Bioregulatory Theory & the Future of Energy Medicine

Jason Prall

Well, I am super thrilled to introduce our next guest, Dr. Christine Schaffner is a board-certified naturopathic doctor, who has helped thousands of people recover from chronic, or complex illnesses. Through online summits, her Spectrum of Health Podcast network, Immanence Health clinics, and renowned online programs, Dr. Schaffner goes beyond biological medicine, pulling from all systems of medicine and healing modalities, helping patients reclaim their wellness and reveal their brightest light. Dr. Schaffner, welcome. Thanks for joining me.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Oh, it’s always so much fun to connect with you, Jason. Thank you.

Jason Prall

Well, I wasn’t gonna start here, but in your bio, you mention biological medicine, and there’s probably a handful of people who aren’t sure what that is just quite. So what is biological medicine, and how does it differ from some of these other complimentary, integrative, functional and classical medicine that we might know?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, you know, it’s a great question, and I’m trained as a naturopath, so I’m a naturopathic physician, and I went to Bastyr, and did the whole thing, and you know, during my time, especially outside of school, and also some mentors in school really introduced me to what we call biological medicine, European biological medicine, shaman biological medicine. There’s a group in the US, a lot of American-trained doctors that wanna use the word bioregulatory medicine now, because biologics is kind of co-opted by pharmaceuticals, and so to differentiate. But this field and system of medicine takes, I think, you know, all these medicines that we’ve talked about, a step deeper, and we’re looking, of course, at root causes, we’re looking about why people have the imbalances they do, but it’s of the premise that the body innately knows how to self-regulate and heal, and if there are obstacles to that, you know, that is basically where disease happens. And disease really happens from a combination of factors, but bioregulatory medicine really looks at the terrain, so it’s not just about the bug, it’s about the host’s response to the bug, so it’s a very much terrain-based medicine, so it’s a very much more empowering view to look at the body. So, how do we support the terrain? We support the extracellular matrix, the lymphatics, we clean up the mouth, we look at interference fields, we look at scars, we look at trauma and emotional history, we look in the environment. So it is, you know, definitely some principles and things that functional medicine or naturopathic medicine uses, but I think it goes a little deeper, and I also think that they have a very much appreciation and understanding for biophysics and bioenergetics. I think that, you know, there’s this wonderful conference, and of course with COVID, I haven’t been to in a while, but it’s in Germany, and it’s called Medicine Week, and it’s in a town called Baden Baden, and it’s been happening for many years. And it’s all in German, so I don’t get to listen to a lot of the lectures, but what’s so fun about going there is that they have this beautiful exhibit, and they have all these vendors. And, you know, in Europe, supplements are actually harder to distribute, and they’re more regulated than in the US, but they have all of these energy medicine devices, and bioenergetic assessment and healing tools. So they really understand that our body operates with electromagnetic fields of information and energy, and so that really always opened my mind. And, you know, in the US, we have all these supplements but we don’t have all these devices, even though more devices are coming. So, bioregulatory medicine is just this really beautiful medicine that I think really looks at the true cause of illness today.

Jason Prall

That’s beautiful. And I love what you’re saying because it’s, when we get down to that level, I mean, first of all, I actually love the word bio-regulatory. I think that actually describes the modality a little bit more, and the philosophy, but to me, it’s so important to recognize that the body has the capacity to regulate, the body has, in other words, our natural state is health, and it’s only when things get in the way or things are blocking these natural processes, or even perhaps, we may not be healthy, in fact, we were just talking about this is I got an illness recently, that there’s a process of letting that clear. In other words, I don’t feel well, and yet the body’s doing exactly what it needs to do. So that’s a philosophy, you know, you and I both have little ones, we see this a lot with little kids, right? In fact, to some degree, we want them to get sick, right? And that’s how the body learns to adapt and deal with these things, and become stronger, right? So even when we’re not feeling well, there’s a fundamental philosophy here that the body has the capacity to return to this balanced state, right? And it has the wisdom and intelligence built in already. There’s nothing we have to add to it necessarily, to make that happen. I think it’s so important.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, and you know, I am always, I still very much see patients, and they’re very much teaching me these principles every day that, you know, you learn, and you think about, and then you see in real life, and there’s that feedback loop. And you know, the bioregulatory medicine, I feel like just is such a more powering, hopeful, and also very much real phenomenon, and I think in this modern day where we’re trying to navigate, you know, health and what’s wrong, and where to go, that that’s not really the conversation, you know? We’ve lost that conversation that, you know, we can do this, we can heal from this. And I don’t wanna jump the jump ahead too much, Jason, but I’m deepening my understanding too, of our physical bodies, right? So we have these physical bodies, I’ve also alluded to our bioenergetic nature, and concepts we call the biofield, and I’m studying also that relationship within what we call the electric universe, which also connects us, not to get too out there too quickly, but to the unified field, if we can talk about what that means. And so, not only does our body have the ability to self-regulate and heal, but we’re also connected, if we choose to observe, a huge field of healing potential outside of us, that is always available, that we can tap into. And again, I’m very much a student, I don’t pretend to have all the answers or be an expert, but I’m playing with that idea more and trying to integrate that more in my life, and I just am very much excited about, I think people are studying this and trying to bring this language into modern times, so that we can also harness that as much as our own internal ability, but also trust in this greater force that we have access to that can help add more healing, and light, and coherence into our body.

