Ready to rethink that drink? Here's how | Maria Sehlstrom.

• Katische explores the impact of perimenopause on her relationship with alcohol and shares an interview with Maria Sehlstrom, co-founder of Cedars Alt Gin. 
• They discuss Maria's journey from working in the alcoholic beverage industry to creating a non-alcoholic gin inspired by South African botanicals. 
• Katische also delves into her personal experiences with alcohol, its effects during perimenopause, and her transition to non-alcoholic beverages.
•  Through this episode, listeners are encouraged to explore their own journeys with alcohol consumption and consider mindful drinking alternatives.

A few months after recording this video Katische stopped drinking all forms of alcohol and her perimenopause symptoms including anxiety subsided significantly. She no longer teaches about Perimenopause or Menopause rather addresses the spiritual side of life. Please excuse a few sound irregularities on this episode as they occur when I am showing a few video images of the area that Cederberg ingredients are grown in.

Transcript

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Introduction to Infinite Life with Katische Haberfield

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Infinite Life with Katish Hupperfield. I'd like to take you on a transformative journey, exploring the mysteries of the soul. I hope you enjoy the regression case studies, mediumship interviews, and fascinating discussions that I've had with guests on the podcast. I hope that these answer some of the questions that you might have about life on this planet, on others, and in other dimensions. Thank you for joining me and please don't forget to like and subscribe. And most importantly, share with your friends. Namaste.

Switching Topics: From Poems to Alcohol

SPEAKER_02 0:47

I know I said last week that I was going to do the poems about my father's death, but I actually felt more compelled this week to do an episode about alcohol. Now the reason why I am including this episode is because it's one that I recorded in lockdown with Maria Selstrom. And I had a little bit of a funny story because I started a podcast called Conversations with Katiche, but it was just videos, and I posted on Facebook and YouTube. And what was the most interesting thing about that was I was so nervous that I forgot to press record. And Maria had a little baby at the time, and she graciously re-recorded it with me as the baby was waking up.

