What do you think of when you hear the word ‘anti-aging’? Botox, facelifts, chemical peels, and expensive creams? Or, said slightly differently – injecting a deadly neurotoxin into your face, surgical procedures that nip, tuck, tear and stretch human skin and flesh, or chemicals being applied to the skin that are known endocrine disruptors and carcinogens. Maybe it’s time we define the term and change the industry as a whole. 

That’s where Jon Canas steps in. He’s involved with a company that is a holistic energetic skincare brand from Switzerland that takes a unique spin on anti-aging. They produce ‘energetic skincare’ that is plant-based and works to balance the 5 basic vital energies in the body. It’s also the first ‘quantum-certified’ line in the world. Learn what that means and why you should be re-evaluating your skincare regimen to not just look better, but actually feel better overall – body, mind, and spirit. 

This is the story of Phyto5.

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The Transcript

Caspar Szulc: 00:19
Hey everybody. Caspar Szulc, cofounder of Innovative Medicine here to discuss the topic of anti-aging on this episode of your health, your story. Anti-Aging is one of those words, sort of like integrative medicine, that’s used in so many different contexts and it seems that everyone has a different definition for it. In fact, many in the medical field and others like myself don’t really like that word. It’s not that I’m anti the act of aging as much as I want my nephew to remain an adorable young kid. I can pick up with ease and play with the aging process is a natural one that will of course impact him over the years as it will all of us and to go against nature is not the path to health and longevity, but the anti-aging business is a big one and everyone seems to be looking to turn back those hands of time.

But what are the actual costs of many of these anti-aging treatments and don’t mean the out-of-pocket costs because it seems that something that most people don’t have an issue with. If it means looking better at the cost of feeling better. Many of us don’t have any issue paying top dollar for that trade-off, but when the top procedures and treatments in the field include injecting good deadly neurotoxin into the facial area, surgical procedures that nip, tuck, tear and stretch human skin and flesh or chemicals being applied to the skin that are known endocrine disruptors and carcinogens, something’s a little off. That’s why in this episode we’re having John kindness on a show. He’s been in a natural beauty world for over 20 years, and as part of a company that’s making a truly holistic, natural line of anti-aging and beauty products that is quantum certified, we’ll learn what that means shortly. This is the story of Phyto5.

You actually started out as I understand, in medical school, correct?

Jon Canas: 02:11
Well, yeah, true. My dad was an MD in France and my grandfather was also a doctor. So it was understood that I was going to go to medical school and so I started until reluctantly until I realized it was not really what I wanted to do. And at that period of time in France, we didn’t have business schools per se, some very famous administration school leading mostly to public service where the elite of the French bureaucrats would graduate from as a wonderful platform. But no business a scooter per se. And that’s what I wanted to do. I was very interested in becoming a…what at the time I did not know exactly the definition of it, but it was, I wanted to become a developer.

And so one thing led to another and I came to the US having applied to Cornell University and I was accepted to enter in a totally different field. And it was hotel management, but it was also a hotel and hospital management.

Caspar Szulc: 03:43
And Cornell has a good hospitality school there. Correct?

Jon Canas: 03:45
Well, that’s the best in the world. And so, of course, I learned a lot there. And having that degree of course, and ended up in the hotel business had a very good career in the hotel business. I was a VP of Sheraton hotels and then subsequently became a Chief Operating Officer of Omni, or what became Omni hotels. And I retired from Omni hotels in 95′. So the reason this background is of some importance is that my dad was very interested in everything that had to do with energy and from being a dermatologist, he became a doctor or traditional Chinese medicine and.

Caspar Szulc: 04:54
That’s a big jump some would say.

Jon Canas: 04:55
But at the time, we are talking about the 50s. There was some pretty significant Chinese or Vietnamese teacher in Paris and my dad would go there regularly and over many years acquired that knowledge. So I was brought up a little bit, with the concept of acupuncture, homeopathy and so on and so forth. So when I retired from the hotel business I came across friends, this idea of a little factory in Switzerland that was making those amazing products. And that information came to me from, I call it actually a college roommate from Cornell who had a hotel in the French Alps – five-star hotels that had a spa that was doing very well. And the spa was entirely structured around the concept of vital energy with Phyto5. And so he talked to me about this company and the products and the fact that it was in the hands of an older Swiss couple without children and that he thought they would be interested in selling and why don’t we get involved?

So a small group of friends and I acquired that little accompany with the hope that our knowledge of the hotel business would enable us at a time in the late nineties when there was quite the evidence that the spa business was going to boom worldwide. And we thought we were going to have wonderful tools, concept products, equipment protocols to provide the hotel industry and that we could do very, very well with our little company providing to essentially hotel spas. Well, that was a total misjudgment on my part. I mean, I could not have been more wrong and there are a number of factors for that. But I felt that the hotel industry was very late recognizing the potential, not only from an income point of view, but from a positioning point of view within a market, having something that really differentiates a resort from another resort.

And of course, I had a lot of experience with hotels and resorts. And of course, knowing a lot of people in the industry. I had a lot of doors that opened very nicely, but only to find out that my peers in the industry were not really focusing on the business. And they would always turn me over to some more junior executives who have been entrusted the task of taking hold of this monster, do something with it. And most of them didn’t have a very good idea of what was really meant by a spa. And of course, it helped to have a European background to understand the spa because in the US it was very, very limited prior to that period of time. And so you had a lot of consultant to the industry who had done very well with the whole business of fitness, you know, in prior to the spa boom.

