Episode 12 | The Magic of Fascia: Unlocking the Body’s Healing Matrix w/ Dr. Catherine Clinton

Welcome to the modern day naturopath podcast with Dr. Sue. Real talk for those craving deep healing while it's living in a modern day society. You'll be equipped with knowledge to make profound mind body shifts that utilize ancient wisdom and will facilitate your healing once and for all. Inspired by Dr. Sue's chronic illness journey and all the real and raw pearls she has learned along the way. Come as you are. It's never too late to start. Welcome back to the modern day naturopath podcast. This is Dr. Sue and I have a lovely guest here with me today, Dr. Catherine Clinton, and we're going to be discussing the magic of our fascia. Dr. Catherine Clinton is a licensed naturopathic physician and author and a quantum biology health educator. Dr. Clinton has spent over 17 years helping people overcome their health issues, and she has a naturopathic practice in Eugene, Oregon, seeing patients virtually as well as in person. She's completed her naturopathic medical degree at National University of Natural Medicine. She teaches doctors, healthcare practitioners, and health enthusiasts from around the world and how to apply the principles of quantum biology. She's a sought out speaker across the globe, and her mission is to empower as many people as she can with knowledge of quantum biology for health and helping them explore a new perspective in their healing. So I want you guys to press pause and follow Dr. Clinton on Instagram. She has a fascinating Instagram page. It is Dr. Dr. Catherine, C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, Clinton, C-L-I-N-T-O-N. Welcome. Thank you so, so much for being here. I'm so excited. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to dive in. Yeah. So what exactly was it that made you get into this quantum biology or fascia? I know just from reading about you and hearing some of your story that you had some medical issues in, I think it was in medical school, in naturopathic medical school. So I, from what I learned, it was some autoimmunity Lyme. I think that's how we bonded. I don't even remember, but I remember we talked on Instagram. We like, yeah, I think we DM'd each other about our kind of like Lyme, you know, we kind of found out around that same time. Right. So can you tell me about the symptoms that started kind of creeping up in medical school, where you're like, something is not right. And then how you actually got the diagnosis of Lyme and any autoimmune conditions, because I know in my case, it took me 15 plus years to get a Lyme diagnosis. So I'd love to, yeah, hear your, your kind of journey with how, like how you started with the symptoms and then the diagnosis and then of course, how it led you. Yeah, absolutely. I, I mean, comparatively, I had a relatively quick diagnosis for Lyme. And I think it came because I was in the right spot. Like I was in my second year of naturopathic medical school, really long hours, those classes that you have to be there at 7am. And if you're five minutes late, then you have to retake it the next year, you know, all this pressure. And I got two different autoimmune conditions. I got ulcerative colitis and Hashimoto thyroiditis. And my symptoms were, you know, fatigue, but also a lot of GI symptoms. I actually ended up in the hospital, and they were wanting to remove part of my colon. I called my now husband, my boyfriend at the time, I was like, meet me outside, you know, because I, I wanted that whole colon out of the way. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was really bad. I just did not have the foundation to go through that much stress of medical school. And it was actually the clinician, the physician that I was doing clinical rotations with, she was also my physician. She was a naturopathic physician, a Chinese medicine practitioner, Dr. Satya Ambrose. And she was the one, because she is brilliant and had her finger on the pulse and really understood what was happening with chronic disease. She was like, we should look at Lyme. And of course, I got that diagnosis as well. So it was really within the first year. And it was because I was in that setting that it allowed me, you know, Lyme can be such a mimicker, but I was just in such dire straits. I mean, having to go get IVs once a week, I just, I was really, really sick. And so she was like, let's see why. Let's see what's contributing to that inflammation and that autoimmune diagnosis. And, and it definitely was Lyme. And so then I started climbing back into, you know, trying to get better and trying to heal from that. God bless her for finding it that quickly. Because, you know, all I see is patients who now, because of my own experience, just like, you know, with having gone through this and not knowing what it was now, you know, it's taking all these patients I'm seeing, I mean, years and years. And then I finally have a different lens. When you've had Lyme, you can see it in other people more. It's like a Lyme detector. Like I can actually have, I actually have like a visceral response in my body. I know it's Lyme and people think I'm crazy. I'm like, no, it's Lyme. And then sure enough, it's Lyme. So did your, did your Lyme come up on a Western blot, like an easy peasy? So it literally just came up. Oh, thank God. I always say thank God for those cases. You don't have to chase some diagnosis. Yeah, I was really fortunate. And at the time I didn't feel fortunate, right? I was like, um, meh. But it was, it's so important to have the correct diagnosis, to understand what's happening and contributing to all the inflammation and the symptoms that a person might be having. And so, yes, I just have a world of gratitude for Dr. Ambrose. She's brilliant and probably saved my life, certainly saved my life as it is now. You