(00:00) forwarding okay [Music] welcome boys and babes to the magic hour a place where we navigate through life’s peaks and valleys with all the vulnerability and shamelessness we can muster with the help of world-class guests from all walks of life we uncover new truths and valuable tools for manifesting our highest potential i’m your host mercedes terrell along with my partner in shine jade bryce hey you guys so when you think about the happiest healthiest version of yourself i’m assuming you envision someone who feels

(00:50) purposeful energetic and painful and who eats real healthy food and you probably don’t imagine someone who’s stuck with prescriptions for life relies on caffeine by day and wine by night or someone who feels sad fatigued helpless or hopeless i know i don’t and today’s guest has made major strides to help people discover the gentle hopeful world of natural self-repair yes and wow what a story our guest today has she’s not being able to sign on hmm i think it is a problem though if you ever have if you already have the zoom

(01:52) app and it’s not updated unless you probably haven’t have you assume in a really long time yeah since i started probably how do i check if this app is already updated just an app store to see if like other apps you would just um when you do the update on your computer it would update all the things that are ready to update look like a stunning goddess good to see you thanks for getting through the technical difficulties of that i don’t know what that was super weird it was just loading like all weird

(02:27) languages and okay so let me tell you that we’re good okay okay cool all right so what i’m gonna do i’m mercedes this is jade hey um we’re gonna i’m gonna read your intro and then we’ll get into the questions for you sounds good i unfortunately still have to go at noon is that does that work for you guys try to do this in hyperspeed 45 minutes right i truck fast yeah okay okay so we are recording on our side all right kelly as a board-certified psychiatrist she knows better than most that conventional

(03:04) medicine really only offers one single solution to every symptom a prescription through naturally healing her own diagnosis and despite years earning her medical credentials she’s broken free from a life dependent on pharmaceuticals and is on a mission to help people get happy and healthy without drugs also board certified in integrative and holistic medicine she’s navigated the many dark spirals of her own awakening process and now a natural health advocate she’s challenging the status quo and empowering people to open

(03:35) themselves to whole person healing something that western medical culture has quite literally vaccinated us against she’s a kundalini yogi and author to several game-changing books on mental health and nutrition the latest of which is called own yourself the surprising path beyond depression anxiety and fatigue to reclaiming your authenticity vitality and freedom which reminds us to come up against our dissonances and reclaim our bodies as our own the passion behind her work is made apparent as she rallies against the standards set

(04:08) by western medicine and big pharma and emboldens us with tools for our own positive transformation we are so thankful to have such a bright light grace us with her presence today please welcome kelly brogan to the magic hour hi great to be here thanks so much for being here so kelly um i’ve heard you talk about how from a young age you would strive to be different um and maybe even defiant in that do you think that part of your character that piece of your character is part of what led you to being um someone who would question the status

(04:46) quo when it came to western medicine yeah so you know i think my story is probably one that most can relate to which is that there is this deeply repressed essential self and then there is the curated will you love me will you finally accept me am i worthy hologram you know that we project to the world and just like almost all of us you know i worked from a very early age to begin to learn how to gain acceptance and meet the needs of my parents um in betrayal really of my own uh understanding of myself and my

(05:23) own needs so that tension was i think you know based on childhood experiences that that sent my essential self really deep into the basement that tension was really really taught um and as i you know began to become a professional in my medical training and whatever else you know i was like always in trouble and constantly it was like getting called to the principal’s office practically in my in my residency you know i’m like in my 20s i’m not a kid anymore and um i just was i’ve always had like this really

(05:56) kind of like my parents would call like a smart mouth right like a big mouth and always trying to get the last word but then i also really always tried to kind of follow the rules and always to be beyond reproach like i never wanted to be caught red-handed or i never wanted to be blame-worthy so it’s like this paradox of fundamentally challenging the constraints that were placed on me and also being afraid um to to defy them you know to move beyond the pale uh and so i think it’s really like in our in our 30s but but maybe in this

