HIListically Speaking with Hilary Russo

How can life after 65 be more fulfilling than ever before? Just ask inspiring entrepreneur and podcast host Ande Lyons, who launched multiple successful ventures in her 60s. Join us as we explore how the Renaissance Years can be more fulfilling by embracing aging, defying ageism, and discovering new passions. We discuss shifting from hustle culture to an intentional energy portfolio—focusing on meaningful pursuits and rest, inspired by movements like the Nap Ministry. We also highlight the value of intergenerational connections, elder planning, and the joy of staying active. This is an opportunity to celebrate aging with purpose, endless possibilities, and a mindset that the best days are ahead of us. ⁣ ⁣ KEY MOMENTS/CHAPTERS⁣ 00:00 Intro⁣ 00:06 Thriving After 65 4:31 Power of Aging ⁣ 18:54 Creating an Intentional Energy Portfolio 23:39 Intergenerational Connections  ⁣ 36:00 Don't Retire. Rewire!⁣ 39:04  Navigating Elder Care⁣ 44:07  Rapid Fire⁣ 45:29 Ande Lyon's wisdom bomb⁣ 47:01 Hilary's Final Thoughts⁣ 48:00 Podcast Resources ⁣ WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE⁣ Subscribe  https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso ⁣⁣ Book mentioned during this episode: Don’t Retire, Rewire! By Jeri Sedlar & Rick Miners  https://amzn.to/4gym8x8 (Amazon)⁣ ⁣ CONNECT WITH ANDE LYONS https://www.dontbecagedbyyourage.com/⁣ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andelyons/⁣ https://www.instagram.com/ande_lyons/ ⁣ ⁣ GET BRAIN CANDY DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/braincandy⁣⁣ ⁣ JOIN ME AT ONE OF MY FREE EVENTS⁣ ⁣https://www.hilaryrusso.com/events ⁣ CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking⁣ ⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣ Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com⁣

Ever wondered how embracing your wild side can spark more joy and wisdom? HeatherAsh Amara can be your guide. That is, if you’re willing. During this conversation with host Hilary Russo, HeatherAsh Amara shares her journey of self-discovery from Nepal to India with stories filled with laughter and insight to inspire us to explore self-trust and playfulness, no matter our age. It’s such a big part of her journey, HeatherAsh wrote a book about it to encourage you to embrace your wild, willing, and wise. Tune in as shares her unique tools for balancing passion and flow, and hear about her personal experiences…including firewalking! This episode is all about igniting your inner spark and embracing the power of community. But also, what it takes to know when to paddle, when to rest, and when to jump naked into the river of life! ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ KEY MOMENTS/CHAPTERS⁣ 00:00 Intro⁣ 00:05 Discovering Inner Wisdom and Wildness⁣ 4:51 Growing up Around the World ⁣ 7:00 The Indian girl that changed her life⁣ 09:30 Spiritual Connection and Community  ⁣ 15:00 Traveling book tour⁣ 16:37  The Importance of Play  ⁣ 22:45  Rapid Fire⁣ 24:00 What’s in a Name?⁣ 27:51 Guest’s Final Thoughts⁣ 28:00 Hilary’s Final Thoughts⁣ ⁣ ⁣ WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE⁣ Subscribe  https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso ⁣ Grab a copy of “Wild, Willing and Wise: An Interactive Guide for When to Paddle, When to Rest, and When to Jump Naked into the River of Life”⁣ ⁣ Paperback https://amzn.to/3ze15yQ (Amazon)⁣ Kindle https://amzn.to/3z4PmTo (Amazon)⁣ ⁣ ⁣ CONNECT WITH HEATHERASH AMARA⁣ https://wildwillingwise.com⁣ https://www.instagram.com/heatherashamara⁣ https://www.facebook.com/heatherash.amara⁣ ⁣ ⁣ GET BRAIN CANDY DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/braincandy⁣⁣ ⁣ JOIN ME AT ONE OF MY FREE EVENTS⁣ ⁣https://www.hilaryrusso.com/events ⁣ CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking⁣ ⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣ Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com⁣

Therapists have trauma too. If you don’t believe that, Dr. Frank Anderson has a story for you and it happens to be his own. A respected leader in the trauma therapy and Internal Family Systems space, Frank Anderson’s latest book is the memoir he never planned to write. But once the words and the music started to flow, “To Be Loved," painted a picture of a young boy’s pain that became his purpose. It’s a reminder that vulnerability and honesty pave the way for healing and compassion for those who hurt him and also freed him on so many levels. In this episode of the HIListically Speaking Podcast, you have a front seat inside a deep conversation that serves as a reminder: healing and love are possible for all.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ 00:00 Intro⁣ 01:40 Vulnerability in Memoir Writing ⁣ 02:10 Breaking the Us and Them Barrier⁣ 03:51 Truth and Compassion⁣ 12:35 The Healing Power of Music⁣ 20:43 Emotional Connection of Music⁣ 22:45 Forgiveness and Healing Process  ⁣ 36:25 Casting the Movie⁣ 47:50 Rapid Fire game with Frank Anderson⁣ 48:22 Guest Dr. Frank Anderson shares final thoughts⁣ 48:48 Host Hilary Russo close and podcast info⁣ ⁣ ⁣ WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE⁣ Subscribe  https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ ⁣ Grab a copy of “To Be Loved: A Story of Truth, Trauma, and Transformation”⁣ Audiobook: https://amzn.to/4cNRXi5  (Amazon)⁣ Paperback: https://amzn.to/3X4R3Ik  (Amazon)⁣ ⁣ Other Books by Dr. Frank Anderson⁣ “Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual: Trauma-Informed Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, PTSD & Substance Abuse”⁣ Kindle: https://amzn.to/3Mxk4ra  (Amazon)⁣ ⁣ Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems⁣ Kindle:  https://amzn.to/4ecUsfd (Amazon)⁣ ⁣⁣ CONNECT WITH DR. FRANK ANDERSON⁣ https://www.frankandersonmd.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/frank_andersonmd LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-anderson-654b1836 ⁣ GET BRAIN CANDY DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/braincandy ⁣ JOIN ME AT ONE OF MY FREE EVENTS⁣ ⁣https://www.hilaryrusso.com/events   ⁣CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com

What if you could transform your trauma into a source of hope and healing? A physician in the middle of a pandemic, who survived the earthquakes in Nepal, Dr. Christy Gibson realized the mounting rates of trauma showing up, but not being recognized. Her mess became her message when she launched the "TikTok Trauma Doc” and authored the "The Modern Trauma Toolkit", a book that is a must at your bedside. During this conversation, Christy shares profound insights on hope in trauma recovery and the hidden emotional toll on healthcare professionals. Discover the distinction between PTSD and normal responses to extraordinary situations. Explore innovative therapies like Havening and Tapping. Plus, the transformative power of community, cultural sensitivity, and the benefits of integrating Western medicine with functional approaches.⁣ ⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS/KEY MOMENTS⁣ 00:00 Intro⁣ 05:27 Healing Through Havening Techniques  ⁣ 10:29  Trauma Healing⁣ 14:46  Community Empowerment After Disaster ⁣ 19:48  Empowerment Through Self-Discovery ⁣ 25:37  Exploring Integrative Trauma Healing Methods⁣ 26:57  The Role of Antidepressants and Psychedelics  ⁣ 38:31 Sharing Healing Skills on TikTok ⁣ 42:45 Connecting Through Healing and Collaboration ⁣ 43:00 Rapid Fire Game⁣ 45:16 The Modern Trauma Toolkit⁣ 47:00 Dr. Christy Gibson takeaway⁣ 48:00 Hilary Russo closing thoughts⁣ ⁣ ⁣ WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE⁣ Subscribe  https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ ⁣ Grab a copy of “The Modern Trauma Toolkit”⁣ Paperback: https://amzn.to/3LeAW5z  (Amazon)⁣ Audiobook: https://amzn.to/3y2cC3A   (Amazon)⁣ Kindle: https://amzn.to/3xRBZoQ (Amazon)⁣ ⁣ ⁣ CONNECT WITH CHRISTY⁣ https://www.ChristineGibson.net⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktoktraumadoc⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@dr.christinegibson⁣ https://www.facebook.com/gibtrotterMD⁣ https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-gibson-md/⁣ https://www.instagram.com/moderntraumatoolkit/⁣ ⁣ GET BRAIN CANDY DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/braincandy⁣ ⁣ JOIN ME AT THE NEXT HAVENING HAPPY HOUR⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/events ⁣ ⁣ CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com/⁣ ⁣ ⁣ ⁣ FULL TRANSCRIPT⁣ 00:06 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ So many people do know what they need. If, given the resources to figure that out and that's why I love the work you're doing and why I created the modern trauma toolkit is to say these are some solutions to consider. I put 40 different activities in the book so that people could design their personal solution strategy to healing both self and systems. ⁣ ⁣ 00:29 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Without hope, trauma intensifies. Think about that just for a moment, how it feels in your body, how it resonates with you, and I want you to just consider what that is like to have no possibilities, no resolution, no solutions, no hope. And I think it's safe to say that we've all been there at some point or another. Whether it is something very big or even small, that feeling of not having the control can be very overwhelming. In fact, it's common for our beautiful brain to go to that place, to want to keep us safe, to go to the negative, and it's up to us to reel her back right. If you've been with me for a while  HIListically Speaking journey, you know that, whether it is the podcast or the brain candy newsletter, social, the HUG it Out Collective, wherever you're tuning in, however, we're connected. You know that. I'm all about sharing the sweetest ways to be kind to your mind and creating that space for conversations, connections, and solutions. ⁣ ⁣ 01:33⁣ Hope, right, but I can't do it alone. I certainly cannot do it alone. That's why we need our tribe, our collective right, our community, and part of that is having people like Dr Christy Gibson joining me. She's part of that circle. She is not only a Havening Techniques practitioner. She is a family physician, a trauma therapist and author of the Modern Trauma Toolkit, which we're going to talk about, but also you've probably seen her as the TikTok trauma doc. Such a little like works really well, right. Well, christy, you offer such value. And when I read those words because those were your words that you said that it's now time to share what can be done to provide hope and solution focus, because without hope, trauma intensifies, it really hit me and I think we're really past due. ⁣ ⁣ 02:22 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ So, having you here to share your story, how you're helping, others and really talk about the book, which we will do is a gift, so thanks for being here. Well, thank you so much. What a beautiful intro Thanks, listen. ⁣ ⁣ 02:35 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I have to say first of all it was so good to see you in person and have an opportunity to just give you a hug and spend some time with you during the Havening Conference which we just came back from in New York and you know there were a lot of people circling around getting to know you and your book that have maybe not met you before or were really touched, moved and inspired by the book or just what you're sharing and putting out there in the world. And I know that comes from what you've been through and I think that would be a really good place to start is to really have a better understanding of who Dr Gibson is, the TikTok trauma doc, and how you came into this work. ⁣ ⁣ 03:12 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ I think being the Dr Gibson part was actually a large part of the trauma that I didn't even know was sneaking up on me. So many others, like Lissa Rankin, a dear friend, have spoken about the trauma that's inherent in the work of being a physician, and we're not really taught to acknowledge it sufficiently. So, if I think about my origin story, while I really enjoyed being a hospital based doctor for 16 years, it took a lot out of me physically, emotionally, spiritually. Took a lot out of me physically, emotionally, spiritually. And it wasn't until I was out of that job that I recognized just how traumatic it is to like not just be up all night for 30 hours, ignoring the cues of hunger or, you know, sleep that your body is screaming at you, but also the vicarious suffering, the fact that somebody might die and then you have to go to the next room and somebody else is suffering in a different way, and we're not really taught how to process the very human feelings that we get when we're interacting with so much suffering. And that's one of the things that I needed to work on, and I'm still. It's a work in progress around my own healing, but it wasn't until I was caught in the earthquakes in Nepal in 2015,. ⁣ ⁣ 04:26⁣ That PTSD kind of came on my radar. I was experiencing not PTSD, which is the disorder when it's continuing for a prolonged time and it's unexpected. This was post traumatic symptoms that I was having related to shaking. So if there was a garage in the building that I was in and the garage was moving up and down, I could feel that in every single cell of my body. ⁣ ⁣ 04:54⁣ I did see a psychiatrist in Singapore. Luckily I had some insurance that was going to cover some medical visits and I said to him like, do I have PTSD? What's happening? I'm so hyper aware of everything around me. And he said, no, no, you're having a normal response to an abnormal situation and over time we'll see if this does linger beyond what's an expected amount of time. And fortunately for me, within the first two to three years the symptoms really faded and I had very few lingering symptoms. And the first time that I was exposed to Havening techniques I think I said this in the talk that I gave at our conference I processed the feeling of being in the earthquake and all of those vibratory senses that were stuck in my body and my nervous system and my very first demo experience of Havening those disappeared. So I had a very embodied, somatic experience of that, and the more techniques that I explored, the more that I was like people need to know this, physicians need to know this, all therapists need to know this. ⁣ ⁣ 06:02 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ But, like humans parents, teachers, dentists, realtors, people who work with the public, who might be facing their trauma in front of them and so that's become, uh, one of my new system level interventions that I'm really keen to work on yeah, and you know, when you spoke at the conference and it was really a gift to be on stage with you there, like I always love to surround myself with like minds and we're learning from each other, right, we're almost like a masterclass to each other in different ways. ⁣ ⁣ 06:36⁣ And you sharing your story and hitting on that point, that PTS, ptsd like a lot of people that aren't in the area that we're in or working in health or medicine, they compound everything and you mentioned that in your book actually about the DSM-5, you know that we're more than just a symptom, we're more than just a diagnosis and sometimes and I'm sure you hear this with patients and clients people go right to oh, I know I have this, oh, I know I have that, and then you become that thing and it's much more difficult to break that. ⁣ ⁣ 07:14⁣ Well, maybe not as difficult when you have amazing tools like Havening techniques, right, but you become this. It's like you label yourself right. You become this. It's like you label yourself right According to this out-of-date DSM-5 that we're still following and it has value, but in other ways, like we're giving people the simplicity of there are so many ways that you can heal and it begins within, just be honest be knowledgeable, yeah, so I wanted to explain what PTSD was so that I could uncover that box and explain it in a way that was really easy to understand. ⁣ ⁣ 07:51 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ We mentioned before we started recording just the main goal for me with the Modern Trauma Toolkit was to create something that was really accessible, Even though you know I'm a doctor and I actually have a doctorate, so I'm doctor, doctor. My goal is to get knowledge into people's hands in an easy way that's not going to stir up their nervous system too much. So I wanted to write a book that was both accessible from a health literacy perspective. You don't have to know big words. You know like psychoneuroimmunology, which is the study of exactly what Havening Techniques does and how it affects the mind-body. I wanted to explain this at a grade eight level of understanding and in a way that wasn't going to talk about the big things that might happen to you and really get your nervous system triggered. So, even though it might still activate some people, I think what differentiates the Modern Trauma Tool toolkit is it's a book that you can read comfortably and then go to sleep. That was really my goal. ⁣ ⁣ 08:53 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Doesn't trigger you. ⁣ ⁣ 08:55 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Yeah, for it to feel like you're getting a hug at the same time that you're getting information, which was different. ⁣ ⁣ 09:02 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Well, you know I'm going to resonate with that. ⁣ ⁣ 09:04⁣ Yeah totally HUG it out. Having the ability to HUG it out with yourself, whatever that means to you, is really important. And if you're reading a pretty intense book at night, what do you think that's going to do to your subconscious mind? You know you're going to go into that place and constantly be thinking about it and it caused restless sleep. So being able to have something that you said is like a hug before you go to bed, a soothing technique that you can do right before you go to bed and people do like to read. I think that's beautiful. What caused you to go this route? To say I need a book, I need to write this. ⁣ ⁣ 09:41 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ I mean, ultimately it was my patients. I work currently I mean, I still do family practice, mostly at our refugee clinic, but I work also in trauma therapy with our refugees here in Calgary and I work in adult addictions. And then I have a really small group of people that I've been seeing for many years that I still see, who have what we call a high ACE score. So that's an adverse childhood experience score and it basically means they went through trauma in childhood and they need a really gentle guiding hand and a lot of them don't have access financially to mental health care that would be good for processing trauma. They can access, you know, some basic interventions for anxiety, but for trauma processing that can get quite expensive and in Canada at least, it's not always covered. So my goal was to work in equity deserving communities, because my entire career has been working in these communities that are often denied access, denied equity, denied safety, and so that was really important to me, that I was a resource, and one of the things that I noticed is a lot of patients would say, well, what book would you recommend? And I might come up with a few podcasts that I thought would be like reasonably safe to listen to. But I really wanted a book that was diverse in terms of cultural awareness and addressing the systemic factors that a lot of my patients face in terms of classism and racism and ableism and even the medical trauma that physicians like me can perpetuate, and I felt like if I wasn't addressing that and addressing the system level traumas that are imposed on people, then it's kind of like gaslighting and saying, oh, you are the only one having this problem, this is an individual thing and you know, because I also study systems and social innovation. It was really important for me to write a book that my patients could feel safe reading and that potential was there and that I was also looking at systemic causes and solutions of the trauma. So, while I definitely focus on the individual, the systems was a part of it. ⁣ ⁣ 11:54⁣ So the Modern Trauma Toolkit kind of came about in this amazing way. Actually, I was asked to write a book by publishers who had been following me on TikTok and they were listening to little tidbits from TikTok TraumaDoc and they thought, well, wow, wouldn't this be amazing in a book? And I thought, yeah, I have this book in my brain already and I sat down and wrote the outline that still stuck in the final version of the book in an afternoon, like I had this book in my head and once I flushed out the proposal, I mean there was a bidding war for the book. Lots of people were really interested in this particular view of toxic stress and this particular way of writing about it. So it was. It was so exciting. ⁣ ⁣ 12:38 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ That is exciting, and you know it's just sometimes having somebody else look at you and go. This is valuable Right else look at you and go. ⁣ ⁣ 12:45⁣ This is valuable, right? So I'm in the process of writing a book myself and submitting the proposals and hearing some really great feedback, because I think there is room for all of us to share with integrity, with authenticity, with knowledgeable factual information. But where I feel that your book is different from every other book that I have come into contact with is that what you just said about the inclusivity, the diversity and being that you have worked all over the world and dealt with those kind of cultures, the misrepresented, just cultures that need this, that might not be able to afford. This is level up, is level up and I have to say I connect with that fully because in my work, when I was working with CVS Health in Aetna, which is really a big company, two big companies here in the States we did a show on the social determinants of health, where we would travel to different areas around the country and focus on areas that could not afford a spa or wellness program or therapy and they were creating their own programs so that their communities were living healthy and well. ⁣ ⁣ 14:02⁣ And you see it firsthand, I know right. Doesn't it make you so exciting, like walking into food pantries and seeing a community getting together and doing a wellness project, and I'm like I was just giddy seeing this. It wasn't something I would normally see in my everyday. I don't live in that world Right, so something like this would be so beneficial the Modern Trauma Toolkit. For anybody that was just interested, maybe it's not the person that lives in that community, but somebody who's supporting them like I'm going to bring this to that community. This could be really helpful for them. You know, and it excites you to know that there are possibilities and solutions. So I appreciate you putting out something like that and taking that into account so somebody doesn't feel less than when they're presented with an issue, a problem, a trauma. ⁣ ⁣ 14:46 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Yeah, and I think it took me some time because, you know, physicians are fixers, we're like, we think we are the brokers of solutions, and it took me some time to really understand that community knows their own solutions. ⁣ ⁣ 14:59⁣ So this was actually my first TED Talk right after the earthquake. Interestingly, I was asked to give a TED Talk and they they didn't tell me what to talk about, they just said well, what is the earthquake making you think about? I thought honestly that I was not the solution to the problem of the earthquakes in Nepal. And so you know, western savior types, we kind of rush into disaster zones and like, if you're with something like MSF and you've got the logistics and you, you've got the expertise to handle that, that's great. But I had an expectation of myself and others had an expectation of myself and others had an expectation of me that I would be really useful after an earthquake, and I wasn't. I just wanted to be rescued. And in the meantime, the Nepali community was ready, because they have earthquakes quite regularly. And so what I had witnessed was this like sense of shame in myself about like well, you're a doctor, you should be useful. You're a Western person, what's your role here? And in the meantime, witnessing these Nepali doctors in Patten, which was the hospital I was affiliated with, so organized, so committed and so equipped to with with low resources, they still did everything they could to do exactly what was needed after the earthquake. And as I watched that unfold and community would fashion up a tent where everybody who was unhoused, whose houses had fallen down in the Patton neighborhood, they would be under these giant tents and they would have communal bowls of rice being served to 50, 100 people and I just watched all of that happen, I thought, you know, community knows what it needs. So that's, you know, watching it. ⁣ ⁣ 16:34⁣ In an acute trauma, but also in chronic traumas, like when a community is facing resource scarcity, that's kind of imposed on them, that I always think of vulnerability as something that is created through the system and not intrinsic to that person, or definitely not that community. ⁣ ⁣ 16:50⁣ And there are so many solutions. So that's why I talked about things like asset-based community development and I taught people how to run a social innovation lab, because I actually did that at a healthcare center that I was working at and I thought what are the ways that we can ask community how to solve their own problems? We create an advisory council, we did digital storytelling projects. So many people do know what they need if given the resources to figure that out, and that's why I love the work you're doing and why I created the Modern Trauma Toolkit is to say these are some solutions to consider. I put 40 different activities in the book so that people could design their personal solution strategy to healing both self and systems. Put 40 different activities in the book so that people could design their personal solution strategy to healing both self and systems. ⁣ ⁣ 17:33 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Oh yeah, girl, I get it. This is why I love having people like you in my circle, because we learn from each other. Like I said, and I'm sitting here listening to you thinking the last thing a community wants is somebody to come in and tell them to change everything and take away part of what might be part of their culture. Right, totally Like ripping that away from them and saying this is how it's going to solve the problem. It's like you don't know me, you don't know the ancestral importance that goes on with how we do things and you see that so much like we can fix you. ⁣ ⁣ 18:06⁣ And, yes, there are elements that you can synergetically bring into a culture and see how it works for them. But when I see that those areas where it's just like rip out, this is a solution, it's like do you have any idea the value that this community has in themselves, the pride, even if it, even if their currency is not high as far as financially, their currency, and pride for who they are is you know, and I think it's really listening and as we talk more about inclusivity and diversity and how we can really work together to help each other in this global village, this blue marble. We live on. These conversations need to happen. ⁣ ⁣ 18:51 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ I love so much how you phrase that, Hilary, around that intrinsic value, and I think we talk so much about ancestral trauma and that's very real. And I do love the somatic technique. So in the book I have a chapter on Havening, a chapter on EFT tapping. So in the book I have a chapter on Havening, a chapter on EFT tapping, a chapter on tremoring, because these are really easy things to learn in the comfort of your home and definitely if you're dealing with trauma, you probably need some professional guidance so that you don't freeze or dissociate or flood or get overwhelmed. But these somatic tools should be taught in school. They should be taught to everybody. Tools should be taught in school. They should be taught to everybody. And just as we acknowledge and work on that subconscious ancestral trauma that sometimes is pre-verbal and body-based solutions are so much more helpful. I love also focusing on the value of ancestral wisdom and culture