Justine Laidlaw - The Natural Bird

15/11/2025

After my big walk this morning, breakfast tasted extra good.

The morning air was so cool, about 6°C where I went for my hike, the kind of crispness that wakes you up from the inside out and makes you feel alive in your bones.

Coming home after that to a warm, nourishing brekkie felt like pure heaven.

Avocados are finally back in season and honestly… they’re divine right now. So creamy, almost buttery — the perfect match for a proper protein breakfast that keeps my cells fuelled, steady, and deeply satisfied.

This morning’s creation?

Salmon & Courgette Fritters — one of my simplest, most nourishing go-tos.

Here’s the recipe:

🥒 Grate 2 courgettes
🌿 Chop one sprig of parsley
🧄 Add 1 crushed garlic clove
🔥 Sprinkle smoked paprika, sea salt & pepper
🥚 Mix in 3 eggs
🐟 Add fresh salmon, diced
🌾 Stir through 2 tbsp buckwheat flour

Lightly pan-fry until golden… serve with that lush seasonal avocado… and enjoy every bite.

A perfect way to start a chilly morning. 🥑✨

15/11/2025

While out walking this morning with my dogs, I was listening to a powerful conversation about when the body remembers what the mind has forgotten, from the Human Garage Experience episode “Ep. 1 – Breath, Soil, and Human Potential: Zach Bush on Healing at Scale.” The wisdom in Zach’s words speak truth to me.

When you begin to understand the emotional memory stored inside the human body, something shifts. Our cells carry stories our conscious mind has long buried. Every childhood wound, every heartbreak, every moment we held back our truth or abandoned ourselves for safety doesn’t disappear. It settles into the tissues, the fascia, the breath, and the subconscious layers that quietly guide how we react, how we relate, and how we heal.

Zach explains that disease is rarely random.
Often, it is the body’s final attempt to communicate what the subconscious has been holding for years.
Not to punish us, but to free us.

When the body can no longer carry the emotional load alone, it speaks through:

✨ inflammation
✨ hormonal or immune dysregulation
✨ chronic pain
✨ autoimmune issues
✨ cancer
✨ anxiety or shutdown

We tend to label these things as illness, but at a deeper level they are invitations — messages from the body asking for emotional release and reconnection.

Zach reminds us that real healing isn’t only about supplements, diets, or protocols.
Healing asks us to meet the emotional truth we’ve been avoiding.

To feel what was never safe to feel.
To listen instead of override.
To release generational patterns.
To rewire subconscious programs formed before the age of seven.
To return to love for ourselves and our story.

This is why so much healing begins the moment we start doing the inner work. The moment we stop fighting the body and begin listening to its wisdom.

If you're walking a healing path right now, hold this close:

Your body isn’t betraying you.
It’s remembering for you.
And it’s asking for liberation.

I’m so grateful for teachers like Zach Bush who weave science, soul, and emotional truth into one conversation — reminding us that healing begins in places we can’t see but can absolutely feel.

If this resonates, our 2-Week Fear, Mindset & Emotions Workshop is designed to support exactly this kind of deep inner work.

It will help you understand the emotional memories your body is holding, recognise old subconscious programming, and gently release what no longer serves your healing.

If you feel the nudge, we would love to walk with you.

(Link in comments or bio.)

13/11/2025

This week I wandered into our local butcher because I was absolutely craving a proper Scotch fillet. I don’t know about you… but I am a meat girl!

Yes, I know - I was diagnosed with colon cancer, and in the beginning I was told to go vegan. That lasted about five minutes. My body did not thrive on it. I thrive on meat. I thrive on low-carb. I thrive when I listen to my body instead of the rules we’re told to follow.

Normally I’ve got plenty of home-kill meat in the freezer, but while we wait for our next organic beef to arrive, I just wanted a decent steak. And then I spotted it… slowly aged, beautifully marbled, full of flavour. I love the fattier cuts — yes, I can already see eyes rolling!

But as much as I would’ve loved to buy a slab of this fillet… it was $165 per kg. I’d need to take out a second mortgage just to have dinner there!

It reminded me how unique we all are. Different bodies, different metabolisms, different healing paths. Some people thrive on carnivore for their health issues. I don’t think I could ever go fully carnivore because I adore my greens too much — but that’s the beauty of it.