(06:32) moment in time it’s happening for more and more people no matter what age they are you know they could be 70 they could be 18. yeah but i think classically it was like you know in our 30s that that that hologram would i think begin to declare itself and we would start to recognize that tension and begin to feel like wow no matter what i do to curate my life i’m still gonna feel like a fraud i’m still gonna feel that hollowness i’m still gonna be chasing like that oasis on the horizon um and so i think you know it was really

(07:05) just that volcano erupting to mix metaphors you know in my uh early 30s that was pretty irrepressible um and it’s it’s a shadow aspect of me which is like a know-it-all you know like i know better than you or you tell me um that actually in that way served me because i was pregnant i remember at the time treating pregnant women medicating them yeah and uh and i was working with an ob who was um i’m sure a very nice kind woman well-intentioned woman and i just started to like challenge her on some of the

(07:41) science of these interventions episiotomy and ultrasounds and c-section whatever and there was you know we kind of like our vibe went rank at that point and uh and that was the beginning of me saying you know what i’m gonna do my own damn research and uh and and leaving the obstetrical field generally finding a midwife and ultimately pursuing uh you know natural medicine yeah so yeah i think it’s it’s these defenses serve us up until a point but that very same defense is like the worst nightmare for my husband you know what i mean like

(08:14) so so it’s at a certain point they need to be transformed into their adult uh their adult version i guess yeah um and that’s your story is really interesting of how you ended up recognizing that this is something you needed to pursue because of your own needs right i mean your own diagnosis um that’s common i you know i think if you if you look at the mds in america who have gone rogue you know um especially those who’ve gone radically holistic it’s it’s because of our own experience with the limitations the low

(08:52) ceiling of that model you know when i was diagnosed with uh hashimoto’s thyroiditis which is you know potentially a chronic autoimmune condition i knew i could have written my own prescription i knew right you know what i what i was looking at and i just i wanted to opt out so i you know i had to walk away from everything that i had learned in order to pursue the quality of life that i i intuitively knew was available outside of the system yeah and um when you did do that when you kind of broke free of that work in western medicine um

(09:31) there had to be a lot of fear around that a lot of um worry about abandoning your original career path and transferring over to this new one what what was that like and how did that work out for you how did it pan out for you um well it’s kind of like any breakup right if you think of if you think of the breakups that didn’t leave your heart in a puddle on the floor it’s probably because you were pissed as hell right so like rage um is a ball in in this kind of a transition and i wasn’t afraid at all

(10:06) quite the contrary it was not something i could choose to ignore and i felt only relief every time i took a step in the direction away you know from my training and those steps you know were really paved by by science because i’d always been you know very interested in science i had thanks to my conventional training i had learned you know how to and specifically my training in medicating pregnant women i had learned you know how to look at research and assess its quality and so i i kind of went back to pubmed.gov and started to

(10:43) figure things out for myself and every time i learned something you know knew that i hadn’t been told or every time you know i was working with a naturopath at the time and i went you know to to get labs on and i saw my antibodies normalizing and i thought to myself well no one ever told me this was even possible let alone that food was relevant or you know um that our whole conceptualization of chronic disease might be just one version of the story i was enraged i was in i’m already kind of like a hot-headed italian irish

(11:16) you know but i was i was really enraged and and it felt like a betrayal you know because what happens is we perentify these institutions and project you know the good parent on to them and i had parentified the medical institution and thought well obviously it knows best it’s going to guide me and all of my patients exactly where we need to go and i had chosen to put my trust there right so you know some say that betrayal is just waking up to something you weren’t willing to see before and i think that’s a very apt

(11:48) definition because that’s exactly what happened i felt betrayed um by the system i had invested blood sweat tears debt you know into but it was always my choice i just didn’t recognize that as a choice because we are presented the dominant medical orthodoxy as the only option not as one of many choices of belief systems to adhere to yeah that makes total sense um i’m glad you made it through that here you are and you having been on the inside did you experience doctors prescribing things to their patients