and so people don't think that it's adding to their vulnerability. It's also an intrinsic strength. Yeah, I just love how you phrase that. ⁣ ⁣ 19:53 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Well, I'll have to read back on what I said and watch this, because sometimes I just say things because I'm so passionate about it, which I'm sure you do too, but it just comes from such an authentic place. It really is about not us empowering anybody, not us healing anybody, but giving them the tools so that they're self-empowered. We don't want to own that, and I say this a lot, and I'm sure you do too. It's like the best thing that I could ever have from a client is them saying I don't think I need you anymore. ⁣ ⁣ 20:21⁣ I want that Comment, if you have another upset or issue or something else you want to talk about, but I don't want you to need me, right? I want you to know that you have everything you need right here and if you need additional assistance outside of what your own body and mind, the secret language that exists right here has, then we can come back and have another conversation, because we all need each other anyway, you know. So it's making it so simple and like even in the subtitle of the book, which is nurture your post-traumatic growth right With personalized solutions, your personalized your post-traumatic growth right and thinking about we're always on this growing journey, you know. ⁣ ⁣ 21:07 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ And thinking about. We're always on this growing journey, you know, and I think we are to some extent, but there are a lot of people who feel stuck, that they don't know the next steps to take, and so what I love is how many of us are putting out good information into the world that's free and accessible and anyone can find it. I didn't know these solutions. You know I had been a practicing physician for probably 18 years before I took a deep dive into trauma healing and I ended up getting certified in like a dozen different modalities, because I'm just a very innately curious person, and it's not that I don't use them in my practice I definitely do. But also part of what I love doing is sharing, and so I'll talk about Havening, but I'll also talk about my favorite processing technique is called accelerated resolution therapy, and it was the very first one I learned, and when I started doing it as a doctor, I started to recognize that I had patients who had terrible lung disease and they were always working to catch their breath and so much of it was actually obstructed breathing because they had a sense of suffocation and even like an energetic disruption in their breath cycle related to trauma. And once we processed trauma they breathed differently. I had another patient whose diabetes was totally out of control. Their A1c, which is a marker of sugar in their bloodstream, was up above 14, which is like twice as high as it should be. We did trauma processing together. They processed like one of the most heartbreaking traumas I've ever borne witness to and their A1c dropped in half and it's been almost normal since that time, and so much of it was this disconnection to their own body. So sometimes people can't find solutions on their own because they're either not wanting to acknowledge that their mind-body system is alive and functioning that's a safety mechanism is to dissociate and to disconnect from your own system. Part of establishing that safety was processing some of these big things that people went through. ⁣ ⁣ 23:10⁣ And once I started to recognize how far upstream this was. So upstream interventions are the ones that are more preventative and they're earlier and healing from trauma and healing your nervous system. State when your amygdalas are firing and telling you every single day that you're in danger. Well, that's exhausting and it's taking a lot of your energy and it's actually turning off your immune system and all of the parts of your body that are self-healing. ⁣ ⁣ 23:36⁣ So we help your Amy's your amygdalas and say like, hey, I don't think you're in danger anymore, or could you just learn the moments when you can be in a safe and connected nervous system state? Then all of these self-healing mechanisms kick in again, and once I saw that firsthand using accelerated resolution therapy, I was like, okay, wow, what else is there? And as a physician, this is one of the most important things I could be doing. So I mean, it was really exciting for me to witness that within my family practice. I just remember my first couple of years exploring this back in like 2017, 18, and the transformations I was seeing and thinking there's nothing more important than this. ⁣ ⁣ 24:25 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, yeah, and thinking there's nothing more important than this, yeah, yeah. And I want to ask you so many questions about how a medical doctor because, look, when you're dealing with Western med and you're taught a certain way, thinking about techniques and other possibilities outside of what has traditional Western med, there are some people that aren't going to gravitate to that. So I want to talk about that in a second, but I do want to remind folks the Modern Trauma Toolkit, dr Christy Gibson's book an amazing, put in your library, right, and we're going to have a link to this in the podcast notes for you to grab it. If you have already read the book would love to know what you think about it. Leave a comment, a, a review, a rating, anywhere that you're tuning in. If you are curious about how to get in touch with dr christie myself, I'm going to have all that in the podcast notes. ⁣ ⁣ 25:15⁣ And, of course, if this is touch, moved and inspired you in any way this conversation thus far, pay it forward. Let somebody else know about it. If you know somebody that's like oh, I know someone who's confronted with this, or I know someone that might want to bring these tools into their community, pay it forward my somebody that's like oh, I know someone who's confronted with this, or I know someone that might want to bring these tools into their community. Pay it forward, my friend. That's. The best way to build community in a collective is to let others know about it. So thank you for that. Doctor Christy Gibson I hear this a lot because I have a lot of doctors on the show. I've had traditional Western medicine doctors who are some of them are even leaving their practice because they feel kind of, you know, tied, mainly here in the States, especially going into functional medicine, integrative approaches because they're tied. What made you say aha, no, I gotta, I gotta look into this. ⁣ ⁣ 26:08 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Well, and I think in Canada we have a little bit more leeway because we don't have, like, a health insurance company dictating how we manage our patients. ⁣ ⁣ 26:16⁣ So we we do have a little bit more freedom to explore and be flexible. I know a lot of people who are straddling integrative and Western techniques. I'm also in the lifestyle medicine community and I think a lot of that is so natural and intrinsically preventative. There is that exploration. So lots of physicians that I know are exploring and I like to think of myself as really straddling both worlds and hoping to bring them together because I don't think either of them has all of the answers right. So the more that we collect all of the different tools that are available, people will be able to personalize the things that work for them. So even though I haven't seen a lot of evidence that antidepressants are curative for PTSD, I've had some patients who really benefit from it. So even though I have a lot more tools in my toolkit than medications, I'm never going to say to a person oh, this can't work for you because that's not everyone's experience. So I love how, because we're recognizing in medicine that trauma. There is no single pill that's going to miraculously heal trauma. Although psychedelics do hold a lot of promise, we need this in an integrated way. I mean, a psychedelic medication, in my perspective, is not going to work if you just take it and you're in a room by yourself. Trauma, especially relational trauma, heals in relationships, and so the set and the setting in a therapeutic relationship surrounding the use of psychedelics is the factor, and so I think that's one of the reasons why the FDA kind of voicing concern over it is because, like, how do you manualize all of those safety mechanisms around it? ⁣ ⁣ 27:57⁣ I was taught in medical school try SSRIs or antidepressants for almost every you know psychiatric condition. For PTSD we're told to use blood pressure medications, so alpha blockers or beta blockers that change the way that your heart rate is beating and then perceived, so you don't necessarily have that body-based trigger for anxiety, and that could help with nightmares. It would help you potentially have a calm body as you're falling asleep and less likely to cue up those intrusive symptoms. That was all we had in our armamentarium. And then, in terms of therapy, I was told cognitive behavior therapy is the gold standard for almost everything, and I had a lot of unlearning to do. ⁣ ⁣ 28:45⁣ I think curiosity and humility are really, really important for all professionals to keep, and we're not always good at it. We're like well, this is what I was taught and this is what the evidence says. And I write a disclaimer really early in the chapter on Havening. And I actually felt a bit bad because Dr Ron Rudin was sitting on the chair next to me reading through my chapter because I'd gifted him a copy and I was like, oh, how's he going to feel? Because I said right in the first few paragraphs it doesn't have the level of randomized clinical trials or randomized control trial that I'm used to seeing as a medical doctor and yet it's one of the most effective treatments that I've been exposed to. So I wanted to be to put that out there and say, even though I am a scientist, I've got a doctor doctor behind my name. I'm also going to listen to my patients and see what's working and try to understand the neurophysiology. And that's what I love about what the Rudin's did. ⁣ ⁣ 29:43⁣ Is they really researched? What are the parts of the inner brain mechanisms that are being activated through the Havening techniques and what is the physiological basis about why these work? And I've started to research that around eye movement techniques like accelerated resolution therapy and brain spotting, deep brain reorienting there's a lot of different therapies where there's actually research into what's happening in your brainstem, and so part of why I love being a doctor who's using these body based, somatic, integrative, psycho sensory, all of these new techniques is I love exploring why they might be working and we're coming up with some not just theories, but even Ruth Lanius's lab in Ontario. She's a psychiatrist who does a lot of basic science research and she's using functional MRI imaging to show how different kinds of techniques are working in the treatment of trauma, so we're actually starting to see the scientific evidence of something that we clinically knew was working. This is such an exciting time, so exciting knew was working. ⁣ ⁣ 30:46 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ This is such an exciting time, so exciting and while you're talking about being there next to Dr Ron and having him read, that and it made me think, like what if someone picks up this book or somebody does Havening and tries it for the first time and they're willing to fund a study because they want? ⁣ ⁣ 31:05⁣ to know more and they've seen it Like just getting it out there is know you do that. This is such a nurturing, loving, effective technique and it's so simple, much like many of the others in the book as well. But for something like this, where I know and you know, I said this during my presentation you get the question, you get a lot is what's happening? Right? But fine, ask that question because I'd love to tell you what it is. ⁣ ⁣ 31:40 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Or I'd love to share it with you, or I'd love to show you how it works. ⁣ ⁣ 31:45 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I mean, I was at a car dealership yesterday having a one-to-one with one of my fellow business networking people and of course you know I'm learning about his business, he's learning about mine. He's like what is it? I was like how long you got. I'm like leave the door open, Don't worry what's going on around you. I can show you what this is in five minutes and let's see how you feel. It's that easy, right? So just being able to put it out there in the inquisitive curiosity of others who might be able to help put a modality like this next level, it's just keep talking about it, which brings me to TikTok trauma doc. Okay, Like that's a whole level up, and I know this is something that you, you, you started doing this during the pandemic, obviously right, Because we're all bored. ⁣ ⁣ 32:31 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Well, and it was. It was a young person who encouraged me, so I have a couple of amazing young people in my life. ⁣ ⁣ 32:37⁣ I don't have biological kids, but there's a woman named Aishwarya that I met when she was in university and it started off as a mentorship relationship but it definitely deepened. We text almost daily now and one of the things that happened quite early in the pandemic. This was January 2021, when I joined, and she said you know, the way that you explain mental health concepts is really different. Like you have just a way of using language that I can really get what you're saying, whereas I've heard this concept before and I don't think I understood it in the same way. You need to get on TikTok. And so she taught me that I had to watch YouTube videos about how to TikTok, which is so meta when you think about it. So I joined, you know, january 2021. By the time, I had my book deal guessing that was a year later I had about 60,000 followers and then, like now, I have about 130,000. I mean, kate Truitt has a lot too. ⁣ ⁣ 33:32⁣ Like there's there's a few of us in the Havening community that are really trying to put this out there, and because TikTok is being targeted as a social media education platform in the states that may or may not survive. I am trying to upload more to Instagram and YouTube and my Facebook, so those would be under Christine or Christy Gibson MD. Some places I'm called Gibtrotter. My Facebook, uh, so those would be under Christine, christine or Christy Gibson MD. Um. Some places I'm called Gib trotter, uh, because I I travel so much, um so. So there, there are different platforms I'm using. All of them are um Christine. ⁣ ⁣ 34:13⁣ Gibsonnet is my um as my professional page, so you can track me down and we'll share all of that. ⁣ ⁣ 34:17 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ We'll share all that in the podcast notes so that you can get in touch with Dr Christy, but like they're going to find you anyway, well, and part of me worries that TikTok will be gone by the time. ⁣ ⁣ 34:25 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ This airs Like it does feel like a really real thing that they might take away from us, and I personally love that community. There's so many good mental health practitioners there mental health practitioners there and there is misinformation, but it's pretty easy to weed out. You can figure out both who's got credibility. But also, is the thing that they're sharing working for you? Is it actually helping heal your nervous system and learning to touch in and figure out which of the techniques are actually feeling good for you and how is your day going once you've learned these? And that's what I think is so special about Havening is people have such a body-based understanding of how it helps immediately after trying five minutes in a car dealership. ⁣ ⁣ 35:08 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Come on, exactly. It's like just give it a try. The first step is the hardest. It's stepping into the tension of saying well, all right, I got five minutes, let me see what she's doing on this old ticky-tock right or anything. And I came to the TikTok game a little later and that was okay. But because I feel like we all are sharing in some way, like you mentioned, dr Kate, yourself, the podcast is big for me, or Instagram, and it's really finding what works for you. So we're kind of infiltrating every possibility, you know, and then we'll like if things move around and things do go away and you know we've seen that happen with other social media sites we'll find our way and people will find us, you know it's just keeping authentic and putting out the content. ⁣ ⁣ 35:54⁣ But my big question is how does someone who has not done that you're watching all these videos on youtube, like you said? I mean, how much time did you invest in that? ⁣ ⁣ 36:04 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ yeah, I mean there was definitely a time investment to try to figure out what does the algorithm like, and I mean I had to watch a lot of tick tocks to see, well, what are the trending sounds and the trending themes and um. So I definitely did some of that. Like, my first videos that blew up were on trending sounds, that I was doing something kind of interesting based on that. So one of the early ones was kind of my journey through medicine and then learning how to be a trauma therapist, and I did that to music. And then my first video that really blew up was related to Havening. It was describing information. So it got like a million views. ⁣ ⁣ 36:41⁣ I didn't relate it to Havening in the video, I just wanted to share what informations were. ⁣ ⁣ 36:45⁣ But I learned this when I was studying the Havening techniques and so then after that video blew up, I was like OK, gosh, I got to tell people the origin story. So I had to explain like who actually came up with the formations and what the what ifs were and how I learned them in Havening training. And it's one of the things I like so much about the techniques is there is the body based practicing of, you know, the gentle brushing on the areas of your body that create calming delta, theta waves in the brain. And people are creating these amazing techniques to go along with it. And people are creating these amazing techniques to go along with it, and that's what I was trying to share in this integrative way at the conference is we are starting to just learn all of the amazing potential within these techniques, so using them with if formations or what if statements. Harry Pickens says that this plant seeds of possibility in the neural garden. I love how he describes that. ⁣ ⁣ 37:39 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ With his voice too. ⁣ ⁣ 37:40 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Oh, I know. ⁣ ⁣ 37:42 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ You can listen to Harry all day. ⁣ ⁣ 37:43 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Yeah. ⁣ ⁣ 37:44 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Fellow Havening practitioner, my friends. ⁣ ⁣ 37:46 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Amazing human. And I like how you said voice, because voice is really important to me too. And so when I'm sharing on my TikTok channel, when I was reading the audio book at the Hachette offices in New York which was like the coolest week of my life I was really deliberate and saying, like, my voice has to feel safe enough. Because of polyvagal theory, we know that tone of voice and the way that you are moving your facial muscles actually makes a person's nervous system feel safer. So we can co-regulate through the mirror neurons in our brain that are saying, hey, is this person safe? And tone of voice makes a huge difference for that. So there was all of these factors that were important for me in terms of delivering the message. ⁣ ⁣ 38:31⁣ So when I'm on TikTok and I'm thinking, well, what is the thing that I want to share, sometimes I can get my tone of voice a little into that sympathetic fight and flight tone if I'm talking about the systems that are harming people. But when I'm giving those healing skills, I want people to really have an understanding right away. Oh, wow, my nervous system feels different. That's so exciting to be able to share. Oh, my nervous system feels different. ⁣ ⁣ 38:57 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ That's so exciting to be able to share Totally. And I had that moment thinking, oh, she was at the publisher's office recording the book, soothing yourself because of that whole Vegas nerve. And that's why we do the OM, that's why we sing Different ways that you can create that safety in your own body while you're sharing it with others. So it's like paying it forward in your own way while you're sharing it with others. So it's like paying it forward in your own way while you're reading your own book. I mean that must have been fascinating. ⁣ ⁣ 39:23 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ And I mean it's not just reading the book, because that was like, even though it was an amazing week, it was, it was just a week, but I find I don't feel as stressed at the end of my day. So a lot of my physician friends will say, like how can you listen to trauma stories all day? And like A I don't tend to encourage people giving me too many details about their trauma. That can strengthen the pathway towards those memories. But for me to do something like Havening or tapping along with my patients all day, like I'm doing this you know, 80% of the day I'm using one of those techniques during a session I feel so different. I feel so regulated and calm at the end of the day. So I feel like I'm processing a lot of my own nervous system dysregulation, from being present to suffering. That's not a skill that I learned as a physician and all of us need it. ⁣ ⁣ 40:16⁣ So, I'm trying so hard to get this book into health professionals hands to say like you're dealing with suffering all day, how are you managing that? Like, yeah, like, be gentle with yourself and learn something that will help your nervous system too, and then share it with all of your patients. ⁣ ⁣ 40:32 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Absolutely. I said that last year at the conference because you know, coming from the background as a journalist, the forgotten first responders were like the first ones on scene first ones to hear the story. ⁣ ⁣ 40:43⁣ We're taking in all that information just like if it's a patient or a client and you don't want to take that home with you, and then you're thinking you're just burned out or overwhelmed and it's like so much deeper. It's that secondary traumatic stress, right, the vicarious trauma. So understanding, okay, I've got a lot that's coming at me. I can self-regulate while I'm listening to this person. ⁣ ⁣ 41:08⁣ It actually allows them to mirror back and feel more comfortable knowing that you're not just sitting across from someone in a Freudian way on a couch being like, tell me your feelings, you're part of the process with them. Like, hey, I'm human too. I got feelings, I got, I got a nervous system that's out of whack every once in a while. I hear you, right, and they just want to be heard. We want to be heard. So, on that note, love everything we're sharing. We're going to put it all in the podcast notes. ⁣ ⁣ 41:30⁣ Again, the modern trauma toolkit You're going to find it because I'm going to share it with you. Also, dr Christy on TikTok so much that you can do to find Christy and bring her into your toolkit as well with what she's sharing. So we'll share all that. But I want to have a little fun with you before we go, because this is where, if you ever listened to my podcast, you know this is coming. If you haven't, you're in for a treat. So I play a game called Rapid Fire, where I have written down words that you've said and I throw them out at you and I want you to come back with the first word that comes to mind. ⁣ ⁣ 42:05 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ No problem, let's do it. ⁣ ⁣ 42:06 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Oh, I know You're like ready for this. Okay, here we go. Relationships. ⁣ ⁣ 42:12 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ People. ⁣ ⁣ 42:14 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Safety. ⁣ ⁣ 42:16 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Calm. ⁣ ⁣ 42:18 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Toolkit. ⁣ ⁣ 42:18 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ I know it's two words exciting growth potential earthquake, I want to say shook me well, that's okay, vicarious healing trauma opportunity. ⁣ ⁣ 42:37 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Healing, trauma, opportunity, tiktok. ⁣ ⁣ 42:40 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Fun. ⁣ ⁣ 42:42 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Are you having fun on it? ⁣ ⁣ 42:43 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ I do yeah, absolutely. ⁣ ⁣ 42:45 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Look, I found you on there and I didn't even know you were a Havity practitioner back when you first did it, because we don't know everybody, even though we're a small group. There's only like a thousand of us. At that time there probably were six, seven hundred. But even at that point I'm like how does this lady know all about Havening? And then I was like, oh, that makes sense and I love that. I was like you just kind of like hi-fi in the screen, you know. So thank you for everything you're putting out there and just everything you're doing and creating this beautiful book and everything that you are doing to help people on their healing journey. I imagine we'll probably have some opportunities to connect and collaborate in the future, because I so align with everything you're doing and it would be a gift to do that in the future. But I want to ask you if there's anything you want to leave with those who are tuning in. ⁣ ⁣ 43:32 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Just the way that you started the session. Let's finish with hope. A lot of people feel like this is who I am kind of. What you said earlier is this I am defined by the trauma that I've been through. That is not necessarily your story. You can always change your story and I think there are so many pathways towards that possibility for folks and I just encourage them to explore the paths that are feeling right for them, Because the path can lead to tremendous amounts of healing and I believe that's possible for all people. ⁣ ⁣ 44:07 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yes, and you know that was one word I never put in the rapid fire. What do you feel when you hear the word? ⁣ ⁣ 44:14 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ hope the word hope, yeah, magic. I feel like some of the things that I've been able to study and I feel so grateful to know it After finishing a session with somebody, that I can see the neuroplasticity happening in real time and their brain is rewiring. It feels magical, and I've had patients use that word and it's just the most uh, wonderful experience. Um, and you're right, it's. It's watching them heal themselves. ⁣ ⁣ 44:42 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ It's magic it's like a silent hi-fi, like you're part of the process, but you're just happy. Somebody else is joyfully present and able to just live their lives well, optimally, you know, or has a new tool to do so. It's a good feeling. ⁣ ⁣ 45:01 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ It is a good day for a good day when that happens. ⁣ ⁣ 45:04 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, thank you, christy, it was a pleasure Thank you for being here. ⁣ ⁣ 45:09 - Dr. Christy Gibson (Guest)⁣ Oh, thank you so much. That was an amazing conversation, Hilary. It's so great to spend more time with you. ⁣ ⁣ 45:16 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ If this conversation aligned with you in any way, I want you to do us a solid over here at HIListically Speaking. Pay it forward, share it with others who might find value too, and just by leaving a rating and review wherever you tune in, it gives others a chance to find this podcast and conversations like this. The Modern Trauma Toolkit. My friend, this book is a must, and I put a link in the podcast notes so that you can grab a copy. Start trying out some of these amazing approaches. See what Dr Christy Gibson has to say. You can also find links to connect with her on whatever social media platform you choose, and you heard us talk about Havening. I talk about it a lot, but it was wonderful to talk about it with Christy and how you can be a part of the journey to put active emotional well-being in your own hands. If you're interested, there is a link and you can HUG it Out with you can with me and see if Havening aligns with you. Plus, you can come to one of my free Havening happy hours that I host every month, a supportive online event where you not only get to learn how to do Havening or continue to do it if you've been doing it already, but you have me as your guide during the experience. It's a wonderful way to do a little Q&A, a little discussion and lots of loving Havening. You can also join the free Hug it Out Collective that is my Facebook group. It is a supportive, safe space where others just like you are on the path to becoming, or continuing to be, a happy and healthy HIListically Speaking, , is edited by 2 market media, with music by Lipbone Redding and supported and listened to by you. ⁣ ⁣ 46:55⁣ So, thank you. There is always hope. That's what I want to leave. So, thank you. There is always hope. That's what I want to leave you with today. There's always hope and as long as you've got me as your guide and me by your side, I will make sure that you always remember that I love you, I believe in you and I'm sending hugs your way. Be well. ⁣