Jason Prall

Mm, I love that. And you use a really key word there at the end that I think for me, I’m actually finishing my book, and coherence shows up just over, and over, and over. To me, it seems like the biological key to make things flow and then harmonize, right? And, you know, I came from the engineering world, the physics world, the math world, and, you know, it’s interesting because I got into all this sort of the electric universe, even as I got into the health world, I read the book, “The Body Electric”, and to me, this is really interesting stuff, right? Because I think most of the people watching this now probably are familiar that there’s a electromagnetic frequencies that can both harm us and help us, and there’s light therapies and things. But what’s really interesting to me is that if we take a step back and go back to the chemistry, the biochemistry, really what we’re talking about is just charges, right? The body is using different ions, and different metals, and different chemicals, and different biological agents, but really we’re just moving around charges in the body. If you look at the mitochondria in particular, you look at cell membranes, you look at water, all of these things are separating charges, using charges to essentially create function, right? And so, then if we just use that as our premise, then I think we can start asking some really interesting questions. Okay, how does light, electromagnetic frequency, affect the electric charges in certain instances? How does sound affect these electrical charges? And sure enough, we find out that it’s not just these chemical agents that affect the electric charges, but it’s the electromagnetic frequencies, it’s the sounds, all of a sudden that opens up a huge world of potential agents. And interestingly enough, when we look backwards through the indigenous cultures, the Ayurvedas, the Buddhists, the Chinese medicine, they’re using chanting, they’re using some of these technologies, you know, the didgeridoo, all of these things, there’s instruments, there’s, they’re using sound, they’re using light to affect healing. So, I just opened up a huge can of worms for you, but we’re navigating into the future of medicine, I think. And so, tell me what comes up for you as I kind of opened that up.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

No, I love it. The more I study this, you know, you kind of get like, okay, health is flow, health is how much exclusion zone water is in our body, health is coherence. You know, I’ve done some talks on that, and I love that your book is about that, I’ve been wanting to have more conversations around that, ’cause I think that is really such an important concept when we’re talking about these principles, and I guess the message in the backdrop as we talk, I love this conversation of interconnectedness, right? And so we have you know, parts of our body that are highly interconnected. You know, when we study anatomy, we think of, okay, this system, that system, but it’s all interwoven, right? And so we start with the cell, right? And within the cell, obviously they’re all the organelles, and the mitochondria, and the nucleus, and the DNA, and it’s surrounded, the structure of the cytoskeleton is microtubulin. And microtubulin, basically just imagine like these networks cross over the cell membrane by integrins, and then we’re in the extracellular matrix, and there’s this whole interconnection in the extracellular matrix bathing in the lymphatic fluid and the interstitial fluid with the collagen, and the elastin, the proteoglycans, and then it’s going into tissues and organs–

Jason Prall

So real quick, before you go there, So yeah, I love it, because you you’re hitting on something, and it’s so important, I don’t want people to overlook it, which is that once we get outside the cell, it’s not like there’s just space, or there’s just empty cavities, or even just blank fluid. There’s a whole network of biology that’s happening outside the cells, outside the organs, and this is what you’re talking about. In fact, I think, didn’t we actually label the interstitium

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah

Jason Prall

An actual organ, right? So, yeah, maybe just talk to me a little bit more about the interconnectedness, ’cause I love what you’re saying.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so yeah, the interstitium is a new organ, and it is actually the lymph fluid underneath the connective tissue of the skin, and it is a way that basically transports all this fluid and information. And you know, what Dr. James Oschman, he wrote a book, the the “Energy Medicine”, and he calls it “the living matrix”. And this conversation I wanted to paint is this interconnectedness from the DNA, to basically the fascia in the skin, and then I’m gonna like take a leap outside into the biofield, into the field, you know, we’re having all of this information exchange. And this is where, of course we have biochemistry, and we could talk about that all day, but this is also how we can make sense of biophotons, right? So we know that the smallest packet of light information actually is a big part of how our bodies communicate. You know, our DNA actually emits biophotonic information that travels along the microtubulin, goes into the connective tissue, and really travels along the collagen, and that coherent light is actually helping our biochemistry run, if you will. And you know, going back to your coherence talk, which I’m sure you’re writing all about this, healthy cells have coherent light information, and unhealthy cells have incoherent light information, and they often leak light. You know, sick cells leak light. It’s having like that Goldilocks amount of light that’s organized in the cell that actually describes what a healthy cell is.