(12:26) that they wouldn’t even take themselves or give their own family um that’s a great question i actually think that it’s more common that doctors are so enculturated that they too participate you know i know that a lot of my um residency classmates for example were also on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicines and sleep medicines um you know i know that most of us were raised taking antibiotics you know at the slightest cough it’s we were part uh women and we still are part of that kind of a world view that looks at

(13:06) pharmaceuticals as a benevolent offering to minimize suffering you know so i think it’s only now that there are clinicians um including in the the field of vaccinology you know who who wouldn’t participate in the kind of medicine they’re offering their patients you know who who are kind of subtly in that awkward place of saying well it’s right for them but not for me and that was my experience so maybe i was on you know the the earlier edge of that where i when i was looking down the barrel of

(13:39) taking a prescription for the rest of my life i thought well it’s fine for my patients but i don’t want to do that you know so that emergent uh hypocrisy was ultimately revealed yeah and i when we you know i have friends that are struggling with whatever their maybe they have an ailment or maybe they are having a hard time getting pregnant whatever it is and they’re reaching for answers in western medicine for that um and kind of closed off to any other options that might be available and i think you know once you get down far

(14:11) enough into that realm and you figure out okay well this isn’t working now i have to finally decide to look elsewhere that’s one route to it but is there a better way that we can ask people to come up against their like dissonances when it comes to that way that the our culture has sold us western medicine is the only way for so long is there a way to ask people to like remove that dogma you know so i wish everyone could come with us and they’re just not coming to us you know like that’s kind of the difficult

(14:43) news um and many many of the people probably listening uh would characterize themselves as kind of the black sheep in their family because i i built an entire community of black sheep you know and myself included and you know my family’s not coming with me and it’s taken me years you know to um develop a sense of sufficient individuation where i can let them be their own people and i don’t need them to share in my reality for my reality to be valid so that’s a part of becoming an adult right um it is really

(15:19) allowing for other adults to live in their reality and and not needing that uh you know what’s often referred to as emotional symbiosis not needing it to be totally fused in order for it to feel to feel safe you know but i i’ve come across and referenced this greek word um which is an amnesia i love it uh because in my understanding of the definition it means uh the remembering of something once known and i think it so characterizes the sensation that has been described by many at this point with me running my

(15:54) mouth for many years um when they hear this kind of information and it’s almost like oh of course that makes so much sense i knew that right it’s it’s never almost never oh okay dr brogan i’ve read all your references and i see you have a point you know and i’m willing to participate in what you have to offer it’s almost never that so far from it being an information-based transmission it’s simply awakening um this innate i’ll call it wisdom but you know maybe it’s just kind of a compass

(16:31) towards a more peaceful expanded version of reality than the constricted fearful version that that individual is inhabiting right so they’re magnetically pulled to this new understanding this new place that is predicated on a truce with the body right so in this new place the body is not a machinery that breaks down or is rife with inbuilt errors or that ultimately you have to subdue and suppress you know the body is an expression maybe even of your soul right the body is holding the energy of emotional conflicts according to you

(17:11) know uh prominent psychoneuroimmunological researchers like dr candice pert you know this this is now being reified scientifically what um i think so many people and especially artists and creatives and visionaries they just kind of get it already they just kind of know it and it makes sense to them that the body would be this elegant uh and so to have a scientific framework to support that intuitive knowing is kind of the cool moment we’re in yeah and what is natural medicine in your terms and and maybe what is the science

(17:45) behind it so i think of um healing right like we hear this word so much in the zeitgeist we’re in it’s like everyone knows they’ve got to heal they don’t know how they’re going to choose a lane to my mind um healing is a process of self-discovery and i think that that is the defining feature of what i have described as really a spiral path so it’s like you know you revisit over and over again these patterns of victimhood in your life and whether that’s in relationship in relation to

(18:21) your body whether it’s professionally whether it’s in your parenting there are over and over again these points of pain rage shame tension anguish that are presenting to you a familiar dynamic bringing it up for transformation if you are ready at that turn of the spiral you will move towards it with empowerment and radical responsibility and you will rewrite your story so that your body no longer has to experience that particular pattern right if you’re not ready that’s okay too because it’ll come back around

