Certified Epigenetic Performance Certification

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Welcome back. I'm just so tickled today to have our good friend, Doctor Melissa Petersen on with us. And, you guys know her because health coach is all seem to know and gravitate towards this area of epigenetics and, me no less than anyone else I want to tell you. So, doctor Melissa, she's the chief limitless officer for April on Academy for Epigenetic Coaching and the host of the Positive Impact Lab podcast. Now, she's sought out all over the world for transformational epigenetic disease coaching.

She's a great author, well known, and she's a speaker for more than 20 years, has been supporting purpose driven visionaries like us to express their limitless potential and and experience their highest success outcomes so they can love, lead a life that's, you know, full and make their authentic impact in the world something that that's what we're here for, right? Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, you're a sought out doctor of chiropractic and epigenetic human performance success coaching. And I know your board certified in holistic health.

You have a master's in wellness leadership and performance. And doc, you know, you're dedicated to this amazing career that you have. You uplifted, inspired and enhanced a lot of health for a lot of people. Let's go over your background just a little bit. Yeah. Everyone wants to hear your your journey. And, then we're going to talk about epigenetics and, becoming a health coach at the highest level, which is what this event's all about. So it's, really tickled to have you here, doc. Thank you so much.

And it's great to be here. I always enjoy time with you. Read, love how you continue to lead so many so well. So thank you. And, Yeah, you know, I think it's pretty interesting, right? When, sitting here with doctor around my name. And yet, what I love to be called most as a coach, to me, that is one of the highest levels that any of us can reach because it's very different than, you know, we go to a doctor with the idea of saying, tell me what to do, fix me. We go to a coach to be guided, right guided into enhanced states of who we really are and the potential within.

And, you know, my own journey is it's it's so interesting because you can always look back and say, wow, how that was happening for me. Who knew that that was stacking up my life? All the right people and places and things, even when they didn't feel like the right people, places and things right? Yeah. To land this exactly where we need to be. And, you know, I the let's see, kind of the short version to it is, I started dancing when I was a little girl. I was two years old, actually, when I started dancing.

And it was my love. It was my love. My parents got divorced when I was young, and, And it was interesting because. And this all led to how I got here today, that when they got divorced, then all of a sudden we moved out. So I went from living in inner city, in town, having access to friends and bikes and parks and just kind of life. Things felt normal, whatever. That was. All of a sudden, moving out to the country, very isolated. Nobody around literally lived on a dirt road and, went from having a sense of, you know, again, resources, food on the table to living in a very kind of extreme, impoverished type of condition.

So my world changed pretty drastically in a relatively short period of time. And so that meant that dance classes went away. And the only thing I. But yet I loved to dance. I'd be down in my basement all the time as a little girl dancing, and the environment was pretty abusive and not really great with our new, stepfather. And what was so fascinating that I can look back and say, wow, life was happening for me, is that even as a young girl in a really unhealthy environment, we're going to be talking about environment today.

And that's why there's context to this, is that I had been given a poster at Christmas, one year of a of a ballerina and again, loving dance. This poster became my world. It was my my mantra. It's what I look to every day. It was this gorgeous ballerina and it was, you know, the quintessential 80s inspiration poster, if you can see it, you know, if you can dream it, you can see it. If you can see it, you believe it. And if you can believe it, you can become it. And so that's what the poster said.

Those words meant everything to me. And those words allowed me to know that there was something more, something bigger than the environment. I was in the world. I was in the the circumstances I was in. And so I this love of dance kind of propelled me forward and propelled me out of small town, out of an abusive environment. And, and I didn't know who I wanted to be when I grew up. I thought I wanted to be an attorney, but I found myself in, you know, teaching fitness and teaching dance. And I found my way actually into chiropractic and, and at the time in Atlanta, the chiropractic university I went to actually had a dance, team.

And I, I was a choreographer for the team, and I choreographed a piece that got us featured in the 1996 Olympics. And, it was kind of a really big deal. And, you know, was a big thing for chiropractic. It was a big thing for all of us. There I am dancing in front of the president and, and so I'm, I'm months away from graduating with my doctorate, and I'm going to go out and, you know, do great things as a chiropractor in the world. And, and then I got this really cool opportunity to go dance on national TV and the number one rated show at that time, which took me into a whole other stratosphere, being on a number one rated television show, you traveled literally the country and then the globe.

It it became kind of a surreal life. And the reason I'm telling you all this is not only did my dream, it believe it, become it, become true. Was I informing my subconscious mind and achieved that it was then going from the highest to the high to then three years later, the show got canceled. Everything was gone. My marriage was in shambles cause I was married to another chiropractor and there I am now, at my lowest of my low going. Who in God's name am I?

Melissa's Journey Into Coaching and Epigenetics 6:29

Who am I now? I don't know who I am now, yet I still have these degrees, and the one thing that I knew is I needed to figure it out. And so that gave me the invitation to go within and to start learning and to actually become my own coach. And then it led me. Not only was I a doctor, not only had I been this professional entertainer and learned marketing and business and things at the highest level, but now I had to learn how to be human again, right? And I had to go truly inward and do the work.

And I fell so in love with psychology and positive psychology and cognitive performance that then I became a master level coach deep into NLP and NLP and master level trainers. And that started way back in like around 2000. And here, here we are today, 20 years later. And love grows every single day, deeper and deeper and deeper and more fully. And what an honor that we're seeing coaching now becoming so like we're hitting a critical mass time, right. Like, oh, it's like being the next Uber. Yeah.

That'd be good. Well, that's remarkable that, you have been around so long and and, you know, have all this experience, you know, 20 years is a long time. But that's exactly when I started, you know? So I feel the circle starting to come around, you know, something like what you said. They didn't call it health coaching 20 years ago. You were just. If you're a chiropractor, you're a witch doctor. You know, if you're right, if you're an old alternative medicine, you're a quack, you know, and things like that.