You had the fitness boom and every hotel is of course, and resorts had fitness facilities and, and steam bath, and whatever. So absent proper experience by a consultant, or a lot of those consultants just had a new calling card that said spa and fitness. And so a lot of people went into that business with the with a limited knowledge. It’s pretty that way. So we just couldn’t get any traction. And we at a certain time we had several very high quality five-star hotel from a very well known American, I should say an international hotel company. I’m not going to say the name that worked with us for a while. And everything that we offer is based on a way of working, a method, a state of mind and approach to not only skincare but wellness in general that we want technicians that are going to be learning over a period of time.

But the turnover in high-quality hotel spa and resort spa is so high that we were constantly in the mode of training and retraining and retraining and spa directors would just come and go and change. And there was no continuing it to the point that at I had to basically say, well, sorry, but we’re not working with you anymore because we’re just not making any progress. So we completely reoriented our efforts a little differently. And that experience in the US was pretty close to what we experienced in Europe with all the chains. The only place where we had attraction was the independently own hotels that had in resort areas in general, where the hotel manager, maybe an owner, maybe part of a family hotel, people who had a better understanding of what we were trying to achieve opened spas or improve their spas.

And they were willing to embrace what we were doing. But, so this is sort of the the big span of our experience from the very start. But you can imagine that when I was introduced to this company meaning the Swiss company making those products, I was very intrigued. I’ve never heard of skincare products based on the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. At first, I couldn’t even comprehend. So I went there, I made several trips and I went with a friend of mine who is a chiropractor who was very much into energy as well. And got enough feedback that no, this is real, this is not just marketing talk. And so I learned a lot. But the idea of having something that had such depth was very intriguing. And again, because I had that orientation from way back into energy concept, I could see the uniqueness and I could see the appeal. What I did not see was the uphill battle we would have in getting it across.

What is wellness? It’s contentment. There’s a great expression in French which translates simply saying: “I feel good in my skin“, and do you feel good in your skin regardless of this or that? So it’s really much more than skincare.

Jon Canas
Phyto5

Caspar Szulc: 12:41
It’s a challenge, right? Because you’re talking about something, you had a background in understanding, you grew up such as myself, I grew up around this idea of energy being a significant factor in health and medicine, understanding traditional Chinese medicine, that we are energetic beings and that products contain vibrations and certain frequencies that either uplift us into a healing, a regenerative state or are toxic to us in some ways. Even looking past ingredients, let’s say. So I can totally sympathize with your idea that people should just understand this and get this, but obviously it’s a huge challenge and it’s a challenge in a place where most are looking only, pun to say, ‘skin deep’ because it is a beauty antiaging spa. So tell me, you have this huge challenge. You’re coming from hospitality with an understanding and energy medicine and this unique, incredible product in front of you that you go all-in on, you’re seeing these uphill battles, you’re starting to witness them even with the connections and everything. What did you do next and did you shift any way of trying to explain this to people or how was that?

Jon Canas: 13:57
Well, we had a situation where the market itself was shifting just at the time we got involved and in a number of issues had to be dealt with. With regard to the company, the structure of the product and so on and so forth, in a way that took away. Well, it was no longer just selling this concept to others. It was to make sure that we were keeping our ground. And if you remember, there was this paraben scare and a number of other related claims made popular internet that skincare products had preservatives and other ingredients that may produce cancer and other horrible things. And suddenly, our products that had parabens were, you know, bad. And because we were talking to an audience that is oriented towards health and wellness, not just simply skincare, we had a major issue because although our products were 99% natural, the parabens were such an efficient preserving agent that we had a little bit of caravan and it had worked very well.

Well, we got into a roadblock. People saying, what do you mean your products are not natural? You have parabens. That was a hard thing to do because we had to reformulate all of the products, hundred or so of them to remove the parabens, which is a very difficult thing to do because parabens are highly efficient. And by the way, finally, there is now a return back to the logic of wait a second – Parabens were not so bad. The studies were very fraught and I kept on saying to people, do you know that there are more parabens in food than there is in your skincare products? So when they say that you can get cancer from parabens, how do they know that it had come from the skincare products and not from the food? And in fact, it’s not even proven that it’s a cause and effect, whether it’s food or whether it’s skincare.

Anyhow, long story, but this was a major hurdle. We had to be ready more pure than we thought we were, although we were already pretty pure. And then another thing occurred that was another big hurdle is that it was never thought by the creator of the line and the packaging and everything else that the look of the products was important because what was important was the recommendation of the professionals who understood what you need. The product is here. It’s a beautiful answer to your issues. Why don’t you take it? It’s almost like the doctor ordered that you take this, you don’t go and say, do I like the packaging? So we had packaging that was not trying to be beautiful and to compete, whereas the entire new opening of this industry called the spa business, that boom, during the late nineties and beyond, so many competitors came into the market with really very little substance except that they had wonderful marketing stories and wonderful packaging and we were always trailing with our packaging.

Jon Canas: 17:57
So we got, we even had a wonderful five-star hotel spas where the spa director, I say as well, maybe your products are wonderful, but I can’t put them on the shelves when I can and attract my customers. So anyhow, I’m saying this because we had all of those major hurdles to overcome at the same time as we had to try to convince people of why we are not simply different and, but this is not who do medicine. This is something that makes sense. And in Europe it’s not so difficult because there is a general acceptance in the US which is where we thought we weren’t going to create our success. It was very punishing. The first class I gave to a trade show, to a group of professionals, massage therapists, distributions giving them a very broad overview of what we were trying to do.