(18:56) and you’ll have another opportunity um and so as we do this if we are oriented towards our life experiences whatever they may be as being rich with opportunity for us to understand ourselves right as the the writers of our own narrative as the creators of our own reality um then each of those experiences is just a moment to learn more that’s it and so it’s um really a path that i think drains fear away and that doesn’t mean you can never feel fear again of course but it means that ultimately you you

(19:33) grow an adult consciousness that comes online that is always present and always able to soothe that ancient emotion right because the fears that we have and that we feel we like to think are universal but what’s interesting is that you know we those are assumptions about the objective nature of emotions and it’s highly highly highly individual you know the things that really bring us to that terrain of existential um angst are very very individual so i don’t know i think natural health is is ultimately a process of supporting

(20:09) that self-discovery journey rather than interfering or imagining that we are at odds with literally anything that’s that’s happening yeah and you say you’re so articulate at putting that all together um and that piece of the psychology that comes behind like whether we’re willing to let these other options be um something we will entertain is maybe it’s about taking away the taboo around the way our minds work you know being in fear of how our minds work and being in fear of diving into our own psychology

(20:46) and figuring out how we do look at medicine and how we do look at wellness in our own body or what that means to us or why we choose you know we have to eat a certain way um every day and be rigid about that or we don’t choose a diet at all and then we you know end up suffering that consequence as well um and in that when it comes to the different diets that people use and the different reasons that they use them the different dogmas they might subscribe to through their diet even like veganism it seems to be almost a religion at this point

(21:21) how do you go about navigating that with your patients when they might be prone to one diet or the other and you know that that’s not probably the healthiest option for them yeah so you know we’ve spoken a lot so far about some of the psycho-spiritual schools i guess that would attend a healing process but i’m a big advocate for you know the kind of i call it chopping wood carrying water you know like very very very basics of a self-care routine and engaging your power of choice which i often you know conceptualize as being

(21:59) the greatest human power we are offered you know in this lifetime um to commit to a discipline and uh you know my my protocol is one month long and it turns out that that amount of discipline can be life-changing right so so what is the what are the components of this month protocol you know they’re based on my own healing experience um and my understanding of the scientific literature they’re very basic the intention is to send the nervous system a signal of safety and the way you send the nervous system a

(22:34) signal is safety is on all those simultaneous layers right so it’s on the physiologic layer where you minimize inflammation you maximize nutrient availability and you eliminate you know the the addictive foods that are yo and drinks that are yoyoing you around including your blood sugar then there’s the psychological layer which is arguably the most important in in my opinion which is how do you create a ritual for the experience of your own power and control over your uh you know embodiment right so so this is

(23:15) a ritual that is different enough it must be different enough from what you are doing that it disrupts your um default mode network your autopilot brain function right and so that’s why you know most um healing programs that that have an impact that’s kind of what you’re doing right you’re not doing 10 of them you’re not you know maybe just trying it out it’s an investment of your energy and attention and you are given a sense of control where formerly there was a sense of helplessness and overwhelm right so

(23:49) that’s the you know psychological layer um and then you know maybe the the spiritual layer is dissolving um your former identity so that your essential self as i referenced earlier can uh you can make contact with that right and if you thought that you were vegan as many of the people who come to my program you do right maybe you thought you were a vegan i remember one patient who said you know i used to think i was a a vegan versus a vegan a liberal and that i was destined to be a school teacher and now i have no idea who i am

(24:26) yeah and you know that confusion that identity dissolution is the hallmark of rebirth it must accompany because it’s if it’s a smooth kind of like oh now i’m a little interested in this then you’re just going to be a little interested in that and you’re going to kind of like squish around the various offerings in the wellness space for the rest of time and and skirt your own awakening potential um from my perspective and i’m sure you know this is a generalization that could be proven um