Jason Prall

And real quick, I’m gonna pause there, because if people aren’t familiar with coherent light and maybe not so into the physics world, I just wanna give kind of some analogies that people are used to. So, you know, if I use a flashlight and I shine light on something on the wall, I can’t really inject too much information in that light. It’s too scattered, it’s not coherent. But yet if I have a laser, right? And you see this, I mean, go back to the old CDs, right? Or a laser disc player, right? We can actually create, or include information that light can include information. This is really wild stuff, right? So, based on the coherence of the light, we can actually have information embedded in that. So, bring that back to that biology, this is real, this is why coherence, in my opinion, and I think you too. It’s like, there’s some thing, and I would say it’s as close to magic as we can get, right? It’s quantum in nature, it’s magical, it’s instantaneous in a lot of ways, like this is wild stuff. And so, when we get down to that level of coherence in the cell, this is real, this is important.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, really beautifully said. And you know, in the image that I’m trying to paint is like within the body, and then adding health to the body, that’s why our light therapies work. If we can add Mo more coherent information to the field, to the physiology, then our cells can basically get that information and start working better, and that’s why photobiomodulation, and photodynamic therapy are you know, therapies. So we have this whole world of light information, and that like is so exciting to me. I love seeing the world through this lens. And then you mentioned sound too, right, Jason? And so, this is an area I’m new to study, but there is also, we said biophotons, but there’s also this idea of biophotons, that sound and vibration is the way that our cells communicate too. And there’s this researcher outta UCLA, I always forget his name, and he studied cells that were healthy at a coherent, beautiful harmony, in cells that were sick. Like cancer cells or cells that were dying had this dissonant, really disturbing sound. So even from like a vibratory sound perspective, you know, we communicate. Our physiology communicates that way. 

And then, you know, sound is, you know, we have ultrasound, right? We know that we can use sound to visualize structures in the body and that our body is permeable to sound waves, and that we can also use different frequencies and different sounds to create more coherence in our field, which also translates to more coherent information in the body and a visual like you just shared with laser light. Have you seen, you know, I’m sure you’ve seen the somatics, right? If you Google “somatics”, and you see these visuals where they put sound frequency at different hertz, you know, in a field of like matters, it’s often sand, and that frequency, they show, changes matter, and creates these beautiful, coherent patterns within the matter. And so, you know, Dr. Dispenza, I’ve been down that rabbit hole, and he’s been opening my eyes that when we think about coherence, we think of light, but we also think about coherent patterns of information within the water, within the cell, that that is what tells our biochemistry to run. So again, you know, I’m noodling over all of this, but it’s very much, I’ve had experiences that I know there’s truth here, and you know, I think, again, it’s such a inspiring way to look at the future of medicine, ’cause just you know, Dispenza says, to change matter with matter takes time. To change the field, you can change matter. So I’m looking at like the elegant shortcuts, right? That can accelerate our patient’s healing. And that’s really my desire to look at these things, like how can we facilitate this in a more or elegant way?

Jason Prall

Yeah, totally. And I actually have somatics. I have these amazing photos that were taken with a high-powered camera of water, basically vibrated at a certain frequency, and it creates different patterns. And so I actually have one of the, each of the chakras at each frequency.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

I love it.

Jason Prall

With the colors and the patterns that are displayed in the water, are just brilliant, and beautiful. And, I think this is what, you know, in my book and in thinking about coherence, ’cause there’s a lot there that I think if we just meditate with or sit with, that we can pick up or learn. And one of the things that I was thinking about was music. You know, it’s really interesting that we all have different tastes in music, no question. But when you hear a note that’s off-key, when you hear a note, it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t sound good, right? And yet if you hear a note that’s on-key, there’s just something about it that seems good. It seems, maybe you don’t get excited about hearing a C-sharp for example, but it just feels okay, right? And then of course, when you hear beautiful melodies and harmonies, and all of a sudden, it can actually move you emotionally, right? And so, this is what’s interesting to me, is that there’s like the universal aspect to music, when we hear something, when we hear a note that’s coherent, it feels good, right? So to me that signals that there’s something in our biology that is happening. And I think this is where we’re at in the West, is science is trying to catch up to some of these things that we inherently know to be true, right? And some of these indigenous and ancient cultures have known for a long, long time through their practices, science is now trying to figure this stuff out on that sort of Western, scientific level, right? So to some degree, we’re still trying to figure this stuff out, but yet we know these things to be true. And I think through our direct experience, we can learn a lot. In fact, I’ve done a little bit of work with ayahuasca and with some of the indigenous healers, and they use ikaros, which are these songs, right? Or they’ll use other types of music, whether it’s guitar, or harmonica, or drums, or what have you, and when you’re in that experience, because your state is so open, your field is so open, the music has a profound impact on your nervous system, it has a profound impact on your emotions. And so, these are some of the things that I think, as I think about how these energies are impacting us, you know, it really is quite powerful, right? And of course, we’ve got people like Masaru Emoto and his work. And I know a lot of people like to dismiss that work, but to me, there’s too much evidence when it comes to the study of water and sound, and how it’s working together, to dismiss it. There’s something there with this stuff.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

So, we definitely know how sound can affect water. And he mentioned Emoto, and I have a dear friend, Kelly Kennedy, who introduced me to this Austrian man, Rasmus Gaupp-Berghausen, and he studied with Emoto for 20 years.