I started the class by saying, so body obviously is matter. But I believe that the body is also vital energy and that what makes the difference between what we do and what other people do. And I could see people looking at me like, what is this guy talking about? So I said, alright, who understands and accepts and believes that the body is vital matter and vital energy? Well, there were about 24 people. There was one person who raised her hand, one out of 24. So I said, very good. So what do you do? She says, well, I’m a massage therapist. I say, well, what sort of modality? And she says, I’m a Reiki master. That’s it. Yeah. So It was easier actually to talk to massage therapists who have almost like an empirical sort of experience or evidence that there is something more in that vital body that I’m working on. But was the aesthetician, it’s almost more difficult because they were not being taught anything. So for the last 20 years, we have realized that we are not in the sales business. We are in the missionary business. Basically, we put out an idea, a concept that we believe very strongly in and either people relate to it and if they relate to it, it’s done. We don’t have to sell anything.

And if they don’t relate to it, then there was no effort that could overcome their disbelief. So, It’s by definition limited. And for that reason, we had to expand our line of products to go beyond just what do we call the energy decline. And we coined the term energetic skincare, which is not a perfect description, but when people say, well, so how different is your line? Or what do you do? And so I say, we practice energetic skincare. Generally, it opens the conversation because unless people are very disinterested and don’t say what, what is it in most instances and what do you mean by energetic skincare? So it opens the door to saying, well, this is skincare based on the concept of energy medicine such as, and I always say ayurvedic medicine. Because in our industry it seems to have had more acceptance or, or traditional Chinese medicine. And then I usually link immediately by saying, because of course the body’s not simply matter, it’s matter and energy. But in fact it’s vital energy that makes matter of vital.

And if that seems to create a level of interest, then the door is open to have more of a conversation, but you know you can easily create an ad in trade publication that’s going to get people to understand that we’ve tried, we failed.

Caspar Szulc: 22:38
Right. I’ve always said that trying to explain to somebody about energy, energy medicine, you can say quantum physics start getting into the picture is like teaching someone a new language in some ways because if you’re speaking to someone on the level of energy and all these things when they’re on the level of matter, they are two separate ideas completely. It’s a shift in your perception and how you’re even picking up on things really to be understanding of a lot of energy. So it’s a lot of education and it is a lot of transforming belief systems. Even you know that idea that we are not matter, we are energy which has been around for a hundred years of course and quantum physics showed us and prove that and brought about a new revolution in science is still not adopted by most minds. We still see each other only as this. And we don’t understand truly that there are millions of things going in between us right now. Vibrations and we ourselves are vibrations and energy and that’s it really. But I can imagine that it’s incredibly difficult to get that across. But let’s go to that point.

You said if people are open that then you could go a little bit further with this idea of energetic skincare, which is of course unique. Most people think, okay, it has a certain ingredient I put it on, it works on my collagen, I’m done. I look more pretty into and have anti-aging effects. But for most of the listeners, I would hope already open to a certain point and probably intrigued by what you’re saying here. So let’s go a little bit further with explaining Fetal Five and what is an energetic skincare line and why do people really need that? 

Jon Canas: 24:20
Well, one of the things that I’ve tried to do is broaden right from the start of the scope of the conversation into wellness. And one of the reasons also is given my age. I am obviously not genuinely interested for myself in beauty, but I am very interested in wellness and vitality.

I am vital or not? And that to me is important for older people. But from the point of view, from the moment people let’s say, become conscious of the fact that their body is aging. There is a first reaction that, Oh, I want to, push this back or maybe reverse it, you know, and if it’s possible. But then there was another stage where the realization is well, what is really important? To look 50 when I’m 65? Or to feel really vital, whether I’m 60, 70 or 80 or whatever. And all of this is really a matter of vital energy and the vital energy is not expressing itself simply within the matter body, but it’s expressing itself in terms of the mind, your awareness, your consciousness. It’s a broad realization of who you are and how you fit within the entire universe.

So to me, this is where it’s fascinating because I’ve always been interested but interested by those issues of, you know, who am I and how do I fit in this game? So just to say that I want to broaden the conversation and as a result, I love to get when I have the opportunity to give a class on vital energy, where I can explain very briefly of course that we have to dig to get a degree of comfort was what’s invisible. And you know, for example, we know that there is electricity in this room because you have lamps, you have appliances, you have all of this. But if we were here in the middle of the night with all the lights turned off, there would be no evidence that there is exactly the same amount of electricity and all kinds of energetic field created by those by all the wires actually. 

So the idea that it’s just like the wind, you don’t see the wind, okay. But you see the manifestation. So you have to help people with a few instances like that. Understand that you have energetic movements and then it opens the conversation towards the thinking process of the great ancient masters. And I’m thinking about both Ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, but the idea of the Chinese that there must be energy and we have the proof of that energy with the seasons. Obviously, in most parts of the world, you have very marked differences from one season to another and you know that it’s very regular year after year after year after year because the seasons are defined by the movement of the earth around the sun. And that is very regulated and it’s very cyclical and it’s very predictable and it’s very evident.

So the Chinese had that brilliant idea, not maybe being encumbered by the idea of a God or anything like this, but looking at things in a very sort of matter of fact way. They said, if there is a change there must be energy, how can there be something that changes unless there is a movement, an action, a push, energy. So they say, well, four seasons, they’re already four energies right there. And then someone must have said, well wait a second, that’s not enough because you cannot in nature, nothing happens suddenly. There is always a progression. So there must be a transition from one season to another. And of course, from this, they came up with the idea of the fifth season and they sort of organized the entire concept of the five based on this. But they also went into the study of the cycles.