One size doesn’t fit all.
Your body knows.
Your healing knows.

What about you — what way of eating makes you feel your best?

10/11/2025

When the Two Worlds Meet…

Every so often, something happens in my work that truly humbles me.

This week, a GP reached out to me for support as they navigate a stage 4 diagnosis. Someone who has spent their entire career caring for others, someone trained within a very different system to the one I walk beside. And it moved me in the deepest way.

Not because of the title in front of their name.

Not because it confirms anything I teach.

But because it shows that something bigger is shifting in the world of healing.

It shows that the walls between the two sides of the fence are softening.

People who have lived fully within the medical model are now reaching toward the emotional, spiritual and energetic layers that often get overlooked.

What touches me most is that this isn’t about one side being right and the other wrong.

It is about both worlds meeting for the sake of deeper healing, for the sake of humanity, and for the sake of the person who simply wants to feel whole again.

When someone with a lifetime of clinical experience chooses to explore this work… healing from within, addressing root causes, reconnecting with intuition… it reminds me that the ripple we are creating is real.

It reinforces the vision that Jenny and I hold so dearly for "Healing Cancer Beyond Medicine."

* A vision where doctors and healers stand together.
* Where intuition and science complement one another.
* Where patients feel supported by a community rather than a system alone.
* Where healing expands emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically.

To this GP, and to every soul walking this path, thank you.

Your vulnerability gives others permission to pause, question and reclaim their own power.

And your trust is something I never take lightly.

This is also why Jenny and I created our two-week Fear, Mindset and Emotions Workshop starting on the 25th.

* Because fear begins to dissolve when we truly understand ourselves.
* Mindsets shift when we learn how powerful our inner world can be.
* And emotions begin to heal when we stop walking through all of this alone.

Healing is a human journey, and I feel grateful every time someone chooses to explore what lies beyond the limits of what they have been taught.

Healing Cancer Beyond Medicine — one heart, one brave step, one awakening at a time.

09/11/2025

Some places don’t just look beautiful — they change your whole internal frequency.

The Redwoods in Rotorua is one of those places for me. 🌲

I took the dogs for a 10km hike this weekend and the moment my feet hit that soft, earthy trail something in me dropped… lower… softer… calmer. It’s wild how a forest can speak straight to the nervous system without saying a word.

There’s a kind of awe in the Redwoods that you don’t find just anywhere. Anyone else feel this when they walk here? Or am I just completely obsessed? 😆

06/11/2025

06/11/2025

The Story Doesn’t Matter

Yesterday I sat with a beautiful soul whose story was layered with loss, grief, and shame. As she spoke, I could feel how tightly she was holding onto the story, the retelling of every struggle, every “what if,” every moment that had broken her open.

The stories were heavy, but what I saw so clearly was how being stuck in the story robs us of peace. When our thoughts stay in suffering, we block our innate ability to feel joy. We live in survival rather than creation.

For years after my father took his own life, believing the words that he likely had less than six months to live, I lived in fear of getting cancer myself. That fear lived quietly beneath the surface, but fear has energy. It shapes the body, the chemistry, the very field we live in. Eventually, that fear manifested in my own diagnosis.

It took me a long time to realise that healing doesn’t come from controlling the physical, not from the perfect diet, fasting plan, or supplement. Those things support us, but they’re not it. True healing begins when we loosen our grip on the story, when we surrender and trust the innate wisdom within us that already knows how to heal.

If our thoughts helped create dis-ease, then our thoughts can also create ease.

When we let go of control, we allow peace to enter.

Yesterday, after two hours together, I saw something beautiful — a lightness, a softening, a glimmer of trust. The fear began to loosen its hold. And that’s where healing truly begins.

Surrender is medicine.
Letting go is freedom.
And joy — that’s the true healer.

If this message speaks to you, you’re warmly invited to join me and my dear friend Jenny Kennedy for our 2-week “Healing Fear, Mindset & Emotions” workshop — a safe, heartfelt space to explore what lies beneath the fear, and how to return to the calm within.

✨ We begin soon — details and registration link are in my bio (or message me directly).

05/11/2025

This morning hubby and I went chasing a soul cleanse — a cold plunge at Whataroa Falls in the stunning Ōtanewainuku Forest, just 10 minutes from home.

