Biohacking For Pet Health

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Oh, thank you so much, doc. It’s great to be here, I’m excited to share all this information with your audience.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I am so excited for this one, bio-hacking for pet health. We’ve been talking bioenergetics on the summit, and it’s really a pleasure to bring in you, your love for animals, veterinary care, and our lovey furry friends, and what we can do for them as well. It is a component, more and more people, I think some of the stats are we spend more money on our animals than we do our families, right? The way that I grew up was you just get the dog food off the shelf and feed that to Rover. And then you learn that may not be the best thing to do for my dog, right?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Well, we grew up on fast food and now we know better.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah, it’s so true. And many other things, to say the least. So when we’re thinking about our pets and our loved ones like that, what is the foundation to a true health program?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Well, just like in us, it’s nutrition and the minimization of toxins. And that goes for planet earth, in fact. It’s not unique, right, if you don’t feed the trees, if the soil isn’t healthy, if there’s a lot of toxins, your soil’s gonna die, the microbes are gonna die. You’re not gonna be able to grow anything. And the same thing happens with us, we’re just another part of that ecosystem. So when we feed toxic foods, which are processed foods, full of chemicals and hormones, and they’re enzymatically dead, it’s dead food. Then how do you expect a species to thrive on that? Now, what’s interesting, and why most people are not really paying attention, is because we and our pets are designed to survive. 

And it’s that survival mechanism that allows us to keep going, even in light of the fact that we’re missing vital nutrients, and that we’re getting a lot of toxins. But we’re still breathing, we’re still walking, we’re still able to move around and think. And so it has this illusion that you’re healthy, just simply because you’re on the right side of the roots, but in actuality, things are falling apart faster and faster. So we need to really help people become aware of the fact that fast, cheap, and convenient, what we’ve been sold for many, many years now is not health. It’s really the answer to broke care. And that’s what we’re used to in our country, is broke care. So we’re reactive to situations after we already see the symptoms. But what I try to teach pet parents to do, is how do we keep them healthy, what is true healthcare? And that’s a preventative program. That’s where we do what biologically speaks to the body as appropriate, so the body can do its job. And we quit doing the things that are causing the damage and getting in the way of the innate intelligence of these amazing machines called our bodies and our pet bodies.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I love that, I love that. And I love that you brought up the innate intelligence as well, ’cause that one, that’s truly coming through on the summit, and I couldn’t agree more. So what’s in the foundational component when we’re talking about our furry friends, and not so furry friends? So you brought up diet and proper supplementation, so how does that play a role in that preventative component, and then really meeting them where they’re at and then developing plans and programs for them?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Fantastic question. So let’s break it down into what I call species appropriate. And species appropriate is what nature designed that particular animal to eat if man didn’t get in the way. So cats are what we call obligate carnivores, and an obligate carnivore has no dietary requirement for carbohydrates, isn’t that interesting?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Dogs are a little bit more adapted because they’ve lived next to man for many more years, and they’ve kind of fed off of our garbage. And so they have a little bit more adaptation and they can tolerate a few more carbohydrates than a cat can. But when you look at processed animal diets these days, the kibble and the canned, they are 40 to 60% sugar. So let me say that again, ’cause this is huge and most people don’t know that. It doesn’t list sugar on the label. It literally lists everything except the carbohydrates. So you’d have to do the math. A hundred minus your protein, your fat, your water, and all that.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

And then you can figure out what your carbohydrates are. And this is irrelevant to the money that you pay for that food. So it could be some of the most expensive food. It could be the prescription diets, which are typically loaded with a corn base, which is all genetically modified. And I would think that your audience certainly knows that genetically modified foods wreak havoc on the gut. Horrible, horrible. So we got all this carbohydrate, we have all this gluten, we have all of these toxins, and chemicals, and hormones, and preservatives. Because pet food typically is sold as complete and balanced, they have to add the required vitamin mineral and fatty acids. When you do that in order to make it shelf stable, they use synthetic vitamins minerals, and then they use fatty acids, that as soon as they’re exposed to air, is gonna start turning rancid. So we are feeding these animals the worst diet possible. Are we surprised that we’re seeing cancers in animals under the age of two.