(24:58) you know proven wrong but from my perspective it requires um deconstruction you know and and for for myself and for most of the patients and course participants i’ve worked with it’s um it’s hard and ugly you know and so the diet part you know it’s really just an offering that you give yourself so that your nervous system is at ease your physiology is balanced and then you can recruit that witness consciousness in the moments of your um when your your old stuff comes up so that you can relate to yourself

(25:37) differently so that you can really begin that self-discovery process without brain fog and blood sugar instability and bloating and you know all of the rest that attends eating a diet that’s not right for you now it’s important that i came upon a diet that i think is right for people who have you know who are struggling with depression principally um diagnoses like adhd or generalized anxiety hypothyroidism multiple chemical sensitivity allergies and autoimmunity this is not the diet for everyone in fact my mentor um advocated for 12

(26:14) different diets that were subtly different from you know eating fatty red meat twice a day every single day all the way to never eating red meat right um so there is a spectrum in my mentor’s absence since he passed in 2015 i have found that it works to use this template for one month and after that month you get in touch with your own preferences right you that that kind of intuitive compass comes online because he also always said and i feel like he kind of gave this to me as a subtle you know offering back when he

(26:48) always said patients will want to eat the diet that heals them so that means you actually like the food that you are meant to eat to heal it’s what you want and that’s why so many of you know the vegans and vegetarians that have come to my office you know when i would say listen um this diet that i’m recommending is very permissive of uh grass-fed red meat how do you feel about that and they would like light up like a christmas tree like that i would give them permission right and that’s not to recruit you know the

(27:22) ethical aspects of consuming animals and um all of what might come into play there and i’ve had many many courageous women work through the spiritual nature of that uh transition you know invoking like native american consciousness and some of those um indigenous folks before us who have templated what it is to have a sacred relationship to the consumption of food you know i i don’t pretend to be any sort of food in that i struggled with it myself i was an ethical vegetarian before i you know was pregnant so i i

(27:54) get it and i don’t need to speak to that at all but from a physiologic standpoint i know that a red meat containing diet that is restrictive of a lot of foods like legumes and grains and processed sugar um is a very good complement to the what what he would call the parasympathetic dominant nervous system so the kind of nervous system imbalance that is very common in these individuals and uh and that’s why i think it sets the foundation for the rest of the journey do you think it’s also the calling of

(28:30) their essentially their microbiome their gut bugs that are like trying to have that communication the gut brain communication of here’s what we need this is the colony that currently is existing here and if you can nourish us we can help you have a good you know a healthy immune system and do older which can be a thin line because some people crave sugar yeah and alcohol because and they think well my body must want this for my healing but that’s because that’s a psychology thing yeah natural medicine

(29:02) like for me a lot of it is common sense whereas the people who find it unethical to not vaccinate your children uh they want to argue science and so what like how are you able to um i guess kind of meet them where they’re at because they feel like you’re endangering them by not vaccinating your children you know yeah that when it comes to um public health we get into the very thorny fields of belief systems and what is dangerous is when we don’t recognize that we are working with belief systems and you know um rupert

(29:40) sheldrake for example is a is a scientist who has really called out um the current practice of science for its use of scientism which is essentially the religious appropriation of science you know um to be used as a belief system without its being recognized as one um and instead being asserted as an objective tool uh for the determination of truth and that’s a very dangerous concept because any scientist any researcher knows that science is a process there’s no destination it is always iterative right so

(30:17) i um i have become you know very very passionate about the the concept of informed consent because i think it’s really the only place where we can land given our radically different perceptions of reality and the different stages that we’re all at in terms of working with our shadows right because it might seem like what the hell does that have to do with anything but it’s it’s my perspective that when you have not done shadow work and what by that i’m you know i’m using jungian terminology by that i mean when

(30:50) you don’t understand that you are running from your own inner badness and you’re desperate to believe that you are ultimately you know the person that your personality suggests you are and you’re not the liar that you’re the murderer the child molester you know the the thief um that those are all bad things out there who belong in jail right then you’re going to be very susceptible to germ theory which suggests that there are invisible little bad things out there that come and get you from other bad sick dirty people right