Personal Journey with Alcohol

SPEAKER_02 1:35

So I hope that you will find this an interesting insight into my journey and your own journey. Because one of the things that I want to tell you about is that as a hypnotherapist, I can help you with your journey to reducing your alcohol consumption. And I don't place judgment on that because I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and I learned to drink Rum and Coke as my first beverage, not wine. And I grew up in a family of very conservative drinkers, very moderate moderate drinkers. And I quickly learned to use alcohol as a way to relax. I also went into the big bad world of drinking at uni, you know, Thursday nights were cheap drinks at the local pub, the RE, if you're in Brisbane. And then when I went on to management consulting, it's a play hard, work hard environment. And I also felt very free when I had alcohol. I didn't feel like my usual very strict conservative sort of worrying about the world personality. I remember being at Charlestown in uh Chicago and having a fellow management consultant say to me, You have two different personalities. There's the crazy one at nighttime, and then there's the very serious one at daytime. So which one was the authentic self? I think it's somewhere a blend in between two, because two people who you are close with, I find myself being a little more oddball. I have my own sense of quirky humour with them compared to say right now when I'm on camera and I'm trying to introduce a podcast episode. So I just wanted to say that yes, alcohol has its place in society and history shows you this. I also grew up as a marketer for a winery. I worked in the Hunter Valley, I worked in the in the Hastings Valley in Port Macquarie, I worked out in the Riverina, and I went to university to study wine. So I have a not only a graduate diploma in wine business from Charles Stoe University, oh god, no, it's not, from Adelaide University, but I also have a graduate certificate in gastronomy, which studies the culture of food and wine. So I do understand it. But for me, and many of you who used to follow me before will know that my journey of perimenopause led to a sudden realization that alcohol became a stressor, not a relaxant for me. And to the point where if I would drink my favorite glass of Chardonnay or any white wine, really, any one at all, I would come down with hot flushes. I would literally go red, beetrip red, and I would be dripping. And the next thing that would happen for me was that I would go quite quickly into awareness of feeling agitated. And then I wouldn't go to sleep immediately. So instead of it being a relaxant, it became a stressor. And so I tried to change over to non-alcoholic beverages, which is what I decided to do after speaking with Maria. So this interview actually is conducted in lockdown while I'm still drinking alcohol. I think that's right. I had b met Maria because I'd reached out to her because I was doing a casual job at that time. Uh being a lady who would uh go to the bottle stores and I would pour uh cedars, gin to customers to give them a taste to see if they would be interested in uh uh switching over to the opportunity of non-alcoholic beverages. Now, at this time this was kind of a strange thing, uh in Australia at least anyway. And I get lots of interesting uh comments and oh no thanks, uh those sorts of things. But there were people that would stop and talk to me and they would taste it and they're like, yeah, that's okay. So they would they would bring home a bottle. And so I got used to drinking the non-alcoholic stuff. Uh I dispersed it. Uh uh then one day I just poured it down the sink and I have never ever had anything to drink again. Not even uh celebrations, Christmases, birthdays, or even with friends who are very bereaved. So that was quite an identity change for somebody who had grown up with alcohol, who had used it as a relaxant, and for somebody who had actually studied wine making, wine marketing, and grape growing viticulture. Why did I do it? Because I was in tune with the changes in my body. I was in tune with the signs that my body was giving, which was anger rather than relaxation. And for me, I decided to go totally off because it just was causing havoc. Now, with the sessions that I can do for you, the three to five uh hypnotherapy sessions, we are looking at reducing it, not abstinence. And I don't work with alcoholics. But if you listen to this story, this interview with Maria Selstrom, and you're inspired, then feel free to reach out to me. I've got a whole page on my website that's dedicated to information about alcohol, and you can fill in the intake form and the alcohol management plan and send it across to me. So anyway, I hope that you enjoy this episode. Let me know. Maria would love to hear your comments. She has since sold the business, her and her husband, and they have moved on to new ventures. Thank you once again for listening.

Interview with Maria Sehlstrom: Non-Alcoholic Gin

SPEAKER_02 8:33

The channel on YouTube for you to stay in touch with everything related to perimenopause and menopause. In this video, I have the privilege of interviewing Maria from Cedars Altgin. One of the things that I noticed immediately upon coming into perimenopause was that my body processed alcohol in a different way, and that I found personally when I drank alcohol, and when I do drink alcohol, um, depending upon where I am in my actual cycle, it will have the added effect of bringing on a hot flush. So by the time I've had um a few sips of a glass of wine or some kind of alcoholic beverage, I can be covered in sweat and feel very agitated and frustrated, and that is the exact opposite to the relaxation response. When you're in perimenopause, you tend to put on extra weight very quickly. And so, one of the things that I found was that I would have my normal wines, and I have quite quickly put on an extra five kilos without changing my consumption habits. So it was really important to me to be extra mindful about the what I was putting in my mouth. So cutting back on the alcohol has become particularly um important for me. The other thing that um a lot of people find in perimenopause is that having an alcoholic beverage can lead to insomnia. Um, and I do find that when I kick back with a couple of wines while I'm watching a movie or something, that quite often um I have difficulty falling asleep or I wake up in the middle of the night, whereas I wouldn't have before previously when you're in your 20s and 30s, you would um find that alcohol was a relaxing way to drift off into sleep. Whereas now in my 40s, I'm finding that um it kicks into the insomnia factor. So I think that for women in perimenopause, an alternative beverage, a non-alcoholic gin, is a fabulous idea to help you still enjoy and not feel like you're missing out because what you have is is equally as good and tasty as an alcoholic gin or an alcoholic beverage.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

Thank you so much for coming on today.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Um, I just wanted to ask you how it started that you got into making a non-alcoholic gin. What what happened in your life and did you have a I understand you had a background in vodka and your husband and yourself met while working? Um, was it for Absolute Vodka?