And of course, the simplest of all of the cycles is the day and night – yin and yang. And that in itself is an interesting situation. But what is more interesting for us is to look in terms of the cycle of the day. By the yin-yang increase and decrease that creates a period of time, which is called wood, which is yang increases, which is the morning. And then it peaks too with fire in the middle of the day. And then it goes into the later afternoon, which is going to be earth. And then you are going to have metal. And then finally water. So you have those five phases of the daily cycle. And you also have the five phases of the yearly cycle. So do you have the term phase, which is just as important as the term element or the term aspect or the term energy.

So then this idea that you have a perfect system that has to be in balance and whatever happens around us most affect us. So, therefore, the principles we learn from nature are principles that we can start applying to how we function. And certainly, in terms of our age, there are things that are normal at 20 or at 40, and that are not at 60 or 80. And vice versa. So you start understanding how we are influenced by not only the season, the time of the day or the night, but our age. And you know, this idea that you have more or less five periods in the life of a human, unless the life is interrupted by an accident or whatever. But in normal completion you would have five periods of more or less – 15 to 20 years each.

And then you can think of yourself in terms of what are the energies that you are influenced by given where you live and how you live and how old you are and so on and so forth. So it becomes a system from which you learn a lot of what influences you and what you can look forward to and how you can mitigate some of the influences. So going into a more detailed explanation of the five elements and how they relate into o each other is just totally fascinating. I mean I have in the past been foolish enough to think that I could give a whole day seminar on the five elements and lots of people are very interested, but then they walk away with it a little bit. Like, you read a book on quantum physics, it’s very interesting, but there is nothing that you are going to do about it in terms of the next morning, your life hasn’t changed. So it’s interesting, it attracts the attention of a lot of people that want to hear more. But does it change anything?

Caspar Szulc: 33:27
I will say people that have listened to this and go into this understanding quality and energy, a lot of them are you know, hobbyist and fascinators by it. But you’re right, they don’t apply so much of it. They have knowledge and there are certain things you can do of course, and go in certain directions, but it is sometimes hard to take action on these pieces. And one of the things I found really fascinating, especially about the line, what you’ve talked about is this idea of, of course, living in tune with the cycles living seasonally. Many of us don’t. Of course, we eat things all year round even though they’re not really in the season. That affects us of course. But I remember speaking or having a webinar long time ago, with Innovative Medicine and T.S. Wiley wrote a book on hormonal imbalances and light being the ultimate endocrine disruptor was saying that most of us live as if it’s summer all year round.

We stay up late, we eat as much as we want, produce more insulin. And we age almost four times as fast as we should because, summer is I think related to fire and other elements and, and we are a little bit more prone to certain actions. And so that whole idea of living outside of the seasonality outside of the cycles is absolutely disrupting who we are; aging as quicker, and also making a sicker. And I love that a line like Phyto5 taps into that cause most do not. And that goes across the board, whether it’s medicine or aging products or the beauty cosmetic industry because they just say take this cream, use it, and you’ll see results. But you say you shouldn’t be using that same cream all year round. Right. So go into that a little bit more. Cause most people find their favorite product and use it forever and don’t really go into it. 

Jon Canas: 35:26
So that’s a good point. And you have the idea of the five seasons, therefore five different energies and five different sublines of products to keep you in balance during each one of those seasons. But because we’re in the skincare business, we also have to recognize the fact that some people do not have a skin that is ‘in balance’, therefore normal for their age group, but that they have a condition such as let’s say acne, which could be very, very normal for a teenager but is not normal at 40 years of age. So you have acne. Acne is an imbalance of earth energy, and therefore you need to have a program that rebalances that aspect of vital energy that is called earth. And this is where I think the line is so simply organized because it basically says, look if you can recognize the inbalance and they are easy, we have it in all of our literature, but basically, oily skin is wood, gains blackheads, because wood is too much young energy, excessive sebum production and so forth.

Then because usually, the problems are excesses. In some instances, they are a lack or insufficiency of, but in most instances it’s too much. And in fire, very simply it’s too much arterial circulation. It’s too much heat. It’s too much. It’s, it’s the sensitivity of the skin. It’s a Cooper Rose and all of those things for earth, it’s toxicity issues. We, we just don’t eliminate the toxins and they have to have a place to come out and they come out on our face or back or other places. And then metal is more, is more subtle, but it’s a, it’s a lack of minerals and a lack of oxygenation and then it creates its own problems and water is really easy to understand. It’s generally dehydration with all of the problems that come with that, which are wrinkles and lack of tone and all of that.

So in a few minutes, you can absorb very quickly what are the major imbalances that will express themselves as a skin condition. So we started with earth, let’s say acne. Well then we have a line that has been formulated to deal with the problem and instead of calling it acne or this or that, we simply say earth line, the function of earth line balance on earth problem. So you do the treatment, whatever the season is to address that particular problem. Once you have had some significant improvement in that condition with that condition, then yes, it’s good to start moving into the flow of the season because if your skin is in balance, your mission is sort of keep it that way and we know from the seasonal changers that there is an energetic push that creates the possibility of an imbalance of one of the other elements.

So to stay in balance during this season, which is the fall season, you should use the metal line, but there is also a great logic to the cycle because just for example in the summer you are going to more likely perspire and be outside and exercise and so on and so forth. And with the heat you’re going to lose more minerals and we are not likely to replenish the minerals that we lose during that time frame. And as soon as we end the summer, of course, you have the short 18 day period of earth, which is the transitional period. And then you get into metal and metal says, now you have to mineralize as much as you can because you have to replace the minerals you have lost in the summer. And because if you don’t have the minerals in your skin and you get to water, you can put as much hydration in your body as you can.