Jason Prall

Oh wow.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

And he came out, yeah, I would love to introduce you to both of them. And he came up with a device that takes your heart rate variability, so it’s a piece of software that takes your heart rate variability, and then converts it to sound and light, and plays it back to you. And so you’re basically auto-tuning,

Jason Prall

It’s neurofeedback for your heart.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Exactly. It’s beautiful.

Jason Prall

Wow.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, exactly. So you’re basically increasing coherence in your field, structuring water in your body with this equipment. And so, you know, that to me, and you know, we’re saying these things, but what happens to people? You know, one woman who works with me came and visited, and did the sound of soul, her tinnitus went away. Other people just have these deep moments of gratitude, or opening. You know, the more that we learn about this work, you know, it’s all complicated, but then it’s very simple, right? It’s a simple equation of just open your heart. You’re like, what does that mean? You know, and it’s just the more that we open our heart, we get in touch with that part of us, that whatever you believe in, but that is where love, and gratitude, and appreciation lie, we create more coherence in our heart rhythm, and then that creates more coherence in our field, informs our brain, and we’re just more in this flow of life, right? Coherence is like this aligned energy that, it’s an efficient use of energy and information, right? And so when you’re in that state, things flow, right? The flow within you, flow to you. So, you know, I have that experience within my office of you know, using sound and light, and how that really can affect us on this profound level.

Jason Prall

Wow, that’s amazing. I love that. And you know, we can go off and get really weird in this conversation, but I’d be remiss to not pick your brain with some of the stuff that you do on a day-to-day basis, ’cause you have a lot of brilliance in the work that you do. I know you see a lot of some of the most challenging cases because essentially you’ve been trained so well, and people come to you when they basically can’t find answers. So maybe you can talk to me about some of these things that when people come to you with lime, and basically unknown ailments, what are some of the areas of health that you find are kind of left out of the conversation, or they haven’t looked into? You know, and I’d love you to bring in interference fields, ’cause that’s one term I actually learned from you and it made so much sense once I heard it, but nobody’s really teaching this stuff in the broad way.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, with the patients I see, again, they teach me every day, and you know, often I find there are, you know, they’ve seen a lot of great doctors, it’s not from like a lack of trying, but I think that, again, I’m coming from that perspective of the body knows how to self-regulate and heal, and you know, this idea of also terrain theory, so it’s not just about Barellia, or Epstein-Barr, or mercury, you know, we’re looking at all of it, right? And so, you know, one of the first things I approach people with is thinking about, do they have an interference field that’s been overlooked? And we used to at terminology because it just brings to light what is interfering with their body’s ability to self-regulate and heal, and that field is like kind of also that physics, right? Like what’s affecting their electromagnetic information as well. And so, when we think about it, we look at the mouth very often. So the mouth can be an interference field. We can see from dental toxicity, still unfortunately, amalgam fillings are still overlooked and they’re very neurotoxic, and they can be very disruptive to our autonomic nervous system.

Jason Prall

I think the reason they’re overlooked, in my experience, is that the patient or the client comes in complaining about a knee, or an ankle, or there’s some liver enzymes that are all outta whack. So sometimes, if we’re not trained in this way, it can be very confusing to look in the mouth because there’s a knee issue.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Totally, totally. And I respect that, and I think that, you know, you have to like, okay, the knee is talking, but what were the conditions to lead to the knee to have that inflammation, to have that degeneration? You know, and I think that we’re shortsighted if we think of the knee in isolation, right? We could do all the ozone, and all the regenerative medicine, and get that knee rebuilt and restructured. But if we didn’t do anything else in the body to change the conditions, is that knee going to, is that knee truly healed, or are we gonna see the regression to these symptoms over time again? And that’s unfortunately the case. You know, we have to, we have all this wonderful, you know, access to all these innovative modalities, and it’s just like, how do we use them, and when do we use them? And so, with that being said, you know, the mouth is so much very overlooked, and so we look at dental toxicity, the amalgam fillings, always get those removed with a biological dentist in combination with a functional medicine doctor. You are one of the doctors that really understand this. So you just do all the support. So that can be something very health-promoting, rather than negatively impact fume–