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Yeah, so my um so I met my husband Craig, it's about 10 years ago now. Uh so we we met actually working for for Absolute Vodka uh for the company Prono Recard. And uh so we do have a background uh in drinks.

The Making of Cedars Non-Alcoholic Gin

SPEAKER_00 11:51

And coming back to your questions about um non-alcoholic gin or or our brand Cedars, it actually started in um 2016. So it was when I was pregnant with my uh or with our first child. Um that's kind of the a moment in time when you in your adult life when you're not allowed or you you can't have alcohol, and and that's when I really realized how very limited the the drink options were. If you don't drink alcohol, you're kind of reduced to having um water, or best case scenario, you'll you'll have a orange juice with a with a straw in it, and it just it just didn't feel right, you know. We we still enjoyed going out to to restaurants and going to people's house, socializing, and you still want to have that sophisticated adult drink experience. So that was kind of a moment in time when uh when we really realized, and I should mention as well that um Craig actually decided and decided to join me and not drinking any alcohol through my pregnancy, so that which was very very kind of him. So we uh I think that was that was a long nine month of of drinking a lot of apple juice and and and tonic, um, and um that's when we started talking, you know, can we can we do something here? Uh there seems to be a space and a place for uh for a new product here.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

And what's the connection with the Cedarberg Mountains and the particular um botanicals? How how did you why did you choose the uh South African botanicals?

SPEAKER_00 13:35

So um Craig's from South Africa, so he's from Cape Town, and um so the Cedarberg Mountains is this beautiful mountain range about two hours drive outside of Cape Town, and I always say that it's um he grew up going there a lot, going for a lot of hikes and spending a lot of time there, and it's always been a dream to to own some land there. So um early 2017, so um just after our son was born, we uh we we went to Cape Town for a holiday, and uh this piece of land came up, and Craig rushed down to the to to the Cedarbrook to see it, and he basically came came back home to Cape Town and said that he bought it. Uh so we we then uh started looking at it's very well it's very sunny and dry being in South Africa, so there's not a lot of things that that grow there. Uh there's um some some citrus that grow, but but also some of these botanicals. And so I guess we we started looking at this property and and the botanicals that grew there, and and and we said, you know, is there we didn't buy the the property, it wasn't a commercial purchase, but we we we said, you know, is there something that we could do with these? And they're very kind of hard hard earthy, uh beautiful botanicals. So uh a gin came to mind, but then of course the alcoholic gin space out there, there's pretty much 20 gins, I think, launching every week, at least here in the UK. Uh so it felt like a very crowded space. Um, and then in addition to that, um Craig um still wasn't drinking, so he decided to continue with not drinking after our son was born. And and we had had this experience where we felt that there just wasn't any good non-alcoholic drink options out there. Uh, so we said, you know, maybe we could look at incorporating these beautiful botanicals in a non-alcoholic drink, uh, and more importantly, or more specifically, in a non-alcoholic gin. Uh, because well, if if you know and love your gins, you know that a lot of gins have a lot of different beautiful botanicals in them. So uh that's kind of where our journey started, and how we started experimenting, and and having this background in in alcohol, having worked in in the alcohol industry for many years, we also had a lot of really uh amazing talented contacts within the industry. So when we started experimenting, we were able to reach out and and and ask, you know, how how could this be done and or or can it be done?