So it's remarkable how it's gone from this. And by the way, all my training started in a chiropractic office. You know, the idea of the innate intelligence and that the body heals itself and it excuse, nurture that and remove the contributors to chaos or metabolic chaos, as I like to call it, you know. And so so we've spent together 20 years doing that and, here we are. The technology is different. I mean, I built my whole practice. All I had was a pager, you know, and if you wanted to unplug, if you had to make a call, you had to go into a gas station and put some coins in one of those black boxes.

You don't see them anymore. They're called, you know, telephones. But anyway, yeah. Built up a huge business with the fax machine. So today I don't think people know how easy they have it to communicate with the entire world. The whole the whole planet, you know, it's just remarkable. Yeah. It's stunning. So one of the things that you mentioned, you know, is this, idea of a whole person, you know, and figuring yourself out. And it starts with, you know, because we're talking here about health and health coaching.

Well, what are some of those contributors to health? And it's really everything, you know, the entire world, your planet. And there's a name for that, you know, because on one side you have people promoting, get your genetics tested and then you'll know everything. No you won't, you'll know about 8% of what you need to know. It's really epigenetic. So let's talk about that and I'll let you explain it. Doc, what is that? I'm glad you said that. Thank you so much for because that that opens up. Let's start the conversation with why direct consumer testing is, you know, not the whole enchilada, not even maybe not even 8%, as you said.

Kind of what what is wrong with this idea that we can just go get our genetics read? Is this concept from a consumer standpoint, that your genes or your destiny, that your genes are your absolute? Here's your code. Here's what this means. Now there you go. Yeah. And that's absolutely correct. So our genes are just simply our blueprint of potential. And each genetic variant each genotype has thousands of potentials of expression. And so it's really we have to ask ourselves well if the gene is just the blueprint.

And there's a lot of different metaphors and one that I like the most. There's a few that I use interchangeably, but I like thinking of it. Okay. This is the blueprint. It's like it's like a recipe. So your DNA is like the ingredients, right? But how are you going to put those ingredients together? What are you going to make from those ingredients? The ingredients alone don't make a delicious cake. Right. It's it's how you put those ingredients together, how they are signaled in essence. And that's the science of epigenetics.

It is how the outer world and I say outer, both outside of this physical body and outside of the cell. So it's how the outer is in, in, in putting and influencing the inner expression. So it's the signals, it's the inputs that will then allow our genes to understand how to express. And and it's not a one and done. So even when we get our genetic code this is not a stagnant thing like we are biodynamic, right? Each and every moment little micro RNAs are going out like little email messengers, and they're picking up signals and information and they're bringing it back in.

And for so long, we in the health lane have been taught this belief, this idea that we are here to fix, we're here to find a root cause. We're here to find a problem, and then we're supposed to fix it. But much like you said, you know, the way that we, really look at kind of the health spectrum out appear on is that we are from unbalanced to enhanced, kind of right there in the center is homeostasis. And unbalanced doesn't mean that you're broken and you need to fix it. Is simply that there is an imbalance in your system.

Right. And so every moment, real time, we are able we our bodies are adapting and responding. Is this safe? Can we come out and thrive? Do we need to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass? And that is what epigenetics are. It is the signals that communicate between the outer and the inner. And so genetics are important. They're your blueprint has potential, but they don't tell your whole story. How you choose to leverage your potential is completely up to you. And that's the really exciting and the limitless aspect to what we get to facilitate.

As epigenetic coaches. Yeah, we at least get to have some control over how the genes are expressed. I like your analogy of the the recipe versus the ingredients. You know, sometimes it's how it all gets put together and then what you cook it in and you know, different things, you know. And so, the old one. Yeah, the old one is, you know, genetics loads the gun and epigenetics pulls the trigger. Will a loaded gun think about maybe. Come on, we can do better than that. Yeah, exactly. I always thought it was kind of cornball or just not seen it.

Right? You know, because it is the pulling the trigger that would do the work. Do it, do the damage. If there was. So, now, the other thing about genetics, people just running genetics and at least in other words, the evolution as you have, because we've been around, when it first came out, you know, the self-test and things you could do, people were trying to treat the snips, you know, like treat, you know, sort of treat the genes. And I knew that was wrong. Just instinctively I said, you can't take this for that.

Every time, you know, something comes in, no matter what test you run, you just take this. For that, you're treating the paper. And the other thing I noticed that was I didn't appreciate it, although I think I think genetics and the guy. So you know, my friends in that business, they have come around a lot to epigenetics is the real answer. But it took them away. And, and the other thing was the, the idea that, if you were told you had a certain gene, if you got this nocebo effect, we know the placebo.

Placebo is, you feel better on a sugar pill. Nocebo is there is nothing wrong with you, but because you were told about something, you start to go, hey, you know, like a trick in the old corporate days was, hey, everyone, go and tell GM that he doesn't look too good today. And but and by noon he's going home feeling kind of sick. You know, that's the nocebo effect. And genetic testing will do that. Right. If you think that 100% and you know, and this is one of the things that I actively so in in the Academy, the all of our coaches have time with me.

And I'm directly giving them feedback. And one of the biggest things is that, again, it's it's really unconscious. So many of us have been programed this way or marketed to this way that everybody's looking for the problem, and they'll see something come up in the in the data that they assume is there, and they'll want to coach to that, speak to that. And I stop them in their tracks and say, absolutely not. Do not create a problem that doesn't exist in the art of epigenetics. And epigenetic coaching is you paired the data with the lifestyle.

So it's it's a three part formula. Where's the clean up? Where do they want to be? What's happening right now in conjunction with their data? And how does that stack up to where they want to be. Right. So now knowing this, what do we precisely need to do more and less, based on their blueprint. So not a one size fits best approach. So it can be very precise and personalized, yet it's not going, oh, well, this is here. This is in the data. They've got this snip, they've got this allele. So we better know if it's not being expressed then that means they're already right.

They're already living in a more optimized way. They're they're playing to their own potential. So there are things that will mitigate any of our genetic expressions of our, you know, potentials for how we can express. And so you're right, it's important for people to realize the placebo, the nasty well, the nasty Bo is that negative effect. And that comes right down even to the precision of our language. And what I hope that everybody watching and listening really understands is that you all as a coach, as a leader out there in your communities, your words matter.