know, I'm symptom free. I have a family, a great practice. I love what I do. And I'm not sure that would be the case at all if I hadn't had some healing. Right. And even the diagnosis then, because everyone is, you know, for those not being diagnosed for 10, 15 years, it's just disseminating deeper and deeper, causing more imbalance, right? And then it just becomes this like ongoing neurological and multi-organ system disease. And so do you feel like if it wasn't for, actually I have two questions. So my one question is, do you, how did you actually get through? I remember saying, by the grace of God, I got through that sick. I remember taking my boards. I think I shared this in one of my podcasts with my head on my like arm, filling in the scantron or whatever the heck we had to fill in. And I said, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't know if I'm going to pass out. And I always say, by the grace of God, I finished. So did you, did you like, you know, have that extreme struggle toward the end? Like, it was like, I don't know, because it's really, when you go into naturopathic medical school, you're like, I can't fail. I have all these student loans. There's like, we have to pay all this money back. So there's the pressure and then you're sick. So how did you get through? Obviously she helped you, but did you feel like that was a huge struggle for you? Yeah, absolutely. I think that actually, you know, how you take two different board exams, one in the second year and one upon graduation, that second year was so rough. I didn't pass my anatomy and physiology. Physiology made sense, anatomy, like all knowing every single structure in the body. I remember coming out of there being like, oh, they want me to know every single one. I thought we were doing kind of like, you know, don't you know most of them? I know. Oh, and were you a science major? Because I was a business major who became, who changed my career. So you could just imagine. I was like, literally, I think I came home crying like 42 times, you know, like, literally within a month being like, oh my God, I had no idea than going to the cadaver lab, trying to figure out what all these, and I was like, oh my God, anatomy was my, I would say that was my hardest subject and knowing where, like how well the nerves had innervated and, and all the, it was just so complicated. So I feel so much better you saying that because I used to really like feel bad about myself, but when you're not feeling well and you have to learn that minutia. And it doesn't fit into anything, right? Physiology was like, oh, I, I totally get how the body works. Like I understand that, but learning, I mean, I just ink massive amounts of minutia. Yeah. That's where I really struggled. And then I extended my education to five years. So. Oh, good. So then you had a little bit more time to take that pressure off and you can heal. And then you'll come out of school being like, I want to teach quantum biology. I want to teach everyone about fascia or did it just happen that way? So how did you get into all of the. This biology and this expertise in fascia that I've been fascinated with on your social media channels. Yeah. No, it really was a combination of being sick and trying to figure out what it is. Like, I'm sure you can identify with this, like late nights. Researching what is going on with me? Why am I so sick? How do I get better? And I was researching mitochondria and that's where kind of the doors to quantum biology came in. This idea that really small things affect our entire biology. The flow of electrons, the flow of protons, how that is mimicked in our fascial network. And I was also looking at some of the early research that came out of UC Berkeley with Graham Fleming and Greg Engel looking at quantum coherence in photosynthetic bacteria and how a photon of light gives to a photoreactive center. And it's an incredibly brilliant system. And it really speaks to the quantum biology aspects of life and how it's not always these macro things that are happening in the body. There's this language of frequency. And so that really opened the door to that room. And I haven't left because it's so fascinating. That's amazing. So did you start then incorporating or were you already incorporating some of these things with your patients and now it just kind of went to a next level the more that you started getting more expertise and research about this? Yeah, definitely. I was already incorporating things that were incredibly powerful and I didn't understand why. And then to get the reasoning behind it and keep getting information around some of these quantum biological interventions was like, oh, now that makes sense. I never understood why that made sense. You know, so many things, homeopathy, hydrotherapy, heliotherapy, the power of the sun, all these things, so incredibly powerful. Yet in naturopathic medical school, it was like, it just is. We don't know why. It just is. Yeah. Right about that. It's like we just learned, right. Because, you know, I don't even think of homeopathy. I mean, in that way, it's really hard to explain even homeopathy to some patients. And we usually have to, as layman terms as possible, try to say, you know, you know, like cures like, and they're like, what? If you, right. So it could already be complicated. So then, you know, when people are looking for healing, they're looking to us to kind of, you know, get it down to a level that they understand. And would you say that the topic, I actually want to talk more on the topic of fascia specifically. Can you tell us, for those who've never heard of the word fascia, or don't know what it is in your interpretation of it, what would you say the best way to explain fascia to someone? Yeah, that's a great question, because a lot of people haven't heard about it. I mean, you