I have sleep apnea. I also had major jaw surgery at 15. Are they connected? If I had a Magic 8 Ball, it would likely say, “All signs point to Yes”. And so would one pioneer in holistic dentistry by the name of Dr. Claire Stagg.  ⁣ Through my personal journey of trauma and jaw surgery, we highlight the limitations of conventional solutions like CPAP and oral appliances, underscoring the need for a comprehensive, whole-body approach. Dr. Stagg shares invaluable insights into the interconnectedness of our body's systems, focusing on non-surgical solutions for TMJ, clenching, grinding, sleep apnea, and airway disorders. ⁣ This is about building your symphony of specialists who focus on the root cause, not just the diagnosis. It's the conversation I wish my parents and I had over 35 years ago when I sat in the dentist's chair. Today, I hope it serves as a guide for anyone struggling to find answers. And for parents, let it offer a new kind of hope for your kids to leave you better informed when it comes to your dental health and overall well-being.⁣ ⁣⁣ Grab a copy of Dr. Stagg's book, “Smile: It's All Connected" ⁣ Hardcover:  https://amzn.to/3XLYm9X (Amazon)⁣ ⁣ Share storytime about proper dental health with her children's book "Captain IFBI" ⁣https://amzn.to/4cipP7l (Amazon)⁣ ⁣ Get the Daily Dental Protocol Checklist.⁣ https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sl/Y4V5mXB⁣⁣ CONNECT WITH DR STAGG ⁣ https://healthconnectionsdentistry.com/⁣ https://www.instagram.com/SmileProDentist⁣ https://www.facebook.com/SmileProDentist⁣   ⁣ ⁣HEALING IN YOUR HANDS. HAVENING WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/havening⁣ ⁣ CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso https://www.facebook.com/HIListicallySpeaking/⁣ https://www.facebook.com/groups/hugitoutcollective/⁣ https://x.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking⁣ Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com/⁣ FULL TRANSCRIPT ALSO ON PODCAST WEBSITE⁣ ⁣ ⁣ 00:06 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Think about all the systems that are shut down because you can't breathe right? The oral appliance isn't going to fix it. The CPAP is definitely not going to fix it, because what's going to happen is the body is going to acclimatize or get used to that level of band-aiding and then it's like okay, you know what it is. The little Dutch boy with his finger came to mind with a dam. So you put one finger here and then you put one finger here, and then you put one finger here and you put one finger, and then you're not gonna have enough fingers or toes, and then the dam's gonna break. And it's exactly the same concept. ⁣ ⁣ 00:40 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Okay, my friends, One of the reasons I went into the work that I do is it was an effort to heal my own trauma and, as a result of that, from having TMJ my whole life, from having jaw surgery when I was a teenager and not knowing really how to heal and not getting the right kind of support after that surgery, I wanted to know what I could do to heal later in life, because we really never stop healing, right? You hear me talk about that all the time and it's really how Havening came into my life. It was the first time I was ever Havened was on the trauma from my surgery years later. But what we're learning is that it's all connected. Everything from head to toe. It's all connected. Everything from head to toe, it's all connected. ⁣ ⁣ 01:32⁣ So when I was introduced to Dr Claire Stagg, a holistic dentist who believes in the whole body approach thank you so much I knew that her story and her method would resonate with so many others, because I've had these conversations with so many Dr Stagg about TMJ, jaw issues, clenching, grinding, stress and the problems that happen after the breathing, the sleep apnea, and it's such a common problem. So when you came into my space, when I was introduced to you by a client who you introduced me to, I knew that you were the right person to talk about this, to share the journey, to share possibilities, and I am so grateful that you are here. ⁣ ⁣ 02:12 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Well, thank you, thank you, and I think it would be good to, if it's okay with you, to answer your questions and your journey, because I think you went through the whole gamut of from the start out the gate to the journey itself. So the first thing I'd like to add is that surgery is a massive undertaking and, unfortunately, one of the things because you and I have talked before this is that, without stepping on too many toes and being politically correct, it would be wise to figure out why orthognathic surgery is being done. A lot of times people are having their jaws move forward without understanding how the whole concepts work, and a lot of times some things can be done, so a lot and some can be done non-surgically. You just don't know what. You don't know until you know it. So surgery is a end-all, be-all concept and if you have a broken bone, it's a good time to put things together. ⁣ ⁣ 03:20⁣ But the head, the cranium, all these things keep moving all the time. I have a skull here with sutures. I mean this is just the top part, if you will, this is the front. The head you can tell Fred moves a lot too with me. Then this is the part that I work with and this is what I tell everybody, this is what I do right this part and right this part, and then this part. All right, but not as crooked. But what happened is you had your surgery to go ahead and to fix something that might have been fixable without it actually having to have the surgery. So here we go. I'm trying to put it all together for you and showing us us on YouTube. ⁣ ⁣ 04:04 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ We are on YouTube in case anybody wants to watch the video rather than just listen. It is on YouTube. ⁣ ⁣ 04:10 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Right. So what I'm trying to say basically is that if you approach and saying that you need jaw surgery, please educate yourself more before you go down that rabbit hole, because it makes us a lot harder for us who are coming in behind to work on, to have arch expansion or arch development or airway issues to resolve them, if we're trying to move bone when you have screws tying them in. That's all I'm trying to say. So I interjected very early on. I'm sorry, but that's where I think. If you start off the gate that way and I think, unfortunately your issues, if I may say so, continued and stemmed from the actual surgery. They were trying to do one thing, but you ended up with a lot of other things. So that's where we have to weigh the pros and the cons, right. ⁣ ⁣ 04:59 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Absolutely. ⁣ ⁣ 04:59 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Very delicate. ⁣ ⁣ 05:00 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, and it's something that you know. Back in the 80s, when this surgery was done, I was 15 years old. What was known about it? It was pretty much a younger surgery. The surgery itself was hours, the healing process was eight to 10 weeks with a jaw wired shut, and just you know. If this is triggering to anyone, I just want to preface that we're going to go there, that this surgery was not a minor surgery that you're doing in a dental office. I had a doctor that dealt with the face, I had an orthodontist, I had a dentist. It was like this team. And even after the surgery, a year later, I had follow-up surgery and I told myself. I said this has got to be it Like there can't be more than this because it was very traumatic. And this has got to be it Like this, there can't be more than this, because it was very traumatic. And the years following, because I was still growing, there was movement still happening, obviously, right. ⁣ ⁣ 05:55 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ So, and at 15, you're not finished growing. And that's the other thing to girls and boys grow differently. Girls can grow, still continue growing, sometimes up to 18, sometimes maybe even 21. Boys start later, but they can continue growing. I have a friend of my former husband who was continuing to grow tall at 29 plus. So everybody's different, but 15 is very young to do that. ⁣ ⁣ 06:19 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ It was young. It was a decision I had to make. ⁣ ⁣ 06:21 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ We could start a column of pros and cons there, Hihillary, of things that could go really really well and things that we might want to wait because they might cause problems later on, right? ⁣ ⁣ 06:32 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ But this is also something that you have a lot of younger patients and I know that there are moms and dads out there that listen that this might not be for them, specifically someone who's in my age range, but perhaps their child has breathing issues or they are dealing with. You know, I had the malocclusion, I had a protruded lower jaw and it was causing a lot of lockjaw and pain and discomfort and to go to that extreme after braces. I imagine that's not the approach this day and age, because there's more science, there's been more development, so it's also to give parents an understanding of information that they're getting about holistic dentistry and other possibilities before taking that approach with their children even. ⁣ ⁣ 07:19 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ All right, so let's go ahead about and talk. Interject also because you had four premolars extracted correct? ⁣ ⁣ 07:27 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yes, I think you're talking about the wisdom teeth. No, no, no, oh no. ⁣ ⁣ 07:32 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ The 18 year old molar right. We, in theory, have 32 teeth, all right. Unfortunately, and I'm just so we're. We're going to talk about all the not to do things all right, to put it in quotes for air, quotes for those who are listening there are a lot of things that and I'm not bashing orthodontists, please don't get me wrong, I'm not. I do orthodontics too, so that's not the issue. There's different ways of doing things all right. That's not the issue. There's different ways of doing things All right. One of them and if you, if you read or you know of Western Price, western Price talked about nutrition, about airway, of growing, of growing arches. All right, your head, your neck. So basically we're back to this again All right. ⁣ ⁣ 08:21⁣ And unfortunately, what happens is that when you have the jaw joint like this, all right, this is this is, think of it this way, like this, and then like that, when you translate, okay, what happens? A lot of times? You end up with a jaw disorder or joint disorder if this whole part, this maxilla, this part, is not developed enough and it sounds to me like what you had was an underdeveloped upper arch right. So, unfortunately, a lot of times, people say, oh, this one, they think that this is the normal one. And then this is too far forward, the lower jaw is too far forward, and that's why you end up having all these issues. Let's go ahead and let's take teeth out and bring the jaw back. Well, you've just created a joint problem, a TM joint, temporal mandibular joint problem, because now you shove the joint back, the jaw back. So now you see the cascade of events and this is what I was trying to say the cascade of events, of all the not to do so. First of all, figure out why you need surgery, what has happened, and then all the not to do so. You can't compound a problem with another, causing causative problem that will create another set of problems. ⁣ ⁣ 09:48⁣ So the first thing that you want to do is you want to be able to develop the arches and figure out which one truly is underdeveloped, because nine times out of ten, it's not necessary that the lower jaw is too far forward. Most of the time it's because the upper arch is not developed enough. And so, in order to balance them, conventional orthodontics go ahead and say let's take teeth out to make more room. Well, there's just so much. Think of a garage. This is my favorite analogy that I use. All right, think of a garage and let's say you have a 20 by 20 by 24, four walls that are 20 feet long, right? So it's a square, okay. And you say you're going to make more room and you decide to take four feet off in the length of each side of the garage. Will you have a bigger or a smaller? ⁣ ⁣ 10:45 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ garage. You're not going to have a lot of space for those cars, that's for sure, correct. But you have a smaller garage, right, right, and it's exactly the same thing with the mouth, all right. ⁣ ⁣ 10:55 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ So think too, now that you have on top of that garage, you have another room, all right, which is the nose. The nose, if you will, is a hollow space, all right. But the floor of the nose is the roof of the mouth, which you've just made smaller. What are you doing to the nasal passages? It's the same exact thing. Now you've brought the jaws up and back, you've made the garage or the box smaller. You've made the nasal passages smaller. Now you've brought everything back. What's back here? It's the tube that the airway is. So you start breathing through the nose, and the tube continues from the nose down to the throat. ⁣ ⁣ 11:43 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ And again, I just want to mention to folks if folks are actually listening and they want to see what Dr Stagg is talking about, you can go ahead and find this podcast episode on youtubecom slash Hilary Russo. You'll see all the podcast episodes there to watch as well, if you want to do that. ⁣ ⁣ 11:58 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ So, if you go ahead, when you think about it, this is a person laying down, but this is the best picture that I can have right now to where we need to breathe through our nose. A lot of people breathe through their mouths, but, no matter what, if you lay back and everything closes up, then you have OSA or obstructive sleep apnea. So, basically, what I'm trying to say is the rabbit hole started by, probably, the diagnosis of lack of airway or lack of space, and so that's where it would be important to go ahead and to determine what type of space do you want? Which space are you trying to open up? The nasal passage or the oropharyngeal passageway? An oral mouth? Pharynx is the back, where the throat is. So in your case, it sounds to me like they wanted to go ahead and to move your jaw so that you can have straight teeth, right. ⁣ ⁣ 12:54 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ That was part of it, and also I was getting a lot of pain and jaw aches. So they broke it, set it back and I don't know if I truly remember everything because I was a kid. You know you think you're getting braces, retainers, it's all to straighten your teeth. That's it, day is done, perfect teeth and you're happy. But there were more issues I was dealing with and that is where I am now, 35 years later, where the problems have become the obstructive sleep apnea movement and wondering where does one go next when you have years in between and other issues are now coming up. ⁣ ⁣ 13:32 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Right. So the rabbit hole you're down at the bottom of the rabbit hole, right? Okay? So we're not going to cry over spilt milk, because it is what it is, it's done. But now you're aware that there are issues that you have to deal with. Okay, so then the goal is to figure out how we can get you out of the rabbit hole by reverse engineering what has occurred. So, basically, now you're going to address your airway, you're going to address your jaw joints, you're going to address your bite and you're going to address your nasal passages both going to address your nasal passages, both upper and lower. That's the airway, all, right. So this is where you mentioned that you were talking with um sleep doctors. Okay, that's one part of the orchestra. If you will, all right, then you're going to talk with dentists. That's the other part of the team, if you will, the orchestra. ⁣ ⁣ 14:22⁣ I like to say that patients are the music. You either have harmony or cac. Say that patients are the music. You either have harmony or cacophony. It's a French term. You either have chaos or you have health, right. So the whole idea now is to figure out who's going to be in charge of trying to figure out what's wrong, what happened where you are now, because we can't reverse engineer everything to. If you have screws in there, per se, all right, but the whole idea is to figure out what can we do to either see what we can ameliorate or make better and or stop from getting worse. So that's the interesting part is that's where you really need to figure out where you are now. ⁣ ⁣ 15:02⁣ If you do have an airway issue, to what intensity is the airway issue an issue? Those of you who do not know anything about sleep apnea we have either a sleep test, a home sleep test, to where you can take a little apparatus. Home Dentists, we're not allowed to diagnose sleep apnea, but we can treat it with oral appliances. So mild to moderate sleep apnea we can treat with an oral appliance. Severe sleep apnea is supposed to be treated. Standard of the gold, standard of care is with a CPAP machine, which stands for continuous positive air pressure. It's like a reverse blow dryer mower back up your nose or your mouth, right. So if you consider that you have an issue, then we need to figure out what your index or your indices are. So, again, a lot of this is on my website, healthconnectionsdentistrycom, where you can read up on the sleep screenings. Again, we cannot diagnose sleep apnea, but we can treat it with an oral appliance. ⁣ ⁣ 16:07⁣ Mild to moderate sleep apnea, usually at normal. Zero to five. Your indices are normal. Five to 15, it's mild sleep apnea, 15 to 30, it's moderate and over 30 is severe. Now, those are just the standard of care, the norms and the indices and who cares right. All you really need, as a patient, to know is whether I can breathe or not. Please, let me breathe or not. Let me help me breathe. So if you go ahead and you consider them, that's why you can have a home sleep test and we do home sleep test, because it helps me figure out as a dentist, because I can treat a functional breathing disorder that is in my wheelhouse. But I cannot treat sleep apnea without it being diagnosed by a physician. So if you have officially been diagnosed as you have Hilary with by a physician for sleep apnea, then that's where, too, you need to find yourself a doctor, dentist, who is versed in this type of care. So then you need to figure out where you're going to go from there. ⁣ ⁣ 17:18 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ And I think that's the thing, and I've talked to other people and I know folks are tuning into this episode of HIListically Speaking with Dr Claire Stagg. Just to remind you, we will put that information on the website. We will put everything about the healthconnectionscom dentistry. Also her book that we're going to talk about that just came out. That's doing very well. And the questions I've been hearing from some who have been in these forums are are you know if you've been diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea? Like myself, I've also been through this traumatic TMJ surgery. I'm 35 years in. I know there are little plates in my mouth from the initial surgery and I've been given a referral to see an ENT, a referral to see a pulmonologist, a referral to see a speech pathologist. But then there's the airway side and then there's go find a dentist and it can be very overwhelming, like where to go first right. ⁣ ⁣ 18:12⁣ And I think that's the similar question I hear from folks. ⁣ ⁣ 18:15 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Where do I go first? Right, and that's where I said the orchestra, all right. So I like to think that a doctor like myself, a dentist, who sees the medical side as well as the oral dental side, we and I liken it to the conductor of the orchestra the orchestra, the parts, the wind, the pipes, the drums, the bass, the, whatever the strings, whatever, all the different parts, if you will are all the different doctors, if you will, who are doctors, if you will, who are going to partake in making music. The patient is the one who is the music, and you either are going to have that harmony where everything just falls into place and that everything works well and you're healthy, all right or you have everybody throw something at the wall and expecting something to stick right. That's putting it pump up politely. So the goal is to get the bullseye the first time if you fail to plan to plan to fail, right, right. And so the goal now is someone like myself and we we talked about this is we got to figure out where you are exactly in this point in time. It didn't really matter so much anymore now, because you've had that surgery and that changes and has changed you forever. But where are you now? What are the building blocks that we can use now to move forward? Interject here for the parents and for those who are asking yeah, but this doesn't pertain to me. Well, we can work with children With the AFT systems. ⁣ ⁣ 19:50⁣ Dr Nordstrom has come up with systems to work with neonates. You can do the tie releases. You can start as from the newborns on. The whole idea is to breathe properly. Once you breathe properly, as in, you have proper tongue position and then you have proper nasal breathing, then you set yourself up for success, right. ⁣ ⁣ 20:10⁣ Unfortunately, with a modern diet and with the way that things are going nowadays, unfortunately things retract a lot and you don't have that room and you end up with disorders and you went through what you went through. Okay, so if we go ahead and we have that conductor I circled back now to the music all right, if you go ahead and you have a team, somebody's got to know what the right hand's doing. Somebody has to know what the left hand's doing, but together we make sure that we're all on board with the same ultimate goal, which would be to get you to breathe again properly. What I heard you say is that you went to see an ENT and they have their own wheelhouse, they have their own tools, they have their own tests, they have their own. We got to do this. This is it, this is my way, or the highway right I? ⁣ ⁣ 21:01 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ haven't actually gone to the ENT yet. I have a referral right because I'm like I want to go the right route before somebody starts telling me oh, you need this, this and this. I did consult with one dentist who said you need a CPAP, and I'm like you don't even know what you're talking about. ⁣ ⁣ 21:17 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ That's the weekend course. ⁣ ⁣ 21:20 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Right, that's the oh, I heard sleep apnea. I'm not a sleep dentist, I don't even deal with this stuff, but I've heard this is the best route to go. I don't want to hear, I've heard. I want to know what is good for me, because it's bio individuality. This is what I've been through. So I'm in this place. Where do I go to the ENT first? Do I go to the pulmonologist first? Do I go to a dentist who deals with, who is specializes in airway and TMJ? You know that's and sleep apnea, which obviously falls under that. ⁣ ⁣ 21:52 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ So one of the things you need to be aware of is the American Dental Association does not recognize these as specialties, unfortunately. I think that will change my practice. I have an emphasis in treating sleep apnea, tmj disorders, head, neck, facial pain. So that is one thing that you can be aware of. The second thing is a lot of us who do this have had many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many hours of extra training. It's just not a weekend course. ⁣ ⁣ 22:26⁣ I mean, I've been doing this for nearly 20 plus years to this intensity and it's a process I keep learning. I mean, I'm still going through a residency for pediatrics right now and it's a lot that I know, but now I'm learning to fine tune and I'm going. I can deep dive a little bit more for certain things that I have been able to do, because it's same old, same old. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as we say in French. The more it changes, the more it's the same. So there's a lot of different things but, like you said, I like that bio individuality. So everybody's different but everybody's the same. It's just you can't use one cookie cutter technique, but we're all humans and that's where it's all connected. ⁣ ⁣ 23:10⁣ So we're circling back to how it's all connected. And if you have somebody who understands how it's all connected, that's when they could guide the ENT to say hey, you know what? This is what I suspect I use the word very underlined, bold caps suspect. I suspect, for example, she has a nasal valve collapse. I suspect, for example, she has a deviated septum. I suspect she has sinus issues. I suspect that she has pharyngeal obstruction. Could you please verify for me? Could there be upper airway resistance syndrome? I suspect that she may be having obstructive events. You might even have central apneic events, we don't know. So that's where you get somebody who understands as a dentist. All right, cause we're the best ones, and this is what floors me and I'm just going to put something for hooah, hooah for my team, my team, all right, this is what we do all day long. We're in the mouth. We see this stuff day in, day out. ⁣ ⁣ 24:17⁣ What bothers me is that they don't train dentists nowadays to read the signs of obstructive C-papnea and or airway disorders. That's going to change. That's all in the book, by the way. Every single sign you could think of is in the book. But I think that's what needs to be changed. It should be common sense that it's not drill, fill and build, it's actually determine what you see, that it's not normal. ⁣ ⁣ 24:43⁣ So I would hear patients tell me entire lives they've had these tore eyes. They look like little mushrooms at the bottom of their jaws or one on the roof of their mouth, on their palate. Or my dentist told me that was normal. No normal for whom? All right, I digress. So, anyhow, what happens is if you have a team conductor, then the dentist who understands this, who is more versed in this knowledge, can go ahead and say okay, then this ENT, could you please help me accomplish X, y, z. If you have a sleep doctor, all right. You don't want to get lost in the rabbit hole of medicine, right, because that's the other thing too. You can very easily get lost in that rabbit hole, all right. ⁣ ⁣ 25:29⁣ So, you want to stay with those of us, because your mouth, your head, your neck is this, is our wheelhouse. Ent is air, nose and throat. All right, sleep. They're the physicians. They're the ones that are going to. Yes, they prescribe the CPAP. Yes, they're the ones that are going to diagnose it. But at the end of the day it they're the ones they're going to diagnose it, but we're at the end of the day, it's still the dentist that's going to do the appliance for you. ⁣ ⁣ 25:50⁣ one way or the other, it's going to be something in your mouth right right and I prefer to go that route it bugs me that now you have physicians who are doing oral appliances. It's like, okay, you won't let us diagnose something that we deal with, okay, yes, yes, there's the medical, the physical aspect, the insurance part, blah, blah, blah, blah, of sleep apnea. Yes, there's a lot of pathophysiology that needs to be dealt with by a physician. Get that, get that, but don't go make an oral appliance for my patient. You don't know what you're dealing with, you don't know how to make it, you don't know what position to do it and you certainly don't know how to put it into the way they breathe better, and you don't know how to check it and you don't know where you're putting that jaw joint. So, yeah, that that kind of bugs me a lot. ⁣ ⁣ 26:33 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Sorry, I think that's part of the reason why now share. This is an open space. If you want to drop an F bomb, you can. I don't mind. ⁣ ⁣ 26:41 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ I can say it in French, but I could say it in French. ⁣ ⁣ 26:49 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yes, right, you can French your way out of this. So I, my thing is and I've thought this, but from talking to you, from talking to others in the field that even though I've been given referrals, I've been holding off on filling those referrals because I'm like I think that's just a doctor telling me this is what's normal and this is how we normally protocol this. My gut tells me that it's somebody who deals with this face all the time and that moves into the next things like how do you find that sleep dentist? How do you find a dentist who is experienced or emphasizes work in that area and know that you're getting someone who's good and isn't just going to say, hey, we're going to, we'll get you fixed up with an orthodontist and now you're going to get a palate expander or now we're going to do the surgery over? Because that's a fear that I've run into as well as one that I have on my own. ⁣ ⁣ 27:43 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Right, I wouldn't go there yet if I were you. Okay, just stop Whenever you hear surgery again, just let's think this over, all right. So let me give you some of my feedback too. Right, there was a sleep course, all right, and I thought, okay, cool, I'll go ahead and I'll go, I'll support the symptom. Nobody's talking about causes, and that bugs me to high end. And there was a children's neurologist in a very, very prestigious hospital Boston I think it is who said yes, said yes, I mean it's all fine and good. Because they said, oh, don't worry about it, you know. And then she said no, no, no, I think she has a point. ⁣ ⁣ 28:34⁣ Yes, so the thing that is that, all right, if you go ahead, you think about all the systems that are shut down because you can't breathe. Right, the order appliance isn't going to fix it, the c-pap is definitely not going to fix it, because what's going to happen is the body's going to acclimatize or get used to that level of band-aiding. And then it's like okay, you know what it is, the little dutch boy with his finger came to mind with a dab. So you put one finger here and then you put one finger here, and then you put one finger here and then you put one finger here and you put one finger and then you're not gonna have enough fingers or toes and then the dam's gonna break. And it's exactly the same concept, because if you go ahead and you the the concept of an oral appliance okay to come back again and I'm showing the picture to mount moderate c, pap. Yeah, it's called a mandibular advancement device, or MAD for short, right, okay, well, what does that do? It brings the lower jaw forward. Why? Because the tongue is attached to the front of the lower jaw. So you bring the lower jaw forward. All right, so that's the mandibular advancement device. Well, how far are you going to be able to break the jaw out of socket? Eventually? No, because if you don't address the root cause, you're going to have inflammation. ⁣ ⁣ 29:55⁣ So that airway that's already restricted, be it because of diet, because of environment, because of whatever. You have large tonsils which are supposed to be there as buckets to hold whatever pathogens or whatever bugs that are in the air or that you're eating, or whatever. They're the engines that are holding the foot down, if you will, the soles, whichever. They're the ones that protect you so things don't go to your lungs, but eventually they get overwhelmed, and that's when your airway is so closed up by these massive tonsils. And then again let's take them out. Surgery to remove tonsils. All right, did that too? All right. ⁣ ⁣ 30:34⁣ So I know I'm jumping everywhere right now, but I'm trying to go by the anatomy. If you'll follow, there's a process to my reasoning here. So the dentist will say say okay, let's do a manageable advancement device for mild to moderate sleep apnea, but that's not treating the root cause. All right. The sleep doctor will say you need a CPAP because it's severe sleep apnea. But that's not also treating the root cause. ⁣ ⁣ 31:05⁣ Because somewhere along the line, if you don't have a nasal what we could call a patent nasal passage or passageway to get air through your nose, all right then. And or if you're doing a CPAP to push air down your mouth which you should be breathing in your mouth anyhow then you're still not getting the air, the quality of air you need. As a sidekick, just so you know, when you breathe through your nose, you actually develop nitric oxide. It's a gas, all right that you develop. You create it. As a human, we create nitric oxide in our sinuses. When you don't nose breathe, you're not getting your nitric oxide, which means that your vessels are getting hotter faster, you age faster. All right, none of that's going to happen with a CPAP and none of that's going to happen with the appliance, because three months down the road there's just so much that you could advancement that you can do. There's just so much titration with a level of pressurization with a CPAP that you can do, and eventually you're back to square one. ⁣ ⁣ 32:10⁣ Okay, well then now let's do orthognathic surgery to bring your jaws forward. And then that's when you have another issue, because now you're locked in. So let's tie back that in. With the anatomy, remember I showed you, and for those of you who can't see, the skull is not fixed. There's lots and lots and lots and lots of little sutures. That's why I was saying there's dozens and dozens and dozens of bones, but they're all connected, and the cranium, the housing of the cranium, but there's lots of them underneath, all right, under the skull, all right. So what happens is all these bones actually pulse. That's called the cranial sacral rhythm. All right, that's where cranial sacral therapy would be really good. That's where you unfortunately have issues because you have screws holding your face. Your facial plates are held together, right, so we're trying to go through all the systems and the scenarios here. ⁣ ⁣ 33:08⁣ An ideal person who hasn't had surgery can have all these little bones changed. Because they're not fused together. They are not fused together. They are not fused together. What did you hear me say? They're not fused together, they are not fused together. So if anybody says that you cannot expand your palate because you're over nine run, it's not true. I expanded, I've done an arch expansion on an 83 year old all right. ⁣ ⁣ 33:41 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I actually had a conversation with a dentist who told me that women they're finding and tell me if what your thought is on this the palate of a woman actually is able to expand for much longer than we originally thought years wise like it, and maybe I'm saying this wrong, but she even had a palate expander in the top and she's in her 50s. So I'm curious, I mean, is that an approach to try? So can I guy it's a human period. Anyone can. Anyone. Okay. ⁣ ⁣ 34:11 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ A human can have. Now I don't know if there's going to be a sex differentiation for the progression of the of the treatment. The treatment I don't know, but any human can have their arches expanded, short of having a disorder of one sort or the other, but in general you can have the arches expanding because the bones are not fused. Right, it's not here, it's here. Let's talk about why you can develop a palatal expansion and growth. All right, this is a totally misunderstood concept. All right, remember we talked about the roof of the mouth is the floor of the nose, and this is magnetic. So bear with me, that's why it was all all catawanka earlier on. So in here you have what we call the nasal passages and you have a thing called turbinates, right? So if you look at it, there's little windmills in here. So you have anterior, middle and posterior nasal passages too, and here you have what we call the sinus, the maxillary sinuses. Here you have the frontal sinuses, all right, okay. ⁣ ⁣ 35:14⁣ So how arch expansion works? And this is why you do slow. Slow is good what you do. Remember this is magnetic, so it might be a little hard for me to do. You go ahead, you do a little bit. All right, you do a little bit and then you wait, then that goes ahead and creates bone. Then you do a little bit, then it creates bone, you do a little bit and it creates bone and so, slowly but surely, you've created the arch that is wider, because it happens in the middle. All right, if you go too fast, what happens is you end up having extrusion of the teeth, or the flaring of the teeth and or what we call the buckle plate perforations, which is what the orthodontist freaked out about. You're going to flare out the teeth because you're going too fast. ⁣ ⁣ 36:07 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Well, how long does something like that take normally? What is that process? ⁣ ⁣ 36:11 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ They do what the orthodontist usually do, what they call rapid palatal expansion. Slow is the best thing. Do a little bit grow bone. Do a little bit grow bone. Do a little bit grow bone. Do a little bit grow bone. Guess what happens, unless you have a septal spur which acts like a handcuff to hold that nasal passage, that septum tied up to another bone on the side. If you don't have a septal spur, that deviated septum just lines right down. That's what happened with me and I was in my fifties I was over 55 when I did mine. If you go ahead and you do slowly, you can expand an arch. Now there's a school out there that says let's do it in a month and then we wait six months. I'd say okay. That to me sounds so wrong and this is my humble opinion, for each time I'm giving you anything. These are my humble opinions and what I've learned and what I've read and my interpretation of everything. ⁣ ⁣ 37:13⁣ Okay, of course, but if you're going to go ahead and you're going to go like zip and then wait, go ahead and you're going to go like zip and then wait, all right. The big fallacy with that is you zipped and you waited six months and that space, in theory, is supposed to grow bone. Uh-uh, it fills up with collagen. That is why, when you go too fast and kids or whom on whom, no matter what age, if you go too fast, you end up with a ton of relapse. So, slow, a little bit grow bone, a little bit grow bone, a little bit grow bone, a little bit grow bone. ⁣ ⁣ 37:49 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Now you have success now, this is just one approach. Right, the palette expansion is just one approach okay, that's the transverse approach. ⁣ ⁣ 37:58 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ So if you're doing this in 3d, you have to think your garage right, because you have width, you have depth and then you have length. Well, it's the same thing. This is the width. The transverse effect is the width. All right, now we have the sagittal aspect, which is from the side, so that's where two to for example, if I'm not mistaken that your issues came from, is that if you look at my profile and they said that this part of you was there, but this part of you was too far forward, so I'm going to exaggerate now, like that, right? ⁣ ⁣ 38:36 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ That's exactly what it was like, right. ⁣ ⁣ 38:38 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ It wasn't that this was too far forward. It can be, but in reality it's that this was underdeveloped. So that's the side view, or the sagittal view. Nine times out of 10, if you have an airway issue, it's because you're overclosed, and then you need height, and that's when we can go ahead and do height. Interestingly enough, oral appliances the same one that they advocate to go ahead and do the mandible advancement devices the same thing. There's two things that they do. When they're doing a sleep appliance, what are they? Protraction vertical, but they're doing the protraction with the lower jaw only and vertical. They're putting the special amount of vertical or the height into the appliances. ⁣ ⁣ 39:27 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Acrylic Now there's a lot of information that we're sharing with folks. I'm taking in a lot of information. I do want to mention real quick that Dr Stack has a new book that just came out, called Smile. It's all connected whole health through balance. I'm going to put a link on there in the podcast notes, rather to grab that book, because this is really something that was written for the everyday person to understand. It's not like reading a medical guide or anything like that. ⁣ ⁣ 39:56⁣ You will be able to go to an upset or an issue that you might be confronted with, learn more about it because, as we were saying before, what gets measured gets managed. But also we have to be our own healthcare advocates and then find the right kind of people to support you, because obviously you can't fix the problem yourself, but you can support yourself in that. And also I know you have a children's book and that's Captain IFBI. I in that. And also I know you have a children's book and that's Captain IFBI. I love that Right encouraging good oral hygiene habits, which, by the way, that ties in with the download that you're offering as well, which is the dental protocol checklist, and I love that. We're going to put all that in the podcast notes so that folks that are tuning in or if they're watching on YouTube because you know you're showing us some fun stuff on visual they'll have the option to either listen to this anywhere we have podcasts and also on YouTube. ⁣ ⁣ 40:46⁣ But, on that note, if you feel that this podcast episode with Dr Claire Staggs inspiring you anyway, touches you anyway, if you know anyone who might be confronted with any of these upsets whether it's sleep apnea, whether it is TMJ or any kind of upset that you might be dealing with, the dental side of your life, or even breathing this is something you can pass along to somebody, share it, let them have the knowledge and make a decision where they want to go next, because we definitely are sharing some really good information here and I really appreciate it. ⁣ ⁣ 41:18⁣ Dr Sags, I know we're talking a lot about my upset, but I know there are other people out there that are dealing with the sleep issues, the sleep apnea, the breathing, the grinding, the bruxing, and wanting to change the holistic approach to dentistry. You're just a normal person, sweetie. I'm just like everybody else. I know I am, and it's one of the reasons why I do this show, because many of the things that I'm facing or have seen with clients is something I want to talk about so that I can make this a vessel for others to get answers or at least find something that they could take away from this and hopefully make a choice that helps them become a happy and healthy grownup, you know. ⁣ ⁣ 42:03 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ So let's talk about the book. This book was written. It's taken me 10 years to get it out here. All right, this book was written for the average lay person. It's a conversation from one mom to all the other moms who have asked me questions. ⁣ ⁣ 42:21⁣ All these years I've been practicing. I graduated in 1982. So I've been at this for a long time. I came to this country in 87. So I was not of American training per se, so I have had different training. I'm also very outside the box thinker and I like to ask why? So why do you want me to do it this way? Give me a reason why I should do it that way. ⁣ ⁣ 42:47⁣ So the whole idea was to understand that, yes, why are these patients getting better? Why is there cacophony? Why is there not harmony? Why do they have all these issues all the time that they haven't had resolution for and that I have not been able to finger point. That's when I went down my training what's going on? What's going on, what's going on. ⁣ ⁣ 43:10⁣ So the book's goal is to go ahead and to change the demand. Because my what? To educate the demand, if you will, because the more people are educated in this is the more they'll understand what's actually going on. It's for you to be your own advocate in your own choices. Just like Hilary at 15 did not know any better or any know what to do or not not to do, her mom or parents didn't know, because they followed their, the advice of their physicians, which is okay, don't get me wrong. You know, but why don't you find out? If you go ahead and you're playing a game of poker, wouldn't it be nice to know your hand instead of playing blind? You know what I mean. ⁣ ⁣ 43:58⁣ So this, this book, has the entire deck in it. This is what I'm trying to say. It's written with you for everything, everything that Hilary and I have talked about, and I think one if you have the book, you will see anything about airway, you'll see about joints, you'll see about teeth, you'll see about muscles, you'll see about nerves, how it used to be, how it is and what the connections are structural, chemical, mechanical, functional, emotional, spiritual, because we're all one. And then in the future, where I think dentistry should and could be. But I think and I know that if we change the demand, the supply will have to change, because the more the moms and the dads and all of us understand how this is connected. They're going to have to teach doctors how to connect the dots too. So that was the goal of this book is to change the way dentistry is perceived and experienced in the world and then change the world for a healthier, better place people to be healthy so they don't have to suffer like a Hilary. ⁣ ⁣ 45:04 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, I so needed. I wish my parents had this back in the 80s when I had this surgery, even though it was different back then. We've progressed, we've gotten better, we're more knowledgeable, we have more tools available to us and science and approaches, but it's here now and if my what is the saying? Someday your story can be somebody else's survival guide. I use that one a lot. I know that's Brene Brown. ⁣ ⁣ 45:26 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ That's a good one, yeah. ⁣ ⁣ 45:27 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, and I'm hoping that this next stage of my own journey is much less invasive and more productive. It's finding ways. So having conversations with doctors like yourself, people who practice more of a holistic and whole body approach and aren't really running right to surgeries and appliances and everything that might not be the best plan, you know. It's constructing the plan building the house and realizing what size garage is really going to fit and what kind of cars do you have for that garage. ⁣ ⁣ 46:03 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Right, because there's different appliances too, so there's different arrows in your quiver, because you want to shoot for the bullseye every time, right, and that's that's where I did all that additional training. It's like, okay, okay, so we have a joint issue. Well, well, let's deal with a joint, but then you can't disconnect the tongue and the space that the tongue holds. And then, okay, so now I do tie releases. So, and not everybody's going to practice the way that I practice this. ⁣ ⁣ 46:33⁣ This is my passion, though, and you talked about your survival journey. My daughter fell and hit her chin when she was three and a half, and that's where she hit her chin, which automatically put her jaw joints up and back, got her disc displaced. So here I am searching for answers back in 2003, 2004. And that's where I ended up. So, yes, I was doing the chemical aspect, where we were mercury free, we were doing all the nutrition, everything. But then it's like, how do I fix my child, how do I get her to not be in pain too? And so that's where it's like, okay, let's do this, let's figure out how we can make this happen. And so that was my journey to go ahead and to put that together for all the other parents who would have these questions. ⁣ ⁣ 47:22 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, and interestingly enough, here you are, a dentist, being confronted with something that you think, oh, I have the answers because I'm a dentist At least it happened to a dentist's daughter and you're looking for the approaches that are going to help her heal and live her best life the best way possible. ⁣ ⁣ 47:39 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ So you know, it makes me laugh too. I guess I'm getting very spicy today. I like spicy, dr Staggs Very spicy. So I remember I had this 83,. He's 90-something now, but he was clearly apneic. I mean his lips were blue, all right, his he had no airway, really, really bad. And so I told, I told him you know why don't you do a sleep screening? No, no, no, my doctor blah, blah, blah. So I went ahead and I said okay, ask your doctor to go ahead and send you to lab and have a sleep test. So he goes ahead and he tells his physician that and his physician says what does she know? She's just a dentist, yeah. ⁣ ⁣ 48:29 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. I wish we could all just get along and work together. So anyhow, that's my two cents again. ⁣ ⁣ 48:38 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ So don't read a book by its cover and look for somebody who understands how it's all connected and there's going to be more of us. There are more of us, it's just you don't know where to find them. ⁣ ⁣ 48:49 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ So what I want to do real quick in closing, I usually do a game with all of my guests, and what I've been doing is I pull you're going to have a little fun and what I've been doing is I pull you're going to have a little fun. This is what we do here. Not everything's so serious. I'm going to throw out a word, something you said today, and I want you to come back with the first word that comes to mind. Just a quick word association game. ⁣ ⁣ 49:08⁣ I already want to say happy. Say happy as much as you want. But if I say the word holistic, what's the first word that comes to mind? Body, jaw, oh God, pain, palate, growth, airway, life, dentist, happy. ⁣ ⁣ 49:28 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Smile, beautiful Happy. ⁣ ⁣ 49:30 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Beautiful. Love that. I love that you focus on the word happy. Just be your own healthcare advocate. You know we don't, we don't have to throw out a name. There are a number of things out there that are good and there are a number of things out there that are not so good, and you have to be your own healthcare advocate to make that choice. ⁣ ⁣ 49:47 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ And things can work different strokes for different folks. I mean it could be the best thing, anything could be the best thing for anybody. It's just that sometimes, when you don't know any different, you wish that had you known, had I known. Had I known, had I known I wouldn't have done it this way that's kind of where I am. ⁣ ⁣ 50:06 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I wish I knew at 15. So I'm hoping that what you shared, I know we'll have more conversations because I'm on a route where I'm going to be looking for approaches uh, because unfortunately we're not in the same area, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't hop a flight to come down to Florida, by the way, no, you still can. I can, I can, but I'm gonna. I know you have a tight schedule, a lot of people to talk to, everybody is. You're in high demand, dr Stagg, and for good reason, and I'm just so grateful to have you here. ⁣ ⁣ 50:35 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ I am eternally grateful to you interviewers, because you have platforms that you can spread the word to the world, because you're the ones, basically, that are going to change. I'm just, I'm just flotsam on the ripple of the of the thing you know. I'm just like, hey, go this way, go this way, go this way. ⁣ ⁣ 50:55 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ We're all in it together as you said, it's all connected, we're all connected. So if we can do anything to help others, that's what we're here for and I'm just so grateful for you. Thank you so much. Thank you too. ⁣ ⁣ 51:06 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ And thank you for having me. And so, on a one little note, I was like this is my last little saying in the book, which has lots of little life lessons. My one is that you're not a drop in the ocean, you're the entire ocean in a drop. So blessings, Hilhillary, I love you. Thank you so much. ⁣ ⁣ 51:24 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I love you too. Thank you for being part of the ripple. ⁣ ⁣ 51:28 - Dr. Claire Stagg (Guest)⁣ Thank you. ⁣ ⁣ 51:29 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I know we unpacked a lot, I know there's a lot going on here with Dr Stagg, but for good reason and we are not done. Next, I want you to grab a copy of Dr Stagg's book Smile it's all connected whole health through balance, plus her children's book that she has Captain IFBI, as well as her checklist to download for daily dental protocol. All of this is in the podcast notes and, if anything resonated with you that we shared here on the show, if you were touched, moved and inspired by our conversation, if you have more questions, dr Stagg is actually holding a Q&A online on Wednesday, july 17th, at 7 pm Eastern time. It's a really great chance to connect with her again, maybe follow up on some of the things we talked about, or if you have your own questions, and get to the root of your dental journey no pun intended with that one and you can get some more knowledge, because knowledge is power. Right, what gets measured gets managed. So be your own healthcare advocate. ⁣ ⁣ 52:30⁣ First, and you know I share a lot about my havening journey, how it has been a big part of my chronic pain. My TMJ and I want to offer you the opportunity to try Havening and see if it works for you. This is a really wonderful way to overcome fears. If you have a fear of going to the dentist or the doctor or even managing chronic pain, or maybe you just wanted to self-soothe, to self-regulate, for daily self-care, it's a wonderful tool to put in your toolbox and I'd be happy to have a conversation with you and see if it's right for you. A link to connect with me is also in the podcast notes. ⁣ ⁣ 53:07⁣ HIListically Speaking is edited by 2MarketMedia with music by Lipo Redding, and I know you tune in week after week because you want answers, you want to find ways to be a happy and healthy grownup, and I'm here for you and I just want you to know that those traumas that you're turning into triumphs, they're happening, they're in motion and I am proud of you. I believe in you, I love you and I will see you soon. Be well. ⁣  

Nervous system medicine practitioner, Karden Rabin, shares his journey through chronic pain, discussing healing through the body's secret language. Topics include opioids, trauma, emotions, healing tools, serendipitous encounters, and a rapid fire game. Learn about regulating the nervous system for true healing.