They matter so much. You know, you set the tone. You set the tone for the outcomes that you're going to create. You know, for for the tone of what's going to become possible for that client. And that's one of the things that I think I love most through the lens of epigenetics. We're having conversations that speak to potential and possibilities. We're showing solutions. We're not speaking to problems, not Pollyanna and pretending they don't exist.

What Epigenetics Means for Health Coaching 17:28

It's just going, okay, so what's happening? What are the potentials within the system that we can support or we can support? We can see where we can add in support to the system. You know, then it's going to be better able to handle, those imbalances identifying also, you know, where are they doing things that are out of alignment with their blueprint that are already going to, you know, have the propensity to increase the likelihood of a problematic expression of right here, let's dial that down.

Let's dial that down. And we know we're doing it to their blueprint. It happens even at a more rapid pace. But it's it's really about how do we want to look at the world. Right. How do we want to look for the possibilities of what can occur within our clients, within our business, within ourselves, within our lives? Yeah, I think it's worth emphasizing that just one, one more time. You know, an example occurred to me that, when my, my, my son was little, I can remember him being six or something, and he was a little rascal, you know, and he would jump, climb trees.

He just was always doing things. And I remember a time when he was walking on top of a fence. There was a fence with the, with the, the fence rail on the top and he's, he's balancing walk along it and his mother comes up and Susan goes, Jason, you can off that fence, you're going to fall. And I immediately jumped and I said, no, you're not, son. Keep going. You know, keep your eyes. Look ahead. Don't look down. You know, like you're going to be fine. No. You know, so even thoughts have this, power of, and of course, you became a, like, a world athlete, you know, because I, I could see the potential, you know, like, don't tell him he's going to fight, and so I.

Yes. What? Yeah. What are we feeding? Right. Are we feeding the potential or are we feeding the limitation? Because we all have both. We can either. Right. We can either really meet. And I went through the same things with my guy when he was little. I mean, same kind of thing. Like he was doing this parkour class. He's up on this 20 storey, like literally it was like 20ft or higher in the air, like structure. And they had these kids jumping off of this, like jumping off like a top of a roof onto this big pad on the floor.

And I'm like, holy moly. Like, of course my son wants to go jump off this freaking roof onto this land pad, right? Yeah. And I'm just sitting there going, okay, okay, Melissa. Like, just like, this is a critical moment for you as a mother right now. And I'm like, you got this bum, you know that. But I'm right there with you because that if I would have been like, you know, don't go up there. Be careful. Watch out. Like, he would have freaked out. And there were kids up there that were panicked against the law.

Right. And their parents were like, oh, so it's interesting. What are we feeding the potential or the limited? That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Excellent, excellent. So you know, we want to talk about the health coaching world. The purpose of this event is to raise the standards, raise the bar and to get coaches to be more professional, use more objective criteria, use less theory and more practical, things. And, you know, this is why I think epigenetics is so important because they really are a health coaches backyard.

This is our wheelhouse is using epigenetic. We're not we're not going to be applying some agent to get rid of some symptom and leave it at that, you know, or have a one size fits all, therapy. You know, you might have a niche, you could have a niche of the favorite people you like to work with. Like maybe you had a problem, you overcame it, and then you want to help others with that same problem, and you could share some of the things you did, but some of those things you did might not be all the pieces of the puzzle for that other person.

And that's what I think we need to be very careful about with these niches. You know, it requires a complete epigenetic program. Don't you agree? That's the future of health coaching? So 100%, you're going to get a resounding yes from me on that. And because I also do a tremendous amount of business, business and marketing, it's one of my specialties. And, you know, I do a I do a lot of training on that. So I love that you've brought this up. We're going to talk about this in two ways. So, you know, traditional business marketing says, hey, you gotta have a niche niche, I'll make you rich.

And you got to stand out in an overcrowded marketplace. And yes, wellness, health and wellness is the most overcrowded, noisy marketplace. So what is it that you really do? And people think, well, I've, I've got to I've got to tell the story of there's this one problem and they've got this one problem, if we can, to solve this one problem, we solve it all for them, right. Like so. If our specialty is thyroid, everything's going to be thought. It's kind of like you got one hammer and one nail. Everything is just that thing for the job. Oh it's right.

But what's the reality is, is from a clinical standpoint. And I love that you said we want to raise the bar in this health and wellness coaching industry. And first and foremost, realize that we as human beings are not stovepipes. We are not linear. We are not a car. Well, we are a bunch of pieces and parts. Yes, we can point to different pieces and parts. However, the dynamic crosstalk that is happening each nanosecond throughout every part of our body is more complex and diverse than any of us can even fully wrap our heads around in a conscious way.

But suffice to say, we are not a piece or a part. You cannot treat one piece without impacting the whole of the system. And when there is something out of regulatory function and this is out of balance, it's not working right. It's not optimally expressing its health, whether it's the thyroid or the gut, right, or whatever. The question isn't to say, what do I need to do to the thyroid? Oh, I need to give it more hormones. It's to say, well, what's influencing the system? Not even why isn't it working?

Because we're we're assuming it's not working. The thyroid is working. It is responding to an out of balance environment. It's responding appropriately. We think we know better than the body. We think, oh, I need to give it more of this or less of that. So what we need to first do is pull back and recognize that there are a myriad we are a complex system that we are getting inputs real time every moment. And whether we want to really fully embrace this or not. The reality is it is the foods, the air, the water, the light, the earmuffs, the, you know, the California versus North Carolina, right.

The stressors in our life, the amount of joy, the amount of purpose, the amount of connection, all of these variables stacked up and inform our physiology of how we are expressing our state of health. All of these are informing our genetic code. And so when we think about how we show up today and be the best coach we can be, first and foremost, you are not there to tell anybody anything. If you want to be the best coach you can be, then you want to become the most masterful Yoda on the planet. You want to be a guide.

Coaching science and the art of coaching is it's client center, client led for client based outcomes. But your role as an expert, master level Yoda coach is to understand the container and the context and the variables so that you can hold the mirror, you can listen, you can actively listen and align and understand what is at the heart of this person's desire. What are the real outcomes they want. So sure, you can have a niche and you could say, hey, you know, like you, you got a thyroid problem, I can help you.