Now, when I started practicing 40 years ago, we saw cancers one or two times a year. It was so rare that I never bothered to really understand cancer, cancer mechanisms, cancer therapies. ‘Cause we just, with all the things that we saw in a daily practice, we never saw cancer, now I see 10 to 15 cancer cases a week. So it is the number one thing I do in my practice now, where we’re almost exclusively a cancer referral center. Now, I didn’t choose that, it just kept happening. And because I am passionate about finding solutions, and my own journey took me out of the box and said, I’m going to find answers, and I’m never gonna tell somebody there’s nothing more that can be done. So a lot of the animals that I see come to me because they’ve been told by their veterinarian or a referral center that there’s nothing more that can be done. And there’s always something that can be done. Number one is just improving quality of life. So we start with what goes in the mouth. So a species appropriate diet is what an animal would eat in the wild if man didn’t intervene. And if we just follow the principles of biology, it makes the decision making pretty easy. ‘Cause you can have very eloquent arguments for anything, right?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Sure.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

You can get a really good talker that can convince you to buy your own shirt off your back, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. So we need to step away from all of the sales pitches and all of the marketing, and just look at what nature would do if we didn’t intervene. And I think that might help a lot of viewers who are confused about, “Well, do I feed grain free, do I feed kibble, do I feed raw, what do I do?” And that will help them in all aspects of their pet’s life, to figure out what is the right thing to do.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Well, yeah, mimic nature, I love that. So a couple questions. So how did you get unplugged, just out of conventional care, 20 years ago? So halfway through your career, you got into integrative medicine. Was that from your own health journey or?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

No, one of my horses. So we were all, my daughters and I, were all into showing horses. And my youngest was 10 years old, and she was riding in a class. She was amazing, her and our horse, Lilly Lacrew, were almost undefeated in the entire nation. And then there was that one class where something went really wrong, and Lily ended up rearing in the air, just straight up in the air. And no one taught my 10 year old, if your horse rears just bail off. Because the most dangerous thing is the horse rolling over and crushing the rider. So we had a 50 pound child and a 2000 pound horse. And so instead of letting go and just bailing off, she was trying not to fall off of her horse during a show. And so she’s dangling from the reins, and she literally was pulling the horse over backwards right on top of her.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Mmh.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

And the horse had the presence of mind. I don’t know how she did it, but she squatted on one leg. And just as hard as she could, tried to push herself in the opposite direction of where my daughter was falling.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

But when the horse hit the ground, you couldn’t see space between the two of them. So I just jumped over the rail, and I was running to my daughter, really not knowing what I was gonna find. And you just, your mind goes blank and you’re not breathing. So by the grace of God, I got there and my daughter was fine. The only thing she hurt was her pride. Lilly got up and she seemed okay, but another incident happened about a month later back at our training barn. And so I had veterinarians come out and look at her, and they didn’t know what was wrong with her. And their answer to me was she’s not safe to ride. You’ll never show her again. She was seven years old and she saved my daughter’s life. Being told I could put her out to a pasture for the rest of her life or put her down, neither one of those were acceptable.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

And it just woke up something in me. And that’s why I said, I vowed at that moment that I would never tell somebody there’s nothing more that can be done. And we hear that all the time. We hear it in the human side, we hear it in the veterinary side. Where when doctors run out of options and they don’t know what else to do, then they say to you, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can offer.” They’re not being mean, they’re not being bad veterinarians, they just really don’t know anything else. And so because that was unacceptable to me, I started looking for other things. So I called in my human chiropractor, who was my personal chiropractor. And he had just gotten certified in doing animal chiropractic. So I asked him to teach me what he knew, ’cause we were still on the circuit traveling. And so I was able to adjust Lilly as we were going through the circuit, and I was lasering her, and doing all the things I could do and that I knew at the time. And then at the end of that year, five months after being told she would never be shown again or safely ridden, her and my daughter won the United States Youth Reserve National Championship, which is the most prestigious horse show in the entire United States for youth riders.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

So when I tell you, I got goosebumps again, when I say somebody in the audience needed to hear that. It’s so important for us not to be talked into thinking that there is a limited outcome. There’s never a limited outcome, there’s never a lack of possibilities. It may not be the one that we’re hoping for, mine turned out to be. In fact, Lilly is still in my backyard. So here we are 20 plus years later, she’s coming near 30 years old and she’s still with us. So we don’t show anymore, but that’s okay. She had a forever home for all the trophies that she won for us.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Oh, that’s phenomenal, thank you for sharing that.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Yeah.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Well, so on this journeys, right, you got turned on to integrative medicine out of your own need, and that’s oftentimes what the impetus is. And now you’ve been helping thousands of patients and their families in, really their health journeys. Talk about detoxification in the veterinarian world, and what does that really mean?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