Melissa Hiemann had her ‘awakening’ back in 2014 when she realized after years of avoiding her traumas through addictions and instant gratification, she was repeating bad behaviors and avoiding the root cause of her pain.  ⁣ Nearly failing out of school and focusing on limited beliefs, she realized something had to give. ⁣ ⁣ That wake-up call lead her on a new path of discovery and inner healing. Now, through her Centre for Healing, she’s helping others find their future peace today, by raising consciousness through manifesting and being trauma-informed.⁣ ⁣ On this episode of HIListically Speaking, we get to the root of what’s holding you back and weighing you down, discover different energetic hygiene approaches and pave the way for abundant living.  ⁣ ⁣DOWNLOAD AND TUNE IN TO THIS CONVERSATION ON ANY PODCAST PLATFORM OR YOUTUBE! ⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast ⁣ https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS/KEY MOMENTS⁣ 00:00 Intro and Your Future Peace⁣ 01:47  Root Cause of Addictions  and instant gratification⁣ 09:15 Unexpected Journey and Finding Purpose ⁣ 11:38  Maintaining Energetic Hygiene for Practitioners⁣ 14:10 Importance of Professionalism and Self-Care⁣ 19:13  Setting Boundaries and Self-Care in Work⁣ 22:35 Importance of Trauma-Informed Certification ⁣ 30:00 Rapid Fire Game⁣ 32:58 Healing Generational Trauma and Self-Regulation⁣ 36:24 Trauma-Informed Healing Resources ⁣ ⁣CONNECT WITH MELISSA⁣ https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecentreforhealing ⁣ https://www.instagram.com/thecentreforhealing/⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@thecentreforhealing⁣ https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissahiemann/⁣ GRAB HER BOOK ON AMAZON!⁣Natural High: Secrets to Overcoming Instant Gratification and Finding Inner Peace  https://amzn.to/3yPTwxR⁣⁣ CENTER FOR HEALING COURSES⁣ (Use code HILARY for a 10% discount on any course)  https://www.thecentreforhealing.com/a/43957/58GLXrgy ⁣ PUT THE HEALING IN YOUR HANDS WITH HAVENING ⁣https://www.hilaryrusso.com/havening⁣⁣ CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com/⁣ TRANSCRIPT⁣ 00:07 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ A lot of people. They reach out for things outside of themselves to try and feel okay, to try and feel safe in their body, and so those can be instant things like addictions, like I had shopping addictions. I had heroin, marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes, anything I could do in the moment to not feel how I was feeling. I was just jumping to it because I didn't know how to escape how I was feeling in the moment and so when I had those things I felt good for a little bit. But what happens is you ruin your future peace. ⁣ ⁣ 00:40 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Let's get to the root cause Now. I know that that term is thrown around a lot right, root cause? And in the world of functional medicine and holistic medicine, it's about going beyond the diagnosis or the surface, or really getting to the heart of things, the soul of what is holding you back and weighing you down. One of the things I love about HIListically Speaking is having guests come on the show who are experts in their field, but they share their own journeys, right. They're getting to their own root cause, their soul, and turning their own traumas into triumphs. ⁣ ⁣ 01:17⁣ Melissa Hiemann she has been on her own awakening journey and she started that back in 2014. And, melissa, you nearly failed out of school. You struggled with addictions addictions and I use that with an S on the end and from those traumas you learned how to heal your limiting beliefs and now, as a therapist, you help others do that every day. It is such a pleasure to have you here and being really open to talk about the root cause and how we can change those traumas into triumphs. Thanks for being here. ⁣ ⁣ 01:48⁣ Thank you so much for having me on. It's a pleasure. I want to really talk about the root cause of things, because we haven't covered that topic, but also the fact that you have dealt with numerous addictions, not just one. I've had people come on the show talking about one thing, but it goes back to this book that you wrote called Natural High Secrets to Overcoming Instant Gratification and then Finding the Inner Peace. So can we go there? First, because I think in this world of instant gratification, which we get that from the internet, we get that from different addictions and the internet can be one of them. Now we get that from different addictions and the internet can be one of them. Now, how are you working with people in this area from your own experiences? ⁣ ⁣ 02:30 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Yeah, sure. So yeah, from my own experience of overcoming my addictions and going on my own healing journey, as you mentioned, I came to realize I wasn't willing to sit in my body with how I was feeling. And so an outcome of that and a symptom of that, is that either we jump up into our head, we try and intellectualize everything and also we try to numb out how we're feeling, because essentially we're all trying to feel good, right, we're all trying to feel peaceful and happy and like, obviously. And so when we don't feel like that and if we don't have the tools for several root cause reasons, if we don't have the tools to soothe ourselves, if we don't have the tools to feel our emotions, we don't feel safe to feel our emotions, then a lot of people they reach out for things outside of themselves to try and feel okay, to try and feel safe in their body, and so those can be instant things like addictions. ⁣ ⁣ 03:28⁣ Like I had shopping addictions. I had heroin, marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes, anything I could do in the moment to not feel how I was feeling. I was just jumping to it because I didn't know how to escape how I was feeling in the moment. And so when I had those things. I felt good for a little bit, you know, but what happens is you ruin your future peace because I've just spent all my money, I've just I've got to hang over the next day, I've taken away from my future self feeling okay, because I wanted that instant gratification, I wanted to feel better now, and I didn't know, I didn't have the tools to know how to do that, and so that took me on a huge journey of then discovering how to heal, to feel my emotions, to be able to process them, to be able to not project it onto everyone else. And then, yeah, this whole journey took me through a lot of modalities and it took me to wanting to help others and give this really valuable information to others that are struggling or they have family members that are struggling. ⁣ ⁣ 04:36 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, you mentioned. You didn't want it to ruin your future peace. That hit me. You didn't want it to ruin your future peace. That hit me. You didn't want it to ruin your future peace. So there was a wake up call, apparently. What was that about? ⁣ ⁣ 04:51 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Oh my gosh. So the wake up call I was sitting in my little apartment on the beach and I had my sports car and I had my corporate job and you know, externally my life looked amazing. But in, in reality, I was in that little apartment because I had left my abusive relationship. I had been with someone else to help myself leave that relationship because I was so insecure. And I remember the day that I moved, the other guy was like I can't do this. ⁣ ⁣ 05:19⁣ And I remember sitting there like so depressed and so sad, looking out at the water, thinking maybe I'm the lowest common denominator here, like why does this keep happening? You know, and I had no awareness I had, I was just, you know, blaming everyone else. I was like the whim of everyone else and I was like I think I need to get help, like and at that point maybe I had seen a counselor once. I was all about just like being positive, making sure I look good on the outside and kind of just pushing, sucking it up and pushing it through and and, and you know, part of that was I was probably looking at the water, drinking or whatever I was doing, and I that's the first time I reached out for for help, because I was like again I, that I probably have a part in this more than I realize and, and maybe you know, and I well, that's the wake up call, right? ⁣ ⁣ 06:12 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I mean part of that is the awareness. The first step to any change is awareness and to be able to sit back and be like perhaps this is something that I need to take responsibility for and stop blaming everything outside of self. ⁣ ⁣ 06:26 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Exactly that. Yeah, that was huge yeah. ⁣ ⁣ 06:30 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, and maybe, maybe blame isn't the right word because then we're just shaming ourselves, but just taking accountability and responsibility that you want to have a better future right as you. Better future peace. Yeah that what's not working. Maybe I'm part of not seeing what could be working, so how did that lead you to the work that you're doing now, and especially the root cause therapy method? ⁣ ⁣ 06:54 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Yeah, so yeah, this would be like 2013,. 2014 I'm talking about. So it was quite a while ago, but I did. I, I, a friend, had um come over and he was like you should contact this other guy. He's like into this life coaching or something. Now I'm like sure I'll message him and have a chat, you know. ⁣ ⁣ 07:12⁣ Anyway, I organized a session and it wasn't just a chat, it was a deeply transformational regression, inner child healing experience, and I walked out just never the same person again, just becoming conscious of my subconscious, of my unconscious, of these patterns that were playing out in the background. Because, honestly, I thought yesterday and the past was just in the past I didn't realize it was still playing out in the now. I had no awareness of that. And so when I walked out of that session, I was like wow. And I remember two weeks later he's like I'm running a course, I'm training people in it, and at the time I was in a sales job because I knew I wanted a business. I just didn't know what kind. I'm like I need to learn sales. So I remember doing that course and halfway through it hit me like a lightning bolt. I don't know for those of you that you just found your purpose in the middle of something. It literally felt like a lightning bolt went through my body, yes, and I was like this is what I'm meant to be doing. I'm meant to be helping people get out of their own way. ⁣ ⁣ 08:17⁣ And I remember just healing like kind of one limiting belief, this fear of failure and I had been working on a business in the background like a jewelry business for a year and in healing that one belief, within two weeks I had finished designing the product, got it in production, started like selling it like so quickly and I'm like, oh my gosh, people just get in their own way. I was just getting in my own way, like I need to help people get out of their own way as well, like I, honestly, I grew up thinking that I was dumb and I grew up thinking that I couldn't learn like other people and there was something wrong with me. But actually I was just disassociated because I didn't feel safe growing up. There was quite a bit of trauma and I took on the beliefs that people told me. ⁣ ⁣ 08:56⁣ So starting to shift them, starting to feel my emotions, starting to become aware of my behaviors, that I was doing to try and escape how I was feeling Like it just opened up a whole new world for me. So I became certified as soon as I could and I just did not stop studying. All of a sudden I was a bookworm. All of a sudden I cut out half the people in my life and I'm just like surrounded by books and videos and like I'm like, give me more, you know. And that's kind of where it started, yeah. ⁣ ⁣ 09:27 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, it's amazing how we can look back on where we were five years ago, 10 years ago, and think I never thought in a million years I would be doing this. You know, I think about that myself because my background being a journalist. But the traumas of being in journalism especially when you're dealing with stories from 9-11 or just traumatic conversations that moved me into this work or just stuff that we've dealt with in life, and it's kind of like a pop, right. You're like what am I doing? How can I leave this world better? Right. And then you're like I never thought I'd be doing this. But if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. ⁣ ⁣ 10:04 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ I'd be doing this, but if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Yes, yeah, totally, and I think that when you start to do any kind of therapy or like healing well, you do tend to expand outside of you just being in the survival, like looking after yourself, and as you expand, you're like I want to serve people. Now, like I'm, I have this huge yearning to like heal people and help as many people as I can, and I think it's beautiful and I think it's amazing. ⁣ ⁣ 10:29⁣ whatever industry that we're in, you can just tell when people are really passionate and they're lit up and they're like on this, on this path, you know and so, yeah, I just, I just love, but I particularly love our space as well, because I'm, I know, like until I'm 100 I'll probably still find things to heal, but I'm forever expanding to be of service, you know, and then in turn, then we can pass that wisdom on to the people around us and onto our clients and the people that we're mentoring, and it's just a beautiful ripple effect. ⁣ ⁣ 11:03 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ And we don't own it. That's the thing Like everything that we effect and we don't own it. That's the thing Like everything that we're learning we don't own. So even if you're developing a course or a certification, or you're sharing a modality or an approach, or you're helping somebody else heal their traumas or upsets, we're not healing them, we're just guiding them, we're supporting them, but we don't own the process. You know, and we see a lot of people out there coaching and doing their thing, and there are many that are doing for the right reasons, and then there are some that are doing it for reasons that are not so beneficial of the person they are serving. So how do you differentiate yourself? To make sure people know I'm coming from an authentic space yourself, to make sure? ⁣ ⁣ 11:44 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ people know I'm coming from an authentic space. Yeah, definitely. So that's something that I found out of my training. I kind of went into a session going OK, obviously I want to make money and things like that. But I was like I've been given a bunch of tools what is the protocol here to actually run a really effective session? So my clients are getting so much out of it. ⁣ ⁣ 12:04⁣ Because my first few sessions I was like I look back and I think that could have gone so much better, like obviously we're always learning and things like that. But I had to put it, structure it together myself, and so one of like a part of my mission is to help as many people that are healers and therapists to do what they love full time, and a part of that was to go what did I actually need when I got training to run the best sessions that I can? So my clients are walking away. They know they got something out of it, because this work can be really intangible, like I think I feel better, you know, and that can be like talk therapy, like oh, I think I feel better, I think I feel worse, I don't know. I'm kind of walking around on the surface, and so what I did was I created this structure for not only for clients but for the practitioners to feel really confident, to be able to run a really holistic session looking at the whole person and then to be able to find the root cause through this structure and then. ⁣ ⁣ 13:00⁣ So my path is like international business freight, like it was completely different, but what I got out of that was that I was really good at in terms of collecting data and looking at data changes. So what I did was I was like, as a practitioner and as a client, for you to see the exact changes that have happened over each session. So we call it the testing sheet and we can actually see, with the client's feedback, including muscle testing, including just how they're feeling and and, somatically, what's coming up for them. We can see and manage the priorities of what we can work on in each session and what has actually been shifted, like we actually have data from each session and so we can actually show the client or tell the client and actually prioritize what's best to work on. What have we already worked through? Um, and so that's kind of like the, the heart of root cause therapy. ⁣ ⁣ 13:51⁣ It's like making it a much more tangible process and looking at someone on all levels of consciousness, their conscious mind their subconscious, their physical body, their mental body, um, and so yeah, it's a, it's that, and that's not including the actual healing part of it, the actual going to the root cause. But that's such an important piece because I really want more professionalism in the space. I wanted people to know that they were safe with their practitioner. So, like in my training there's a lot of training around like that, how to manage your clients properly like I've had coaching sessions where they're just like here's a calendar link, like there's no intake form, there's no like proper structure, like oh yeah, like they might email you after, like no, I want this to be a really safe container where we know I'm with someone that knows what they're doing. We teach the method, but we also teach the business side of that to be really ethical and really give that credibility. ⁣ ⁣ 14:50 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I love that we're touching on this area of how to serve the practitioner and the coach. I mean, I was just telling you when we were before we pressed record that I just finished doing a two-day conference where I was emcee and also presenting to healers, to healers, coaches, practitioners, because we're really the first ones to not think about taking care of ourselves. And one of the areas that I focus on a lot is secondary traumatic stress, because we think it's burnout, we think we're just overwhelmed and rarely, when you're doing trauma work especially, you don't realize that you might be just like a sponge. You're taking in some of what you're hearing, some of what another person's trauma is that primary duress right. So we need more conversations like this, especially for practitioners, caregivers, coaches, therapists, doctors that yes, you are in service to others, but how beautiful is it that you are taking care of yourself so that you can show up 100% for someone else and stop putting yourself on the back burner, you know. ⁣ ⁣ 15:52 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Absolutely, I mean so. ⁣ ⁣ 15:54⁣ My partner and I in 2016 opened an outpatient mental health and addiction center, so we were not only dealing and helping people with their addictions, but also we would include their their main family members or their partner, whoever was mainly their person and so there was a lot of that and we were working 12 hour days and I remember this older lady that, um, we had like infranutrition things and she was like you guys need to get massages, you guys need to slow down, like you can't, like people need you, and at the time I was like, whatever, I was like I'm fine, and we were just pushing through and working crazy hours and managing all the staff and like, obviously like dealing with inquiries and hearing all the stories and doing the healing. So we're like, yeah, like you said, like secondary trauma, witnessing with the client the traumas that they went through, like in some of them, you know, obviously horrific, and like kind of processing that and doing our own work at the same time. And yeah, and we did, we got to the point after like four and a half years where, like after I had a child as well, after I had a baby, that changed my priority of like looking after myself and having time. And that's why we kind of shifted over to teaching online courses, not only being able to help more people around the world, but to actually look after ourselves a little bit. Because it was, it was, yeah, I was getting to the point of burnout and I was getting sick a lot and I was dysregulated, like sometimes I was getting really angry and really frustrated and and that's like not the approach that I want to have. ⁣ ⁣ 17:30⁣ I'm the center for healing, like we're meant to be baseball and I'm like we need to practice what we preach here. So I so resonate