Jason Prall

And so what you’re doing there is you have the biological dentist who’s really, really skilled and trained to remove those amalgams in the safest way possible, usually as quick as possible, right? And then also, the functional or integrative, or perhaps naturopath doctors there to help support any of the mercury vapor, or some of the stuff that might get in the way with binders, and these type of things, right?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, with IV therapy, and yeah, all the things to prep, right? You know, ’cause you’re gonna get that removal, and often there is some mistake where people think, “oh, I got my amalgams removed, “I’m free of mercury.” That’s just step one. You know, you’ve had a lifetime of mercury vapors being released over time, you know, getting into the, they’re neurotoxins, so they can get into the cranial nerves that can then shuttle mercury into the brain. can get into the digestive tract. So it takes time, you know? You need to also be patient with metal detox, it’s not something that’s gonna, that can happen overnight. It’s a process. And so, definitely working in combination, and then other interference fields can be either root canal fillings. So, root canals are dead teeth, so they’re teeth that die, dentists take out the root, put in a bunch of non-biological material into the tooth, and then they say, oh, the tooth is sterile, it’s sealed, it’s fine. That tooth we know, can be basically, a focal infection over time in that bacteria, viruses, I just had a patient who got her root canals out and we had this dental DNA connections, we do a PCR test to see what’s there, and all sorts of bacteria, Entamoeba, you know, all of these things that, again, when you think about the proximity of the mouth to the circulation, it’s a very exposed area. So you’re getting all of this systemically. So you could have any problem, but you could have oral microbiome imbalances with pathogenic bacterium in your mouth, that’s poisoning your joints, and your bladder, and you know, things that you don’t even think of, right? So the mouth is very much connected. So we look at getting those root canals, extracted unfortunately, safely, so making sure the tooth is extracted, all of the dead, necrotic jaw bone that is still around the roots is cleaned out with ozone. 

Usually we put platelet-rich fibrinogen in the mouth so that, or in the jaw, rather, so that that can heal well and be solid for then potentially an implant down the road, and we use zirconia or ceramic implants that can be very helpful. And then another area that we look in the mouth, Jason, is the cavitations. So the wisdom tooth cavitation areas. So this can be an area where the tooth was extracted, but it didn’t always heal. So there’s a, basically, pocket of necrotic, dead bone, that can be again, another reservoir for infection. And so, you know, we look at all those things, and that can have a profound effect on the whole body, the brain. You know, we even know Alzheimer’s, there’s a link to a type of bacteria in the mouth. You know, we know the heart can be affected. You know, we know this in conventional medicine, right? So the oral microbiome is very important to our health, and you know, again, we’re looking at safely removing them and doing that with a lot of support. And one other connection that we see in biological medicine is the meridian system. So each tooth sits on a meridian, so there could be an interference to a meridian, which also is kind of a highway of electrical energy in the body. So if there is a circuit that is broken in an area that can affect communication, and so, for instance, like the front teeth are related to kidney and bladder, so somebody might have interstitial cystitis or chronic UTIs, and they might have a root canal in their front teeth. And so there’s that relationship that we see. Also, the wisdom teeth area is very connected to the vagus nerve, you know, because of the vagus nerve branches that come out through the neck. So anyone who’s in my office who has Pott’s or dysautonomia, or you know, just a lot of vagus nerve symptoms, you know, we look and make sure that there’s not a cavitation that’s kind of really chronically poisoning the vagus curve and creating what we call vagus nerve toxicity or vagus nerve infection.

Jason Prall

Yeah, I remember speaking with a teacher of mine, Dr. Vasant Lad, who is Ayurvedic master, and you know, in Ayurveda, they teach that there’s places on the tongue that are, again, through meridians, related to different organ systems. And I almost bit through my entire tongue when I was a kid, and so I have a pretty big scar on the right side of my tongue. And I asked him, I said, could this be affecting my kidney-bladder area? And he said, yeah, of course. Or maybe it’s spleen. I can’t remember, I have to look. But you know, these are the interesting things that as we open up to the idea that the body is connected, now we can start to think about some of these things that we have, and that’s one of the areas I wanted to talk to you about next, which is scars, because you know, most of us in adulthood have some scars here and there. Some of us have quite big scars from big events. And so, how does something like a scar, you know, work as an interference field in the body?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the focal infections are kind of like the interference field, and then scars are the other one that we very much look at, Jason, and then very much are, you know, when I see a new patient especially in person, you know, we do a scar history, and see if that’s affecting them. And scars are basically disruption in the fascia, right? So there’s scar tissue in the fascia that is creating again, it is closed off from surrounding tissue, it’s not communicating as well with the neighboring tissue, and it can–