That’s a great question too, thank you so much. Because none of this was taught in veterinary school, none of it. So what I was doing is I was attending every human summit, which at the time, you’re going 25 years ago, there was not a whole lot of functional medicine on the human side either, but I was just sucking up everything I could learn. And then as I started understanding the biology, I had the honor of working with Dr. Zach Bush, I had the honor of still working with Dr. Chris Shade. And so I started being challenged by these amazing mentors to understand biology, ’cause that’s really where the magic is. It’s not all the surface stuff. It’s not throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what’s gonna stick. “Oh, I heard curcumin is a really great thing. “Let me go ahead and do that.” It’s understanding these pathophysiological processes, how is the body actually work? And what can we do to assist the turning on or turning off of these metabolic pathways so that we can help the body work the best. 

And as I was moving down this path, I started realizing that if we started treating a cancer patient and killing cancer, we were oftentimes making them sicker in the beginning. And the reason was because their organs of elimination were so clogged up that these toxins had nowhere to go. So quickly, I started really understanding the whole process of detoxification. And there’s six organs of elimination for our audience. There’s the kidneys, the colon, the lungs, the liver, the skin, and the lymphatics. Now, as I came through my journey, I came to understand that the liver and the lymphatics are probably the two hardest working organs of elimination. So I spend a majority of my time on them, though I do address them all. In fact, I’m opening detox centers for pets and their parents. Because it’s not addressed, nobody talks about this. It’s not talked to a lot in the human side either. 

You might get a specialist that does lymphatic therapy, but they kind of forget the liver, they forget that there’s lungs there. So as I started diverging out into understanding the whole body in total, I focus on the liver and the lymphatics, making sure those are working. And then address the other organs of elimination, and support them as well. And one of the most profound techniques I came across was something called assisted lymphatic therapy. And we have a machine that has two glass probes. We can adjust the depth, and the frequency and the intensity of the heads of these probes. And they produce inert gases and a micro-current. And basically they break up the lymphatics, and they open those areas where it drains. So you have armpits, and you have your clavicle, and your groin. And so it opens those up, and then we have ways of decongesting the body, and then draining and pushing it into those areas. And again, it has to be done with some mindfulness, because if you overwhelm the body, you can actually make them feel bad. So you have to learn how to do it. 

But we find it is one of the most effective therapies that we have, and it’s all of our patients. In fact, it’s not just for the sick ones. These are things that we do for our healthy animals to keep them healthy. Because we’ve just never lived in a toxic world like we live in today. We are inundated, overwhelmed, and we just have to have help. Because we don’t have the same lifestyle, we’re not outside sweating in the sun, we’re not doing high intensity exercise. And our pets, they’re lucky to get up from the carpet, walk over to the food bowl, take a walk around the block, right? But most animals are not doing that high intensity. Again, go back to their natural lifestyle. They lived outside, if they got hungry, it was dawn and dusk. And then they had to work really hard to capture their food, it didn’t just lay there in the bowl. So they had to chase it down, they had to rassle it, they had to kill it. Then they had to eat it really fast because something was gonna eat them, that heard all that commotion going on. 

And so it’s a tremendously different lifestyle. So we have to figure out how can we start mimicking that lifestyle, and for some of our older pets that have arthritis, maybe we have to modify that a little bit. So I have one of my bio-hacking machines. It has vibration and frequency. So the animal just has to stand on the vibration plate, and that helps with their musculoskeletal system. It helps with toning, it helps with bone health, it helps with lymphatic. And then the frequencies, there’s over 800 different programs in there that can address everything from GI, to lungs, to cancer, to infections. So we have the ways of working around the problems, but what would we rather do is start with a young, healthy animal, and encourage people to pick the right pet that they’re able to meet that pet’s needs. So if you are not an active person, don’t get a large dog. They need to go out and run, right? So you just, again, it’s about thinking about what we’re doing and being more mindful with the choices that we make.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I love that. Are there certain prescriptions for certain sized animals then for movement and exercise, like there are for humans. We typically have by age and fitness level, do you have those kind of guidelines for animals as well?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

That’s probably a little bit more loose than that.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Sure.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