with that and, yeah, part of like the training for our students is that energetic hygiene, you know, energetically, like before a session, grounding yourself, being able to hold space for them, an empathetic space, but not trying to take on what's coming up and letting the client process it and, like you said, being a guide. And then, after a session, like little things, like just getting doing your notes, just like getting it out, so you're not thinking about it for days after, having your own little ritual to help clear the space. And it might be also little things like increasing your prices a little bit so you have less clients. So there's so many little elements that you can do to find that that work-life balance because the work is is so important like the world needs us. So, yeah, like you said, we do need to make sure that our cup is full so then we don't have empathy, burnout and things like that so important. ⁣ ⁣ 18:31 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Energetic hygiene. Energetic hygiene, that is a great way of putting it. So let's talk about some of those energetic hygiene approaches that we can do for those who are in the caregiving practitioner doctors, therapists, you know what, anyone because it doesn't matter what your, what field you're in, you're always going to be hearing other people's stuff right, whether you do it for a living or not. So let's go through maybe like five things people can do. You just mentioned a couple. You mentioned saying yes to that massage, doing your notes right away, doing a little self care right, doing the notes right away rather than waiting. Name a couple others. I'm curious. ⁣ ⁣ 19:13 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Yeah, so other things would be well, like I said, just increasing your prices a little bit, just so that, and not feeling bad about that. I mean some people like to do a sliding scale, which means sometimes you charge certain demographics one price, but I found that I just I had to do that to honor my time and that allowed me to have like a couple of hours in the day to chill and watch Netflix or just that's self-care, to chill and watch Netflix or just that's self-care. ⁣ ⁣ 19:40⁣ That is self-care especially for those of us that, like we're always like I need you to be doing something with work, like no, you can be a normal person as well and just like binge a little bit, and that's fine. You know, on your favorite show and the other things I would say is that and this is a word that gets thrown around so much with boundaries but just getting really clear on what works for you in terms of maybe there's only certain times of the day where you have the most energy, like the best energy. So for some people it might be 4pm onwards, so that's fine. Make your availability 4pm onwards, and why I say boundaries? Because some of us go. Your availability 4p onwards. And why I say boundaries? Because some of us go. ⁣ ⁣ 20:23⁣ Well, I just need to be available when clients need me, so I'm going to jump on it anytime, even if it doesn't suit my I know, like when I have good energy and not good energy, and so honoring that and holding to that and not being scared that they're not going to book with you or not being scared that you're not going to make enough money because of that. If you really like, own that and go. No, these are. I only work Thursday, friday and Saturday um for consultations. Whatever industry that you're in, try your best to make it suit how you work, because otherwise you will get burnt out and you will get resentful and I think that does come through um with whatever you're doing to the clients as well. So that's super important. And I did touch on ritual a little bit and it depends how woo-woo you are, how spiritual you are. But you know I've got stuff like this space clearing spray. You know that I just spray around me. I like to smell some essential oil to kind of ground me. ⁣ ⁣ 21:21⁣ Sometimes I'm like I just need to go outside and just be near a tree or something like I just and just grounding grounding and I would say the number one thing and we do offer supervision in our courses is that have someone that you can talk to about your sessions, to decompress and just to debrief. We were really lucky at the Healing Center because all our officers were near each other like, oh my God, I want to tell you about the session, blah, blah, blah. We were able to debrief, but it's not so easy, especially with client confidentiality. You don't want to just like tell your partner about your whole client's session. So having someone that, whether they're a co-worker, like someone that is doing the same method as you. ⁣ ⁣ 22:04⁣ It could be someone that is your trainer or someone that you've hired as a mentor, someone that you can just go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like this or I got triggered, or you know cause. We're going to get triggered as well, you know, in sessions, and I think if you've got someone to bounce that off, that's so important for your own mental health and to get it out. ⁣ ⁣ 22:26 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Everything you said is like, so on point, because you know we want to serve, we want to help, we want to help people heal, and rarely are we thinking about what we can do. ⁣ ⁣ 22:35⁣ But also having that one person who's in a similar field, that understands, rather than unloading it on your partner or unloading it on you know a friend who's kind of like I don't know what you're talking about, and not breaking confidentiality, but doing it within the walls of your, your therapeutic center, or if you work at a place or you just know, like I have a mentor that I go to, I have my other practitioners, and having that just to be like, how do you feel about this? You need that, we all need that, you know. So that's really important. I think those are really good tips, especially when we're doing trauma work, and I want to talk to you briefly about that, because you do offer a trauma informed certification and there are a lot of certifications out there. So what makes your trauma-informed certification different from the copious other ones that are out there, the myriad of courses that call you trauma-informed? ⁣ ⁣ 23:34 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Yeah, sure. So originally, as I was watching the industry change and a lot of coaches coming into the industry and myself just having the awareness of blending therapy and coaching, I'm like I have the sense that a lot of people are being held space for, but I feel like with coaching, there's not much awareness of trauma or reactions of trauma that people are having or when a client is having a trauma response, and, as a coach, often people are trying to push them through that, which can cause them to shut down or get depressed or become burnt out. And so, as I watch the industry rapidly grow, I said to my partner and another trainer that we have on, like you guys need to make a trauma-informed certificate, like for these coaches, like it's super important. So they, they did it, they create, they recorded it and everything and we started selling it and I just I just had this feeling I'm like it's not. It was a very affordable price and everything. I'm like it's not, it's not reaching enough people, it's not, and it's not reaching enough people, it's not. ⁣ ⁣ 24:45⁣ And and we're doing quite well with our other courses. I know you guys put a lot of effort into this and it's an incredible course, but do you mind making it free. And they were like what? And I'm like, trust me, trust me, trust me. They're like, okay, I'm like we need to make a positive ripple effect in the industry. And so they were like, okay, like they're just trusting me again, and it absolutely blew up. So to date, I think about 70,000 people have enrolled in this course and literally because I see the comments every day, so in our courses you can do comments under each lesson and we're there and we're answering questions and things like that, and the testimonial is like this is the best course on being trauma-informed in the world. I've done a psychology degree. This is the best education that I've ever had. ⁣ ⁣ 25:31⁣ This is, and so people taking it that are either managers, parents, teachers, so it's not just for coaches, it's for anyone that is holding space to other people in any capacity, and so many people go through it for themselves as well, and so the main kind of points that are in there that people get out of it is understanding the nervous system, understanding the reactions of the nervous system, understanding how to hold space for someone by regulating yourself, to be able to hold a safe space for whoever you're holding the space for, and to recognize when someone is having a trauma response and how to navigate that and how to help them around that. ⁣ ⁣ 26:13⁣ And I think you know one of my old friends she was and I'm talking 15 years ago became a school teacher and she would like complain about some kid that had ADHD and she would be quite negative about it and be like, oh, I kind of would have a go at them, see if they do this course they would have a huge understanding of oh, this is actually the reaction that they're having because of what they've been through. And these are the things that I can do to help this student to feel safer, to learn and to hold and to be able to understand. Okay, what can we adjust to make it a safer experience for them? ⁣ ⁣ 26:48⁣ So they're not having these behavioral reactions. But it comes to anyone really like why do we have these behavioral reactions? What do they actually mean? You know, and yeah, so. ⁣ ⁣ 27:00 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Well, I think it's amazing that you're offering it for free and I just want to let folks know that I'm going to have that link in the notes of this podcast for Melissa's certification. This is a trauma informed certification or even the other short, free educational courses that you do offer. We'll have that all in the podcast notes for the Center for Healing. That's so generous and honestly to be able to give that gift to people even if they don't need the certification. ⁣ ⁣ 27:29⁣ The knowledge is really helpful, whether you are in the field of therapy or coaching, like you said, teachers I know plenty of lawyers and people that are in the legal that are hearing the stories from the narcissist, and I mean the battle back and forth is traumatic in a lot of ways and there are a lot of lawyers that are getting sort of certifications in narcissism, trauma, informed approaches, just so they know how to NLP, you know learning the language of what's coming at you. So all of this is so helpful. I mean more education is great as long as it's authentic and comes with some kind of a backing. ⁣ ⁣ 28:10 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ So absolutely and the the way that the that Matt and Ryan teacher is. It's so digestible, like you don't have to have the technical knowledge of, like the coaching industry or NLP or as a therapist, like it's so or science exactly. It's like, oh my gosh, like everything that I've learned has clicked in. ⁣ ⁣ 28:31⁣ You know, and um, and, and people enjoy watching it and I'm just so I'm so grateful for Matt and Ryan that they were like yes, make this a free, because I truly believe if everyone becomes trauma informed, we are going to have a better world, because we're going to realize I'm raging and I'm angry, because actually I'm feeling scared and dysregulated about this because potentially I'm getting triggered because of this. ⁣ ⁣ 28:56⁣ So, rather than attacking someone all of a sudden, we've had this huge awareness about ourselves and we're able to calm down and then have a conversation with someone that we need to have a conversation with, rather than attacking each other, abusing each other, cutting each other off, like just basic human behavior, like having that understanding that all of us I don't want to say all of us have experienced extreme trauma, but all of us have. I don't want to say all of us have experienced extreme trauma, but all of us have probably had painful experiences of probably getting triggered now by each other and by circumstances. That, yeah, if we're to have that awareness, understanding ourselves and others, it's going to be a much more peaceful, communicative society. I really believe that. Yes absolutely. ⁣ ⁣ 29:41 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I couldn't agree more. And it's a question of learning how to respond instead of react. You know, because that that scared, that scared creature that we have in the little amygdala up there, little Amy, that gets scared and doesn't feel safe if she's gonna, if she's backed against a corner, it's all hell breaks loose. You know, yeah, so it's definitely understanding that that's great, it's such a beautiful offering and just everything that you're doing. So, before we actually wrap things up because I know you've got things that you need to do, you got a full day ahead of you in Australia I would love to play a little game with you, real quick, sure, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to throw out a word and you just come back with the first word that comes to mind. Let's get things going with the get you get you moving on your day ahead. You'll thank thank me for it later. All right, one word, here we go. Transformational Recalcerapy Okay, okay. Healing. ⁣ ⁣ 30:44⁣ In a child Peace neutrality practitioner space holder boundaries self-care addiction self-soothing energetic hygiene. ⁣ ⁣ 31:11 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ I know it's two words, but I just really love that I'm going to say the word you already said, but boundaries Okay. ⁣ ⁣ 31:20 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ And self-care, and that's one word, because it's hyphenated. ⁣ ⁣ 31:25 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Yes, self-love Beliefs. ⁣ ⁣ 31:33 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Generalizations Good. ⁣ ⁣ 31:34 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Gratification, I want to say painful emotions, which is the opposite of gratification. But I feel like it's okay. We're trying to gratify ourselves so we don't feel the painful emotions. ⁣ ⁣ 31:47 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Now I'm going to give you one more word. I got to keep going. One more Root cause one more root cause. ⁣ ⁣ 31:56 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ The word that comes to mind is dna, just because I've had a lot of clients with generational trauma at the moment. ⁣ ⁣ 32:03 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, that's a. That's a big topic yeah we didn't even really get into that. I know you mentioned it a little bit going back to the inner child, but that generational trauma and holding space for ourselves with the ancestral trauma, what would you say to those tuning in about being able to process that and be open to the idea of generational trauma? ⁣ ⁣ 32:29 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ so you can look at the cherry blossom study. There's a study that's been done on how generational trauma can get passed down, not only by us hearing stories that have happened to our ancestors, but actually we live out the symptoms in our dna. So some people will have symptoms and behaviors that they don't understand why they're having them and it doesn't make sense their reactions that they're having to the life that they've had, and sometimes the trauma has been passed down generationally. And so I have taken people into regression and I myself have gone into regression where I was in my grandmother, where she couldn't feed her kids and my mom was only little and I felt how she felt and I saw the rice on the table and that's all she had for them. This is in Sri Lanka, in a village rice on the table and that's all she had for them. This is in Sri Lanka, in a village, and I and and the behaviors that I had previous to understanding that was like I would hate to go to a restaurant. ⁣ ⁣ 33:22⁣ I always looked at the food and I always used to think there's not enough food. I can't eat this restaurant food. They're wasting so much food. There's not enough food. I couldn't go to a supermarket. I had all these weird behaviors that were unexplainable, but once I went to that and healed that, that shifted all of that. Now I'm happy to go to a restaurant and I believe there's an abundance of food and so, yes, it's very those of us that are willing to do the work. ⁣ ⁣ 33:49 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ We're often healing generations of trauma from both sides our mother and father's ancestry you know, so it's yeah I remember when I first went through trauma informed, my trauma, informed certification I really opened up and I was like and I don't know where it came from it, just like it was, like I just vomited all of this generational trauma and the feeling that I had in my body that I had not felt before. ⁣ ⁣ 34:14⁣ And I remember calling my mom after saying it ends now, like it ends today. And I had already been doing this work for a while, but something about something hit me hard with that program where I went really deep into the generational trauma and I was like, oh no, like it ends, it ends today, it ends here, with this lineage, right here. And that's really an awareness, it's stepping into the tension of the unknown and realizing you have a couple of choices. You can go forward, right, you can retreat and nothing changes. If nothing changes, you can try to go around it without dealing with it or try to go over it, but you'll get kicked back. So it's really just like diving through it, you know. ⁣ ⁣ 34:56 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ A hundred percent yeah. ⁣ ⁣ 34:59 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Wow, Good stuff. Melissa, thank you so much for being here and I want to give you a moment because we got off track after the. Well, we got on a good track, but we changed gears after the rapid fire game. ⁣ ⁣ 35:23 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ I'm curious do you have any final words that you'd like to share with those tuning in? Yeah, I'd just like to say that, if anything, start to feel into your body, more into your feelings, and stop intellectualizing them so much. And it's safe to feel your negative emotions and they do go if you fully feel them and breathe into them. They do go after 60 to 90 seconds and I think that would save so many people's lives just by doing that. Just by doing that, your relationships, your health, the way you look after yourself. That's a really great first step to take. ⁣ ⁣ 35:50 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, like, is it a bad day or is it just a bad five minutes? Right, we tend to just like catastrophize everything to make it like life is horrible, and it's like is life horrible or is it really just like in this moment, right now, you're really ticked off, right yeah, but that's great. Just give yourself a chance to self-regulate. You know we have that power and it's beautiful when we know we have it, because then we're just more empowered. ⁣ ⁣ 36:15 - Melissa Hiemann (Guest)⁣ Definitely. Thanks so much. Thank you, it's been my honor to be on. Thank you so much. ⁣ ⁣ 36:23 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Might as well. All right, I want you to take advantage of Melissa's trauma-informed certification and courses. She's offering a lot of free resources that you can put in your toolbox that brain candy jar that you got a lot of free resources that you can put in your toolbox that brain candy jar that you got. I'll add that in the podcast notes of this episode, along with her book Natural High Secrets to Overcoming Instant Gratification and Finding Inner Peace, plus more on her root cause therapy and the Center for Healing, and we talked a lot about ways that you can be kind to your mind during this conversation, finding ways to heal the healer in you. One way that you can do that is with Havening techniques. If you want to learn more about Havening and how it can change your brain, I dropped a link in the podcast notes as well on ways to connect with me. Remember to give this podcast and this episode a little love. Just by leaving a rating or review. You are making a difference. ⁣ ⁣ 37:14⁣ Wherever you are tuning in, we are on all podcast platforms, including Apple, Spotify, and even YouTube. I love hearing from you week after week and I appreciate all your shares HIListically Speaking is edited  2Market Media with music by Lipbone Redding and supported by you. So thank you. I appreciate you every day. I know there is a lot of podcasts that are out there. You're choosing to join me every week. It is a gift to have you here and I am truly grateful. I love you, I believe in you and I will see you next week.