(31:25) they come and get you inside you and they contaminate you and they need to be beaten into submission right like this is the most childlike psychology that is not substantiated by contemporary science according to me and many of my colleagues um who have allowed this hundred hundred hundreds of year old um perspective that it you know does not account for the microbiome does not account for epigenetics doesn’t even account for the discovery of dna you know vaccine science is over 200 years old and has not been

(31:59) advanced or progressed right so this is this is a relic but it’s really a psychological relic and and one that betrays the immature psychology that says bad things are out there that need to be destroyed because i am fundamentally good right and instead an adult psychology allows for what’s referred to as the mixed object right so allows for things to be both good and bad and actually fundamentally meaningful and non-random right right so in this world my body you know interacts with the environment and what seems bad could

(32:37) actually be good what seems good could actually be challenging right there is that level of nuance right that belief system is totally at odds with a belief system that is forever using force to fight the badness outside of us right and we’re talking about germs but you could talk about you know terrorists or you know you could apply that to any um any technology to apply that same psychology and so if we allow for these differences in belief that inform our medical choices informed consent is the ethical bedrock

(33:14) for those differences to exist harmoniously because informed consent says it is ultimately my choice based on all of the available information to permit you know a medical treatment right to allow for a medical treatment of course one that penetrates my body right let alone the body of my you know my child and so if we if adhere to that ethical tenet then you always have a choice no matter what and there is not anything that supersedes that and so you know i think if we can get back to medical basics we can restore

(33:55) that and then we can begin to uh perhaps really allow for the true exposure of some of these science-based um you know the the indicting you know that the science has the capacity to do of the modern practice of vaccination when it comes to safety and efficacy because right now we’re in paralysis because of the default assumption that this is an urgent intervention that should um supersede all other considerations including ethical considerations but once we kind of secure that then we can actually take a

(34:31) fresh look at what the science has to say so that people can actually make informed choices and thankfully you know despite google algorithmic suppression of you know those of us who are trying to get the word out thankfully i do think that a tipping point has already been reached and kind of everyone already knows someone who knows about this so i actually think it’s a bit late for censorship yeah and i think that’s great that um you know the fact that we’re having the conversation right now i guess speaks to

(35:01) the fact that it’s getting out there you know this is a way and um and it’s a scary thought yeah it’s a scary thought and the whole the whole google censorship um maybe you can speak on that a little bit just because i think that a lot of people don’t know what’s going on there they think if they do it they’re going to get the answers right but they don’t realize that how it’s filtered the opposite yeah yeah i i don’t know how they would know if not listening to this kind of

(35:30) conversation right because it’s um you know there’s been a little bit of of media about it but it was basically in june um of this past year there was an algorithm put into place that effectively treated as fringe any uh alternative natural health um websites that provided information like the information we’re discovering and so me and about i would say 40 of my colleagues um found ourselves dropped off of organic search so what that means is that whereas i might have been a first page result that i have you know

(36:12) diligently without any capital or anything just over the years made sure that i answered questions that people were actually asking about let’s say like the gut brain you know maybe an article that i wrote would come up on a first page search now you literally cannot find my articles unless you put my name right that’s not how people search for information on the timeline if someone were to post it yes so you can interestingly um you can go to google trends and you can actually find um not only you know kind of how

(36:44) these things have dropped off um the the site visits etc like we’ve lost almost all of our organic traffic but you can also see that what they are auto populating the search result with so you know if you put in like like vitamins are and it might come up you know uh synthetic or whatever like things that people actually search for but now the auto population of those search phrases is inconsistent with what people are actually searching for so they’re engineered so it might be vitamins are it might be deadly you know maybe that’s

(37:19) not a great example um because maybe people are actually searching for that but there are many instances in the vaccine realm where people are absolutely nuts or gmos for example people are absolutely not searching for you can see from the google trends that they’re not searching for this and yet it’s coming up as a suggestion yeah right so you know i think that uh and there there’s actually been quite a courageous um whistleblower who’s potentially risked his life um to come forth with the agenda that has been