brought up cadaver lab in medical school. That fascia was the thin kind of white covering that we would remove from all the organs to get at the real thing, right? It was the scaffolding of the body. And that's true. It does definitely help support different organ systems in the body. But it's much more than that. So when you look at fascia, it's really this body wide web of connective tissue. It's like our bones are a loom, and our fascia is this fabric stretched throughout the body. Continuous, it's a continuous fabric, a continuous system. And when you look at fascia, it's connective tissue. And connective tissue is mostly collagen. And when you look at collagen, and this fascial network, we're used to thinking of the double helix of the DNA, right? That ladder kind of representation. But collagen in our fascia creates a triple helix. It's called tropocollagen nanotubules. Really small, but the triple helix creates a tubule, a tube. And so what we have are these tubule collagen networks running throughout the body from our most external layers of our skin, all the way down to our most internal structures. And what's fascinating, and I'm sure we can talk about this more, is that our fascia is really a quantum communication network. It is lined with this specialized, easy water network. And it is carrying energy in the form of electrons and protons and information throughout the system. So there's a way to look at our fascia as this repository or this reservoir of energy. And there's a way to look at the body where we see pain, where we see inflammation, where we see symptoms as a deficiency in energy. And so it's this incredible system that we can support for overall health and any kind of symptom that we might be having in the body. Oh, I love that explanation. And it's like, do you also think of it like people use the word like matrix? Like, right? Like you said, like a web, right? And you're right. When we were in cadaver lab, yeah, I remember now kind of pulling away that fascia. And would you say if you had to show fascia, and maybe I'm not saying this in the proper way, but for me, people understand what a person who is sick and they're like sick fascia would look like or fascia that is on a patient that is having chronic health issues or a lot of inflammation, or their lymphatic flow is not, or, you know, let's just say they have a lot of trauma versus someone whose fascia is, you know, more, would you say, cleaned up or flowing better? How could we say, like, do you understand this type of question? Like, I'm trying to word it in a way like, like, could we see it? I know I've seen pictures before where you're like, oh, this is fascia that looks more healthy versus non-healthy. So can you talk more about how it would look? So when we're looking at the difference between healthy fascia and fascia that isn't as healthy, I think we're looking at a couple things. We're looking at fascia that isn't moving, literally, right? So the person is sedentary. They're not moving. And when we move, our fascia is piezoelectric. It's like a quartz crystal. So when we compress it, it creates an electrical charge. And that electrical charge also creates infrared energy. And it structures the fascia in a certain way. And then the second thing we would see is that the fascia is probably dehydrated. When we're talking about this fascial network, we're also talking about the water that lines it. So when water in our body comes up to a hydrophilic surface or a water-loving surface, like our fascia, it takes on a different structure. It becomes what Gerald Pollack, and he's the one that has done a lot of the research around this type of cell-bound interfacial water. He calls it exclusion zone or EZ water. And he proposes that when the water comes up to fascia, it takes on a hexagonal lattice formation, like a honeycomb, right? All of these hexagons. And it takes on a different texture. It's more gel-like. It's more viscous. And this water is, again, a reservoir of electrons and energy. It has free electrons that can move throughout this network, which we already know spans from our external layers of skin all the way down to our most internal parts of the body. So it's the fascia, that piezoelectric fascia that needs movement, as well as the water that's lining it. And so when you're looking at fascia that's in need of support, you see fascia that is immobilized, that is not moving, and it's chaotic, right? The strands of collagen and connective tissue are going any which way, whereas fascia that is being moved looks like all the fibers are oriented in a similar direction. And then you would also see that it's hydrated. It has this interfacial water, this easy water lining it. And it's really quite extraordinary how profound the difference is between dehydrated fascia that's not moving, that's adhered, maybe by trauma, maybe by surgery, but they are starkly different when you're looking at them in the real physical form. Okay, that's exactly what I what I wanted you to clarify. So you literally visibly can see it, and what I'm hearing is a sedentary lifestyle, not moving your body, and also not hydrating properly, is going to create this stagnant fascia. And like you said, the directions are not going to be as cohesive as you would. And I would love maybe what I'll do is I'll put a link, if you could share with us at one point after the podcast, I can maybe show a healthy fascia versus unhealthy fascia. And I'd love to talk about people who've had emotional trauma and suppression, right? Those patients who say, you know, something happened to me when I was younger, I never really processed it, or I had to keep going, or my parents were always telling me, stop crying, get over it, move on, let it go, all of that. How, in general, have you seen trauma affect fascia? Have you seen, what symptoms