Prepare for an enlightening episode in WyzeCast Season 2, Episode 17, as we sit down with Mimi Daraa, the co-founder of Maison Palo Santo. Mimi is on a mission to connect individuals with their innate creative potential through the transformative power of Palo Santo and daily rituals. Join us as we explore her deep commitment to sustainability, creativity, and holistic well-being.

Maison Palo Santo proudly sources its Palo Santo just four hours from Mimi’s home in Ecuador, planting seeds of inspiration while ensuring the growth of more Palo Santo trees. In this episode, Mimi shares how she combines ancient wisdom with modern practices, incorporating yoga, meditation, breathwork, and thoughtfully crafted products to rejuvenate the mind, body, and soul.

Discover the sleek intersection of sustainability and elegance as Mimi discusses how Maison Palo Santo is reshaping the narrative around conscious living. From her signature workshops to eco-friendly products, Mimi guides individuals toward authentic connections and daily rituals that contribute to inner harmony.

Watch on YouTube – Premieres December 11th, 10 AM ET

Listen on Spotify – Premieres November 22nd, 6 PM ET

Melanie McSally
Welcome to another episode of WyzeCast™, the show that elevates the voices, shines the light, showcases the gifts of our heart-centered guests, and amplifies the positive differences they are making in the world.

I am super excited to bring today’s guest to you. She is the founder of Maison Palo Santo. A company that connects people to their innate creative potential through the power of Palo Santo and daily rituals. She is deeply committed to unlocking the boundless creative potential within all individuals. She combines the ancient wisdom of Palo Santo, the transformative power of yoga, meditation, breathwork, and thoughtfully crafted products to rejuvenate the mind, body, and soul. Proudly sourcing her Palo Santo directly close to her home in Ecuador, she not only plants seeds of inspiration but also ensures the growth of more Palo Santo trees. Through her products and signature workshops, she aims to infuse every life with daily rituals and authentic connections, guiding individuals towards holistic well-being and inner harmony.

My name is Melanie McSally, your host for today’s episode, and without further adieu, I would like to give a warm welcome to the beautiful, the always joyful, the bright light, Mimi Daraa. Welcome, Mimi!

Mimi Daraa
Thank you. Can I bring you with me everywhere so that everywhere I go, that’s the intro no matter what the occasion?

Melanie McSally: Of course

Mimi Daraa
I want every time I go somewhere. Even at the supermarket, open the door. And here she is. Well, actually, it’s funny because everywhere I go, people know I’m coming because they smell me first. That’s what they say. It was a very weird compliment to hear in the beginning. Hey, we always smell you; we always smell you coming. You’re like, oh, okay, great, because of the sense of Palo Santo, which has a beautiful Woody, citrus-y, gorgeous natural scent to it. So I feel really happy and blessed to be able to be carrying that around everywhere I go, I guess.

Happy to be here.

Melanie McSally
Perfect, and I’m delighted to have you. So that’s a great segue. Why don’t you tell us about Palo Santo and why it’s so important to preserve it.

Mimi Daraa
Absolutely. So Palo Santo is a holy wood, a sacred plant that comes from Ecuador and Peru. It also grows along the Yucatan Peninsula. We’re going to focus on Palo Santo, which comes from Ecuador, where we source our Palo Santo from, and also houses the largest concentration of Palo Santo trees in the dry tropical forests worldwide. You might have seen Palo Santo in a smudge stick, which is something that you would light the end of. You might use it in a yoga studio, in a meditation practice, or maybe in a self-care ritual at home. This is used for cleansing. So, you may use it in your home for cleansing, similar to Sage. It does have different properties than Sage, and something very unique about it as well is that instead of just clearing out all of the energy, Palo Santo has a spiritual pedigree to also invite a lot of positivity to boost your focus, creativity, a lot of grounding, it has a beautiful citrusy, earthy, woody aroma that not only cleans your spirit and elevates your mood, but also has properties in it, a terpene called D-Limonene that has antiviral, antiseptic, antibacterial properties, so it’s literally cleaning the air. And it’s not just malas vibras, the bad vibes, but can also help you with reducing some pain and muscle soreness; the essential oil can be used in the bath. There are a variety of practical uses, as well.