(37:47) going on behind google’s closed doors because they apparently believe that this is the best way to keep dangerous information from the american public right so perhaps there is a good intention behind it um but it’s like i explained to my daughter you know who’s 10 i said it’s kind of like if you’re going to the library right but you think it’s like a normal library and they’re going to have a collection of books and you know you’re going to look around but instead it has the outside of a normal library

(38:18) but but it’s actually the librarian’s favorite books only only her favorite books but if you’re perusing and you don’t know that then you could miss out on like a ton of books that could be really important for you and if you knew it was the librarian’s choice of books maybe you’d go to a different library right so once we know this information and you you you know i no longer use google as a search engine um you know you can go to duckduckgo or you you know new ones will be born i know that and

(38:48) that’s the kind of silver lining of this is like the transparency era that we’re in like you can’t get away with [ __ ] more and because of that you know there will be fertile soil for you know conscious entrepreneurial efforts to meet the needs of a free informational economy and i i do think that that’s going to be born of this yes i’m all for that authenticity i’m all for that transparency so because you deal with mainly women um how much do our hormonal cycles come into play when we’re talking about

(39:26) mental health and physical health in your work yeah so in my practice i um i’ve treated only women so i have a good amount of experience with um the role of hormones i know nothing about hormones in men don’t ask me about that but um so you know what’s interesting to me is that so many of the women i work with have been uh treated with birth control pills over their lifetime i myself took them for 12 years um because i had kind of an insider knowledge biologically i knew that i didn’t even have to believe

(39:57) that it was like a false cycle so i even continuous cycled so i pretty much took birth control continuously for for 12 years um stop birth control got pregnant like a month later right and then was pregnant breastfeeding for the following god i don’t know what five years so i was like into my late 30s before i actually had a natural cycle that i could even recognize as something to learn about and i don’t think i’m that unique you know i think this is this relatively wrong now and so as you know as somebody later in life

(40:37) i’m just beginning to work with the rhythm of my you know biological energy um and this is not to even go into the territory of how we’re related to the natural world and the moon cycles right this is literally just the the hormonal relevance of your having at least four stages in one month um that you are ultimately you have different levels of energy you have different levels of creativity your brain is functioning in different ways your emotional signatures are going to be different if you don’t know how to work

(41:10) with that you’re you know you’re you’re functioning with a handicap yeah fundamentally right and so because we are coming out of an era of feminism egalitarian feminism where we myself included were so invested in you know i can do what you can do bleeding kind of a psychology like i’m i’m just as good if not better than you know any man and i’m gonna show you by basically you know uh you know neutering myself by basically you know um eliminating and any evidence of my femininity uh we’re coming out of that and thankfully

(41:49) we’re coming into a deeper understanding of how our relationship to our bodies is ultimately a source of tremendous advantage and power but healing that um that energetic cycle over the course of the month does in my experience require the same layers we were talking about so understanding you know how your physiology is reflecting to you hormonal imbalance right so you know i had a patient ally who’s who is very public with her story who was so uh psychotic before her period that in in several of the cycles she

(42:27) would she was like digging a hole in her cheek thinking that something was like in her cheek she was suicidal she had i think five very serious suicide attempts multiple medications multiple hospitalizations within two cycles she was physiologically balanced right and in in her case we also recruited a detox strategy i learned from my mentor called the coffee enema um you know now notorious coffee enema um and so you know it was from that bedrock that she could then begin the psycho-spiritual process of healing as a

(43:03) woman and learn what it meant for her to reclaim herself right from all of the ways that she gave her power away over the course of her lifetime so i’m a big big believer again in that chopping wood carrying water and um understanding that you know you don’t have to take 700 supplements and progesterone and all this stuff first get the basics on lock meditation detox diet and consumer conscious consumerism so making sure you’re not using hormonally disruptive products you know cleaning products or cosmetics um