Before she was designing holistic spaces, Gala Magriñá was living large in the fashion industry. But no amount of partying and rubbing elbows with celebs created a happy space, inside or out. That is until she realized that investing in your personal space is investing in yourself. On this episode of the HIListically Speaking Podcast, discover how holistic interior design goes beyond the aesthetics and considers the mind, body, and spirit approach that's necessary to create mindful spaces that support inner healing and personal growth. You'll walk away with a new perspective of what it means to create a respite that flows and flourishes personally and professionally. Download and listen to this conversation on any podcast platform. https://pod.link/hilisticallyspeaking Grab The Badass books series Gala and Hilary talked about! You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, Jen Sincero https://amzn.to/3KjV99l (Amazon)  Get all four books! You Are a Badass Series 4 Books Collection Set by Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass, You Are a Badass at Making Money, You Are a Badass Every Day & Badass Habits, Jen Sincero https://amzn.to/4dRn3qS (Amazon) CHAPTERS/KEY MOMENTS⁣ 00:00 Intro 00:27 What does holistic mean to you? 03:24 Gala’s story: From fashion to functional living
 08:05 Design and Well-Being Connection 13:31 Navigating Stressful Transitions in Design
 11:02 Personalized Wellness Practices
 18:15 Creating Sanctuary-Like Spaces 24:51 Beyond Spaces 26:55 Interior Design Methodology 32:48 Rapid Fire Game 34:52. Investing in your space is investing in yourself 35:06 Hilary Close CONNECT WITH GALA https://www.instagram.com/galamagrinadesign https://www.linkedin.com/in/galamagrina/ GALA'S DESIGN COURSE (launching in Sept 2024) https://galamagrinadesign.com/beyond-spaces-course/ PUT THE HEALING IN YOUR HANDS WITH HAVENING ⁣https://www.hilaryrusso.com/havening ⁣GRAB MY DISCOUNT ON HOLISTIC HEALTH COURSES AT IIN https://sldr.page.link/4byd CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso ⁣ https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com/

Grief wrapped its cold hands around my heart with the loss of my calico kitty, Miss Eliza Doolittle. But in sharing my story on episode 151, I discovered I wasn’t alone and others had a tail of their own to tell about the power of pet companionship. On this episode of HIListically Speaking, I passed the microphone over to our listeners who share gratitude moments for the fur babies who left a paw print on their hearts. Whether they're purring beside us or frolicking beyond the Rainbow Bridge, we honor the laughter and love they bring into our lives, as we recount stories of the profound bonds formed between humans and their animal companions and heal in community.⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS/KEY MOMENTS⁣ 00:00 Intro ⁣ 00:08 Healing Through Community⁣ 03:04 Juile and Champ⁣ 04:28 Bree and Moe⁣ 05:24 Amy and Bella⁣ 06:31 TC and Charlotte⁣ 07:38 Brooke and Lady⁣ 8:48   Kristin and Angie⁣ 10:18  Beverly and Coco⁣ 11:24. Hilary’s closing thoughts on pet loss and love⁣ ⁣ JOIN ME FOR THE NEXT HAVENING HAPPY HOUR⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/events⁣ ⁣ DOWNLOAD THE HUG IT OUT FIVE DAY CHALLENGE⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/5daychallenge⁣ ⁣ CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso⁣ ⁣https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking⁣https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com/⁣ ⁣ TRANSCRIPT⁣ Full transcript available on https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣ 00:08 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ The power of community is amazing, isn't it? It helps us connect, it helps us grow, it helps us learn and it helps us heal. Recently I lost my beautiful calico kitty, Miss Eliza Doolittle. Those of you who watch this podcast know that she sits right behind me on this very chair. Maybe you've seen her in commercials or in videos and if you know me personally, you've probably had a chance to sit with her for a while right here in my home. And one of the ways I found healing, after close to 19 years with her by my side, was to share her story right here HIListically Speaking, and what I learned from living with her for close to two decades. To me it was therapeutic to share with you. It felt right, as raw as it was, as real as it was and as recent as it was. It was necessary and important for my healing journey. ⁣ ⁣ 01:09⁣ What happened after I dropped episode 151 was an outpouring of HIListically Speaking listeners from listeners and fans and friends and family and strangers. I received gifts and cards and words of encouragement and kindness and stories, so many stories, your stories, and I thought what better way to share and heal than in community? After all, that's what this podcast is all about. That's what HIListically Speaking is all about those empowering conversations of trauma to triumph through health, healing and humor. Basically what it takes to be a happy and healthy grownup, because even in loss there is laughter at some point in time, don't you think it comes. It might take a while, but it's there. ⁣ ⁣ 02:10⁣ So this episode is about you and your stories. Pets that you have loved, that have made a difference in your life. Some have crossed over the Rainbow Bridge already and maybe they're hanging out with Eliza. Others showed up just at the right time and are still bringing you happiness and joy and, I hope, for a very long time. I asked you to press record and share your stories and your pictures so that we can honor those fur babies in our lives. And what came back is what you're about to hear on this episode, and it is truly inspiring and amazing. When we become pet parents, we know our time with them is short. It is likely that we will outlive them, and we know that there will be heartbreak. It's inevitable. But to love and to be loved is the real gift. ⁣ ⁣ 03:04 - Julie (Caller)⁣ Hi, this is Julie Marty-Pearson from Bakersfield, California, and I am here to share my story about my childhood dog, champ. I got Champ as a puppy when I was about 12 years old. At the time I was dealing with some difficult health issues and I ended up missing most of my 7th grade year. Champ became my best friend. He was my little buddy. Seeing most of my 7th grade year, champ became my best friend. He was my little buddy. He was there with me through all the tough days when I wasn't feeling well, when I wasn't able to see my friends and go to events and fun things like I wanted to, and Champ was there for me. ⁣ ⁣ 03:37⁣ All the way through college I lived with my parents to save money, and the day I left for grad school I had to say goodbye, even though I knew he'd be taken care of by my parents. I knew I was going to miss him. Little did I know he had snuck a little surprise in one of my boxes for me. Cut to the next day in my new apartment, unpacking all of my boxes In the middle of my books, in one box I found Champ's tennis ball. He had dropped it in the box for me and I packed it away without knowing, so that I would always have a piece of him with me. Champ passed away about six months after that. It's like he knew he'd done his job and he was okay to leave, and I still miss him every single day. ⁣ ⁣ 04:28 - Bree (Caller)⁣ I want to honor my dear sweet Moe, who just left us. In the last few weeks he wasn't a fan of everyone but he definitely loved his mama and he provided so much comfort in our bedtime snuggles, I know, when I just wasn't feeling right or was just having a day or a moment, I could retreat to my room and lay in my bed and wherever he was in the room he would just pop up and lay next to me, usually near my head. It was just kind of like a comfort, like knowing he was there for me. You know, no words needed to be exchanged and I just felt his little body vibrating with purrs and and it was sweet to know that somebody was there with me. So, moving forward, it will be a change and adjustment on how to find that comfort somewhere else, but I am grateful for the 18 years he provided me that snuggle and that love. ⁣ ⁣ 05:24 - Amy (Host)⁣ Hi, my name is Amy. I'm the host of the Grounded in Maine podcast and I just wanted to talk about my dog, Bella, who was everything to me. She was nine pounds, she was a Pomeranian, she loved everybody and she loved everything. She was the only pet I've ever had that loved going to the vet. She just loved anyone that would make a big deal of her and she just was the best thing ever. Her last year she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and a collapsed trachea and she was having seizures. Oh, that was a hard year. She completely broke me when she passed away. Like I said no more dogs, I don't want to hurt like that again. And then it was the beginning of a vacation, actually, and so I took that week off and I didn't talk to anybody. I could not say the words without falling apart, crying, so I just messaged them through Facebook and that was it. And that's why I was saying, Hilary, I'm impressed that you're able to talk about that, because I still get teary and it's been six years. ⁣ ⁣ 06:31 - TC (Caller)⁣ Charlotte York McPuppy Newman. Let me be her human mom for 16 years on this earth and it's a privilege that I will never get over. I met her when she was nine weeks old and it was an instant bond and an instant love, and it was so powerful she traveled with me across the country. I mean, if dogs could have frequent flyer miles or hotel points, she would have been platinum status everywhere. ⁣ ⁣ 06:52⁣ Planes, trains, automobiles. But it was more than just the physical journeys. It was the emotional journeys. She went on with me. She saw me on the highest days when we were dancing in the kitchen, and she saw me on the lowest days when she knew just to cuddle up around me in bed because I couldn't do much more for her when she transitioned to the other side. It was one of the hardest events, the hardest times of my life, but it was so precious to get to hold her as she took her last breath. I was her mama and she was my baby, Though I will always have a Charlotte-shaped hole in my life. I see her signs everywhere Butterflies, dogs that stare at me in the eye for no reason, and I am so grateful that I got to be Miss Charlotte's mom. ⁣ ⁣ 07:38 - Brooke (Caller)⁣ Hi everyone. Two years ago I adopted a five-year-old Chiwini. Her name is Lady. She's 12 pounds and has had lots of trauma in her life. She attached to me quickly and wants to go everywhere with me all the time, which is not always possible. ⁣ ⁣ 07:52⁣ Well, years ago I had a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis due to my upbringing and it resurfaced recently. I'll get a dump of adrenaline and a debilitating fear for no immediate threat. It makes life difficult and I started thinking between the trauma of my dog and the trauma of mine, maybe I could make this into a positive thing. So I called a dog trainer and they came over and evaluated her. She has what it takes to be a PTSD service dog. So for 120 hours we need to train. She is halfway through that and, absolutely amazing, my little dog responds to me so well and calms me. I calm her. It's kind of this leaning on each other situation, but we're making each other's lives better and with every day she learns something new, as do I. Our lives are calmer and happier because we're together all the time. So I just wanted to share that. Thank you so much. ⁣ ⁣ 08:48 - Kristin (Caller)⁣ My name's Kristen. I want to share this story about a dog I once had named Augie, who I bought from a puppy mill and on a whim one day and told myself that I was saving him from that horrible place. Augie was a beautiful black lab. At the time I was in an on-again, off-again relationship with a man I would marry and divorce in less than a year. On one of our hiatuses I secretly bought Augie because the man I loved hated dogs and was afraid of them, and I prayed that Augie would keep him away. Augie gave me a run for my money and he had not only massive amounts of energy but massive amounts of anxiety, and I'm an ICU nurse and a mom and I make a lot of hard decisions, but this was one of the hardest I've ever made. ⁣ ⁣ 09:29⁣ I decided to find Augie a new home, because not only did he not have good quality of life in our home, we didn't either Rehomed him. I found a man, a friend of my dad's, named Billy, who was like a lab whisperer. Augie snapped and he snarled at Billy and Billy stood there and he didn't flinch and a little while later Augie went, hopped in his truck and went to live with Billy I still get pictures of Augie from time to time. He's living his best life ever. He got the love and life that he deserved, and I ended up writing a book about my healing journey, which is called Heal the Intensive Care Review. You know I wanted Augie to save me, but I learned that the only one that could save me was me and that I had the power to do it. ⁣ ⁣ 10:18 - Beverly (Caller)⁣ Hi, I'm Beverly. I'm 83 years old and I've been a pet owner most of my life and I love my pets to bits. Recently I lost my husband and I've been very, very depressed. He was the light of my life and, as a result, it caused me to want to have company in one form or another and I recently I adopted a dog, a little chihuahua, and he has been the light of my life. His name is Coco and I've never in my life as much as I've loved all my animals. I've never loved an animal like this. Perhaps my need caused me to love greater, I don't know, but he has made a major difference in my life. Having Coco in my life has been a godsend and, although I still miss my husband, coco is a wonderful distraction and completes my life. ⁣ ⁣ 11:24 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ What an incredible collection of stories from childhood to current day. Our pets really do make a difference in our lives, and I am so grateful to everyone who took the time to share and, more importantly, took the time to love. Whether or not you pressed record on this very episode. If you are tuning in right now, I know this is reaching you when it needs to, and if this episode touched, moved and inspired you in any way, I would love to hear from you. I'd love to know what you think, share your thoughtful responses by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify Podcasts or YouTube or wherever your headphones take you. I'd love to read what you have to share. So download this episode, make a difference, pay it forward. Somebody else you might know could use this right now, and I imagine those who are part of this episode will love to hear your thoughts too. ⁣ ⁣ 12:19⁣ On that note, if you've experienced the loss of a pet, I hope in time you open your heart again to love again. And if that is part of the journey, you know now, know that you're chosen and know that you were chosen or, better yet, you chose each other. What a gift, what a gift to know that. Thank you again for being here. Thank you again for one of your choices being that you tune in week after week. I love you for that and I'll see you next week. Be well. ⁣ ⁣

We have a saying in the world of integrative nutrition. If it’s made by people in white coats, you are likely going to see people in white coats. In other words, your food could be keeping you sick. But Doctor of Social Sciences, Nicolette Richer is on a mission to change that for millions of people by 2030. On this episode of the HIListically Speaking Podcast, we take a deep dive into the healing potential of whole foods as Dr. Richer shares her insights on dismantling systemic barriers to wellness, particularly for BIPOC women. Learn about the pitfalls of the ketogenic diet and other trendy plans, and be inspired by stories of empowerment and recovery through eating from the earth. This episode is not only rich with actionable knowledge but also a call to action for those tuning in to embrace scientific literacy and health education for a healthier, more informed society. It’s time to eat real to heal on the HIListically Speaking Podcast. ⁣ ⁣Full Transcript https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣ CHAPTERS/KEY MOMENTS⁣ 00:00 Intro ⁣ 00:08 Food as Medicine for Healthful Living⁣ 03:25 Addressing Health Disparities ⁣ 10:24  Holistic Healing Empowerment ⁣ 14:10 The Dangers of the Keto Diet⁣ 16:02 Media Misinformation ⁣ 19:33 Health Coaches and clients⁣ 27:02 Nutrition, Healing, and Wellness Journey⁣ 29:00 Dr. Richer’s shift from government to nutrition⁣ 31:45 Rapid Fire Game⁣ 32:55 Reversing Chronic Disease and Detoxing⁣ 34:00 Hilary’s closing thoughts and how to connect⁣ ⁣ ⁣ CONNECT WITH DR. NICOLETTE RICHER⁣ Eat Real to Heal Cookbook: Using Nutrient-Dense Foods for Happiness and Longevity https://amzn.to/4blFWAG (Amazon) Eat Real to Heal: Using Food As Medicine to Reverse Chronic Diseases from Diabetes, Arthritis, Cancer and More https://amzn.to/4bnnFCZ (Amazon)⁣ https://www.instagram.com/nicolettericher/⁣ https://www.facebook.com/richerhealthconsulting/⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@eatrealtoheal⁣ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eat-real-to-heal-podcast/id1442998357⁣ ⁣ JOIN THE REAL TO HEAL PROGRAM https://www.richerhealth.ca/eat-real-to-heal-course⁣ ⁣ PUT THE HEALING IN YOUR HANDS WITH HAVENING ⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/havening⁣ ⁣GRAB MY DISCOUNT ON COURSES ON INTEGRATIVE NUTRITION AT IIN https://sldr.page.link/4byd   CONNECT WITH HILARY⁣ https://www.instagram.com/hilaryrusso⁣ ⁣https://www.youtube.com/hilaryrusso⁣ https://www.facebook.com/hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.tiktok.com/@hilisticallyspeaking⁣ https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣ ⁣Music by Lipbone Redding https://lipbone.com/⁣ ⁣*******⁣ ⁣ EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ⁣ Full Transcript https://www.hilaryrusso.com/podcast⁣)⁣ ⁣ 00:08 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Individuals who can afford to buy food at Whole Foods, but they still choose to buy processed refined food. I've been working with these individuals for a long time. I've, quite frankly, become a little bit exhausted because we do have so much information there's too much information out there, in fact but it's interesting. I've decided to really focus on BIPOC women, and that is an area that I know I'll be focusing on probably for the next half of my life, the next 50 years, and it's the area with some of the biggest challenges, because we're still facing racism in this area. We're still facing those economic gaps as well. ⁣ ⁣ 00:43 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ All right, my friends, this is not the first time we talked about this, but imagine being able to reverse the chronic diseases in your life, the health issues that you have, with small changes and I mean really small changes that can make a difference. Like I said, this isn't the first time we talked about this. Holistic living and integrative nutrition is really a big part of that. If you can reverse 97% of the chronic diseases out there with whole food eating, with different kinds of approaches to taking care of your body, mind and spirit holistically, whole body approach, wouldn't you want to have the answers? And that is exactly why I have Dr Nicolette Richer here. She is a doctor of social sciences and she is on a mission to teach 22 million people using food as medicine by a deadline, by the way, 2030. Dr Nicolette, it is so great to have you here. Thank you so much for being on HIListically Speaking. ⁣ ⁣ 01:39 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Yeah, and thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and share this information. ⁣ ⁣ 01:43 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ So I was chit-chatting with you before we pressed record about. You are the first doctor of social sciences I've actually had on this podcast. We're, you know well into 150 plus podcast episodes here. Being that this podcast is about holistic health well-being, turning those traumas into triumphs in our life. I've realized from the different kinds of doctors I've had on the show many in functional medicine and integrative medicine that doctors do not go to medical school and take nutritional courses. That's kind of an extracurricular and I do want to start out there. So how is being a social science doctor different? ⁣ ⁣ 02:19 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Yeah. So I was actually on the path to med school and all of our friends and our customers who ate at our plant-based whole food restaurants told me don't go to med school if I want to teach people how to reverse their chronic diseases. So I wrote my MCATs, I passed my MCAT, I was applying for med school and I really thought that was the path, that was the way I could help the most amount of people. And they were like Nikki, you're not going to be able to help people in seven and a half minute. You know practitioner patient appointments. And so they're the ones who actually the medical doctors talked me out of going to med school. And they said work with people around behavior change that's what's important around education around nutrition. And they also point blank said I'd lose my license if I was prescribing nutrition to patients who had heart disease and diabetes and cancer, etc. Etc. That's what a lot of people don't realize is they can't prescribe a specific diet as a doctor because that's not considered evidence-based medicine, even though we have thousands of studies to show that plant-based whole food eating is literally the answer to reversing 97% of all chronic diseases. ⁣ ⁣ 03:25⁣ So, being a social scientist, I get to be on the side of understanding what makes a person tick, what makes them actually engage in the behaviors to reverse a chronic disease. What are the barriers in society that prevent them from being able to reverse their disease? Because it's never just a person has a disease and they want to reverse it. No, there's economic factors, there's geographic factors, there's political policies that are in place that prevent people from accessing food, particularly if you are Black, indigenous or a person of color, and a lot of people don't know that. So it's not just a simple have a disease, choose to reverse your disease. That's not how it works. There's financial inequities that are in place, there's racism within the medical system that prevent people from getting the proper lab test done, etc. Etc. So, being a social scientist, I'm actually able to look at the systems that are in place and the systems that need to be changed that would allow somebody to even engage in the behaviors of reversing their chronic disease in the first place. ⁣ ⁣ 04:22 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ And that's a big difference. That's a really big difference from what you originally went to school for, like you said, but was this something that you identified with because of your own health concerns as well? ⁣ ⁣ 04:33 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Good question and the answer is no, but a lot of people. That's. Number one question I get asked is how I got into this work. I was working in government actually creating policy for environmental policy, so I was in environmental toxicology and screening and you know wastewater management etc. Etc. ⁣ ⁣ 04:51⁣ And so in doing that work, at the same time my best friend's dad was diagnosed with stage four cancer. He was 72 years old at the time and he had metastasized to his bones. He was not given chemo surgery or radiation as a treatment option at all and they just sent him home to die. So instead he had heard about metabolic nutrition and detoxification years and years and years before. So he went back and started researching, investigating, asking lots of questions, and he immediately changed his behavior, his lifestyle. He stopped eating processed food, stopped eating pizza and burgers and fries and packaged ingredients, and he switched to organic, plant-based whole food diet, daily detoxification with supplements and added juicings for the added nutrients. And at 72 years old, he reversed his stage for metastasized cancer, where he was given three months to live and he lived another 22 more years. ⁣ ⁣ 05:44⁣ Now, being naturally a researcher and really curious, I couldn't discount what he did and just chalk it up to one anecdotal story. So I investigated the therapy to understand. You know, what did it mean, what was the science behind it? And lo and behold, it opened up a whole new world where I saw that actually, not even just for the last 200 years of published medical research and peer reviewed journal articles does this information exist. But you know, going back through traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine and other indigenous medicine practices, you know food has been medicine since the day every single human being was came into existence on the planet. ⁣ ⁣ 06:20 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ What is your hope when you say that you want to teach 22 million people how to eradicate their chronic diseases using food as medicine in the next, really, six years? Yeah, when you think about that, what does that mean for you? Because I know that you are putting a lot of these programs, in these wellness programs in organizations, companies and institutions, but and teaching doctors is one thing that you do, so what is how? Would that mission be a possibility for you? ⁣ ⁣ 06:49 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ yeah, I think one of the biggest, most important things any entrepreneur can do is to set a big, hairy, audacious goal. And a big, hairy, audacious goal is a goal that is bigger than anything you can ever imagine accomplishing. And if we don't set goals like that, then we we just don't set big goals. We actually set really small goals that are very easy to achieve, and so it's important to set a big, hairy, audacious goal. So that is mine. It's going to be really hard to quantify. ⁣ ⁣ 07:12⁣ For example, I was invited to China by the Ministry of Health and the Center for Chronic Disease Control to teach 600 physicians how to do this metabolic therapy that I teach. So what they ended up doing was donating 200 acres of organic farmland. The Chinese government did that and they mandated in China that every municipality needed to be in charge of the diabetes reversing diabetes using food as medicine. They now have a 150 bed wellness center where anybody in China can go to to learn the therapy that I taught these physicians. They gutted a main hospital in Beijing to put in a metabolic nutrition and detox center and including kitchens with stoves where every Wednesday evening the community can come and learn about food as medicine. So that's a country with over a billion people. ⁣ ⁣ 07:57⁣ Now, am I going to know exactly how many patients those 600 individuals, those physicians, have been able to impact in the 150 bed center and the hospital in Beijing? ⁣ ⁣ 08:08⁣ I will not be able to quantify that, but it allows me to actually reach out to organizations that I would not normally have reached out to and say, hey, can we partner? Another example is that Lululemon, which is a major employer of 34,000 employees, is one of our biggest sponsors and they made me an ambassador simply so we could get the message out, as food is medicine. So we're now working with them on a huge endeavor which is not only around chronic diseases but around mental health disorders as well, because mental health disorders are just chronic diseases, and so to really support men around the globe in reversing their suicidal ideation and mood disorders as well. So it's by partnering with these big organizations that I think I'm going to be able to achieve this goal. So, yeah, going to be hard to quantify, for sure, because I don't keep track of every single individual, but it allows me to really partner with big organizations. ⁣ ⁣ 09:00 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ You glow when you're talking about this. You really you come alive, Like I'm just watching you as you talk about, and even talking about things that are traumatic when you talk about suicide. But I think you're seeing the other side of it, like where the possibility is. ⁣ ⁣ 09:13 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Yeah, thank you for noticing that. It is definitely my life's work. It doesn't even feel like work and every time I get a client who is sitting on the side of the road. This is one example a very successful entrepreneur in our town who called me from the side of the road crying because he had a rope in his hand but couldn't figure out where to hang the rope. He had served in the British Air Forces. ⁣ ⁣ 09:37⁣ You can listen to the podcast on our Eat Real to Heal podcast his story. And then now to see him, married with two kids, running a restaurant. He completed our metabolic, nutrition and detox coaching certification. He helped his entire family reverse their head to toe psoriasis. After he healed himself of his psoriasis and his chronic diseases and mood disorders, no longer wants to take his life. He's thriving. And when you see an individual, you know really, do that 150 degree turn like that? Yeah, I can't help but glow and smile and I can give you thousands of case studies like that reversing mental health disorders, suicidal ideation, chronic diseases. It's one of the easiest things to do, but our society makes it so complicated, so I'm excited to be on the side that knows how to