Let’s just say… I made it up to my b***s 🥶 while hubby tapped out at the knees 😂 The water was freezing but the forest air, birdsong, and laughter made it totally worth it.

Sometimes healing looks like freezing your bits off together in nature and laughing the whole way through.

03/11/2025

As I sit here in my office after chatting with a new client, I can’t help but feel so grateful for this incredible weather today. The warmth and calmness fill my heart, the colours of new flowers emerging in the garden remind me that life is always renewing itself, and the birds outside are singing their own joyful symphony.

When we pause to notice what’s good and beautiful around us, our body shifts into a healing state — our nervous system relaxes, our energy expands, and we begin to vibrate at the frequency of love and peace.

It’s the simplest medicine of all: gratitude. 🙏🩷🙏

Gratitude is the gateway to healing aye!

30/10/2025

Nature reminding us she’s in charge down in the South Island! 🥶 Time to find the joy in the unexpected.

29/10/2025

So beautifully expressed by my dear friend and co-facilitator Jenny.

This message speaks straight to the heart of what true healing is about — learning to honour who we really are, rather than who we think we need to be.

When we stop being too nice and start being authentic, healing begins.

Thoughts?

The Early Detection No One Talks About!

October is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, and my feed has been filled with posts about early detection.

But I want to talk about a different kind of early detection, the one I see every day in my healing practice, and what I wish I had known many years ago.

I just finished a session with a new ovarian cancer client. She was so nice.
In fact, all my ovarian cancer clients are nice.

When I was diagnosed with “incurable” ovarian cancer, someone said to me, “I can’t believe you got cancer, you’re so nice.”

My advice for prevention?

Don’t be nice.

When we’re “nice,” we often suppress who we really are. We people-please. We swallow our anger and shame. We disconnect from our truth in order to be accepted.

Back then, I would have disagreed with that. I thought I was simply someone who saw the best in everyone.
But in truth, I tolerated things I should never have accepted, and I was too afraid to say no.

Our ovaries are the seat of creation — of life itself. And time and time again, I see women who have felt too disempowered or afraid to create a life that’s truly theirs.

Many don’t even know what they really feel or desire, because they’ve been so busy putting others first.

The majority (though not all) of my ovarian cancer clients have also experienced sexual abuse.

To me, this is the real early detection. The emotional and energetic warning signs that show up long before the physical ones.

Healing begins when we learn to love, honour, and express who we truly are.

29/10/2025

Did you catch Counting the Beat tonight on TVNZ?

I was glued to it. They shared that the average New Zealander eats 26 teaspoons of sugar a day — ten times more than what our bodies can actually handle. No wonder we’re seeing such high rates of pre-diabetes, fatigue, anxiety, and even depression.

It’s not just in chocolate bars or fizzy drinks — it’s hidden in so many processed foods that many people think are healthy.

When I started tracking my blood glucose levels (something I now recommend to my clients), I was incredibly surprised at how certain foods spiked my blood sugars.

One day, I ate a few pieces of sushi with salmon and Avocado. Within an hour, my blood sugar spiked significantly, and took a couple of hours to normalise.

That’s when it clicked: even “healthy” options can play havoc with your blood sugar — and our bodies all respond differently.

For anyone on a healing journey, especially with cancer or chronic fatigue, this is so important. Cancer cells actually have many more insulin receptors than healthy cells — they love glucose. And it’s not just food that affects our blood glucose. Stress, poor sleep, and lack of movement all play a part, too.

When I began cutting back on refined carbs and sugars and focused on whole foods — clean animal protein, healthy fats, loads of green vegetables and mainly berries — everything shifted. My energy became consistent, my head clearer, and I honestly just felt lighter and happier.

In the early days, I followed advice to juice lots of raw veggies, carrots, beetroot and greens It sounded right — but it didn’t feel right. My body was running on sugar, not stability.

Now I know better. I’ve learned to listen to my body and nourish it in a way that keeps my energy steady and my mind calm. We’re all unique, but one thing’s true for everyone: when we start paying attention to how food really makes us feel, healing begins on a whole new level.

Your body is wise — it’s always talking. Sometimes we just need to slow down long enough to listen. Watch it on TVNZ on demand if you want to understand it more.