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yes, yes, absolutely. And um just very quickly, I understand that the difference between the production process for the Cedar's gin and uh which is a non-alcoholic and a normal gin, is that with the Cedar's gin you've got uh up to 18 different uh ingredients, botanical ingredients, and you need to individually either distill or distract or macerate the various um botanicals and then combine them with the Swedish spring water. That's correct, that's how you make it.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah, so it's um we kind of quite often get the questions about you know how how do you produce it and what's the difference between an alcoholic gin and um and there are quite a quite a lot of big differences, and I think I dare to say that it is more in general that it is more complicated to produce a non-alcoholic uh spirit or gin than it is to produce an alcoholic one. So, where you often, when you produce an alcoholic gin, you're able to take all your beautiful botanicals and your juniper and you can combine them and put them all in a still together with alcohol, ethanol, and extract all your flavors. What we have to do is that we um individually, as you mentioned, we distill, extract, or macerate our ingredients and botanicals, and then once we have the concentrated form of that, we then uh mix it all together. Craig often says it's it's almost a bit like a very delicate baking process. You take a little bit of all the or just the right amount of all your different ingredients and botanicals, you mix them in a in a still uh with Swedish water. So we um we produce in Sweden, uh, and the reason for that is because I'm I'm Swedish, and I I think I dare to claim that Sweden has some of the best water in the world. I might be a bit biased there, but uh, and so again, this is also about kind of combining our uh I guess our backgrounds and our love for nature. So we use a lot of the botanicals from the Cedarberg from from Craig's home country uh in in uh South Africa, and and then we produce in Sweden with marrying it together with Swedish water. So it's uh it's a bit like blending our our two backgrounds.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

It's just very pure and and botanical product, isn't it? Very good for you in comparison to drinking an alcoholic beverage in terms of kind to the body and and kind to the mind and giving yourself mindful um moments.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah, and I think there's I mean there is something, there is something to that moment when you're when you're making yourself a an alcoholic drink, uh, or that that that moment when you're kind of making yourself a drink, which always used to be alcoholic, you know, you you have your favorite glass, you you put some ice in it, you uh you pour your spirit of choice in, and then you mix it with something, and you put a little lovely slice of orange or garnish with it, and then you sit down and enjoy that kind of end-of-day cocktail. And uh it's we we both really we love love our gins, and we've always liked that moment, you know. In South Africa they call it sundowners, and um, you know, I'm I'm sure there's uh various terms across across the globe uh for that moment, that drink, you know, end-of-the-day drink. And it it's just we we really feel that everybody should be able to have that moment, and that you should still be able to have a good, sophisticated adult drink moment, even if you choose not to have alcohol, because even if you have an alcoholic drink once in a while, or you know, it that that's not that's not so bad. But if you start having it every day, or maybe even two or three, you know, that will have an impact. That will impact your your sleeping and your eating, and um, and it's just we we just feel that you should be able to treat yourself to that moment without having the the potential negative side effects of of having alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