We look at the animals age, it’s condition, does it have arthritis? And we would have to do x-rays to know that. Does it have a heart condition? So you’re looking at the overall general health. We also, in my practice, I look for deficiencies and toxicities. So my workup goes past the typical CBC blood chemistry, thyroid and urinalysis. That’s what everybody does, but what we should be looking for are the deficiencies. Are they vitamin G deficient, magnesium deficient, B12 deficient, are they showing inflammation in their body? So we check for C reactive protein. We have cancer markers that we can look for to see is there any evidence of a cancer, or Lyme’s disease, or even osteoarthritis can trigger some of these markers. So we’re looking beyond, and then we look for heavy metals, ’cause it’s not only what you’re deficient in, we’re also looking for what we’re toxic in. And the studies I did with Quicksilver Scientific, we had over 200 animals that we tested. And in those 200 animals, we had at least four to six nutrient deficiencies. Calcium, copper, selenium, zinc, et cetera. And we had three to five toxic heavy metals in significant quantities. And these were not animals that all had cancer. This was a wide spectrum of young to old. Some of them not really having a lot of major illnesses. And yet they were showing up with deficiencies and toxicities, they just weren’t becoming symptomatic yet.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow, that is incredible, and very ornate, specific. I love hearing that, that you’re doing that with the animals. A big buzz term in alternative complimentary health communities is mitochondria and mitochondrial health. Now, I’m wondering how you address that with the animals.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Oh, you got great questions. Okay, so we start with step number one, which I have a six step program. So I’m gonna start from the beginning, because again, it’s all built on another layer. So step number one is we have to stop doing the things that are polluting the body. You can’t keep doing the things that are causing a problem and expect to get a different result. Okay, does that make sense?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

So step number one, we look at food, and water, and environment, and EMF, and even the ants in our human brains. ‘Cause we have ants that are called automatic negative thoughts. And of course, those negative thoughts are producing negative neurochemicals, which are animals entrained to. That’s not even woo woo, that’s actual physics principle, entrainment. So we help people to address everything on helping to stop the pollution. And then number two, we’re looking for all the nutrient deficiencies. What can we make up? Because just take vitamin D and magnesium, for example, those two are required for the innate immune system to actually function. So we don’t think about that. We don’t think that this pathway requires these two little items, but those two little items are super important. So most of the animals that we test, in fact, there were studies done by a university that showed that 85% of animals, dogs and cats, eating processed pet food, kibble, can diets, were vitamin D deficient. Because animals, carnivores, only get vitamin D from their protein source. They don’t get it from the sun.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

So people are out in the sun going, “Oh my dog’s getting plenty of vitamin D, “we’re in the sun all day long.” Because they, as an omnivore, can synthesize vitamin D from the sun and or their diet. Animals, carnivores can only do it from their diet. So if whatever went into that can or bag never saw daylight. And most of these are feedlot animals that didn’t see daylight.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Right.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

So if the cows vitamin D deficient, the herbivores only synthesized vitamin D from the sun. So if that herbivore never saw the sun, then they’re not gonna have vitamin D in their muscle. Then anything eating them is gonna be vitamin D deficient. Makes sense?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Number one is reduce the toxins. Number two, make sure all the essential nutrients are there. Number three, heal the leaky gut, which, as we all know in our world, is super important. Number four is the six organs of elimination, how do we do detoxification? And number five is the mitochondria. So there’s a gazillion different ways that we can support the mitochondria. We know that intermittent fasting is a fantastic way. Anything that we do that’s a hormetic stressor, so it could be extremes in temperature. It could be intermittent fasting. It could be high intensity exercise. All of those are going to aid in helping to turn on the reactive oxygen species. Ozone, one of the simplest things that we can do is utilize ozone. In fact, we encourage pet parents to get an ozone machine. So if people want to, please check with me first, because they’re not all the same. But just doing rectal ozone, something so simple on a frequent basis. Could be one or two times a week, as a preventative healthcare thing, is phenomenal. So ozone is a pro-oxidant, as depending on the level of vitamin C that we use, that can be also a pro-oxidant. And those are all going to be used to help feed the mitochondria, and get them stronger and healthier. And then we have a variety of supplementation that we use. So there really is a lot that we have control over, and that we can institute, we use hyperbaric oxygen.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Oh wow.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Yeah, there’s so many different things. One of my favorite is to get vasodilation using infrared saunas. So you get blood supply going, release nitric oxide from either our infrared sauna or from our red light lasers. And then we hyper oxygenate the body with our ozone, and then they go into the hyperbaric machine. So now you’re taking all that rich oxygen, increased circulation, and you’re pushing all of that out into the tissues. It’s magnificent.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Oh, I love that, that’s a great bio-hack stack. So that is phenomenal.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Let me give you one more, because not everybody has access to this.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Oh yeah.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