have you seen? And I want to talk about this specifically, because I personally found this PT who does something called fascial counter strain therapy. Have you heard of this before? Yeah, I was I didn't know much. I know it's basically they said it was like a subset of fascial work. And she has helped so much, just from releasing from like an emotional perspective with migraines that I've suffered from that no one else has been able to help. She's done like emotional release fascia. So can we get into a little bit about the emotional trauma, you know, this how fascia comes into play there and the symptoms it may show? Yeah, definitely. I think that this is something that people have been reporting for so long, that connection between the fascial network and its ability to hold emotion. And, you know, the definition of trauma really is when the body can't process it, when that emotion or that event can't flow through the body, it becomes stuck. And it can become stuck in different tissues. We see research showing that the, you know, upper neck and shoulder muscles can hold tension associated with depression or anxiety. And fascial release helps that condition. We see the same thing with vagal tone and emotional status and mental health and the state of the nervous system and whether that fascia is adhered and stuck or whether it's moving. And, you know, it's really the work of pioneers out there like Stephen Porges and this polyvagal theory, really talking about how we can hold patterns, physical patterns and holding patterns from different traumatic events. And those patterns are not only emotional routes of pain, and we can talk a little bit about that if that's exciting, but there's also the tissue response of holding a certain posture and how the fascia becomes restricted. And back to this idea of the fascia being instrumental in the flow of energy and information throughout the body, wherever there's a restriction, there's going to be an obstacle or a blockage to that flow. And we're going to see that in so many different systems. So the symptomology of adhered or blocked fascia can come in so many different versions. But what you see kind of across the board is when that fascial work is done, when fascial maneuvers or release, counter strain techniques, all of these different methods out there, the person that you think you're working on them for a physical tissue complaint, they immediately have this often very intense emotional release because the two seem to be interconnected. Absolutely. I'll never forget the first time I went to that fascia practitioner, the physical therapist, I, the whole car ride home, just crying, like, like, drainage from my nose, like, just like crying like that, like, that, you know, when you're like, out of commission crying, like, you're, you're crying, this hysteria type crying. And I was like, Oh, God, that's how I knew I was at the right place. But I made sure to tell her and I think it's also important to share how doing too much too fast. It's also the way too much for people. And I made it very clear, hey, I'm very sensitive. I've had a lot of trauma. I've had a lot of chronic health issues. I don't want the floodgates to open too quickly, right? I don't want to overwhelm my, you know, physiological ability to get this stuff out and actually create more of an issue after. So have you told you know, have you have you seen a lot of sensitive patients where it's kind of like, a little goes a long way? Or you are you have a lot of patients who you can kind of get in there and go deep with them right away? It's so individual, right? And those sensitive patients, I think, really need a foundation in, in the basics, right? They need to be able to drain, they need to have circadian alignment that I mean, there's so many different things out there that can create a foundation where releasing that trauma is not another trauma. It can flow, it can be released. And so I see both, you know, I see people come in that have a strong foundation, and we can go right to that. Or I see people that we need to work on the basics for a little while, because I like you was the same way it was like, I just needs a step wise progression towards health, you know, letting the floodgates open is just too much for, for my nervous system, honestly. And and that's what got me sick to begin with. Yeah, yeah. Right. Keep pushing it. And it sounds not fancy. When we say basics, I'm selling a broken record, because people will be like, where do I start? I'm like, well, the foundations and I don't know, were you familiar with my mentor, Dr. Stenson? Did you know Dr. Stenson? He was so he was one of our mentors. He was on the East Coast in Connecticut. And he used to stay to us when we used to grow. We graduated 10 years ago. And we were literally scared shitless to start practice because we were like, how are we going to help people we were scared, you know, we call ourselves baby docs. And he would be like, literally half the people that you see, if you just get them hydrated and drink water, they're going to come back feeling better. So to your point with stagnant fascia, and how you said it needs movement in water. One of the biggest takeaways, right would be please drink water. I mean, I don't know why it's so hard for people to drink water. But I feel like I say this, like 50 times a week, it's hard for people to drink water, it seems like they're very resistant to it. But then once they drink water, they literally feel like a new person, their brain fog lifts, they feel less exhausted, their anxiety is better, they're not dizzy anymore, you know, so are you seeing people resistant? Yes. And I see a lot of people. I mean, if we just look at our modern day life, it's so dehydrating, right? Like, we live indoors for the majority of the day, we have these artificial it's