If you don’t have the minerals to hold this, the water will just go in and out, in and out. And there is no retention within the tissues for that hydration. That’s why most people are dehydrated. And I was very interested to hear that. In California in particular, I don’t know that it is still very popular in other places in the country, but you have mobile units where you can go to and get an IV replenishment of hydration, which is just so wonderful for all kinds of reasons. But the fact therefore is that, in the winter you need hydration, but it’s in vain if you don’t have the minerals. So the wisdom taking that particular example in the metal season, we’re compensated for the accesses of the fire season and prepares you for the necessity of having good hydration in the water.

So this is the whole five elements, there is a bunch of logical steps and that goes into, as you mentioned the diet, the choices we make not only of our activity but of course of our food. And we are completely on the wavelength that food is medicine and therefore you have to choose smartly. But it’s also what you do, what are the things that occupy you during each one of the season, not only the season of your life but the season of the year. There are things that are logical to do and other things that are not an example, you are fire by trait. This is what you mostly seem to project and you love golfing or tennis or whatever and you are going on vacation in August and you are going to be playing in the middle of the day.

You are creating a problem with your constitution, even on your heart, the heart, you know, of course for each one of the five elements, you have a pair of organs that corresponds to the five elements and contributes to the energetic balance. But the heart is going to be subjected already to your environment, which is fire. And then you are in the heat and so you create a lot of problems. And being sensitive to those things is just pure logic. It’s very simple. It’s just as simple as saying, I have to drink when I’m thirsty. It’s a way of life, I guess. I wrote a little book called Energetic Skincare where I tried to touch on all of those little things. So that you sync in terms of not only your skin and your diet but how you live and the need, to think in terms of periods of reflections and introspections and meditations just to maintain that balance because the balance, that’s the keyword in energy medicine.

It’s, you know, two precepts;  vital matter and vital energy. But the second one is balancing vital energy. If it’s not in balance, it’s an imbalance. It creates a problem. So balance, balance, balance, everything is balanced. But the activity of balance is contributed by your frame of mind, your belief, your thoughts, your emotions. And this is one of the things that I love about traditional Chinese medicine and energy medicines in general, but it’s the correlation between energy and emotions, an energetic imbalance and an emotional imbalance. You know, if someone has a liver problem, maybe they eat McDonald’s much too often, but maybe they are just angry at their boss and their parents and their spouse and their kids and there are going to have the same issues. So this is a thing teaching us how to live better.

Caspar Szulc: 44:50
It is. And you know from that point there you have this incredible line, PHTYO 5 with the five elements, five seasons that have things like ceremonies and creams and human shampoos. It’s a wonderful, fantastic and thorough line. But on top of that also you have these therapies that incorporate that emotional concept, go further into the energetic and do so in a very holistic, natural way impacting the full-body, which is very interesting cause most of the times when you think about anti-aging treatments, you think about chemical peels, Botox, things that are in some ways adding into the imbalances and toxicity we carry. So could you go a little bit more into the actual therapies and how they work with the line? Because most of the times you have lines of products and then completely separate, maybe a therapy or something. But this is a very robust type of therapy that you offer. Could you go into that?

Jon Canas: 45:52
Sure. We have a very extensive line of products that have been specifically designed for a purpose. And that purpose is not simply care by the individual at home. But it is to provide tools to professionals who are going to be able to help you in this wellness effort. Not only working simply on the face as it is for most people but the whole body and even the scalp. And what we haven’t touched upon is there are so many sub-subjects, but one of the reflex zones, one of the things that is so extraordinary was the idea of the vital energy that flows, you know, from the inside out, from the outside in, from the top to the bottom, from the right to the left, et cetera, et cetera. All the parts of the body are not only interconnected but they are connected to the skin.

And it means that it’s an example of nature having done things very, very well is that for example, the face, in particular, will have reflex zones for each one of the five elements. But even better than that, each one of the pairs of organs of the elements. So you have 10 organic reflect zones. And then you have another one, which is a hormonal reflect zone. So if a technician is really very knowledgeable with everything we are talking about, they understand the theory and they understand the tools, those are sort of the master of the trades. And we, fortunately, have a few who just will not write up a treat, a description of a treatment standard for everyone. They basically will say, I’m going to look at you and I’m going to decide what I’m going to do to you because I want to help you get back in balance.

And I’m going to make the use of the tools that I have, products primarily, but also some of the equipment that we have so that I can work on your reflex zones. Because when I work on your reflex zones with our ceremonies and with our clays and with our algae and all of those products, I can help balance or rebalance any energetic imbalance that has appeared at the level of your skin and at the level of your body shape. So by seeing someone, someone’s skin, someone’s shape, and even someone’s behavior, to some extent, you the master technician is going to have a very good idea of what they are up against and then they are just going to create a treatment based on the products and their knowledge of what the products do by applying them how and where.

But of course, that’s the exception. So when we start, we create relatively simple, logical but simple treatment protocols so that we know that whether it’s official or scalp treatment or body treatment, we have to rebalance all of the key points that let’s say would be the shortcuts too. Help the energy balance. And I’m going to give you a very, very simple one. It’s almost childish, but believe it or not, we are the only one in the industry doing it, which is that when a body is on the massage table, the first thing you do is that with the back of your hands, the technician massage therapists should go from the top to the bottom and determine the areas of the body that are either warm or cold, 90% of the people have temperature differences in different parts of their body. Well, what does it mean? Imbalance. As a matter of fact, I had a problem in my house with the air conditioning where I get a lot of cold in one part of the house and not enough cold in the other part of the house and I had an air conditioning person come. And what do you think? He said your system is out of balance. That made me laugh.