I’m going to show you something really, really cool. From the forest, this is what it would look like when you find it. It’s this huge, really dense branch that falls naturally off of the tree. This would lay dormant on the forest floor, which is where the magic begins, which is why we call Palo, which means stick, and Santo, which means holy. So masion, House of holy stick. The reason why it’s considered holy. Obviously, we can see it’s a piece of wood. But the reason why it’s considered holy is because of this natural death cycle and rebirth. So it has a lot of symbolism. And it’s the only aromatic plant like that. So it makes it very, very special. You can’t just go up to the Palo Santo and rub on it and smell. It has to go through this natural death, rest, and then it dwindles down, down, down anywhere between three all the way to seven to ten years. And then, we can use this beautiful wood to burn in one of these little palitos, small smudge sticks, or we can use it to distill essential oil and make a variety of products for self-care and holistic wellness.

Palo Santo has gained a lot of popularity recently. And so more and more people have been discussing sustainability aspects of it. And I think it’s really important to touch on that as well. I think with any sacred medicine like Palo Santo, with Sage, or with other foods that we might eat that come from faraway lands, like chocolate, coffee, and things that become very common in our everyday rituals. It’s important to show reverence and the juxtaposition of the hours that it takes to go into the forest, to harvest the wood, to gather, to store, to know the plants, to feel the earth, and to do this from a very intrinsic. Just nature, right, working only with the indigenous communities. Ecuador has very strict laws that prohibit the sale of Palo Santo from anybody who’s not in the indigenous community, and also if the wood is not ready.

So we’re very lucky in that regard. It’s also very important that we generate more interest in Palo Santo because what this does is, this helps us regenerate not just Palo Santo trees but the entire dry tropical forests as a bio, as a home, which is really important for other endemic species such as birds, for example, there is some fragmentation of the forest, and in the dry tropical forests. Excuse me. Where sometimes lands are cleared for grazing cattle or for firewood. So by generating more interest in Palo Santo, we can boost not just the longevity and lushness of the forest but to maintain this indigenous culture of gathering wood. But we can also boost economics. By creating more economic prosperity in a zone, we can motivate local people and people from all around the world to help us preserve the dry tropical forest. And so that we can all enjoy these medicines and we can all enjoy these products for many, many years to come.

So what we do is we make Palo Santo fun. We don’t just only deal with the palitos. We don’t only deal with the sticks. You know, we make a variety of products. And how we contribute to those reforestation efforts is that for each product we sell, we donate one seedling of Palo Santo to be germinated and then transplanted within a dry tropical forest, of which there are two plantings yearly now. It used to be just one, and now there are two. So that’s very exciting. And this forest where the trees are planted is approximately three hours north of our own home. So it’s a pretty cool experience to be able to go there when they’re doing that.

Melanie McSally
Um, so you said so many great little tidbits that I want to touch upon. I know that Native Americans have a lot of rituals. I don’t know the right word to use, and I don’t want to use the wrong one. Where if you if you take something too soon, that the energy is actually impacted. Like, you might change the properties of something. You might make it a negative energy instead of its natural positive energy because you destroyed something or you took it too soon or something. Is there anything around that with the Palo Santo?

Mimi Daraa
I think the word that you’re looking for is the vibration. So, the vibration of the medicine of the Palo Santo. So, when it comes directly from the forest to your home, there’s nobody in between except for me, and our life is dedicated to Palo Santo. We only work with this one ingredient. Everything around our entire life is focused on this plant. There’s a beautiful book by David Crowe called Sacred Smoke, which is the story of our supplier. If you’re into Palo Santo and want to learn more about it, he’s a mentor and is becoming a friend as one of the great people that I’ve met through working with Palo Santo. But yeah, the vibration states I. We’re 100% plastic-free. So the product never sees any kind of plastic. It never sees anything industrial. It’s never. It’s cut by hand, gathered by hand, by a small team of artisans that we know personally, and that we’ve shared food with and, you know, visit and personalized Palo Santo sticks as gifts, and bring back products for as gifts. There’s nothing that makes me happier than to show the team in Ecuador the beautiful things that we make with the ingredients that they so carefully curate, not curate, but carefully produced for us. Nothing touches it. Fire, water, steam, and me. That’s it.