like that 70 degree year round temperature, whether it's from heat, whether it's from air conditioning, our lighting is really dehydrating as well. When we look at metabolic water and how the mitochondria are creating water. I mean, there's so many, we have a epidemic of mouth breathing, which is really dehydrating. Wi Fi can be dehydrating to this like liquid crystal water we're talking about in the body against our fascia. So I think it is going hand in hand with our modern day setup and how just overall dehydrating that can be and people are sometimes drinking a lot of water and they come in and are totally dehydrated. I'm so happy you just mentioned those other things, because we usually think, oh, yeah, coffee, dehydrating and not drinking enough water, maybe getting on an airplane, but we don't realize how much light, right? Just just being on screen right now, then, you know, when we're done looking at our phone, then going to write a chart. No, now, you know, now we're back on our phone. And then there's Wi Fi going on, right? So that's actually really important that you mentioned that. Think of all of these ways combined, if you're not drinking enough water, that's compounding. So would you say with water? Are you is there any special waters that you love for fascia versus like just drink filtered water? Or do you either add certain minerals that you like? Or where are you there with water? Yeah, I definitely like minerals. It's just back to that basic osmosis, right of being able to get the water where it needs to be outside of the cell inside of the cell. And, you know, I think that when we're talking about water and the fascia, it's also important to realize that when we move those little fibrocytes, so fibrocytes are cells that put down fascia. They are the cellular matrix of fascia, fibrocytes and fasciocytes. But fibrocytes put down, or excuse me, fibroblasts put down fascia. And they also secrete hyaluronic acid. So when we move, those fibroblasts are triggered to release hyaluronic acid. And when we look at hyaluronic acid, it is completely covered. It has a full hydration shell. And some research has even put it at, you know, 1600 water molecules surrounding one molecule of hyaluronic acid. So movement can be really hydrating. And we have, it's just really interesting when we talk about hydration, like there's so many different inputs of water, but water with minerals is definitely my hands down go-to when it comes to what kind of water we're intaking. And I love that you said that, movement in general will hydrate you. I did not, the hyaluronic acid part, I did not know. Thank you for sharing that. That is amazing. That just moving alone, just taking a walk, people think they need to go to CrossFit. They need to do Barry's Bootcamp. My patients would literally be facedown if they did that the first day they saw me. And so would I. So I don't recommend those extremist things right away. I usually tell them just walk, like take a 30 minute walk. If you can't take a 30 minute walk then you take a 10 minute walk. And what I noticed is by the second, third or fourth appointment, I haven't even told them to go to the gym. And now they're at the gym doing a class because they actually feel better from just starting to walk and we're giving them hydration, right? With minerals and we're giving them some basic nutrients, like maybe a multi or some minerals, right? A probiotic, maybe some vitamin C, right? These basics that are not fancy, but that's what they needed to be able to feel better, to actually start getting moving. And did you, do you actually do any fascia therapy, like hands-on work with your in-person? Yeah, I'll do all kinds of different fascial techniques, whether that is a strain, counter strain, work with my hands, whether it's work with acupuncture or acupressure, like suction cups or cupping, you know, that Chinese medicine therapy where you put moxa in there to get it hot and it creates a vacuum where you can use kind of suction cup ones that do a similar thing. But all of these things are working on the patient's tissue. There's a great fascial maneuver, there's so many different therapies out there for patients to do the fascial maneuvers on themselves as well. So it's something that they can continue at home. And I think it's, it's so important because when we talk about that piezoelectric capacity of fascia, that comes from us moving the fascia, but it also comes from other people moving our fascia, right? So it's an incredible therapy. Body work is so incredibly healing. For the fascia movement too, do you feel like getting a simple massage is helpful for people? So that will, you know, let's just say someone just wanted a relaxing massage. Like I just had a patient just yesterday, she got some bad news about something. She needs to just calm down. You know, just getting a simple massage, not only will just help her nervous system, but it's going to move fascia too, right? So even just having that, also that other energy, my, one of my acupuncture doctors in medical school, he always you know, just to have somebody else do a therapy feels really healing too, right? So you could do some stuff to yourself, but nice when someone actually can do something to you and have someone's hands on you with the intention of helping you. Yeah, absolutely. Just being in that space to receive can be something that a lot of people with trauma, chronic illness are not very good at, right? This ability to receive help. And so getting those therapies, just a simple massage can create this space in the personality where it's like, I am worthy of receiving help. I am worthy of that touch therapy, of that healing. And that just in and of itself can be medicine. So profound, right? And even, even one thing that I noticed when I went to that fascia therapist, she