But we use an endo laser. So this is a special machine of laser lights. They’re actual laser lights, they’re not LEDs. And they go into an IV catheter. So we place an IV catheter into the patient, and then we give photo activating substances. And there’s a variety of those, it could be vitamin C. There’s a variety of different things.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Curcumin, yeah.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Yeah, and then after we give the photo active compound, then we put the laser into the vein. And then different colors of laser activate the different photo chemicals so that they become even more active. So they’re turning on more enzymes in the body. And they range anything from antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti-cancer. And the beauty of doing it in the vein is that those low light frequencies, like ultraviolet, blue, yellow, and green, they don’t penetrate through the melanocytes, through the skin. Melanocytes actually absorb most of it so you’re not getting anything to really penetrate, but when you do it right into the bloodstream, the red blood cells just pick up those colors, and carry them around the body and they do their magic.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow, when do you think about utilizing that? Is that in particular, is that the Weber laser that you all use, Or is it a different one?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Yeah, we use the Weber laser.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

That is phenomenal. A lot of the themes on the Bioenergetics Summit have been around sound and light frequencies and healing. Let’s dive into that one a little bit more, on different light colors for different conditions perhaps. Let’s say what you’re seeing in the veterinary world.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

So we use it for all of our chronic degenerative cases. We see mostly cancer, but it could be osteoarthritis. It could be autoimmune diseases, it’s not something that you would put into every single patient because it’s a little more expensive. You have to have an IV catheter in. The things that we do topically, we can always use our blue light topically. As anything that light sees, and it sees the light, is going to be effective. But when you get into the other low light frequencies, then they’re not penetrating the skin. So unless the skin is broken, like you have an open wound, then you can penetrate better there. But the endo laser is really used mostly intravenously, or intraarticular. So when we have cruciate injuries, we have two needles that go into the stifle joint, the knee joint, and then we’ll add stem cells, and prolotherapy and ozone into the joint. And then we put our laser in there, and we activate all those chemicals that we just put in with our endo laser. So we use all the colors while we’re in there. It’s all done under anesthesia. And when they get out, these animals are walking when they leave. They come in three legged, they leave walking. It’s really remarkable.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

We can do it intralesional, we can do it in the abdominal cavity. There really isn’t a limitation.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

There’s no end, yeah.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

No, there isn’t, it’s just, what is the need?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow, phenomenal, phenomenal, thank you for sharing that.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Yeah, and then–

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

All right, so we went high tech with lasers, IV. Now we’re gonna talk emotions. So how about emotional health? How do emotions factor into pet health and recovery from disease?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

All disease, repeat, all disease has an emotional component or more. So it’s interesting that the pets that we see in most families today, at least the ones that come to my practice, they’re not just pets, these are soul animals. They’re not the family pet, they’re the person’s soul pet. So there’s a shift, there’s something very different about today’s pet relationship that is bringing people to a level of consciousness or awareness. And I personally believe that we’re undergoing all of this shift in our hologram. I think we’re in a hologram. And I think the purpose of it is so that we can change the frequency. So emotions are on a spectrum. Remember the abacus, the little counting from elementary?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

It was all these dials on the wires, and you had to move them from one side to the other. So imagine if we had a game called the emotional abacus game, and you had all your low vibrating emotions, I don’t know if you can see my hands, on one side. You know what the lowest vibrating emotion is, you probably do.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Let’s say it would be hate or depression.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Shame.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Shame, shame, blame and guilt, sure.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Shame, and I know when I used to take my kids when they were little to Bush Gardens. How many times we would hear parents go, “Shame on you for.” And shame was always in the vocabulary when we were growing up. So shame is your lowest, and then there’s anger, and hatred, and bitterness, and we all know those, okay. And actually, even when you say those words, you can feel they’re heavy and their dark. And then as you go across the scale, you get into the high vibrating. And the highest vibration emotion, a lot of people will say it’s love, it’s not, it’s gratitude. And if you notice that in the last, at least five years, we hear so much about being in the state of gratitude. Wake up in the morning, what are you grateful for? Before you go to bed at night, what are you grateful for? And it’s because it’s such a high vibration. So I think that the game that we’re supposed to play is to see the patterns. What is the emotion that you see re-happening in your life over, and over, and over again? 