So when you get the product, you really truly get that maximum benefit. It truly is something that is for you, for yourself. The energy in the wood is extremely powerful,  it’s concentrated, it’s very special, and it is sacred. And I know sometimes it’s easy for us to forget that with certain things because they just become so common. What I’m working on is translating this feeling of reverence into pretty much everything that I consume on a daily basis or that I use. And I think it’s really important Palo Santo gives us a really great opportunity to do that. So if you’ve never done that with a product before, it can be really fun to be like, hey, let me look where this comes from. Who gathered this? How does it grow? What is it like? Then you can really feel connected to it. You can really show it some gratitude. And that’s when you really become open to the energy and to the magic of transformation that it holds, which is something that it helped me do for my own life. So I can tell you that it does work for sure.

Melanie McSally
Yeah, just one more point back on the previous question. You mentioned so many amazing qualities that the Palo Santo tree itself has, and you’ve also mentioned that it’s a powerful intention-setting tool, if you will, for lack of a better word. And so I love that these qualities- resilience, hearty, having fortitude- those kinds of things. It doesn’t need much to be powerful and grow strong. I love all these adjectives, these words when we’re thinking about our own ceremonies. Using Palo Santo to set our own intentions and create our own personal transformation. So, I know that you’ve used Palo Santo to transform your life and have your own transformational journey. Do you want to tell us about that?

Mimi Daraa
Sure.I mean, Palo Santo gave me a new window to the world. In New York City, I worked in restaurants for almost twenty years, and it was extremely high-stress. I started working with Palo Santo, the house, and Ecuador. I was going through a personal change as well as looking for a deeper impact. Looking to create a deeper impact in the world rather than just looking for deeper meaning. The hospitality industry is really fun until it’s not fun anymore. When you reach that point, like I did, and I was looking to do something else, Palo Santo helped me find clarity. It’s supported me and my transition from a maître d’hôtel and captain waiter to yoga teacher and breath work facilitator, and it allowed me to create community. I became an expert on Palo Santo. I’m not an expert on many things. I just have my humble knowledge, but what I like to do is really just offer that visualization. At each event I do and each class I teach, we always talk about we are Palo Santo trees. Sometimes, we have to let parts of ourselves die off. Man, I was attached to myself in the past. I still struggle with that on a daily basis. I think that it’s really important. It’s such a deep symbolism of transformation and what a little bit of rest, slowing down, and clarity can do for your future. Sometimes, we just race through everything, and we lose the ability to even have a creative thought because we’re just on play all the time, like rinse, wash, repeat at work, in our relationships, and in everything we do.

I’m a people person, you guys. I like to talk. I like to hang out with people. I like to do events, and Palo Santo offered me a way to communicate and to be in community with people, which is what I loved about the restaurant so much. I love to be a host. I love to invite people, to see people happy, and to know exactly what they want before they even know what they want. To just create a vibe, and that’s what we do with the Palo Santo. We create a vibe. We create a vibe with a deeper impact on life. Again, it’s not just about the product. It’s about the lifestyle. It’s about creating a ritual. It’s about transformation. Because we’re always in a state of ebb and flow, nothing is permanent. We’re always changing. We have to be flexible. We have to be in that flow and have to move with ease and grace through all of the beautiful transitions of life, just like nature does. And it can be brutal. Sometimes it can be really, really hard. And sometimes, when I was leaving my restaurant career, people were saying, Are you crazy? And that’s when I knew I was on to something because as soon as people start thinking that you’re crazy, you might just have a great idea. So, just like as a side note, but yeah, so Palo Santo itself gives us that deep symbolism for transformation.

It really helped me, on a spiritual level, find clarity and confidence and what I was working on next. Also, it helped me connect with people all over the world. In six out of seven continents, we’ve sold Palo Santo. We’re in almost twenty states now out of the fifty-one states. Is it fifty-one or fifty-two? I don’t know. Whoops. We’re just excited to pair it with a workshop we have created called Palo Santo Sacred Journey, where we go to yoga studios and health and wellness centers. Wait for it; we are creating a workshop specifically for hospitality. This is where we’re coming full circle because nobody needs Palo Santo more than restaurant managers.