said, Oh, I did this extra training on the emotional release with fascia. She did like an extra certification and it was like an EMDR without talking. It was so wild. And why I brought this stuff is because sometimes, and I don't know about you, I don't know if you've had EMDR or you've experienced it yourself, but you have to tell the practitioner what you see, like, right. And then throughout your healing, while I love EMDR, I was at a point where I didn't want to talk about, I didn't want to mention it anymore. I didn't want it to come out of my mouth. And when this fascia therapist, she literally just said, I'm going to put my hands on your head and I'm going to feel when something kind of like lights up for lack of And I would have memories just flooding through my brain, but I didn't have to say it out of my mouth. And that was healing. And that's when I knew, okay, maybe I needed the EMDR in the beginning, but maybe to finish this type of trauma work, it's time to just have that body work where my body is releasing. And I don't have to say those words because sometimes just saying it just and talking about it again and bringing it up and even though it's EMDR and you're supposed to be processing, it's not just talking about it to talk about it. It still has to come out of your mouth. And that, you know, sometimes when you're going through a lot and you're under stress, that's like the last thing you want to do. So I want to encourage everyone to do some body work if they do have trauma, right? Because this, this fascia movement and release can be so incredible. And it creates the safety that a lot of us don't have after experiencing trauma, right? There's a lack of safety in the world around us and in our physical body, especially dealing with chronic disease, right? It's this lack of safety. My body isn't safe. It hurts. It is not doing what it should be doing. I, I don't. Right now, why, right? Why am I, why is my body against me? Right? So you almost, you're just, you're like a victim to your body. And so doing something like that creates this safety that doesn't require reliving the trauma, talking about it. It's just actual messages to the physical tissue. And we know it's all connected, right? The, the sensory pathways, the motor pathways are influencing the limbic centers, the emotional centers, the prefrontal cortex. It's all connected. So when we can get safe in our physical body, that informs our nervous system and our emotional states. Absolutely. I love that. And speaking of safety, what about the patients who I've done everything in the world to lose weight and I can't lose weight. I've balanced my hormones. I'm eating well. I can't lose weight. Do you happen to see people with just fascia and lymphatic restrictions? Do you happen to see a lot of those potentially do having emotional trauma or suppression? And it's kind of like this almost like holding pattern of, you know, like holding on sensation, or, you know, sometimes it could be some people have said like a pad of protection, right? That weight might've served them in some, in some sense, or it could have been a secondary gain, right? Secondary gain. I always share this because people don't realize how their illness can be protecting them from, from something, right? Like there might be something that you're getting, you're subconsciously not, you know, you're, you're doing that, but you're consciously not wanting that to happen. So where do you see weight loss in all of this and lymphatic flow and motion, fascia? I think it's something that a lot of people are working with or struggling with right now, right? But the way I see it is I usually start with something like basic, like movement, like circadian rhythm, right? That morning light sets up all those hormonal cascades, our metabolic cascades, making sure that we are getting sleep, lowering the lights at night. But there is definitely a subset of the population where that doesn't work. And that to me really points to the nervous system and that lack of feeling safety. And so that fascia, when we talk about our fascia, you know, we're talking about it like scaffolding of the body, covering the organs and systems in the body. What we don't realize is it's covering our nerves and it's going through our nerves as well. So if we are attending to our fascial network, we can have obstructions in the flow of information and energy in our nervous system, that part of our body where we need to feel safe, where we need to feel a sense of belonging. And if we don't have that, it's going to be an obstacle to so many things like weight loss. Yeah. And that's what I'm hearing a lot of lately. I'm not, I'm not also, they'll say, I'm not also willing to go there. And I say, okay, you know, we have to get them at a place where they feel safe enough to go there. And right, because some people are not ready. They'll think that they might be ready, but it's not easy to go into some of these things that have caused us to feel unsafe. Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes just the recognition of, oh, that is affecting my nervous system. That is affecting my internal dialogue. Sometimes even just that can be incredibly profound in the shift of the energy flow in the body of so many different things. So I think when people think of like, oh, I have to address my trauma. It's like, no way we're keeping the box closed. There's no freaking way I'm going to open that. You know, it's like, well, we don't have to unpack the whole thing. Like if we can just recognize that that's a part of the system, if we can incorporate that and understand that we can be safe with that trauma, then that completely changes the landscape for a lot of people. That's so true. It's like, just, just the awareness of it, but, or like planting that seed like, oh, hey, this may be hindering me. There may be something here that I got to work through, right? Even if it's extremely, it's nail paste, it starts to add up. And then even those patients, do you see, do you see a lot of chronic pain patients with this fascia that's like you said, and stagnant and not flowing? And do you see a lot of, are your patients coming in for a lot of pain conditions? A lot of my patients right now, well, have always been sort of auto immune and GI patients. And then they get better and sometimes we'll come back with acute things, but that's been a lot of my practice because that's what I dealt with in school. And I think that chronic pain comes in at the end. It's like, okay, we've gotten the inflammation down. We've gotten all this stuff, but some of the pain patterns are still there. And why are they still there? Because that pathway in the body is still so worn into that neurological pathway and those nervous systems that it just is still presenting like I have chronic pain, even though those things have been resolved. Those inflammatory markers are so down or gone, but we still see that pathway because it is speaking to our emotional centers that speak to our prefrontal cortex. I mean, think about phantom limb for example, like there's no limb to have pain in, but that person is still experiencing pain. Why is that? Because it's not just a sensory pathway of pain. There's an emotional pathway as well in the limbic center, in the thalamus, and that communicates with our prefrontal cortex so that pain is also cognitive as well. So we can have pain that we're still feeling even though the system has resolved all physical aspects of the pain. And so that's what I see with patients and that requires some work on the nervous system and that feeling of safety like we've been talking about. So you'll see them coming in with an autoimmune disease. You'll see all these inflammation markers. You'll do all the beauty of naturopathic medicine and you'll see these values go down and you're like, wow, your labs look great. But I'm still kind of having that like that, you know, that like the body is kind of remembering that, right, that pattern of pain. And that's where, I'm so happy you said that, where that nervous system work, you know, work comes in. So would you say with nervous system work, what do you think are your few favorites? Like I like, I'll do like EFT, like the tapping with patients. I may tell them to go ADMDR. I may say do somatic work. Like I've obviously, whatever makes the patient feel good. But do you have any favorites? Yeah, those are great. I think some of my favorites are, I like to kind of stack things, right? We live in a busy world. So most, I think maybe all of my patients walk away with a circadian rhythm protocol where I'm asking them to go outside in the morning and get natural light. And if they can stack that with some kind of grounding, and if they can stack that. So this is only taking a few minutes, right? They don't have to do one and then the other and then the other. They do it all at the same time. And then if they can do some self-generated sound and, you know, humming, singing, toning, chanting. It is so incredible what five minutes of self-generated sound can do. I mean, it increases our oxytocin, our serotonin, those I feel loved, I feel safe and happy. It increases our dopamine. It increases our nitric oxide and our nasal cavities so that we can dilate those vessels and get more oxygen in through that interaction when we inhale. It's really profound and it sounds so simple. But I guarantee you, I've never had a patient walk away with this protocol and not feel different. And it sounds like, oh, she told me to go outside in the morning and put my feet on the ground and hum. But I've never had a patient come back without some kind of transformation. I'm doing something so simple. Thank you for sharing that because they're like, what is this hippie stuff? That's not going to work. You know, I have a bunch of New Yorkers. So when I tell them to put their feet on the ground, they're like, where? You know? So I'm like, okay, well, you got to get out of the city. You're going to go find some grass and we're going to Central Park. There's grass in the city. You can find it, right? Or even like get a grounding pad. They can also like, let's just say they don't have a place where they can get their feet on the ground as often. Do you believe in those grounding pads at all? Like the ones, like I know like Therastage, I have their infrared sauna. There's like this little pad that you kind of comes out of the sauna and I can kind of stand on it even when I'm not using the sauna. Is that, do you like those? Are they effective? I definitely, if there's a little patch of grass or a little patch of dirt, but also, you know, we're so used to thinking of it so idealistic, like get in this ideal spot and then do your grounding. But the concrete conducts electrons, not as many, right? It's not as large as like the ocean, you know, walking barefoot on the beach or something like that, but it actually does too. I mean, there's no way to stop this stuff, right? So there is that conduction even on concrete. And even the, I think the getting outside, you know, we think of grounding as putting bare feet on the ground or like you said, hippies hugging a tree or something, right? But there are negative ions in the air around us. So just going outside in that morning window where that light is really going to sink our hormones, our neurotransmitters, our metabolic pathways and cascades will also offer some kind of grounding influence no matter where we are. Okay, so that's the biggest takeaway I would say for today is it doesn't have to be fancy. It's waking up, going outside, letting your eyeballs see the sun, right? You're getting negative ions from just being outside, as Dr. Clinton