So,

Crafting the Perfect Non-Alcoholic Gin Experience

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Maria, my um favourite of the Cedarberg range is the wild here in Australia. We have the wild and the classic, and um I just really love this one because it's very refreshing here when it's a 43 or 42 degree day. Um, it's just so hot, and it's really lovely to come home and have a Cedars Wild because um I find that with um the Cedars Gin, if you're like me, somebody who has come from a Romotherapy background, what happens is that we're quite often in a winemaking, wine marketing background, not a winemaker, but I worked in the Hunter Valley and a number of the Australia's wine regions for quite a few years and I'm very big on understanding the role of aroma with the relaxation response. So, how it works is that if your brain is used to a particular aroma and it associates that with relaxation, then you only need to smell that aroma for your body to actually go in and kick off the relaxation response. So, for example, um the main ingredient is juniper berry in in all gins, and for anyone that is used to drinking an alcoholic gin that is used to the juniper berry smell, then you all you have to do is to smell the juniper berry that's coming out of the bottle of cedar's gin, and it activates the relaxation response immediately. I think that a lot of people don't realize the power of our nose in creating a relaxation response. So, what I wanted to show people was just really how you make a my favorite way of making a Cedars gin, and I will confess that it's really quite simple. You don't need as we were talking about off-camera earlier, you don't need any fancy equipment. What you need is your beautiful glass Cedars bottle. I'm using a panadol or murifin measuring cup from the kids, so you don't need a fancy one, as you said. And we just want to pour 50 mils, so that's 20, 40, and you can't see the uh glass it's off screen, sorry. 50, so I've got my lovely glass here. Okay, put that in. Now it's typical to use tonic water. I don't have tonic water with me here today. I have mineral water, but you can use whatever mixture you like. I know that you specifically um chose tonic water because that's the mouthfeel you were saying to me off camera earlier that uh you associated with enjoying the actual um relaxing process of having a gin prior to having your children. Um the tonic water creates part of the mouthfeel experience of a gin. But if you don't like tonic water, then you can use your soda water or mineral water. So I've got some basil leaves here, which um are from my garden. Not so bountiful at the moment because we have a little bit of a cricket explosion happening in the garden. Um so they've eaten most of my basil bush, but just a couple of leaves is all you need, or can grab some next time you're in the supermarket. And I use I've got orange here today. There's no grapefruit around at the moment, so just a wedge of orange. So put that in there, and then all you need to do is grab your ice. So being Queenslander, I like lots and lots of ice, and your mineral water, or your tonic water, or soda water, or however you want. And there you have is your Cedars Wild Gin. And in the um Cedars Wild Gin, the ingredients as we mentioned are juniper, clove, and rubos. Now, um, as you mentioned to me earlier in the um discussion off-screen, uh rhubos is grown exclusively in South Africa, I believe, and in Australia here we have lots of South Africans, and so we also have got used to drinking rubos tea, and so the rhubos gives um a lovely flavor profile with the gin with the um juniper berry, and also you're explaining to me that the rhubos um can be quite powerful, so it is uh carefully distilled, and also one of the other ingredients that you were mentioning earlier was the bushu, which is um grown in the Cedarberg mountain region as well. So on the Cedarberg Um Alt Gin website and the Facebook and the Instagram account, yes, of different cocktail ideas that you can try out. Um, and the benefit of the Cedars Gin, as we discussed off-screen, was that there is no sugar, so it's only your mixer that's going to have the sugar content. So the the gin is a sugar-free experience, so that helps also with that keeping the calories down. There's only two calories when you're making a drink, so that helps also, um, especially in these times when we're all in lockdown and um we may be consuming a little bit more through emotional eating than we otherwise had done before. So, just a really refreshing way to enjoy a drink that your olfactory system can immediately identify with as a relaxation response, and it kicks in and it just helps you get calm without the alcohol.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Um the the the mindful drinking movement even further and and uh show people that there are other good options. So whether you want to have one drink and then move on to a non-alcoholic drink, or you don't want to drink at all, um, you should still be as included. Uh I guess the dream is that in five years' time, or even if it's ten years' time, if you walk into a bar or a supermarket or a liquor store, you should have as many choices of non-alcoholic drink options as they are alcoholic drink options, and it shouldn't be a big deal if you choose to have a non-alcoholic drink. It should be just as if you know one person likes vodka and another person likes gin. So that's kind of the that that's the dream.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_02 28:16

And so I can hear the baby in the background. Um, our viewers don't know that you're uh a new mum. Um, you've got a three-year-old and uh a little six-month-old baby. So I'll take my Cedars Wild, which I've mixed with orange and basil, and I'll I'll toast you. And thank you, Maria, for joining us today from London and telling us about Cedars. And we wish you all the very best. And we look forward to following you on social media and and and grabbing some recipes from the website and um really enjoying um the moments of missing out rather than fearing missing out, but taking time to enjoy ourselves and quiet solitude while we all are in lockdown and and taking care of our health and just really looking at some alternatives for the way that we can consume um beverages in our lifestyle. So thank you so much for your time today. And um, we um are very excited about the future and and hope that you come out to Australia next year or the year after when everything's all settled down.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Yeah, well, no, uh definitely, and I I I just want to echo that as well because I think that you know, while you know this this while everybody is in in in lockdown at the moment, or a lot of people are, you know, there there is of course the potential that maybe some people do have that moment a little bit too many, too many moments a week of of having that drink to also maybe just feel some anxiety and and I just I just worry that that you know I hope that some people might find a non-alcoholic option once in a while instead of as well, just to kinda mix it up a bit because I think we we just we just all need to like really take care of ourselves and try to practice a bit of more mindfulness as much as we can, although it it can be tough, but yeah.