Jason Prall

And real quick, before we get too deep, maybe you can explain what fascia is for those who aren’t familiar, and how important fascia is, because I think it wasn’t until a couple years into my health practitioner journey, I started realizing, oh my gosh, fascia is quite important, I better pay attention to this.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fascia is like where it’s at, right? So fascia, you know, we learn in school like, oh, it’s the Saran wrap, and it’s structural for muscles, and it keeps everything together, and it has just a structural role. And then as our understanding has evolved, fascia is actually a very important part of our communication network in our body. And even my good friend, Gina Bria, who’s taught me a lot about structured water, fascia actually carries structured water throughout the body. So it’s basically this water irrigation system in the body, and it also, you know, again, is related, ’cause we talked about that idea in the beginning, of the living matrix. So, you know, it’s this idea that everything is interconnected. And so, we can really, by doing facial therapies and opening up the fascia, we can open up the interstitium, and the lymphatics, and the extracellular matrix, and really change epigenetic expression, you know? And so that is a big piece of that interconnection. And then fascia too, with this role of exclusion zone water, and basically irrigating the for… You know, irrigating our system, we know a property of this form of water is that it can hold memory. It can hold, you know, some people say consciousness, some people say memory, some people call it fascial memory, but we have that experience, right? Which we can go into and describe, but you know, you might have a person who does myofascial work, or craniosacral, or some type of body work where it’s the hands-on modality, and you don’t know what’s happening, but all of a sudden you have a memory or a thought, or some type of visceral response where you’re releasing a stuck emotion. And it’s not in your brain.

Jason Prall

Yeah.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

You know, and so, we have that experience with–

Jason Prall

Yeah, I’ve had a lot with Rolfing, in particular. So Rolfing is one of those like amazing techniques that if anybody’s heard of it, or maybe haven’t, but look into this, ’cause it’s the, if you take a Ten-Series, there’s a classical Ten-Series of Rolfing that just goes throughout the body, and goes up the nose. It’s all kinds of crazy stuff, but not only can it actually change the physical way your body is held. Like my hip changed directions. Like it changed the structure. Like I was able to walk in a more balanced way. Emotions came up. I got extremely tired after one session in particular, like almost like chronic fatigue type of just like malaise and just exhaustion. And so, yeah, I’ve just had a lot with that type of work. And of course, massage too, and some other things, but Rolfing in particular has really opened me up to this idea that fascia holds something special. There’s something magical when it comes to trauma, and these stored energies and stored emotions that get caught or stuck in the system.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, I think, you know, when you go back to like scars, right? Scars can be this interruption in the fascia, so that can affect more, you know, can really create more stuck energy. We’ll also sometimes call scars, islands of turbulence. So this kind of island within the body that’s not communicating, and also has this traumatic, potentially, information, so it’s actually a very stressed part of the body, and so it’s basically, scar tissue can hold toxicity more, so just the netting and the fabric of scar tissue, so things that we’re exposed to can settle in. You know, the cell voltage of cells in a scar tissue is what we call lower resting membrane potential than healthy cells, so it’s basically a weaker, kind of stressed cell, that’s disruptive to our auto an autonomic nervous system. And then again, when we think about the water that holds the memory in the scar, you know, often I’ll inject C-section scars for women. So, some people have planned and it’s not a traumatic event, but some women, it’s completely traumatic, it’s an emergency, they have a lot of stuck energy that they have not processed that the body’s walled off, that can affect, you know, the flow of information and energy in the body. And so, when you think of like the C-sections scar, it’s often along the abdomen, so it’s also affecting communication from the legs to the abdomen. We think about the digestion too, all of the digestive organs underneath the scar, the reproductive organs. And so this can be, you know, definitely an area that is really holding the body back. And so when we do neurotherapy, there’s other ways to treat scars. I would say neurotherapy is the most effective. I mean, I’m biased cause I do the treatment, but if you don’t have access to neuro,

Jason Prall

What is that? What is that?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. Neurotherapy is a German injection technique that we use often a substance called procaine, which is a local anesthetic, it’s been around since the 1920s compounded, preservative-free, and it has a beautiful property to break down scar tissue, and also reset the cell membrane potential. So then the cells can basically flush out toxins better. And so, it’s essentially breaking down the scar tissue, increasing circulation, helping with the electrical activity in the scar. And then when we’re doing the scar injections, often people will have those emotional releases as well. So, you know, people can see their scar tissue is softer, you know, they feel less stuck energy in that area, they can feel more in that area, and then, again, when we think of interference fields, like sometimes, you know, a patient comes into my office and I’m like, you know, I don’t know exactly what to do, but I know, you know, let’s work on this interference field, let’s uncover this interference field, let’s treat these scars and just get stress off the system so that the communication network is back online.