Caspar Szulc: 51:03
Easy to understand when, when when you’re sweating in a room and the other room is freezing, right? Yeah.

Jon Canas: 51:08
So the first thing we do is that we have a young product and a cold product. We’re going to put the young, which is warming on the cold part, are going to use again on the warm part, and by doing that what we are doing is that we are sort of forcing the flow of energy, which carries temperature of course because if you have a blockage of or you know too much arterial circulation in one area, not enough in the other, you are going to have an effect of cold and warm. So very, very, very simple. As I said, almost childish, but on how logical it is now you know we are not going to say put it automatically on the feet or on the chest or whatever. It’s up to the technician to find out. So the technician is not in an automatic mode.

They have to think, they have to say what’s the situation on here? And then having discovered that just as they may discover or I can see a body that indicates too much of this or not enough of that. So, of course, the products have proven over many, many years that they are potent. And I marvel at the people who created the original line and how there are knowledge of essential oils made the whole difference because essential oils have been known for a long time for the therapeutic value for there aromatic value, but not so much for their energetic value. 

Caspar Szulc: 52:55
Always mistaken, I think for being mostly aromatherapy, but in reality those huge energetic principals too. 

Jon Canas 54:03
Precisely. And fortunately, I’m in the south of France. We have had for centuries and centuries and centuries, an awful lot of knowledge ancestral knowledge, literally of essential oils, how to extract them, how to make sure you have the essence of it without damaging, how do you preserve them and so on and so forth. And so the people, I should have said that earlier, but the people who were at the genesis of the method were combining several levels of knowledge and interest of course, traditional Chinese medicine, essential oils, and an interest in doing treatment on the body. And the very idea that you could use topical product to create an energy balance was very novel. I mean, you don’t really read that in in the traditional books and energy books. So in that sense, they were totally pioneers. So of course those formulations have been refined over time and when it was done, it was done simply on the best effort of their creator prior to the time when we had tools to measure the potency or the energetic activity of those products.

But now we can and on our website, there is a quick little video, which unfortunately is a little too short of a European technician who has a dousing fork and approaches that dousing fork to one of our serum. And you can see immediately how the fork opens up. And you know, it’s not a voodoo, it’s the reality of the fact that they’re here is a product that has a massive energetic field that proves it’s potency. And then, of course, you use that product on a certain condition and you see an improvement and frankly, I do not know of any product. I mean I cannot say here’s the X, Y, Z line that has, that is created and maybe, I don’t know in India or someplace else hat is a competitor to us was regard to that. There is no one, I don’t know that there is anyone. In fact, it would help us even there were others because it would bring the whole knowledge a little bit more to the surface.

Caspar Szulc: 56:04
Right. And in some respects you’re, you’re out there alone doing this. Meaning you’re the only, I believe, energetic skincare line that even we’ve found, we’ve tested many at the center of different skincare lines. But when we found this one, we were excited because as you mentioned, we test a lot of different products. We do it in numerous different ways. One of them is a lek or antenna, which is a modified, you can say dowsing rod, which picks up on different vibrations and can look into quality of certain products. And all of the Phyto5 products tested wonderfully with that. So that was a really wonderful addition for us. One of the things we saw when we started to implement more anti-aging was number one, that anti-aging and health and medicine really are related. Some of the patients, I was speaking to one recently that said you do such a wonderful job with all these complex conditions, why are you going into anti-aging? They seem so foreign ones about vanity and Botox and the other one’s about curing, you know, the incurable and I had to, you know, push back just a little bit because I think there is a misconception that anti-aging is so different than wellness or medicine. I think they’re all the same. And I think with something like Phyto5, you’re not just going in with an antiaging effect, your balancing and producing health at the same time. And I think you say that the skin is really a representation of what’s going on inside healthwise. 

Jon Canas: 57:36
Well you said health because we are in this medical environment, but I’m not allowed to say that. 

Caspar Szulc 57:45
Different industries have to use different words, right? 

Jon Canas: 57:47
Yup. That does not make our life easy to, you know, we are restricted in what we can say, but what do we have found out is that we have a lot of people who have a medical background who have embraced products and equipment and who, to my amazement tell us they do this and they do that. And I marvel but I can’t repeat it.

Caspar Szulc: 58:17
Yeah, I understand. And it is the, you know, I think one of the fallacies again of this is in one section, you can’t do it. This isn’t another, in medicine, we understand this all the time, that a drug can be used for so many different things. Even though its purpose may be superficial only on, nothing too deep on the patient. But then they find it works on this whole disease. And it keeps going from there. But in general, I think that the separation of anti-aging and wellness and medicine really needs to stop and come together a little bit more. And I think Phyto5 does that very well because it’s already going in from an energetic principle. So you have a lot of energy practitioners that work on that principle already and it’s doing it in a holistic manner, which is very useful for that way. What has been the reception from, I mean, I could speak from our terms, but what has been the reception in general practitioners using this both therapy as well as users who are just going and using the products?

Jon Canas: 59:22
Well, you know, let’s say that we have our little distribution business in the US is now in its 21st year. And just imagine we have no salespeople. We, of course, have some presence on the internet, but it’s the satisfied clients, both the consumers that come back and buy on our website and the professionals that called and said I want to learn more about PHTYO 5. I’m interested for my practice. So the numbers are still small. But as I said the fact that we have so many professionals who spread a good word we have recommendations people come to us and this is how we open new accounts. In fact, that’s exactly what happened with you. We received, we received an email from your secretary I guess, or assistant who said, we’d like to learn more about Phyto5 and this is how it works.