I had a thyroid problem too. Yeah, it's not just the thyroid. There's so much more informing that niche. So sure, if you feel like you've had a if you've had a personal story that is that speaks volumes and you will attract your tribe to your point. Reed, recognize that whatever your path was is not going to be the same path as the person next to you, even if they're similar to you. So there will be patterns. There will be certain, you know, components to the journey that will be similar. Yet if you really want to honor the person you are working with is to recognize that they are not you in their path.

Although may be similar, will be unique to them to be the very, very best coach you know when you can understand how to hold that space and then have the data as well as the lifestyle variables, and you can take the data and you can take the expression and you can overlay them. Then you can make really precise, informed decisions. So it's not just a guess or a well, I think you should do this. We're not there to psychoanalyze the well, I think you should know. It's not that you take the data, you take the expression, you overlap them.

And now you can make precise recommendations. Right? Let's make and they the client get to then be a choice of what they are willing to do to actually achieve the outcomes that they say are important to them. I think you can get really close. You know, you raise the issue of, of root cause, you know, and I, I, actually this sounds like heresy because that was my mantra for many years, 20 years ago, you know, and I still see it on people's, signature lines. Get to the root cause things like that.

Well, there's in some cases and I think maybe most cases, you may never discover the true root cause, but you can have an effective chronic, you know, that's the wheelhouse of the health coaches. Well, there's not enough labs. There certainly isn't one lab. And by the way, in my medical program, I run one of the best, highest rated, direct best you Sumer lab test programs there is. And it's, there's 80 labs. We work with 80 labs. You can run all 80 and not find the root cause, but you can get some, a constellation of data.

You mentioned the data that tells you what the healing opportunities are, and maybe in some certain areas. And then you can apply these principles that I want to talk about with you. Next, the epigenetic factors and those metrics that will have an effect on that root cause. So whatever it was, it's gone. It's healed, you know, and and it's everything from the way you think to the outside world, the environment, which is, you know, where I started, and as an environmental, warrior, and environmental law and, to, you know, what's going on inside your body.

You, you polluted you, it gets polluted from the outside. It pollutes itself in the whole thing, you know, the whole the whole ball of wax. So, it's it's remarkable how that works and how, you know, if you it's an emancipated paradigm to me that.

Why Coaching Must Be Personalized 28:38

Well, I don't have to find the root cause. I just need to know how to have an effect upon it. So. And think about this. This is so much pressure. Having been a functional medicine doc in my practice for years and working in the functional medicine space for a long time, and the mantra of root cause there becomes this self-imposed pressure by the doc, the coach, or the clinician thinking they take on all the ownership. Oh my gosh, I've got to find the root cause. And I'm telling them I can't find the root cause.

Well, gee, that's that's a lot. There's a lot right there. Right. But we all have to be willing to hold the mirror on ourselves and go, why do I think I'm God, that I'm going to find the root cause? However, however, stay with me on this track is that we do put that pressure because we love serving these people, right? Like to give, to love, to serve, to heal. Those are parts of our mantra of why we've taken our oaths, our Hippocratic Oath, and everything else to do no harm and to help them to heal.

And so we really live by it. And we care deeply about producing outcomes for our clients and for our patients. But this idea of root cause. Yeah, exactly. Well said. There is never one root cause. There's never one inroad. There's not just one stovepipe. It's going to all of a sudden rebalance and revivify the entire system. Everybody out there who says root cause if you think of even running 80 tests or even five tests, well, then you're certainly recognizing you're looking at many pathways, many potentials.

And there's never one there's overlapping, right. There's overlapping of these pathways and systems. There's. And so what the best thing that our data can do is step one. And you do such a great job with like the blood chemistry work and the training that you give. You know, I love I love the work that you do read. And we piggyback off of that. Right. So people come to us, we, we work with this understanding of, let's look at the different data points we've got, so there's data points that you can look at just through lifestyle and some biometrics.

If you don't have the deeper data points of now, let's say we can get a little clinical and going into labs or advanced diagnostics has their labs advanced diagnostics, like you said, your company, you could run over 80, yet you don't need all those. Right? There's only a few that you really need because then there's a lot of overlap. And so what happens is we as docs and clinicians and even the client have come to believe we've we've believed this outdated story of thinking. The answer is in the test.

So we run all these tests because everybody just wants an answer. Then what happens? We run thousands of dollars in test, right? And sure, we may definitely have found more insight, but now we still have to go do the work to do the work. The patient, the client has to do the work, and there's no money left over to do the work to implement the information. And that's what I tell my coaches all the time. Information means nothing without implementation. We're no longer in the information age. People are overwhelmed.

You can Google anything. So giving somebody information is no longer unique. It's saying, what do I do with it? And that's what I want everybody hearing to again, here's another thing I want you to hear your magic. What makes you special, what makes you sought out, is that you're not there to be an information provider. You're there to be an implementer that Yoda that will guide them on that journey to implement the change that they are seeking, that they are craving so they may achieve those outcomes that they so desire.

Yeah. And that's where I find, some of your background in the coaching aspects, so important, you know, you said, you know, information is not as important as implementation. And I have, I try to simplify things. We investigate underlying causes, conditions, you know, the contributors to metabolic chaos, where things are out of balance. Some of it's just to the interview a really good intake history, things like that. You can get to know a person you in the data support. And we get to try to get a constellation of data.

Give me some saliva, urine, blood and stool, and I'll tell you a few things about you that maybe you didn't know, but it has to be correlated with what you do know about yourself and makes sense that, oh, now, now I know why I don't feel so well. And my doctor couldn't tell me it like that. So the investigation is one thing. Then there's the step two is the the program. Well, we're going to design a program for you and you're going to have to eat. Right. You can just do it a better time. You have to go to the gym and you're going to have to, you know, like reduce stress.

And that could include changing your job or your relationship or your environment or a lot of things. You could be internal stresses pierces picture. Your focus is versus food sensitivity and on and on all these other dysfunctions. That's a mouthful there. And then there's also the supplements you know, you can support and stimulating substitute for what's missing in food and other sorts of things. So even that's easy. As much as that was a mouthful, investigating and designing a program is steps one and two.