Jason Prall

This is interesting, right? Like it’s a totally different approach. In other words, you’re getting away from this differential diagnosis and saying, here what’s wrong with you, here’s the thing that you have. Instead you’re looking and saying, okay, we’ve got some scars here, we’ve got some trauma there, we’ve got some heavy metals here, we’ve got wifi and all kinds of electromagnetic radiation in your environment. And you’re just analyzing all the things that are getting in the way of health from revealing itself, and that seems to be your guide. And I’m sure as you go, there’s things that get revealed along the way. But that’s a really, really different way of going about working with somebody who’s got chronic illness.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, you know, we’re in the middle of like a paradigm shift, right? And so, you know, our culture has trained us, like you have this, you do this, you get better, you know? And I am still surprised that works, you know? And it probably doesn’t, ’cause that’s why we’re seeing this evolution in medicine ’cause the body is way more, you know, than just one mechanism is off, and needs one target treatment and then we’re good. You know, that will never solve all the problems. And so, what I’m hoping as we go through these times is that we can really embrace this other paradigm. You know, that we can really look at our bodies as this ecosystem, and this dynamic interplay of all of this information, but there is a driving force within the body that is trying to regulate, trying to find homeostasis, trying to heal. And if it’s not doing that, as you said in the beginning, it’s not because it’s broken, it’s ’cause something’s in the way, right? And so it’s just this kind of more uncovering, releasing process. So we can, you know, it’s a facilitation rather than a, you know, just trying to suppress or cut off, or shift in other ways. And you know, I’m not completely anti-medicine of course, there’s a role for all of it, but just understanding why and how we’re using things, of course. So yeah, I very much think that we’re in a paradigm shift, we have to get away from the single mechanistic model. We have to think way more in systems, and way more in this whole, you know, like flow of information and energy that is coming from all these other aspects that we’ve talked about through our conversation. So, I very much hope in my career that this conversation that we’re having and this approach is way more the mainstream conversation than just kind of these, you know, these niche conversations on the side.

Jason Prall

Yeah, totally. I mean, I get excited about some of these things that are subtle energy medicines, right? Things like the bot flower remedies, and homeopathy, and you know, this stuff is subtle, right? But it can be powerful on its own right. And I’m curious, you know, you explore a lot of these up-and-coming alternative ideas when it comes to health, what are some of the things that you’re seeing come out? Like what gets you excited about medicine as we go into this sort of more biofield medicine?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, that’s a great question. And so many things, you know? And so, really light, sound and water, you know? And then again, how do we, you know, interact also with the more that we get our state, you know, our state of energy in a state of coherence, how we can connect with the unified field. And so, these are thoughts that I have on a regular basis, but I feel that light, you know, so I mentioned sound of soul, I have that. We also have this piece of equipment in our office called the Weber laser, and we can do intravenous laser therapy, we can do also topical or interstitial, and every color of light has a different biochemical phenomenon in the body. So we can use red light, green light, blue light, yellow light, infrared, UV. So these different light therapies can have an effect on structure of the water, helping us make more ATP, and carry oxygen, being antiviral, antibacterial, helping us, you know, feel happier, you know, with different, yellow actually helps with serotonin production, so that’s pretty fun. And then there’s kind of combination of what we call photodynamic therapy, where we combine with either natural or pharmaceutical agents, things that have a peak spectrum absorption. So, methylene blue is something that–

Jason Prall

That’s what just came to mind.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, yeah, we’re in there, we’re in the fold. Yeah, so, methylene blue is something I use often, and it’s a dye. It has all these like really amazing properties. It’s an electron donor, so it helps to donate electrons to the mitochondria in the absence of oxygen. It’s also antimalarial, antiviral, it’s a neutropic. It is photo-activated by a 660-nanometer red light. Yeah, so basically our cells, especially inflamed cells and cancer cells take up photosensitizers, and almost like make, like present them to light therapy. Like make us respond better to light therapy. So, we can give intravenous methylene blue, or oral methylene blue, and combine that with red light, and then we get a magnified, amplified response, that we would not see if we did them alone, you know? So that whole photodynamic therapy has a really exciting future, I think, in the field of chronic illness, as well as cancer therapy. So that’s something I’m really excited about.

Jason Prall

And a little word of caution if anybody’s gonna take methylene blue orally, it will turn your mouth bright blue.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, turns your mouth blue, you know, we have capsules, but yeah, there’s mouth blue, turns your pee blue,

Jason Prall

Yeah, it’s kind fun to play with that.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, any one of–

Jason Prall

It’s very safe, I would say.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, it’s very safe. If you’re on any SSRIs, you know, you wanna, it’s not a true contraindication, but you definitely wanna be aware of the dose and work with your psychiatrist. But yeah, it’s a really fun agent, and so this combination of, you know, I’ve been thinking about all my medicine, like what’s the peak spectrum absorption of this, and how can I photo-activate that, you know? So, that’s exciting. And then sound, we talk about sound therapies. I think in my office, the main tools that I’m using are sound of soul, and then I’ve been working with a bioresonance device that comes out of Russia, and it’s a technology that does a lot of different things. And I see this as the future, that people are gonna have more access to this information, that essentially different programs, and there’s different companies and all of that, but basically send information to your body, your body basically says, is this tissue in resonance, or not, right? Is it in balance, or in out of balance? And so we can pick up all of this information in our physical bodies and our biochemistry that a lab might not be able to pick up yet. And so, and then we can give healing frequencies to the system. So, you know, if the liver’s outta balance, it can give resonant frequencies to the liver, or, you know, so forth. So there are these technologies and equipment that are becoming more affordable that you can do at home. Part of the one that I’m talking about also has a inner voice program, where you speak, and then it has a program where it finds where there’s too low of tones or too high of tones, and they’ve done this research to find that those correspond to different subconscious emotions that your body’s dealing with, and then gives you through sound and music, the balancing frequencies.

