Volkswagen Beetle.

Allyson McQuinn
Hey, it’s my turn.

Jeff Korentayer
Oh, whoops. Sorry that you get all the fun ones. I couldn’t help it.

Allyson McQuinn
So lots of sun exposure, attention getting. We had a friend, remember Jeff? She had a Volkswagen with great big eyelashes on them.

Jeff Korentayer
Oh Yeah.

Allyson McQuinn
That’s a very Phosphorous thing to do it. So as a car, she’s just like, “Look at me.” Yeah, she always really really love the attention.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay. Oh, yeah. So these go in a slightly different order. So here’s you again with an EQ.

Allyson McQuinn
Oh, yeah. So they’re the Toyota Matrix. Enough cargo space for children and outdoors and sporting equipment. It’s all about getting together with family, making sure they get good fuel economy because they’re always traveling to their in laws or parents, grandparents. I mean, extended family. They’re very down to earth. They have very practical values.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay, Lycopodium. They have a bumper sticker that says: “My other car is a Porsche.” Or maybe I guess would say: “My other car is also a Porsche.” It will be more accurate. “I’m too sexy for my car”; serious “wow” factor; “He who dies with the best car… wins!”

Allyson McQuinn
Well said.

Jeff Korentayer
That’s pretty nice looking car. Yeah.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, it is.

Jeff Korentayer
I just said “wow” on the inside. Yeah.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay. Oh, here’s me again. So the Calcarea as a car, the Dodge Caravan. So it’s solid, unassuming, pragmatic, take the whole family with, no flash, no unnecessary features. It’s just different from the Silicea. Like it was that smartcards, almost like. The Silicea is just they’re one little independent entity in the universe going and doing their thing. But the Calcarea has that deep connection to their family, their community to doing greater community work. The Silicea is they’re on their own kind of world as it were.

Allyson McQuinn
And they don’t want to be seen, like they want the little car to go in and small spaces. Siliceas, when they’re in your schedule that week, you’re like, “What is the name of that patient? I can’t remember.” And I’ve asked a patient who I had this week I said, “Do you sometimes feel like you’re not seen?” And she said, “All the time. People forget my name all the time.”

Jeff Korentayer
There was the other day (actually we’re jumping back to Silicea here), but I had a new patient, Allyson, and I had their timeline and I showed you their timeline. I said, “Okay, guess the constitution of this patient.” And there was just about a quarter of a page (you know, the whole timeline), a few bullet points. There weren’t more than three dozen words on the whole page. And you didn’t take half a second, you said, “Yeah, that’s Silicea.” So yes, thank you.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah. They’re minimalists, aren’t they?

Jeff Korentayer
Total minimalism, yes. Minimalism is a good work. Yeah. Okay. And finally, Allyson.

Allyson McQuinn
The old pick-up truck for the Sulphur. No time wasted on superficial outer appearances, such as a car wash; doesn’t care what anyone thinks; they’re easy to throw just any junk in the back and they generally don’t clean it out. So it is just accumulated stuff over many years because they think they might need it.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. That’s it. Yes. Sulphurs are amazing. They can fall in love with a piece of what other people would say, “Well, that’s just a piece of junk you got from the junkyard.” They’re thinking that to themselves. But it can be the most beautiful object to the Sulphur. And maybe they’re thinking they can bring it home and fix it up and add something around it or whatever. But yeah, they are amazing. What we would call ‘junk collectors’, to them they’re treasures.

Allyson McQuinn
That’s right. My best friend of 35 years is a Sulphur. She’s the one that lives down the hill that can fix anything and everything. And we’ll go take stuff to the junkyard and often we come back with more than we took, because she’ll have seen something that she can use or fix up for. Yeah, that’s a big thing.

Jeff Korentayer
Yes. Okay, now to come back directly into the homeschooling topic. So sorry, if this is a little crunched with all the texts, but we’ll sort it out. And I even see a spelling mistake. And I’m going to do the Silicea thing and fix that even though…

Allyson McQuinn
Wow, I didn’t know you could do that. That’s so cool.

Jeff Korentayer
Right when we’re talking and everything.

Allyson McQuinn
I know. Wow.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay. Anyway, so what this slide is all about. We’ve talked about the strengths and the weaknesses. So now putting all this into the homeschooling context, we just have a few basic notes here. Obviously you have to adjust to your child and to the homeschooling situation and everything, but just some basic ideas and suggestions that you can start to weave for each of the constitutional types of how they would be most engaged with certain homeschooling activities and so on. So do you want to do the same, hon? the IQs and the EQs?