So how slow or how fast it will go in, you know, the next 10 years or so. I don’t know. But we are obviously very passionate about what we do. So grateful to have a spouse who is a partner and who is so into a vital energy and who is both an aesthetician and a massage therapist with a long experience, but she is so intuitively in tuned with anything and everything that is energy that she feels, whereas I have all of this passion for the ideas, but I need practice as a technician, nor do I have the intuitive sensitivity to an energy environment, Jeana walks into an  environment, and in a matter of seconds, she has a reaction as to whether it’s a good environment or one that she doesn’t feel comfortable in. You know, she can’t, in an airport or mall, we never take an escalator. She doesn’t like the energy of the escalator, which is great. So we walk, we take the stairs.

Caspar Szulc: 1:02:11
The healthy option. 

Jon Canas: 01:02:13
Yeah. But this is a person who totally lives what she preaches. And I do it in a different way, but she does it in probably a more extensive way. And you know without her, I don’t see how we could even make any efforts in this, in the country, in this market environment.

Caspar Szulc: 1:02:47
Well, she’s obviously the yin to the yang, right. She, she’s there for a reason. It does work that way. And it’s, you know, I’ve met Jean of course, and she is wonderful at what she does and an amazing technician. You could feel that she understands the energetic concept. Some people have it, some people don’t. And that’s okay. But she, she absolutely does. What are your hopes for the future of Phyto5 as well as just the industry as a whole? Because it’s moving in one direction. You know, the industry itself is moving into organic as you could see, and you’re having more celebrities promote different beauty products that are more away from chemicals and toxins. I don’t think it’s embraced yet, the energetic side of things. I think it’s still, you know, getting there. But what are your hopes both for Phyto5 in the industry?

Jon Canas: 01:03:36
Well, you know, the industry is becoming complex because it has now so many players, not only small players that it has, it was mostly at the beginning, but it has some giant corporations that are into it. And some of them can spend an enormous amount of money in genuine research. And but by and large, I think the largest investments are in the marketing and the packaging and making it look good. So you have this, you know you, you have this dichotomy still in our industry, which is you want to look thin. Okay. You have two solutions. You put a girdle on or you go to the gym and you watch your diet. What do you prefer? Well, a lot of the industry goes towards the girdle.

Caspar Szulc: 01:04:30
The easier, quicker solution, right?

Jon Canas: 01:04:33
So, right. So of the people that want the real thing, then obviously we’ve had an enormous evolution in the natural and that is wonderful because as difficult as it is to define what is natural we still today have had new evolution by labs that have very successfully taken natural ingredients that they have made compounds of that passed the mustard in terms of organic certified agency will say, okay, we can live with this even though you’re not going to find it on a tree or, and it’s okay. It’s natural, it’s organic. And so the more we have some of those compounds, and I’m, one of them, for example, I’m thinking about is an aquatic seal, which is a very good product that we have, you know, hydrating creams that 20 years ago it didn’t exist. And today you have that ingredients that it again, is, is organic certified and has all of those wonderful properties.

So there are a number of such compounds that we are using in our Ageless line, but there will be many more. And so the the the the the ones, the players in the industry that want to remain natural, they have to bring in something that is giving potency because the first wave of natural skincare products frankly has been. If you can eat it, it’s going to be healthy for your food, for your skin. And I keep on saying I’m sorry, but you know my skin is not a stomach. You know, it doesn’t work that way. And yes, it’s okay. You can eat your skincare product. It means it’s natural, it’s great, but is it really going to do the job? And the fact of the matter is that too many people using those natural products that have no other claim than to be natural have proof, you know, have unfortunately not provided the results.

So now there is an effort to say, okay, let’s be natural, but let’s be potent. Then how do we get there? Well, we can wait for those compounds to come on the market or we have a ew players like of course our sales and a couple of others that are making use of the next best thing, which is essential oils because totally natural and you can do great things but still have those players none use the essential orders for their energetic properties that they use the essential oils for some of the other properties that they have and as a result of the products are better than the ones that don’t. So there is an evolution towards that but we also have to realize that there is a lot of people that do not seem to care too much about the natural aspect, let alone the energetic.

And those are the people who basically want a quick fix and if the marketing is potent enough and says, this product will do this and this and that and it’s well marketed and well-packaged they’ll buy it regardless of what the ingredients are. They are not going to get bothered by the ingredients because they think, Oh, I’m going to have the quick fix. And maybe they do, maybe they don’t. And some think they get a quick fix and then they get bad news. So how does PHYTO 5 fit in? I think that we have experienced a little widening of the acceptance on the part of aestheticians and massage therapists of the whole idea of energy as a concept. If I give a class, I don’t do it anymore too much, but even 10 years after the story that I related earlier this afternoon I have asked a questions to attendees at a class and then I could see that 50% or more of the hands would raise and say, yeah, I accept energy now.

Then you say, well what do you do about it? And what we said is that, look, if you work simply at the level of matter and you ignore energy, you are basically working on 50% of the possible solutions. So you have to work more extensively. And some of them accept it. And some don’t. So I think that it will happen. I wish I were 20 years younger so that I could see it become really successful. But unless we have a constriction through government regulations of the use of essential oils that would basically zap our ability to have those wonderful products, then we should do well. However, the last round of European regulations, cosmetics regulations have set a clear limitations on the percentage of essential oils that any skincare products could contain. And specifically some like cinnamon, which is a wonderful lead, potent essential oils where the limit or a fraction of what we used to have and we’ve never had any problems with those products. 

Caspar Szulc: 1:10:56
Why is that? 