(43:36) filtering i have no idea yeah yeah um you’re also a kundalini yogi how has kundalini had an effect on your journey with natural medicine um so it’s so interesting because i don’t know if you know there’s a huge controversy exploding in the community right now um indicting you know uh the teacher yogi budget who brought kundalini over from the east to america and um and so i’ve been really immersed in that i just finished a book called premka on on the subject like an expose right a bit of a me too kind of an

(44:13) expose but i think very beautifully presented and um and so it’s interesting because i never really fell into the like i’ve found my religion um that some people literally do with kundalini yoga where it’s conflated with sikhism and so some people really do take it to that level um and i’m sure it served them uh for me it was like a revelation that i could actually get anything out of meditating that’s why i ultimately became a teacher because i knew that i wanted to equip those people who know that they needed

(44:49) to meditate probably more than anyone else with a means to have an ex like a micro experience quickly right because i’m the kind of person who i’ll sit down to do a mindfulness meditation and literally come out feeling worse right self-flagellating like what’s wrong with you that you can’t even sit for 10 minutes you got to like think about what you need from you know whole foods or like the 4 000 things you forgot to write on your to-do list or oh my god i need to call it and that would be the detritus and the

(45:20) garbage in my brain would just be revealed to me um and i actually had that experience in in yoga too like vinyasa yoga i would go in i would do an hour feel like it’s good for me to have done it and i would leave feeling worse emotionally and psychologically because i just spent an hour with my trash in my mind you know and i had no discipline over it i had no capacity to tame it and so i found that the practice of kundalini which invokes many different things so often like hand movements uh called mudras or breathing patterns

(45:51) that are somewhat complex like eight sniffs in and then one long one out the mouth you know your eyes sometimes have to look in a particular direction and sometimes there’s something that is physically challenging like holding your arms up for you know 11 minutes or whatever that ultimately has the capacity to to to train and tame the mind for that small moment so that you can have a little bit of contact with that emptiness and for me it has really worked and gave me the opportunity to develop a daily practice that i think ultimately rewired

(46:29) my nervous system so that i no longer experience uh fight-or-flight the way that i was chronically resting and i’ve heard you also speak about a randomized trial who where they’re using yoga as a means to um help with ocd specifically right yeah so this is my colleague david shanahoff also such a wonderful um heart-centered brilliant man and he has been doing this research for a long time trying very hard to get a lot of it published and he succeeded in uh mainstream journals and yeah in this particular study there was a 70

(47:08) remission rate of ocd symptoms and if you know anything about the pharmacological studies on ocd they’re really pretty sad you know like 23 30 remission is pretty typical with uh the use of antidepressant medications so you know my thought of course this is in the rage and indignation phase was like why why didn’t i at least hear about that even to be dismissed you know as some like quackery or what i’ve never even heard i should know about this one study with this outcome yeah you know because it’s so

(47:37) um far surpasses what’s otherwise available for you know um something that many people struggle with so yeah powerful tool powerful so there’s a few short questions we like to ask everyone who comes on the show so if you could hug your younger self right now what would you say uh i would say you were right all along when you were hugging hmm there oh like six six if you could have the whole world read one book which would it be and not mine no kidding um we recommend all those as well it would um the whole

(48:22) world read one book okay i’m gonna give a plug to my friend charles eisenstein and i would have them read a book called ascent of humanity which i believe is a book that he channeled um it’s huge unfortunately it’s like 600 something pages and it’s basically like you know what you know but here’s another version of the truth about everything um so it’s a sense like a-s-c-e-n-t of humanity oh and if you could whisper one phrase to everyone on the planet what would it be thank you [Music]

(48:58) so before we let you go where can people find you online um so i’m over at kellybroganmd.com and we have lots of free information and then tools you know for your your level of readiness as you as you travel your spiral thank you so much this was amazing and i just want to tell you that the work that you’re doing is really changing lives i’m sure you already know that i’m sure you get all kinds of response from your community but it’s changing our lives as well so we’re just really inspired by your light yeah i appreciate

(49:29) that it’s because you’re remembering what you already knew and that’s good you already are thank you so much have a good rest of your day thank you so much take care bye [Music]