Allyson McQuinn
Yep.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay, so the Silicea, they have a great time with logic puzzles—things like Rubik’s cube, morality stories. Again really, really young kids, the Grimm’s fairy tales, those have these morals built in, the moral of the story is. Well, Silicea is a moral of the story kind of constitution. And so, Allyson, so you do Phosphorous?

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah, tell me about kiva.org, hon.

Jeff Korentayer
Oh, right. I’m sorry. Yes, that’s a website. They’ve been around for many years. And it’s basically a humanitarian website. And the idea is, you can go there, and it’s not just donating, but you lend money. There’s people in all these different countries around the world, they’ve put up different projects they need to work on. And it’s whether to repair their family store, their community, or just some basic thing that helps their family. And by extension, will help their community. You actually lend a certain amount of money, and then over a set number of months, they pay that money back. And it’s this humanitarian thing where you can help these families in all these different parts of the world to basically better their life, and maybe add a new little service into their neighborhood store or something like that. So rather than the typical model where we may be asked to donate to different projects in different countries—put in a school in this community or things like that. It’s similar, but it’s more of this self starting model. And we actually, when the kids were little, we did this for a period of time where we would start with a base amount of money. We found families to support and then when the whole project was done, and the repayments came back (we got our money back), we would then just recycle that money and then put it into the next project.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah. And Jordan, our Lycopodium, would say, “We give them money without interest?”

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah.

Allyson McQuinn
Can you remember that? “We’re giving them money with no interest?” He couldn’t even compute. Made no sense to him.

Jeff Korentayer
Or just even asked at one point if we could put a project up and people could send us the money. Yeah.

Allyson McQuinn
So the Phos is your visual learners, very much around the expressive arts, invent stories or improv. They were amazing. She was amazing really in those areas. When our kids were in their teens, we actually asked them for that year, “What’s your main three interests?” And then we would try and make it so that they could walk on their own because we’re just setting up our practices, and we had a farm with 36 animals to take care of. So our daughter picked music, art, and then horseback riding classes. So those were her three favorite things. Our son was like trampoline, aikido, and he had another one. Might have been mentorship online with learning about finances and bookkeeping.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. Okay, so speaking of which, you just gave the examples, but I’ll just read our Lycopodium: lemonade stand, budgets, detective stories, because there you have the law and society and powerplays in between the good and the bad guys and things like that. And the video game SIM City actually is really great at that whole simulation of civic planning, and it’s about money and earning, saving enough money, and then “Okay, now we’re going to put a nuclear reactor over here to generate more power.” And so it’s a very, very good Lycopodium game.

Allyson McQuinn
Pulsatillas love to play house dollies, anything that has to do with nurturing; they love stories about family; they’re very heart centered individuals. So a good project for an older Pulsatilla child is to actually work on the family tree. They’re very interested in that aspect of how they’re connected to the whole. I have a patient that lives internationally. And her goal as a Pulsatilla is always to reconnect with family members she’s never met before like extended cousins and aunts and uncles. And to get together and make a connection and have these meaningful relationships. Yeah, and she’s all about food. She’s a real foodie. So she loves to have dinner parties and have people over. She loves to connect with family like that’s her main gig.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah, now moving on to the Calcarea. So trivia games, Guinness Book of World Records; Minecraft is a video game example, you get to building these whole worlds and complex worlds; things that you can collect, such as stamps. So those are some of the types of activities you can start building around your Calcarea homeschooler.

Allyson McQuinn
Yeah. Tara just asked a really good question. She’s curious, “Can a person have 2…”

Jeff Korentayer
I’ll put that question up in a moment. Let’s just finish this slide, and we’ll pick that up in a minute.

Allyson McQuinn
Okay, so Sulphur. Multiple workstations—they’re the ones that have various screens that they’re moving stuff from like they’re really kind of running the world. Lots of projects on the go—like Jeff said, I’ve written 20 books and I can have three books that I’m reading and three books I’m writing all at the same time. Very hands on projects—the other thing I used to do on our farm is that we needed a chicken coop. So just in my imagination, I wouldn’t even draw it out. I would just go start cutting the wood and put the thing together. And it was quite elaborate. Like it had all the little boxes inside for the chickens to lay. And people come out and go, “Oh my god, this is like an amazing little…” You know, I make it kind of futuristic. And then my daughter would decorate it. And it was a blast. But I never worked from plans. I don’t even understand really. It’s like Temple Grandin. She just designs the whole thing. Let’s say for cattle, ethical slaughter of cattle, like the most elaborate blueprints you’ve ever seen. She’s not working from a plan or anything. She just draws it as it is.