Step three is running the program that you know. How does that happen? How do you get people to eat right, go to bed, exercise, reduce stress and take their supplements? At the same time, you know, and man, it, so I love this. Is that, typically you don't you don't get them to do all that at once, because let's just think about it. Most people come. And so there's two ways that people come to any of us, right? They come because they're in so much pain. They're in so much discomfort. So we know that there's two main motivators pleasure, pain.

I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired. Right? Is the the, kind of saying we've all heard meaning I can no longer tolerate this. So I'll do whatever it takes. So that is the carrot, the stick. That is somebody that's what's called a away from type of motivation strategy that somebody's got in a way from motivation. Strategy is a short term strategy, meaning they'll come in, they'll pay the money because you're going to tell them, yep, I got it. We can help you. We're going to investigate.

We're going to create this program, and then you're going to have to do the work. And they're going to I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. And then they want to please you and they want to please himself. And they've just paid a lot of money. And so they're invested. And then all of a sudden there's all the stuff they have to do well, they become overwhelmed. They become more stressed out. Maybe they're not getting the results as quickly as they had hoped for, or they're getting the results, but they're so uncomfortable in the process that they're whole time they're having an inner dialog battle and they're going, gosh, right.

Like, and you've you've got to really razzle dazzle. They've got to love you so much that you're all of a sudden and so being their coach, you become their cheerleader. And the whole thing, the wheels start to fall off because you're giving them so much that they're failing before they start. And they're also going well. And there's always the 20 percenters. There's always the 20 percenters that are like, well, I'm not responding to the gluten free diet. I'm not responding to the elimination diet.

I'm not responding to that workout plan. And so then there's more struggle and dissatisfaction and what happens? Well, they're going to quit on themselves. They're going to quit on you. They're going to ask for their money back, or they're going to muddle through, get mediocre results, and they're going to say, that didn't work, or that coach didn't help me or that program, meaning they're going to no, they're not going to meet their expectations and their desired results. Right. So it's it's not a win for them.

And they feel worse than when they began. So how do we overcome that? How do we overcome this idea. And especially in today's digital health and coach space, there's lots of people that are out there. They're going to tell you you need to create a digital course. You got to create this course, you got to create this course. And like you said, program design is really quite easy. But we've come to be we've been led to believe by marketers, by people and these platforms. There's great platforms out there.

So I'm not gonna say any where we can put our digital content. And they say, hey, here's how you do course design. You're going to take them from problem to solution. Step 123456. Yeah. Everything that we're taught is this idea that the process is linear and it is not. It is not linear. It is not linear. How to heal. It is not linear of the inputs that are coming into our system. And so how do we overcome all this. So you guys get it by now right. So so hey it's really not that. So what is it. Well first and foremost how you do get compliance is it's not about I'm going to tell you what to do and you've got to do this if you want to solve this.

Because again we're implying something's wrong. It's saying you have limitless potential. And up until now, you or the people you've worked with just haven't been able to see, you know, what is potentially hindering that potential. So we're going to look at your blueprint. We're going to look at what's happening. We're going to look at some data right now going to see where you want to be. We're going to find the opportunities that you will be able should you choose. You'll be able to implement these in a very precise and strategic way, step by step.

Right. All the time. We're going to layer things in. We're going to stack things. And so instead of being a linear progression right we're creating it's kind of like this quantum reality. If we think about how we're going to stack and we're going to layer, we're going to start to build back into your system the support that it wants, that it needs, that it deserves. So that things are working well. And guess what? We're not going to stop at homeostasis. We're not going to stop when all of a sudden you are symptom free.

That means we were really just beginning because now we get to optimize. Now we get to in here. Now we get to take you into actually expressing more of who you've ever been than you ever realized. And we do it a piece at a time, really read like we pace and we with that client, we meet them where they're at, we understand where they want to be, and we pace and lead those expectations. Also based on the data, we give them too much, too fast. They're going to crash and burn. So although we may be excited and we know what's possible, they do it all.

And yes, we stack multiple things at once. They're going to get a faster result. I have to temper my team on a clinical level so much. We do a lot in our human performance centers with advanced strategies. So people come in and we do a lot with everything from cognitive enhancement tech. We do a lot of technologies. We'll layer in peptides and hormone optimization. I cannot tell you how many times I have to dial back some of my team, because on the more medical end, they want to layer in all of the stuff at once, like lots of peptides and lots of hormones. And I'm like, yeah, too much, right?

Like too much. And so it's it's really just this beautiful. And here's the last thing I'll say, because you can tell clearly, I love talking about this and I can talk about, yeah, you know, you it's an important moment for everybody. But we've also been conditioned on this idea to think immediate gratification. Right. Like faster, better. And so, when you truly become aware of how you are able to best be that the Yoda, the type of Yoda that you are and how you work with people and how you feel like some of us need to go really fast.

Who are the type of clients that you attract? What are the outcomes? How quickly do they want things so they like to work in little 90 day sprints or you know, is are they somebody that likes to take their time? When you think about the outcomes that you are promising in your program, please do not over promise under deliver. It is better to go with a slightly longer program than a shorter program. And I mean this, especially if you're just getting started, you have to find your pace and rhythm.

And if we try to go out there and sell a six, eight, 12 week solution, are we really delivering the solution? Yes, we are creating enough stress

Using Data, Labs, and Wearables in Practice 40:48

in the body that there will be a response. There will be we're going to be creating a change, but it's not a lasting change. And so this is where we have that that, you know, kind of back and forth, ping pong effect where people especially we see a lot of weight loss. Right. They're going to lose the weight, but then they rebound and they gain all the way back. And we're not keeping it off. When you work with somebody over time, you give yourself as well as your client permission to recognize the truth of what's really going on is that there is not one root cause.

There is not one quick fix. How they got to where they're at did not happen overnight. It was a stacking of different inputs and different breakdowns and different compromises in their system. For the system to continue to do what it was designed to do, which is to keep them alive. So the system is doing the best job it can, and it's not going to just like this, transform overnight. Even with the deepest meditations and the most amazing kind of quantum leaps, there can still be rapid healing, right?