Okay, that’s your clue, that’s what you’re supposed to be shifting. And then how can you take that and shift it to its equal and opposite, or higher? So that’s what I help our pet parents to do. Is identify the emotions that are coming up over their pet, and then realizing that those are emotions that they’ve been seeing in their life over, and over and over again. It’s like it’s a recording that just keeps playing. Because if you don’t change the recording, and you just keep hitting the play button, it’s gonna keep playing it back. So it’s important that we recognize this is a theme that has been going on, and then ask yourself the question, is it serving me a purpose to hang onto this emotion? And if the answer is, yes, by Joff, keep doing it, no problem. If the answer is no, then that’s your opportunity to find a practitioner or a technique that will help you to shift that low vibrating emotion, detach from the outcome of it, and go to the other side. And for our pets, they’re like our fur messengers. They’re the pony express. 

And they’re going to bring us to a place in our lives where we have to face things that are dark. And it’s not because they’re mean, or they’re loving, it’s doing this because they volunteered. We’re not making them sick. This is an opportunity to create an experience that can serve us in a much higher way. Because doc, at the end of the day, none of us are staying here forever. We’re all going to leave this planet one way or the other. So it’s not a question of, will we live forever? Will we have the quality of life, and will we have the experiences that will help us to create something better than what we came into? Will we be able to clear some of the heaviness, some of the tragedies, some of the things that we need to forgive. Whatever that looks like, can we experience those in a brand new way? And that’s by recognizing it and deciding if we want to delete the old program and put something better in its place.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Oh, I love it, really well said. And great reminder. And really, you’re dealing with the people of the pets on that front, right?

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Yeah, and it’s interesting because I’ll know immediately if an animal’s going to have a chance of recovering from their illness.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Sure.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Because if that pet parent is just engulfed in fear, and limitation, and guilt, and shame, I’m not gonna go very far. Until they’re willing to deal with that, and get rid of their limitations, shift their belief system, forgive what needed to be forgiven and move to a new place. And I think that’s what the game of life really is.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Oh, Dr. Siegel, that is so beautiful, thank you. Full on agreement. I think you really summed it up beautifully there. I will also give you the opportunity, if you have anything else that you would love to share with our listeners and viewers at the Bioenergetics Summit.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Wow, we covered a lot of material.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

We really did.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

I think step number one is taking ownership. The two reasons that people fail at anything, is one is a lack of knowledge. So kudus to everybody on the summit, because you’re learning. Buy the summit, take notes, keep being open-minded to listening to what speaks to you, because what speaks to you is what you need to know right now. I’m getting a chill again, so I know there’s gonna be a whole bunch of people that are gonna get value out of that. So number one is education. But a lot of times when we’re getting all of this massive amount of education, it becomes overwhelming. And then people go into this inability to execute. And so it’s so overwhelming they do nothing. So number two, after getting educated, is working with somebody who can help you with implementation. So what I do is I have people literally, ’cause I have an online program for pet parents. It’s three hours, it is incredibly intense, but it’s speaks to the lay person and it’s real inexpensive. And I have them take a piece of paper, fold it in half, make a column A, column B. Column A, all the things that you’re learning in the course that you should be doing, but you haven’t learned to do them yet. Column B, all the things you shouldn’t be doing and you still are, right?

So you just make the list, it’s not judgemental. It’s not about being a bad or good parent. It’s just making a list so then you have a roadmap. And then I have people just pick one thing from column A that you aren’t doing that you should be, and just start doing it. Pick one thing from column B that you shouldn’t be doing, and just stop it, it’s just is that simple, just stop it. And then when that becomes so easy that it’s just who you are, you don’t have to think about it. Then you go back to your list, and you take another one and cross it off. And take another one from column B and cross it off. And before you know it, you’ve really made some massive headway. And then if you have more than one person in the household, let them do their list. So now you’re going two times, four times faster. And before you know it, you’ve made massive changes, but it’s not just for the pet health, you’re gonna make massive changes for your own health too, because you have to change some of the environmental things. And most importantly, we’re changing for mother earth. ‘Cause every toxic thing that we’re doing, even down to our thoughts and our attitudes, we’re destroying our planet. So we really need to take ownership, educate ourselves, and then have a plan of implementation. So that we work in community with our planet, and our fellow human beings and our pets.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Aw, beautiful, thank you so much. The listeners and viewers, thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. Thanks Dr. Siegel.

Dr. Marlene Siegel

Thank you, bye everybody.