Jeff Korentayer
Yeah. Okay, so I will pop that question up right up on screen now. So the question says, “So, just curious, can a person have 2 very high constitutions, or is it typically only one?” It’s a fantastic question. And it kind of plays off of what I said earlier. Ultimately, everyone is all six. We are all a walking a six pack, as it were, a six pack of constitutions. But, yeah, typically we have that one that stands out. But more to this question, we do see it quite a lot. Let me just give some examples, will see a lot of Sili-phoses (part Silica, part Phosphorous), Sili-pulses (Silicea-pulsatillas), Sulphur-podiums (part Sulphur, part Lycopodiums). So we do see those blends fairly often, fairly consistently. But even within that, you still find what the underlying single constitution is underneath that apparent polarity within the person. And the other way we say this too, back to the six pack, the healthier that we each get, the more we have all six of those parts come out of ourselves and express themselves in the world. We become more balanced within all six. But even then, we’re still that kind of that single one. But yeah, it’s a really excellent question. And then we see quite a lot of that, the double constitution.

Allyson McQuinn
Yep. As adults, we actually marry our polarity. So Phosphorous, we do a whole other talk on this. Silicea and Phosphorous will often be in relationship together. Pulsatilla, some Lycopodiums make really good balanced relationships. And Calcs and Sulphurs, like Jeff and I, generally work very well together. So just a little snippet of that.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. Yep, totally. So if anyone has any questions or comments, we certainly have a few more minutes if anyone wants to go into any details of anything or just general concepts, we are happy to be able to do that. And we have a couple of formal slides, but as I say we do have… the wrap up phase. So Allyson, these are all excellent books on some of the more general learning philosophies. And as we said, of course, we have your book here on sale this weekend. But you want to highlight any one of these books or mention anything by name?

Allyson McQuinn
Just that these are books that I had read in the research for Self-education for Excellence. John Taylor Gatto, who we saw at summer school a number of years ago, is a typical Sulphur. And he is an amazing human being. He forged his teaching license, not that I recommend this, but went into Harlem and ended up in a school that was deeply challenged with kids that were having the hardest time. And he really executed an interest in them and what they wanted to learn. And it’s such a good map to read. I’ve read everything he’s ever written. I love him dearly, became friends over his lifetime. He died, I think, last year which was a huge loss. But yeah, he would say to the kids, “Today, what do you want to do? What do you want to learn?” And two of them, he’d get them subway tokens, and they would go off to a different museum. And they became so interested in learning that a lot of them, and not that this is a success story, but became doctors and lawyers and extremely successful individuals as far as society terms. And where these children really had a hard time because they were considered marginalized, really, by the education system and by society. And really by turning them on to project-led learning, that’s just brilliant. Free to Learn by Peter Gray, one of my favorite authors. He writes for Psychology Today, Superman. We became friends over the years as well. He weighed in and helped with guidance around Self-education for Excellence as I was writing it. Home Grown is very much about letting your children raise themselves within nature. The Teenage Liberation Handbook is amazing. Anything that Grace Llewellyn writes, I would suggest reading, especially for teenage babes. And then John Holt, I mean, walks on water with regards to self-education, on schooling, and homeschooling. So in the back of my book is a whole bibliography. And Jeff said earlier, it’s 50% off this weekend on Amazon. So if you want to pick up that Kindle copy, you have the whole, the resources, everything here and beyond to figure out what style of learning you want to do with the different characteristics and constitutions of your children will be very helpful.

Jeff Korentayer
And on that note, there it is again, the selfeducation.me takes you directly to this book. It only goes to one particular store. The other goes to the .ca (Canadian version of Amazon) or the .com. Either way, you can navigate to your own country store and you’ll find that there. And there we are. Our talking selves can look at our static picture of ourselves right now. And I always have a hat on in the picture, don’t I?

Allyson McQuinn
Yes, you do. You’re difficult to photograph without a hat on.

Jeff Korentayer
Mm hmm. So yeah, as I said earlier, we have a few minutes. We’re happy to take any more questions. Or even if someone wants to come on with us, if you do not just want to type your question, but come on camera and have a bit of a talkie conversation with us (it’s easier to get some ideas out that way), we can send you the link for that. But yeah, we’ll be here for another minute or so at least, as long as the questions are going on.