But even instant miracles start. But then they can still take several weeks to move through. So what I'm trying to share with you is give yourself permission to take time and have a journey with your plan, and realize that you will get to all of it. You will get to the diet and the exercise and to the sleep. Your job using the data will allow you to identify what's the most important place to begin, and the client will also tell you what they believe. Data is one thing, but what does the client believe is the most important place?

Because here's here's the thing. If you think the most important place for them to start is nutrition, but they absolutely believe the most important place for them to start is sleep. And you're pushing this way and they feel like it's this way, and you've never found out what they believe to be the most important place to start. Then you've got a mismatch and they're not buying in, and you're not building rapport, and you're not building trust, and you're you're going to have a difficulty eliciting those great results.

But then if you think I know they need nutrition, they need sleep all of a sudden, wait a minute, I can look at their genetic blueprint. I can see they've got a cab. One variant. I can see that they're eating foods high in glutamic acid at night. I can see this is not allowing them to convert, you know, glutamate to Gaba. So they're not relaxing and being able to get deep sleep. Holy moly. I can talk to them about a nutritional change that we can make that's going to let them sleep. Oh my gosh. So now you've done your work because you still know they need to make some nutritional changes and you've met the client in the space that's most important to them because they want sleep, right.

Do you understand that connection. So this precision, this stuff we're allowed to do, give yourself time, give yourself the opportunity to realize you don't have to fix it all overnight. Take that pressure off yourself so that you can really support. Yeah, I'll give you one. Just to prove I understand what you're saying. You know, to me, it's very it's very logical, you know, but, again, that demand to be a hero, I've, gotten at peace with, you know, and when I say to people, that you get is, look, there's no power boating to health.

It's like sailing. You know, because I grew up sailing on the Great Lakes, and, you can't go straight in a sailboat. Not for long. You know, you're going to get blown off course. You're off course most of the time. You're you're always hitting up, hit you. You know, there's there's wind and of course, there's currents, and there's even the waves slapping on the bow, the whole and everyone's got a decent sized shaped hole and rudder and, and, things like that, you know, the keel and that and the mast height and the amount of sail you have.

And just there's no power in the health you get. The eager beaver says, yeah, I know I'm, you know, 80 pounds overweight. I'm going to lose it by summer. Tell me what to do, and I'm going to do it, you know, 100%. And that guy's going to go hurt himself, you know, and then he's not going to be able to do anything to get towards it. So sometimes it is taking your goal. Yeah. So that coin to I know you agree with that. It's like it's like sailing. The other side of that is that physicians and some of their magic does happen instantaneously.

And people are kind of spoiled by that in a sense. It's like, well, when I went to the doctor, he gave me this stuff. And when that pain went away, you know, like right away. But it's come back, we go. Well, yeah. You know, so we know what you could do for relief. What can we do. So that doesn't come back. And that's the two different wheelhouse is you know, so so but you mentioned some things there Melissa that are appealing to the there's that we have a nerd side. You know like we love to be spiritual and have emotional intelligence and to be able to communicate with people really well and to, meet them where they're at.

As you just said, it's critical to listen to your client or patient. And sometimes they ask them, well, what do you think is your weakest area? You know, and then if they say, sleep, you go, all right, well, let's work on sleep. You know, like, you know that it's because they're eating like crap and they never exercise and that they're going to you have to bring in these elements at some point. But let's start with your weakest areas. So now but in terms of the nerdy stuff, now, what what kind of metrics are we talking about here?

I heard you mentioned the gamma and, you know, glutamate and things like that. So talk a little bit about that. And then and then I want you to talk about the, the of you know, the course become a certified epigenetic coach. Absolutely. Thank you for that. So so some of the nerdy fun stuff is that our coaches are all fundamentally trained in, first of all, obviously coaching and complex human systems, foundational genetics, epigenetics. Then we move into the more technical, which is we actually have a proprietary, array genetic array that looks at more snips than 23.

And me, it's something that's really conducive, especially to a clinician's practice because of our levels of HIPAA, privacy, safety, security and how all the data is stored. It's only connected to the person with a barcode. So it's it's really and then it's dumped from the system within 90 days. So it's never sold to big Pharma or any research core or anything like that. So, so what happens is fundamentally we are looking at over 760,000 snips. We have then the raw data comes in and we have a proprietary epigenetic algorithm system that's looking at the highest impact snips that are driven by lifestyle.

So when we think epigenetics, we're thinking, what's in our control, what's happening in our life, in our day to day environment that can evoke change and enhance expression of health and flourishing. So our reporting specifically is doing a deep dive on hundreds of these high impact lifestyle driven snips so that then we can really move people into. So you're going to see snips, you're going to see words like comt p. You know, people are gamma ApoE gad one like you're going to you're going to learn about these fun little codes that go with these, right?

Like our, our genetic, our genotypes. And what they really mean and the alleles. So the beautiful thing is that through the training, while we teach you all of that, we also have this beautiful proprietary system that when that data comes in and you can at any time, I don't expect you to know every snip. I don't expect you to know off the top of your head, every allelic combination. So our system you're able to hover over, you're able to see at any time what it means. You're able to drop in interpretation and recommendations.

However, the data is just data. You're still going to do the coaching, right. So we teach you on how to coach based off of that data to ensure that you're going to then drop in. It's all in the system, the right strategies and protocols, right to that lifestyle, to that person, to those outcomes. And so foundationally, all of our coaches are trained in the genetics and then those epigenetic expression markers utilizing those two tools. Then we also layer in biometrics. We do a lot around wearables and technology.

So how can you leverage, you know, wearable devices like the Garmin or Ring? How can you look at things like the loop strap and understand what those metrics mean, how to assess them over time, how they're informing. And you can see changes in the system. So what's really beautiful, especially through the precision performance lens, is that our coaches are understanding, again, not just about data and information. In a snapshot, but then we're looking at these tools and we're training in them and we're having conversations and the latest research in them of what is this telling us about the system real time.