Jon Canas: 1:10:57
Well I’m sorry to sound very negative, but I think it’s a defense mechanism. The part of certain industries absolutely. That we’re basically seeing that the skincare industry was coming up with some products that are too darn good on their own.

Caspar Szulc: 01:11:17
Yeah. It’s a shame. It really is. I think you have a lot of these you know, large, large players that don’t want to see that change, that start to cut into their market share. Even the smallest bit. Pharmaceuticals are huge. And yet they do want to crush homeopathic, which make up 0.0001% of what they’re losing perhaps. And it’s a shame because I’m hoping those regulations don’t continue in that route. We don’t know. The one thing I’ll say is if there is a demand from the people, the government usually abides by it because they are voted in some ways, but huge powers move in that direction.

Jon Canas: 01:11:54
Yeah. but you know, I came across an article not too long ago that was commenting on a very important individual in the French government that has always been very open to alternative medicines. And you know, there isn’t a pharmacy in France that doesn’t have a significant section on homeopathic medicine. And this person who has a key position on, in the health department of the French government basically was making comments about the fact that there is nothing to homeopathy and that it was just a big scam and that she was looking forward to the day when all of this would be wiped out. And that people would stop fooling themselves with a placebo effect. So you make great strides forward and then suddenly you step back, right? So hopefully that’s not going to become a trend, but you always have those threats.

Caspar Szulc: 01:13:08
Always, always. And, and it’s an unfortunate trend in some instances, but at the other time you have this conscience movement of people that are accepting it more, that are understanding the science is even verifying it now. So it is a little bit ill-informed to say it’s just the placebo effect. And of course, so many other things are involved in it and it’s been such a useful therapy for so long.

Jon Canas: 01:13:35
But you can imagine that that was music to the ears of some industries. And they are going to continue to push in that direction. 

Caspar Szulc: 01:13:45
Well, we could go into that probably a lot more, but I won’t you know, jump into such big topics right now. Where can people find more about Phyto5 because it is something I think you could dive into and you could read your book of course, and please tell people where to purchase that. But it’s something really, really interesting for a lot of people. So where could they learn more?

Jon Canas: 01:14:05
Well, actually we have an enormous amount of information on our website and that’s www.phyto5.us. That’s right. And, and it’s a fairly substantial website and we are very active with blogs and we have a mixture of things from talking about ingredients or talking about the five elements, but also some other issues. I mean, we had a blog recently on things that are interfering with our wellness objective, which is what are the effects of climate change that are going to be making our search? And achievement towards a higher sense of oneness, much more difficult.

If certain things continue to go the way they have. And it was very interesting because we received some responses from clients who just say, you know, keep on making skincare products, don’t get into politics. And then we got some other responses from people. We’ll say, loved your blog. 

Caspar Szulc: 1:15:24
You’re never going to please everyone with those things. But yes, you’ve got to stay true. Right? 

Jon Canas: 1:15:33
So we talk about everything that we think has an effect on our wellness. And we keep on talking about the fact that unfortunately, we live in a time where the stress level is very high and even the people who are very well to do are very highly stressed. So it’s not simply a matter of money or job or whatever. It’s an overall climate that is such that you know, the United Nations has a ranking of countries in terms of where it’s a healthy and pleasant to live.

And unfortunately, our ranking has been going down in the US and it points to the fact that we are under stress constantly. And stress has an effect on health, it has an effect on looks, has an effect on vitality. It has it. So we have to be mindful of those things and bring it up to the attention of people and just say, here are some of the things you should be doing or you could be doing to get back to this idea of balance because, in the end, what is wellness? And you know, a long time ago I came across this definition and I was very gratified to see one of the big gurus of the industry said in an interview using the same word that I haven’t been using. And it is for me, contentment. What is wellness? It’s contentment. There’s a great expression in French which translates simply saying: “I feel good in my skin“, and do you feel good in your skin regardless of this or that, or you don’t, you know. So it’s really much more than skincare is.

Caspar Szulc: 01:17:27
It really is. And that’s why I’m so happy you got the share of this story and share these perspectives because they are incredibly important to us right now, especially with all the stress we’re going through and all the different pieces and people are just seeking solutions. And I really do applaud them for that. And that’s why I want to highlight people such as yourself and others that are offering those solutions to them. So thank you for that.

Jon Canas: 01:17:52
You’re welcome. So we like to say skincare is a modality of wellness and energetic skincare is a modality of wellness, but all skincare should be a modality or wellness.

Caspar Szulc: 01:18:04
It should. And that’s beautiful. John, thank you very much. I truly enjoy this and thank you for sharing this story. I really advise all the listeners here to go and seek out that information, these solutions. It’s a wonderful website, a wonderful product line. We recommend it to a lot of people here in use, of course, the therapies at our center and I’m hoping they can get something out of it as well and go there and check it out.

Jon Canas: 01:18:28
Well, thank you. We are very, very honored to be participating in your effort. Thank you.

Caspar Szulc: 01:18:36
I hope this episode showed you a little bit about how aging and aging gracefully requires a skincare routine that should be personalized and change just as you do throughout the year. Kind of like your wardrobe changes to adapt to changing environments and give your body what it needs to both protect and regenerate. Also, a truly holistic skin or beauty product should impact you on a much deeper level than just your skin and look to improve your health on all levels, mind, body, and spirit. John and Phyto5 stories very much in line with what we’re doing, Innovative Medicine and our story as it’s about redefining the common concepts of what terms like health, anti-aging and medicine mean. Until next time, stay healthy, stay happy, and continue to write your own healing story.