Allyson McQuinn
I want to thank you all for joining us today. You’re at a place maybe in your lives where you’re exploring this more and more how to be a peaceful parent, how to continue attachment parenting with your kids. And knowing constitutions helped me immeasurably when my children were young. And I was trying to figure out that one size does not actually fit all. And that once I understood their different typologies, I was able to really foster the tools. It was interesting with my daughter Addie, who is very Phosphorous. I’d say, “So what are you doing today?” And she goes, “Oh, I’m just studying a course in poetry with the University of Toronto. But this morning, I actually spoke with a guy from Greece. We’re teaching each other on Livemocha. He’s teaching me Greek, and I’m teaching him English.” And Jordan would come up and I’d say, “So what are you up to today?” And he says, “Well I’m playing this game World of Warcraft, and I’ve got 200 kids reporting to me, and we go on different missions together.” They both would play these games sometimes together. And they would develop relationships with kids in Pennsylvania, and there was another kid in Michigan, and they actually got together. And man, like, after playing together for 15 years or more. And it was an amazing story really, that they had created this legacy through gaming and play. And I know a lot of people always ask, “Well, Ally, do restrict their game time?” In a healthy individual, it’s a bit like, “Do you restrict a fever?” You don’t actually need to. They will self govern. Like, our kids would just come up and say, “I’m done with this. I’m going outside to play on the trampoline for a while.” And off they would go. Or, “Can we go for a hike?” Or “What are you doing Mom? Can we kind of streamline what you want to do and what we want to do?” And so this was the ethos of our family. I was big into unschooling, because I didn’t want to cause any damage, like what had been caused to me, with false authority dictating what I should learn on their mandates. I think I was just born to be a bit of an anarchist from the word “go”. And I want to unfold myself out of my own volition. I’ve always been that way. And I’m so much happier when I don’t have so much formative forces bearing down on me. And so the same I felt was to honor my children, to have respect for them, out of love for them, I really wanted to know who they were as individuals. And they knew innately by telling me what they were interested in. I would provide tools. My daughter did this whole cool project, where she compared all the Greek and Roman gods. But she said, “Mom, I need a piece of Bristol board, and different colored pencils so I can color code them. And I’m going to draw each one of the gods and do a comparative analysis of each one.” And this is totally out of her own volition. The cool thing was that as a grown adult now, I asked her, “Do you need help putting yourself through paramedic school?” And she basically said, “No. Why would I need help?” And so from the time she was 20, she picked up extra courses that she needed in biology and chemistry, she put herself through school, she got grants. She did it all herself. And I think if you actually really allow a person to unfold their essential self (every human has this quality within them, that is God given), that enables them to be excited about what they love. It’s not probably going to be what you love. And there was a time I was really concerned about my son Jordan’s screen time. So I thought, my inclination was like, “I have to get him to stop to be on the screen so much.” So what I did was I went down to his room, knocked on the door, and I said, “Bud, can I come in?” And I said, “Let me sit with you. Show me what you love about this. What does it turn you on?” And I could see all the different armor and the pieces that he bought, and he’d show me how he could shape shift and change. I was like, that’s pretty cool. Like, can you get me a character? Not that it was my interest at all, at all, at all. But because I loved my son, I wanted to know. And so I ended up like the 201 person to go on these missions. And of course, I got slaughtered. But he would come in and save the mama. And he loved that feeling as a Lycopodium that he could fix the game and look after that serious weakling that didn’t have all the armor from the years that he played and stuff. And of course, that’s how he learned to read was he can type at 100 words a minute because of all these games that he played. So they do have benefits. And there were times that he would just go outside for also hours at a time.

Jeff Korentayer
I guess as you tell that story, what strikes me Allyson is, “How much screentime?” and these kinds of questions. We can’t answer those questions mechanically, but it’s really the principle of learning. Is somebody engaged? Are they being lit up by something? Are they learning? Or is it just something that they’re doling away their boredom with and doling away their life with? There’s sort of a different way it can be used, right?

Allyson McQuinn
Well said. And I think a healthy child just will self navigate. It makes it a lot easier. In Heilkunst medicine, we take a person like an onion and peel off the emotional, physical shocks and traumas in the order in which they assume, and then the vaccines as well. So any trauma of that nature. And then we see the person closer to their factory settings, really, and they self navigate it much easier. I know because the kids when they’d have other Heilkunst treated kids over, I mean, it was very different. We ran a camp on the farm with a lot of homeschoolers and self-educated kids and Waldorf kids and Montessori kids. And they just seem to have this natural capacity to really self-navigate, self-moderate. That was key.

Jeff Korentayer
Okay, very good. So I think we’ve come to the end of the questions that were submitted. And I will thank you all again for spending your time here learning this along with us. And we will see you whatever our next topic is that comes.

Allyson McQuinn
Bye, everyone. Thank you so much.

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