And so then all of a sudden, and any of us can use these right now, right. You don't have to be an epigenetic coach to leverage wearable devices and, technology. But what becomes really great is now you have another way of also engaging your clients in their results. So they they learn a new skill set which can become what's called interception. Right? So that inner awareness. And oftentimes when clients come to us, especially if they're more on the unbalanced side of the scale, many of them have kind of disconnected, right?

Their mind and their body are not one. And they're so externally focused, like to get them to even become aware, oh, what did I eat for lunch yesterday? Like, you know, so step one is kind of just, a little closer, external awareness, but the deeper dive of where we get to go over time and working with clients is then heightening that interception. And then they get to leverage technology and they get to see it for themselves. So it's not just you holding the knowledge. You also, as the coach, holding the knowledge of what this lab means or what this number means.

But we're we're working. We're coaching them. They're learning about themselves. They're learning about their own potential. And you not have to tell and convince them of anything because they can easily see. So let's say that all of a sudden their stress scores up and you've been educating them on the importance of breast. For example, we do a ton of training around breath and specifically the proper type of breathing to maintain regulation between your CO2 and your O2 and and what that's doing to cognitive performance and function and mood and energy and metabolic function throughout the day.

So, so simple breath exercise, all of a sudden their stress is elevated

Training, Certification, and Business Support 51:38

and we do stress and coherence I mean breath and coherence. Right. So breath awareness to the heart. Little, through the nose, in and out. Gentle breaths. 60s just thinking a thought of gratitude into the heart space. That's it. 60s later they can see that their stress has dropped by more than 20 points. Happens all the time, right? And so now this. And it's not. You're saying you really should go out and do this breath, this meditation. It's going Holy moly, that stuff that Melissa's talking about really freaking works.

And, that didn't solve my problem, but that just allowed me to become more resourceful. So now I'm better able to navigate the challenges in front of me. So instead of us constantly be broken and broke down, stressed out, we become resilient and adaptive. The way we were built. Me so the nerdy stuff is the genetic test kit, the epigenetic report that precision dialing in, of delivering those results and making those, very precise protocols based on the data and then leveraging biotechnology and wearable devices.

To your last question about the actual program itself, yeah, it's pretty great. We actually offer up to three levels of certification, all for one price. It is a combination of online, where you get to go at your own pace, quarterly live events that are included in the cost of a VA admission, as well as once we, you know, each quarter, we start the live training where every week they come in for an hour and a half. They're working with myself and the high level academy team. So they're getting the top level training on how to really not just understand the data and all the fun, nerdy stuff that we love the clinical side.

They're also learning how to implement it as a coach, how to go out and deliver this and we have a very extensive business and marketing section, because I'm all about helping my people understand whether they're brick and mortar or virtual or want a hybrid. How do they. That's amazing. And, I think that's a really important element. You know, like when you went to chiropractic school, they probably didn't do much about running a chiropractic office. Did they know two classes like, like super short classes that.

Yeah, like, you know, the insurance, you know, and hope they pay you, and they don't. So now what do you do? You know, like, yeah, I get it. That's where I started, like I said 20 years ago in there. So things thanks for that. So tell us, like, give us an example of how a coach used this to success. Like, like this person was, I don't know, empty so far. Just just pick pick one metric in anything. And how how did that help somebody. You know, so again, I, I don't like to look at just one metric because we know that there's many more than that.

However, one that just came to mind and, and I don't mean to keep picking on that one because it's not the end all be all, but it's really interesting that there is this one with one of our doctors, in West Virginia. So he's a chiropractor. He's a functional medicine. He's a brilliant functional medicine doctor. And, and so he's and he also had he's got a full medical team, integrative practice. Okay. His nurse in the practice, her son, who was five years old, had been coming into the practice since he was born to get adjusted.

And, and because it's an integrative, you know, they're very lifestyle based. So they were already looking and doing kind of lifestyle protocols. Right. And, functional protocols. Well, the little boy was still really pretty hyperactive. And, little boys can be that way. He goes to kindergarten and, they had one of the within the first week of the assignment was that the child had to trace his letter. So all he had to do was trace the letters. And that the teacher wrote on this piece of paper, and there was nothing that was even coherent.

Everything was squiggles. It was all like there was no letters to be found anywhere. And, and so the mother actually took a picture of this, and she was talking with her boss and doctor and friend, Doctor Leonetti, and she's like, what do I do? Like there is clearly a problem here. And he said, and they'd already run his genetics, but they hadn't run his report like they have the raw data back then. Know that they hadn't looked at the report. So he now looks to the report. He sees the genotype in the variant.

And without even doing a deep dive, he's like, talk to me about what he's eating again. And while the so the Gad one is full time glutamic acid okay so glutamate conversion issue and this little guy and some of the foods are that this is high and this is important or of course grains. So we're thinking gluten. We're thinking any kind of wheat or rice. Even quinoa. But here's what we're thinking. It's also in chicken. It's in eggs. It's in soy. It's in dairy. It's in this is also very important. It's going to be in a lot of protein powders, bone broth and carrageenan.

Okay. So this little guy, she had taken them off dairy and they had him on a on an almond milk. That was high in Turkey. So, like, they thought they were doing right by getting him off dairy. And, and he was not doing grains, but he was doing it was one of the I can't remember one of the other foods out in front of me. But anyway, suffice to say, they replaced the milk he was drinking to a non carrageenan blend. They added in the magnesium and they, whatever grain he was getting, they made sure to get rid of it.

And within seven days, the little boy did the exact same exercise in kindergarten. And he traced every letter perfectly. We have before and after pictures. Yeah. And this is something that's been, you know, they've been doing all the right stuff for a long, long time. And those are so there's clinical breakthroughs that happen every single day that are just stunning and magnificent. There are economic breakthroughs that are even more stunning and magnificent. I'll just share really quickly. One of my docs, she, and and this happens both for my coaches that are not docs who one of our coaches, he went out and came from a financial background, had no health history at all, as a health coach.