Sometimes we forget. We forget to slow down. I think that now the world is moving so quickly that using these natural products and creating these small rituals so that we can continue our momentum forward on our path and not stay stagnant is really important. Just creating energy, an energetic ecosystem of clarity and purity, can help people, not just in their everyday lives but on a big scale, to plan for the future while still staying present. So, it really helped me. It didn’t even take the seven years that it normally takes on the fourth floor. My journey with Palo Santo began in 2016. So, yeah, we’re going on about year seven. It took me about two years to create that full transformation. Yeah, it’s been a journey. And the story about how I found Palo Santo is up on our website. You can read the whole story, but basically, it really it found me. The universe had different plans for me, and I couldn’t be more thankful that it did find me. After learning everything that I could from our supplier in Ecuador, it was pretty clear that the smoke was carrying the message that I needed. It also helped me quit smoking cigarettes. That’s a side note. You’re like, oh my gosh, a yoga teacher that smoked cigarettes. Well, it was a thing. Everybody in the 90s smoked.

Melanie McSally: And everyone in the restaurant industry.

Mimi Daraa
Yeah, but it’s not really a thing anymore. It did help me quit smoking. It helped me meditate more. It helped me live a healthy lifestyle, and it helped me be around community that we’re supporting my mission to change my life. I’m just so happy that I’m where I am now, still with my Palo Santo.

Melanie McSally: That you carry around in your Mary Poppins purse.

Mimi Daraa
Yeah, that I carry around. This is actually very functional. It’s really heavy, you guys. It’s a dense wood. This can be a chair. Put it up here as a table. You can sit on it. You open the car window with it when you lose your keys. It smells amazing. It’s a conversation starter. I mean, it’s endless, and it’s for sale. Everything is for sale at Maison Palo Santo. No, I’m just kidding. This one is not. This one is very special, but we do have branches that can make beautiful art pieces for your altar and things like that.

Melanie McSally
Awesome, awesome. Well, as children, we’re taught not to be selfish, and I think the greatest lesson that I’ve learned as an entrepreneur is to be selfish. Anytime that I am up against something, it feels like I’m inviting too much of something into my life, negative or something or other. I just stop; I’m like the scratching of a record. Stop. Let’s. Nope. Let’s stop. Let’s take a moment. Let’s take whatever it is: five minutes, an hour, a day, a week, a month, whatever. To just go back inside and reconnect with yourself, with who you are as a person, and then invite that positive energy. I love that your whole mission, your whole focus in life, is around this product that can help people do just that because I love efficiency. I am an engineer. So if I need to scratch the record and say, Whoa, wait a minute, I need to reset here. I’m inviting too much of something I don’t want into my life. If you can just do a little ritual, it’ll be five minutes, and then I can go back to my day. Pft, much better than a month or weak or …

Mimi Daraa
Absolutely. I’m glad you brought that up because our sense of smell is closest connected to our memory. So, when we start to create a ritual when we’re in moments of peace and relaxation, we literally are training our brain to feel cool, calm, and collected when we have a moment of stress, when we really need it the most.

We can’t all be kundalini, white robes with singing bowls and gongs all the time. We can’t always be around that. We’re gonna be in the real world. Some of us have to go to an office, or we’re in a car and traffic, and we find ourselves in these moments of complete overwhelm, sensory overload on all terms. Our sense of smell is the only thing that can trigger, beyond sight and sound, that can trigger an emotional response that is so vivid and so deep that it can instantly drop you back into your true nature. Which, no matter who you are, is gratitude and joy and love. That is who we are.  That’s who we are internally. As we age and as we get older; when we were little, we were master manifesters. All we did was manifest. We lived in the creativity zone, where imagination ruled our world and anything was possible. And our brains don’t change, but the external changes, and we start to develop these layers. And we forget that inside, we’re soft. This is something that happens to me and what I always work with, with my people, the most, is that first thing in the morning, this is when it’s the most important, you know, I would we’re not going to get too woo-woo with it, but I don’t when we wake up, we’re still in that alpha brainwave for longer than we think. Right? But we just get right to our phone. And we immediately look at social media or answer a text. So what does that do? It puts us in responder mode versus creator mode. So, what if, instead of in the morning, light your palo santo stick, literally close your eyes, and say a prayer or a mantra, whatever you want to call it, say today, each and every day, I’m getting better in every way. I’m healthy, I’m wealthy, I’m free, whatever it is, or just say, Hi, my name is, or don’t say anything. Then, when you’re done, you put it down. It’s going to go out on its own. And that two minutes that you talk to dedicate to your own energy will put you in the mode of creator for the rest of your day. You’ll be able to have more individual thinking. You’ll have more creative thoughts. You’ll be more efficient. You’ll boost your focus. And you’ll be able to have more balance when people come at you with texts and needs and responses. By slowing down for five minutes. Or even if you only have 30 seconds, by pairing it with the power of sense, the essential oil Palo Santo, rubbing your hands together. Take a breath in and out, shaking it off doing a little mortal hot, whatever it is that you need to do to create your body’s own frequency, a little vibration to remember that you truly are a magical being and that you weren’t put on this earth to press play every day. That little glimmer of hope that a little creative inspiration can make such a change in our mood and that improves our health and elongates our life. So palo santo helps us live longer.