Jason Prall

Mm, beautiful. I mean, it’s almost like this stuff is, it’s only limited by our creativity. Like we’re gonna get so creative with how we use these tools and technology, because the technologies are getting there, right? To where we can really do some amazing things. And we have, of course, things like binaural beats, and this has kind of become popular, but I think we’re just gonna continue pushing the envelope when it comes to, how can we use sound and light in infoceuticals? How can we inject information into water, and blah, blah, blah. There’s just so much there, and in fact, you remind me, speaking of the Russian technology, it seems like a lot of this physics-based health stuff comes out of Russia, Japan, kind of the Eastern blocks. And I’ve got one device called the Bio-Well GDV, and I know you know that one. And I took that on a health retreat that I was on, it was actually an ayahuasca health retreat, and I took measurements like three or four times a day throughout the week, and I saw my measurements, and I’ll just call it that ’cause there’s a lot of information, but my health improved dramatically, which taught me two things, that there was a relationship between both the health retreat that I was on and the impacts that it was having on my body, and this device seemed to be pretty accurate on some level to be able to display that back to me. And so, you know, and just for those who aren’t familiar with the Bio-Well GDV, it’s a, put your finger in this little box and it’s measuring the output of biophotons coming out of each fingertip, and somehow through pretty complex physics, it’s able to discern and give you back feedback on various organ systems, and aspects of your health. And so, I don’t get married to these things, like I’m not in love with convincing people this works, and this is, I just kind of experiment and play, and see what’s what, right? And this is what’s fun about a lot of these things as we go forward, is that there are gonna become so much more accessible. You know, you mentioned testing, there’s a lot of great tests out there, right? With, you know, the metabolites, and things that we can produce in the body, but yet it’s still just a snapshot in time, it’s very expensive, right? The access is still not quite there. And so, you know, with some of these other technologies, I think that we’re gonna get more real-time data, more continuous data, and we’re gonna have a little bit more understanding of what to do with that beyond just supplements, herbs, and pharmaceuticals.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Absolutely, and you know, I have patients who have gotten some of this technology that’s more affordable at home, and there’s just this like settling of their system, that they have a biofeedback tool that gives them information, that they feel empowered of how to navigate through their treatment with. And so I think there’s just so much there. And then also because with bioenergetics, things change, right? So it’s also just sharing like, we are cyclical, dynamic beings, and we need different things at different times, and connecting people with that information more and more, I think will help us only enhance their treatment results. And so, no. I’m all for, you know, this and that. Even if, again, you’re listening and are skeptical out there, you know, whenever I try something like with this one device, I tested every patient that I saw just, you know, as part to their visit for like, I don’t know, almost two years now, and it’s amazing how it gives me some clinical insights, or clinical thoughts that I wasn’t quite maybe thinking, and then we go into and get either the lab verification, or if I address it, you know, they feel better. So, you know, clinical practice teaches you, you know, you’re gonna learn through your patients and not through study, what works.

Jason Prall

Exactly, yeah. I love that. Those little clinical insights, the little hints, the little, and through that sort of big aggregation of data, you can start to really parse some things out and start to figure out what this machine’s good for, what it’s accurate for, what’s going on. And again, I get so excited about these things as they become more and more available. Dr. Schaffner, you work with some of the most complex cases. Where can people find your stuff if they’re looking for somebody to really help them navigate their health, especially for those that can’t figure out what’s going on, where can they get some of your trainings, teachings, and perhaps some of your personal help?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Oh, thank you. So I have a clinic in Seattle, it’s called Immanence Health, and Immanence was a word that came to me, it means the divine within. So it’s all about really connecting to our own innate ability to heal and connect, and so I have a team of people that I work with, and we also do telemedicine. And then I have a website, drchristineschaffner.com, and I have a podcast, I’ve gotta get you on Jason, again, it’s always fun to talk to you.

Jason Prall

I’d love to, yeah.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

You know, just anything that I’m up to, we try to post there. So, thank you so much.

Jason Prall

Beautiful, thank you. Well, thank you so much for showing up today and spreading your knowledge, and thank you for everything you’re doing in the world. I really appreciate the information you put out. You’re a teacher for me, so I love listening to you and getting some new insights into the field of bioenergetic medicine, and biofield medicine, and all that stuff. So, thanks so much, and we’ll see you on the next one.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Thank you.