And he's gone on to create one of the most successful podcasts in the biohacker space. And so his whole plan was he learned he came in and he started to interview all these experts. And and he would always lead people to getting their precision genetic read with him. So he started to build his business from his podcast, interviewing all the other experts, tying it back into his offer. And then he became so busy, he hired four more of our coaches from our academy to be his coaches, and now he's one of the top podcasts out there.

I mean, so there's so many really cool things, and I could go on and on and on. The program is, is, you know, it's beautiful. We have a great tribe of everybody from medical doctors prescribing physicians to alternative providers, chiropractors, natural paths, acupuncturist, health coaches, nutritionists, dietitians, psychotherapists. Biohackers. You know, we have a beautiful mixed tribe of people that all together hold the desire, the belief and the awareness that it's not about fixing the problem.

It's about enhancing limitless potential. Right on. Is there here for this? So, yeah, you know, I just I just want to know. I mean, I hate to even press you past that, but, because it's been a really good, event and an episode here. Do you have a give a final tip for coaches, this will be the last thing just on how to be a professor. Know what separates the, the wheat from the chaff. You know, when you consider the traits of a health coach, that that would separate them from, the rest, because there is it's such a, big field now that it can get kind of unclear of who's who's really doing this that, that, you know, I think the business aspect like what is our backyard and any comments about that, that, that people can take home with them.

Oh my goodness. Okay. So a lot to it. So you know we're in an interesting time just within the health coach space. There's a lot of a lot of push for regulation. Right. Like we want some certifications that are accredited and we are we're actually right now moving through our process with the national board. So we're really excited about that, that our program will be nationally board accredited and, with health and wellness coaches. But there's more of that coming and coming and coming down the pike.

So that to say, how do we regulate? How do we know who's the best? And and it's not about the best. It is like what really makes for a great coach. And so there's the political side of it saying, let's make sure there's some proper accreditation, right? So that there's there's at least a foundation of knowledge and understanding so that, it helps the lay person to go, well, when I go to a coach or a health coach, you know, here are some of the things that that should occur. But specifically beyond that, what makes a really outstanding coach?

There's a few key ingredients. First and foremost, the only way to be an outstanding coach is to begin within yourself to show up. And I love how you said it's not about power building through anything. It is to remember that you're not here to make it about you at all. And that's tough for us. Like, look, I took me a long time. What do you mean? It's not about me. They're coming to me for the information. I'm magic. Yeah,

What Makes a Great Health Coach 1:01:38

yeah, it's not about us. And so that's kind of step one is to go. You know what? Why am I doing this? Like, what's really driving me. And so I'm going to invite you to lovingly set your ego aside and to recognize it's not about you, it's all about them. And if you truly can lead heart first, be value driven and if your whole approach is I'm showing up because I care about you. And I absolutely know, like I know, like I know that if you have the desire, I can support you to get the outcome. So ingredient number two is certainty.

So step one value in advance. Show up heart centered. Make it about them not about you. Essential ingredient number two certainty. And what I mean by certainty is that you have total confidence in yourself as a guide to be able to navigate the person. So remember, when we think we have to fix and find root cause, we can be putting all this pressure on ourselves like, oh my God. So me, I got to figure it out. What if I messed up? What if I get it wrong? You're not here to do that at all. You simply need to know how to how to sail that boat.

I love that analogy. Right? Like, how do we make these little specific course corrections over time? Because that's what's going to win the race. That's what's going to make the change. And then step three from a business standpoint, and these all apply to business too. So if you're showing up and showing up can mean in your local community, right. It can mean in the online space showing up in front of your ideal audience. The people you feel most called to serve and support, to recognize you are not here, to serve everybody.

Just because you can does not mean that you should. You will water yourself down. Yeah. So I do want you to show up in your zone of genius. I want you to show up to the people you feel most called to serve. Others will come. You don't have to worry about them. They will find you. But nobody will ever find you if you don't first show up in the ways that you are most meant to show up and shine. Well, those are really important ones. And, at the top of my list to, you know, especially around picking and choosing who you work with, that's what separates a professional from a hobbyist.

Because hobbyists. Yeah, I'll help you, you know, but a professional goes, well, let's go through a few questions and let me decide if number one, can I help you? And then, you know, if you're someone that I think I could work with, that would be a good fit for each other. And we can both go through this little thing and then we can decide if we want to work together. That's a professional approach. You nailed it 100%. Not everybody's a fit. And don't try to make them because you do both themselves and yourself a disservice. So.

And that's what's beautiful, you know, that's that's what we all get to do as a coach. We need to be willing to do our own work first so that we can show up and we can lead and live by example. Not to prove that we're better or right. It's just simply as you lead, you will attract your tribe. You come to you, you know, that's what's beautiful about this event that you do read. There's so many of us here, each with different coaching programs, and it's not a one size fits all. Right. So we're all here to support one another because everybody needs a coach.

None of us came with an instruction guide in the beauty of what a coach does at the core, because we can hold a mirror right for the other to truly see their reflection, the truth of who they are and what is possible for them. So this has been great. Anybody that this resonates with, I love, we have a free gift that we're including here at the summit. I'd love for you to be able to download that, find out about it, come over to appear on that academy. That's eight. Iron is the way it's spelled. It's harder. It's kind of like way up here on eight.

Iron Dot Academy is where you can find out more about our programs, but we've got links. I know that'll be right here with this because we're doing some special things with the summit. And we make it really affordable. We've got some easy ways for people to come in and be able to get started in the program. And, and we're there to mentor and to guide and support and both in business and, and in those clinical results. So if this resonates, we'd love to have you and Reed. Thank you again, as always.

It's just great being a part of this event second year in a row. It's it's been an honor and it's going to resonate with a lot of people. I am, tickled that you here to provide your, vision and, be a leader, because that's what this field needs. And thank you. We're going to put all the notes into the show, notes on the context and things like that. But thank you for what you said. And, folks, don't forget to buy all the recordings because, you know, you can't listen to them all in five days or whatever it is.

So, do it while they're available. You'll be able to come back and listen over and over and see all the pretty faces and, learn all the good tips and, make some choices for yourself that will help you to help more people. So, thanks again. It's been really lovely. Take care. Melissa.