do it. ⁣ ⁣ 10:24 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I think that's where we truly vibe, because that's an area where I'm focusing on. As far as being a holistic practitioner in the emotional well-being field, you know, having self-regulating tools, having ways that you can put the power of emotional well-being in someone else's hands. People will say often they'll say, oh, you're a healer or you are the one that is doing the work for someone, but it's being the guide, it's being the person that says here are the tools. You're the one that's actually doing the work that empowers the actual client or patient in your case. And I think about that, like just in the work I do with Havening Techniques, which is a, you know, a psychosensory, neuroscience-based approach that changes your thoughts, moods, behaviors and habits rapidly and being able to give people those tools. Really, I think I'm seeing parts of the mirroring back. You know like you get very excited when you see that, oh yes, this is working for somebody and the work that you're doing is working for so many people. Where do you feel that the challenges are truly in the work that you do? ⁣ ⁣ 11:30 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Yeah. So we just got a book picked up by a publisher, our third book. It's called Rise Up and it's all about how women of color, it's time to rise up. It's time to reclaim our ancestral knowledge that food is medicine. It's time to reverse these chronic diseases. It's time to end the discrimination in the health field, in our food systems field, and it's time to reverse these chronic diseases. It's time to end the discrimination in the health field, in our food systems field, and it's time to really close those economic disparity gaps that we see that are huge, that really women face at higher levels than men. ⁣ ⁣ 11:58⁣ So one of the big areas for BIPOC women especially, but men as well, and all genders and identities it is the fact that so many BIPOC individuals can't even access clean, real food. So they can't access your services, they can't access my services. It is out of their ability to be able to afford them. There's policies in place that won't that prevent them from having a grocery store that sells organic, clean, real food at affordable prices in their community. These are called redline districts. You know, whole Foods will not, whole Foods will not put their restaurant or their grocery store in a redline district. ⁣ ⁣ 12:37⁣ Food deserts Well, yeah, and it's not even just food. Deserts, like just because you can get pop tarts in a grocery store, does not. That's not food. So it's actually having nutrition deserts, and so that's a huge problem. So that is the work that I'm really focused on individuals who can afford to buy, you know, food at a Whole Foods, but they still choose to buy processed, refined food. I've been working with these individuals for a long time. I've, quite frankly, become a little bit exhausted because we do have so much information there's too much information out there, in fact, but it's interesting. I've decided to really focus on BIPOC women, and that is an area that I know I'll be focusing on probably for the next half of my life, the next 50 years, and it's the area with some of the biggest challenges, because we're still facing racism in this area. We're still facing those economic gaps as well. ⁣ ⁣ 13:31 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ That is something that I became very familiar with when I was working with CVS Health, because I was hosting a show called Healthy Communities. We focused on the social determinants of health and seeing the lack in some of these communities that, really, put it, halted a number of communities from being able to access what is healthier for them in their everyday, in their communities. But also it's changing the habits, because if for so long they have been eating a certain way to survive, it's changing the thought, moods, behaviors and habits to thrive, to live well to realize that they can turn so many things around, and it's not just the food, like you said, it's an emotional response as well. ⁣ ⁣ 14:10⁣ Can you touch on why keto kills? That was something that came up because we hear so much about keto on both sides. I'm curious from your perspective, why does keto kill? ⁣ ⁣ 14:20 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Yeah. So I'll actually just jump in and say it's not my perspective. It's actually what the scientific literature shows. So we have media, nutritionists, health advocates promoting keto based on a very few amount of studies and these studies have not been done long term. All of the studies that I've looked at that have been done long term. They had to actually stop the studies because they actually resulted in people having higher rates of suicidal ideation, clinical depression, which they didn't even have starting keto, higher rates of heart disease. Some studies had to be stopped because some of the patients they couldn't even carry out the long-term study because some of the patients ended up with 98% arterial blockage from keto. So they couldn't ethically continue the study because the subjects, the participants, would have died. ⁣ ⁣ 15:06⁣ So when you just look at the evidence, that is why I do not promote keto but scientifically, from a biochemical perspective as well, when you choose to eat that high amount of fat, that high amount of protein, and especially if doing it through an animal-based diet, you create what's called a TMAO reaction in the gut. This happens in everybody. It's just a basic biochemical principle. Most people have no idea what TMAO does and is. So this reaction happens and then it starts immediately to clog arteries. When you do this, you create insulin insensitivity. You cannot draw glucose and insulin across the arterial walls into the cells where it's needed. So your kidneys, your heart, all your organs that are dependent on glucose and insulin no longer able to receive it. So then you create diabetes, heart disease, mental health disorders and more. So there is no way I can get behind that, because the long-term studies show keto kills. ⁣ ⁣ 16:02⁣ So now we have a bunch of hooligans and I'll call them hooligans running around the planet. Most of these hooligans are backed by media because they running around the planet. Most of these hooligans are backed by media because they you know how media loves to. You know jump onto one little molecule like resveratrol from red wine, one study showing that resveratrol it does the body good. All of a sudden, the media is promoting red wine as being good for you. ⁣ ⁣ 16:22⁣ But what media fails to say is that you'd need to drink 12 bottles of red wine in one sitting to get enough resveratrol. That would actually be beneficial to the body. So we have people running around spreading nutritional information that do not know how to read an actual scientific study from beginning to end, and this is killing people. So it's not just keto kills, media kills. Nutritionists who fail to read scientific studies are killing people every single day, and I do not say that lightly if they're in. You don't know how many nutritionists that have patients, clients that end up coming to me afterwards because their markers are worse than when they started with that nutritionist, and so it's really, really important that we start looking at nutrition as a body of medicine that is not going to be run by people who've never read a single scientific study. ⁣ ⁣ 17:11 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I have a question about testing too. When people do come to you, do they get specific types of tests, meaning like their vitamin tests, blood work, like a full panel? What's the first step for somebody that comes to you as a patient or a potential patient? ⁣ ⁣ 17:25 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Yes. So everybody who comes to me already has years of diagnostic testing done. They have years of lab results. They have everything. Most often I don't need. There's only a few more tests that I need done. They're very minor, so they already have it. Because they're on disability, they've had their chronic disease for a long time, they're on 36 different medications, so they don't need more testing. ⁣ ⁣ 17:47⁣ This is the other side that drives me, and if I can say this on the show, you can say whatever you want Thank you, that shit. Crazy is when a health coach takes on a new client and then they just send them for these expensive tests that do not need to be done, whereas they already have the testing done. We've seen their lab markers, we've seen their hormone panels, we've seen everything. So my clients come in, we already know their full diagnosis. I work with their entire medical team to reverse their disease. So the premise of what I teach is only there's two things you have your chronic disease because of two factors okay Nutritional deficiency that resulted in toxicity or toxicity that resulted in nutritional deficiency. You reverse those two factors and the client heals. Now people will say what about the emotional side of it, which I know is really a lot of the good work that you do. ⁣ ⁣ 18:36⁣ Of course there's an emotional side of it, but here's the thing Most of my clients don't have the mental capacity anymore because their brain fog is so bad that you can coach the hell out of them and they cannot remember what you just said. They cannot implement the tools that you know. So the thing is is that we can reverse those two things nutritional deficiency and toxicity which really starts with the next meal that they eat, the next meal they can do it that day. Within a day they can start to think clearly, which means that they can address yes, intergenerational trauma is 100% true and affects probably everybody. Right? ⁣ ⁣ 19:11⁣ People have huge traumas, big T traumas, little t traumas, emotional concussions All humans have that. If you're a human on the planet, you have that. So what we do is we just go in with the simplest thing that every human does on any given day, and that's that they eat food. We just change the food that they're eating and all of a sudden they heal, even though they still have the big T traumas. They still haven't even dealt with that. But now that their brain is clear and their body's nervous system is not in angst because it's looking for nutrients or it's highly toxic, all of a sudden they're able to address the emotional side, or the spiritual side, or their mental health as well. But we start with the physical first and foremost. ⁣ ⁣ 19:50 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Yeah, that's why you're the type of doctor I love to work with, because there is such a need for the liaison between the client, the patient and the doctor, and I think that's where health coaches come in. But what? Where you really hit the nail on the head is that, first of all, stay within your scope of practice. Everyone, if you are a health coach that tunes into this podcast or you are in any way in the nutrition or health or medical or mental health field, please stay within your scope of practice. Build that tribe of people, like you mentioned, working with their doctors right, it's not just one, because we all have these areas that we focus on that we're there to support the client or the patient for the doctor, right? So the one thing I do want to share with those who are tuning in is that Dr Nicolette has just graciously offered her reverse your chronic disease. This is her program that she has. It's called Eat Real to Heal, course. I'm going to put that in the podcast notes. And also there is a program, a certification program, that you have, on nutritional detox. ⁣ ⁣ 20:53⁣ If we can just learn how to detox this body from the things that we you know we do it so much for our home. We do it for things outside of ourselves. If we're not starting right here, the temple before you, the one that you look in the mirror and see every day, what are we doing Right? So having something like this is really great. I'll put all of that in the podcast notes. You can look into Dr Nicolette's approaches everything on her website to offer more. What would the first step be for folks that are looking to take this to the next level? They are frustrated, they are getting brain fog, they are getting migraines, they are not sleeping well. You know we can really compound all of these doctor visits that they get and that in itself can just burn you out. So what's the first step? ⁣ ⁣ 21:35 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ The first step is when you go to the grocery store is you have to know the difference between processed food and refined food. So a lot of people don't like taking supplements. They're afraid of supplements, they think they're going to hurt them. But again, that's because they're not looking at the research that shows that supplements do very, very little harm, and in fact, you can count on my fingers how many people have been negatively impacted by supplements, whereas prescription medications everybody's willing to pop those pills and which you do need until you know another way. So the first thing you need to do is know the difference between refined and processed food. All the processed food that's out there usually comes in a box, a bag, a package of some sort. You need to not purchase that stuff anymore. It's full of preservatives high in sodium, it's full in food coloring, it's full of glyphosate, it's full of you know, pesticides, herbicides. This stuff is killing you slowly cell by cell, organ by organ. ⁣ ⁣ 22:29⁣ So that's the first thing you need to know. ⁣ ⁣ 22:30⁣ So when you go to the grocery store, it makes it really, really, really easy, because when you want to go buy the potatoes, sure the potatoes might come in a bag, but try and get the potatoes that are still dirty that come in the box. Buy the apples, not the fruit roll-ups or the applesauce in a jar. Buy the oranges, buy the chickpeas, not the chickpea potato chips that are 100% organic and still covered in tons of sodium and have to have supplements added to them to even be considered food. So this is the first thing that people need to do. You do not need to know how to cook, which is so beautiful. A lot of my clients who come to our retreats they've never chopped a potato or even seen broccoli. And it is okay, because in our Eat Real to Heal program, we teach you how to become some of the best chefs in the entire world, and you don't have to spend hours in the kitchen If somebody has to give you meal plan after meal plan, week after week. This is not intuitive eating, and what we do is teach you how to eat intuitively so you can eat with the seasons, you can buy what's affordable at the grocery store and then you know how to make it really really easily with spending the least amount of time in the kitchen. Really important to cook your food. ⁣ ⁣ 23:34⁣ So if there's a lot of raw foodists out there who are suffering from chronic diseases, one of the most important things you could do is actually use the heat from your stove as medicine, because by cooking the food, you're going to actually access about 2000 times more nutrients and make it really easy on your body to heal. ⁣ ⁣ 23:49⁣ So if you're doing any fad programs right now, if somebody is telling you to fast right now to try and reverse your chronic disease, I promise you. ⁣ ⁣ 23:57⁣ I've worked with thousands of people who fasted and they're still have their chronic diseases and that's because they're still not eating clean, real food. So eat real food. And with our coaching program I just have to say and it's not just an online course where you're going to be left to do it on your own Only 5% of people ever ever even open up, let alone complete, an online course that they purchased. So we offer a lifetime of group coaching every single week so we can handhold you through the process, so you can ask the questions and not have to spend 24 hours just trying to find the answer on Google or within the course. You can just simply show up, ask the questions and, as you age and as you go through menopause or giving birth or whatever it is that you're going to be doing over the course of your life, we're still here for you to answer those questions in our weekly live group coaching. ⁣ ⁣ 24:44 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ And that's the Real to Heal course. Correct, that's your group coaching course. ⁣ ⁣ 24:47 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ That's the Eat Real to Heal course and it's the community too, isn't it? ⁣ ⁣ 24:50 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ It's community. I mean, you're not alone in the battle. It's not one to one and there are benefits to one in one. But I think there's also real benefits to having community and knowing other people are going through something. It might not be your specific battle, but we're all in this together kind of thing, right, you learn from others. ⁣ ⁣ 25:04 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Yeah, and like, for example, andrew, you know he suffered from 30 migraines. A Everybody celebrated Miguel rheumatoid arthritis on disability couldn't play baseball anymore, which is his sport. Couldn't work anymore, living alone at home suffering from rheumatoid arthritis on all of these prescription meds that were just like slowly killing him. When the day his doctors took him off his last medication and declared him rheumatoid arthritis free, we all celebrated. His son died a month later. We were all there to support him and hold him through that time. So, yes, community is so, so, so important. ⁣ ⁣ 25:42 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ What do you think is the biggest fad out there right now that you just wish people would just stop? ⁣ ⁣ 25:51 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ I don't know. Keto for sure is one of the biggest ones. Keto is just another name for the Atkins diet, so everybody needs to know that that created so much heart disease in the 80s. ⁣ ⁣ 26:01 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I remember that. ⁣ ⁣ 26:02 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ So keto, I would say, is the one that is doing the most harm to humans, to their bodies and to the planet. It is horrific when it's, you know, in a time when we need to be consuming less meat because we were told 100 years ago how you, we need protein, we need fat, we need, you know, all of these animal-based products. And now, basically, governments around the world are rewriting all their nutrition programs to say, please stop eating so much meat. At the same time that all the keto advocates came out, and all because of what? They? Sure, you can lose weight, but you're going to clog your arteries doing it. So I would say, keto Fasting is amazing, for sure, there's no doubt about it, but people are using it like it's the only thing that they need to do, and it's so important that, sure, if you're going to eat within that eight hour period, that's fine, but if you have a chronic disease, you need nutrients all throughout the day, and that is critical, especially if you're trying to reverse something like a very aggressive chronic disease like cancer, where you have limited time on your hands. Fasting is not going to get you there. So that's a challenge for me and, as well, the kind of fasting people are doing. ⁣ ⁣ 27:10⁣ I'm a big proponent of intermittent fasting, where you still consume some calories, but not this. You know people who are running around, you know consuming their one meal a day, which you can do for a limited amount of time. But again, you have to look at the long-term studies as well. And as well you have to know that you're not a yeast molecule, you are not a yeast species alone. You are intricate human species. ⁣ ⁣ 27:38⁣ So what happens in the laboratory in a Petri dish, is not the same that happens to a human in real life. That's busy, running around taking care of kids, has stress, you know, because the economy is taking in environmental toxins. So it's really important that people are critical of the scientific research that gets published as well, and anybody can take a course in how to you know understand bias in a research and how to read the entire study. So that's going to be really important is we need to develop a scientifically literate society, and anybody can do that. My kids are teenagers and they know how to read through scientific journals now, and so this is something we need to be teaching in school. So that's also one of the big fads is that our education system is also needs an overhaul. ⁣ ⁣ 28:22 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Oh, that could be a whole nother conversation. I agree with that, not just. I mean in all areas. It's not your everyday home ec, home ec, like when we grew up. You know, and I'm so happy to see that some schools are taking that really seriously, both nutrition and mental health, mindfulness, you know, bringing those into the classroom. ⁣ ⁣ 28:41⁣ So hopefully we will see a change with more champions like yourself. I know we have a little time left and I just want to remind folks that there is a wonderful course, that that the doctor is putting out, and it's called eat real to heal, and also the detox coaching certification she has. I'm going to put all of that in the podcast notes you mentioned. You have a book that you're working on called rise up, and is there anything else that is coming up? Because there's? I have so much on you that I want to talk about in this time and I actually really I do have something I want to ask you about. Please tell me about the Green Mustache Organic Cafes. ⁣ ⁣ 29:16 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Yeah. So back in 2013, I had been working in government up until that point and our local HR manager in the government said could you please teach all our employees the Eat Realty Heal program? And so I did and all of a sudden all the employees started coming back to me saying oh, I don't have, you know, emphysema anymore. I can breathe again. I don't have depression. I just got pregnant after being told for 15 years I cannot get pregnant. Diabetes gone, heart disease. So all of these individuals kept coming back their energy through the roof, you know, brain fog gone. So I started taking on clients. Then because you, then because people are saying can you work with my mom? She's got this disease. Can you work with my cousin? So I started taking on clients and one of the number one things my clients said to me was after they got started with the program and they saw well, you need to be in your kitchen, right? Feminist movement was wonderful, but it really did take humans out of the kitchen and didn't replace them. So that's all fine to take women out of the homes, put them in the workforce, but they forgot to put a chef back in the kitchen for the household. And so tv dinners. You know macaroni and cheese. Those things came to be the convenient food, quick fix, yes. So my client started asking me can you make me the food? So I did. I did. ⁣ ⁣ 30:35⁣ I was like five months pregnant with my third child and I would start making juices and making the food and delivering it to clients and delivering it to restaurants so they can sell it to their patrons. They were asking for the food and I was like I cannot do this anymore. I need a restaurant where I can have a whole team who makes the food and I can be coaching clients. So I quit my job in government, opened up the first restaurant. That's when I was also applying for med school. I had just written my MCAT and all the doctors who were eating at our restaurant. ⁣ ⁣ 31:02⁣ They said Nikki, do not go to med school, just grow the green mustache. So the green mustache is 100% organic, plant-based, whole food, vegan, gluten-free cafe, which means we basically get the food from our farmers. They pick it at five in the morning. They bring it into our restaurant. We convert it into amazing meals lots of warm dishes, cool dishes. Any beverage you get in there is made from a whole food. We do not have refined sugar, we do not have any salt, we do not have any refined oils, everything is made from scratch and whole foods. So that's our restaurant. And, yeah, we had up to eight locations at one point, or seven locations, and we have 10 coming to New York at one point soon. So, yeah, that's an exciting company. ⁣ ⁣ 31:46 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ That's amazing. What a journey. Love it. We have a couple minutes left. I want to ask you if you are willing to do a quick rapid fire game that I do with my guests at the end of every podcast. I'm going to throw out a word and then what you do is come back with the first word that comes to mind. All right, yeah, refined Processed food Intuitive. ⁣ ⁣ 32:08 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Healer Clean vegetables, metabolism, mitochondria disease, reversed bipoc, complete, most amazing total health and wellness knowledge that needs to be resurrected so that we use that beautiful wisdom to heal the planet and heal all people and animals and rocks and trees and soil, etc. ⁣ ⁣ 32:37 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Can I just leave it there? We're going to make that one long word like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. ⁣ ⁣ 32:43 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ That's exactly what it was intended to be. That's great, yes. ⁣ ⁣ 32:46 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ Awesome. One more word for you, just like it's the exclamation point heal. ⁣ ⁣ 32:52 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ Potential. Yeah, and we all have that right. ⁣ ⁣ 32:55 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ I think that's what you're teaching people. ⁣ ⁣ 32:56 - Dr. Nicolette Richer (Guest)⁣ We all do. ⁣ ⁣ 32:58⁣ We all have the ability to be free of chronic disease, and I'll just talk about the nutrition and detox coaching certification. ⁣ ⁣ 33:05⁣ So that is a six month training program for any individual, whether you have a science background or not, whether you're a physician, a stay at home dad, someone who's a physician, a stay-at-home dad, someone who's battling a chronic disease. That's a beautiful program where you're going to learn everything that I know that I've learned in the last 25 years about reversing chronic disease. I download all the science to you the art of reversing disease, how to coach clients and then we help you build a business in helping other people reverse their chronic diseases. So that's an exciting program. One of our former students he just got a $4 million investment for his business that he built. Another student has 169 acre beautiful piece of land in British Columbia where he now works with elders and indigenous communities working to help men and women in their 20s reverse their mood disorders and mental health disorders and chronic diseases. I love that program because it can take anybody, you do not need to be a physician, and it turns you into a healer overnight. ⁣ ⁣ 34:06 - Hilary Russo (Host)⁣ We're our own healers first. Yes, exactly, it's really the only ones that we can focus on is the inner healing, yeah, you know, and then we can support others on their journey as well. Exactly, thank you for being here and just sharing your gift. Thank you for having me on your show. If you connect with what Dr Roche shared during our conversation on HIListically Speaking, it may be time to connect with her personally so you can turn your health around and finally heal once and for all. Just check out the list of notes of Holistically Speaking and see how you can find out more about the Eat Real to Heal program that she has, her course and her detox coaching certification, as well as everything else that we shared during our conversation right here on this podcast episode, and listen. ⁣ ⁣ 34:50⁣ Dr Richer shared that healing is about building your army right, finding the right doctors, the right practitioners, the right coaches to support you on your healing journey. And you know what? Havening could be one of those things, and I could be that guy by your side. So if you want to see how havening can help you with your emotional well-being, how you could hug it out, how you could put the healing back in your hands and make that part of that army that you want to build to heal, to live a well-balanced life. Just check the list of notes I shared how you can get in touch with me for a complimentary session and learn more about how Havening can help you on your healing journey. ⁣ ⁣ 35:31⁣ And don't forget to share your thoughts and your responses about this podcast episode. Remember, every time you download, every time you subscribe, every time you leave your message and thoughtful message on the app where you listen, it lets others find this episode and this could help someone else too, so you can pay it forward. I really appreciate reading those responses and I love to read what you have to share Holistically. Speaking is edited by 2MarketMedia with music by Lipbone Redding and listened to and tuned into and supported by you. So thank you so much for being part of this journey. Week after week, you have everything you need to heal yourself. You might just need a guy by your side, and taking this first step just by tuning in here is all part of that process. So thank you for trusting me on your journey. I love you, I believe in you and I will see you next week.