Melanie McSally
Okay, so the other thing that I would say, just to add onto that. Do that same ritual before you get on any really important, business-changing, or life-changing phone calls, and let your mantra or your thought process be about what you want to create on that call, for the highest good.

So I know that you have some really amazing and powerful ways that people can take advantage of all these transformative properties for themselves. So can you tell us about that?

Mimi Daraa
Yeah, so for the holidays, we always do a bunch of bonus gifts for everybody. We do customization. You can get your loved one’s name or a custom message written on the stick. It comes in a beautiful glass, too; we call them message-in-a-bottle. It’s made to express your love in a very unique and profound way. We also have a beautiful fragrance, which I would highly recommend. It’s that very special and very transparent gift on the ingredients and fragrance, which is another episode that we can go into at a later date. But what you’re offering to your people when you buy from Maison Palo Santo is not just a product but it’s a full experience that will change their life for the better. I just want to highlight that. We’re more than just a candle company. We’re more than just a Palo Santo company. We really, truly are a journey of the senses. From the forest to their home, they can experience the high vibration of the healing aromatics with Palo Santo. You can find it in a variety of ways. So, the best way to stay connected is to join our email list. Throughout the holidays, the entire month of December, we send out specials and bonus offers. Each and every single one of our products is carefully wrapped with love, with customizations, and little bonus gifts. Because we just love our people who find us online and who are committed to being conscious consumers and to knowing their source of Palo Santo, and we hope to just bring a smile to your face when you receive the box or when your loved one receives the box. So we’re honored to be able to provide those types of special gifts for everybody, especially around this time of year. Something really exciting that we just launched is called the breath bubble, where our beautiful Palo Santo people can meet once a week live on Zoom and breathe together. We breathe in a rhythm to awesome beats to supercharge our energy and find inner peace, and we get to learn a little bit more about Palo Santo.

Melanie McSally
Mimi. It’s been such a delight having you here today, sharing your wisdom. WyzeCast™ is all about elevating the heart-centered business owners who are looking to build a better tomorrow. We want to build a better tomorrow. And so, by helping to elevate other businesses that are looking to do the same, we get to make a bigger impact. So, thank you for sharing how you’re helping to build a better tomorrow in a very heart-centered way. We appreciate you. I feel honored and blessed to have you here today. So thank you so much.

Mimi Daraa
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Muchas gracias. Merci beaucoup. Shkran Iak. Thank you to all of the beautiful Palo Santo people. I love you all, and I can’t wait to see you or feel your energy somewhere soon.

Melanie McSally
I want to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you like what you’ve heard here today, please do like, share, and comment. We are trying to get WyzeTribe™ to be a hot new release. So if you feel inspired, if you feel moved, if you feel called, if we earned it, please do like, share, and comment. It is free for you to do so and really helps the podcast grow. And we really do love your engagement.

This was another episode of WyzeCast™, the show that elevates the voices, shines the light, showcases the gifts of our heart-centered guests, and amplifies the positive difference they’re making in the world.

If you want to learn more about WyzeCast™, you can visit our wyzecast.com. We dropped ten episodes every month on the 21st, so you can binge-watch or spread them out over the month. Whatever suits your mood and lifestyle.

Once again, my name is Melanie. It has been my pleasure being your host today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, thank you for your engagement, and I invite you to come back and join me once again for our next episode of WyzeCast™.