said, and then you can hum or sing or put on whatever you want, music if you want. I don't love those earpods in the ears, so I'd rather you just sing to a whatever, but yeah, I'm not an earpod in the ear girl, too much radiation. But going outside, singing, humming, getting in the sunlight, moving your body can have profound shifts, right? I really want people to know that because they always think now they're on social media and they're seeing like ads for all these devices and supplements and then they're coming to me with like 50 supplements that they bought already, none of which I think they should even start with, right? Or now I should go fast. I'm like, no, you need to go outside and take a walk, you know? So my friend yesterday, do you think I should start fasting? I was like, no, you don't. You know, it's just like a stressful job, stressful events. I'm like, that's the last thing you want to do. So you don't need to do these crazy radical things to see shifts in your health and just moving and drinking water is enough to your fascia. And what else would you say is your most sought out question about what you do or anything that we didn't talk about that you'd say, I really want to make sure that I share this about quantum biology or fascia or anything you wanted to speak more to in some of the topics? Yeah, I think you did a great summary right there. The just interconnectedness of it all, right? How connected we are with the sun, with the natural world, with the movement of our body. Just going back to these things that modern day life has done an incredible job of disconnecting us from the way that we've always been, right? Having some space for silence, having some rhythm with the sun where we have natural light and we have darkness, having social connections, having water, having real food. I mean, these things aren't the latest, greatest gadgets out there, but they're so profound and those gadgets come and go, right? It's like one trend after the other when really we're asking people to cultivate a relationship with the world around them. And sometimes our human relationships don't hold that. I love my family tremendously, but any human relationship has a friction at times, but the sun has no judgment. There's no friction with the sun. There's no judgment about what the trees have or that nature has or that wind has. It truly is an unconditional relationship that we have and it can give us a sense of belonging, a sense of safety that we might not have in our everyday lives. So I think that these things can be incredibly profound, life-changingly profound. Right. Using nature to heal and using silence also to heal. I love what you said when you said just sometimes silence. Was it you? I don't know if I made this up, but there was someone I saw recently. Was it you on your story where they're like, my daughter got a new instrument and now my nervous system is strung out? I don't know. It was somebody recently. They were like very calm and Zen person. They're like, I can't hear any more noise because we were putting, people are listening to noise. They're listening to podcasts in the car and then they're on a zoom meeting and then they're listening to their AirPods with music when they take a walk and just getting some silence enough for your nervous system to just calm down. I love silence. I'm a Scorpio. I like to kind of like, yeah, you know, like introversion brings me back up. Right. Like I need that, that fills my cup back. So whenever anyone wants to have noise around, like, no, no, no. If we have enough as naturopaths, we are talking to people all day. It's nice to just have that quiet time to yourself or like you're at work all day and you're in meetings. It's nice to even schedule a quiet time and having that silence can just really settle your nervous system down. So I am so excited to talk to you about this because I've been following you for so long and I love all the stuff that you share. And I do want to mention you had shared that you have a health institute that you teach practitioners called Quantum Biology Health Institute. Do you want to share a little bit about that for anyone? I'm really excited about it. We have two arms of the institute. One is a research arm, an incredible scientific advisory board of scientists and researchers and experts that we're going to research quantum biology and human health. And the other side of the institute is in charge of the quantum biology health training program. And it's a practitioner training program, although we do have some health enthusiasts in it, but it's really in depth. It's a six month program and we've got, I'm a lead faculty member as well as Eileen McKusick, who does sound work and Dr. Michelle Patrick, who does Chinese medicine in the program and Dr. Albin Oren, who does breath work. So many incredible instructors, Dr. Christine Schaffner and drainage. It's just an incredible institute. I'm really excited to offer this to people and just continue to bring this information out. Yeah, congratulations. That sounds incredible. The website is quantumbiologyhealthinstitute.org and all the information there on the research we're doing on the training program, it's all right there for anyone who wants to learn more. Okay, perfect. So we will put Dr. Clinton's Instagram on the caption for those of you watching on YouTube, as well as also in the podcast Spotify listeners, as well as we'll put, if you want to sign up for her institute, we'll put the link for that. Thank you so much for joining me. You're such a bright light and I'm just so grateful to know you. Thank you so much for having me. It was an absolute pleasure to meet in kind of real life. Yeah, absolutely. We have to do real life next. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening to modern day naturopath podcast with Dr. Sue.