Importance Of Addressing Unresolved Trauma To Optimize Health And When Facing Chronic Disease

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

It’s my honor to be here. Thank you so much.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Like the audience to know all the incredible work that you’re doing. Dr. Keesha Ewers is an integrative medicine expert, Doctor of sexology. I mean that I would actually love to have just a discussion on that alone because that’s such an important aspect that people don’t realize how important, I mean how it impacts us family practice, A R. N. P psychotherapist, herbalist Board certified and functional medicine and diabetic medicine and is the founder, medical Director of the Academy of Integrative Medicine Health Coach certification program. Dr. Keesha has been in the medical field for over 30 years. You don’t look 30, that’s incredible that after conducting the hurt study in 2013 healing unresolved trauma should develop the hurt model for understanding how past childhood trauma impacts adult health. 

This led to the creation of the U unbroken online program for patients to heal their own trauma and the mystic medicine, deep immersion healing retreats. She leads at her home in San Juan island in Washington. Dr. Keesha is a popular speaker including at Harvard and from the TEDX stage and the best selling author of solving the autoimmune puzzle. The woman’s guide to reclaiming emotional freedom and vibrant health. The quick and easy autoimmune paleo cookbook and inflammatory recipes with seven ingredients or less for visit and your libido story, a workbook for women who want to find fix and free their sexual desire. You’ve done a lot, doing a lot and, and it’s amazing all. I mean such a breath of training and knowledge. I mean that that’s incredible, thank you so much for being here.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

I always say whenever anyone came in my office and stump the chump, the chump went back to school,

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Is that the truth?

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Yeah

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

So tell me a little bit, I mean, how, how did you start this journey? I mean what I mean, what made you kind of get into the niche that you’re in right now working on autoimmune trauma? I mean these are, these are big things.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Well, I think like any of us, I find as I run my own summits, the stories of the people that are experts in their fields are compelling and so it’s, it’s, I’m definitely no exception. I started out in a very, I would describe myself as an adrenaline junkie in my early days, a very high intensity medicine was what I loved, I was a nurse in the hospital in the ICU, ER, life flight, balloon pump team. Like I just loved that and I did that for about 10 years. I was raising four Children, I was a marathon runner before I started having kids. I used to skydive, I mean I just loved that kind of adrenaline and then, and this is the way my patients described this to all of a sudden I woke up sick one morning, right. And of course it’s that’s not how it works, but that’s how I felt it also. And it was because I was completely disassociated from my body. I wasn’t listening to the many warning signs along the way that it had given me. 

So one day I woke up and I had £10 of just extra puffiness and fluid over my joints throughout my body. I was they were red and inflamed. I was flattened. It was like someone had taken the batteries out of the Energizer bunny. So I got in to see a doctor and she asked me in the course of the history taking process if I had a family history of autoimmune disease. And I said, you know, I think my grandfather had rheumatoid arthritis and was in a wheelchair when he died and he died at the age, I am right now and I never knew him. And she said, well that’s what you have. And you know, here pulls aquifer prescription pad, two prescriptions here, two prescriptions take them and when you get worse, come back, not if when and it was for methotrexate aid and for a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, which this has not changed in all of these years. It’s the same exact thing that went on then. And so I remember on my way home, I always tell my patients and students, you know, if an herb had bit me on the bottom, I would have known what it was. I was completely born and raised in the Western medical paradigm. And so I just remember for the very first time, as I was driving home that day that maybe there was something else out there, like I didn’t even know, it wasn’t an east versus west or an alternative versus you know, I just didn’t even know anything else in order to look. 

And so I thought, you know, I’ll just start on the internet. And back in those days was I asked Jeeves about arthritis on a dial up modem and, you know, as the, as I started going deeper, I went into pub med where we keep our medical research and I found a compelling article on yoga and autoimmune disease. And I found myself in my first yoga class the following morning and I was holding those postures as the yoga teacher was wandering around the studio talking and he said Enough about this word higher Vida, which is the sister science of Yoga, that’s the medical arm of it 10,000 years ago. And he said enough that piqued my interest that I went back home afterwards and looked that up and what I discovered about irrigating medicine was so interesting to me because first of all, it was a paradigm shift that was revolutionary on two levels. One was we’re not all the same. 

And I had never, ever contemplated that, you know, like we’re trained inside the Western paradigm to drugs like here’s your list of drugs, here are your diagnoses, this is a drug that matches it, you know, here’s your list of side effects. Here’s what to look for drug interaction, you know, like that’s it. And so that’s how I was raised, you know, here’s the cookbook and we have this thing called evidence based, standardized medical care, standardized medicine implying that were standardized people and we are not. And Ayurveda was the first thing that showed me that like, oh we are not all the same and in fact we need to be fed and watered and taken for walks differently from each other, you know, just basic things and that was, that was new for me. I know that’s sad, but it was and then the second thing that was brand new revolutionary skies partying with the clouds and the angels singing and the sunbeams shining on me was you’re ayurvedic medicine said autoimmune disease is undigested anger and I remember going, hmm, wait, you know like you mean you have to digest your feelings, you have to digest your experiences and your memories.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I didn’t realize I thought digestion was processing food, but

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Hey, just a second, I don’t get this, you know, and and then, and then the second ball that drops, you know, is oh that means wait, but I’m not an angry person and so, you know, like this all I remember like the second thought from that was, well maybe that’s a problem. You strapping on your running shoes or being making yourself busy doing some high intensity thing, being a perfect mother, perfect wife, perfect everything. Maybe a distraction from having actually feel your feelings. And so you know, and, and I just remember thinking, oh, I think the way that I’ve been doing things is what’s gotten me sick, That was really important. And then the next thing that happened was how do immune means I’m attacking myself? 

So is there a time in my life that I wanted to die? Because I certainly don’t know and I’m basically committing suicide in a societally acceptable manner. So then, you know, I learned to meditate, I became a yoga teacher and during my training, during all of that process, I just like kept asking that question like, and one day in my meditation I went back with that like, very clear, let’s look for a place where maybe yourselves agreed with you, maybe you said you wanted to die, you know, and I really got like, that’s possible that maybe you set this up a long time ago. And sure enough, as I went backwards with that thought in mind, I ran into my 10 year old little girl version of myself who was being sexually abused by the vice principal of the elementary school that I was attending and my dad was out to sea in the Navy. We’ve moved a lot in my lifetime and I, I was raised with no television and I don’t even think I knew like, I don’t, it was 1975, I get it. Like, but we had just moved from Japan and I don’t think I knew the word sex. I don’t think that I knew the word of like abuse or molestation. I don’t think I had the right words to tell my mom, but I know I tried to tell her like I didn’t want to go to school, but I didn’t, I don’t think I really knew how to tell her what was happening because I don’t think I knew And the vice principal was saying, you know, you’re a bad kid, that’s why this is happening. 

So You know, there’s this, there’s this little girl that I found in this meditation sitting there, she wanted off the planet. You know, like she was talking to angels, she was trying to figure out why people behave the way they did like what she was doing wrong. You know, and, and of course little child brains are not fully developed. We don’t have a prefrontal cortex until we’re 26 years old. So everything is self centered, you know, or like what is this? Like what am I doing wrong? If your parents are getting divorced, that’s the way kids are right. And so for me, if I’m told you’re bad kid and that’s why this is happening. And of course I’m going to believe that, so of course that set up this perfectly aligned belief system, that something’s wrong with me, that goes with the feeling of I’m not good enough, right? That is anxiety and panic in my system, the nervous system and then the behavioral strategy that you learn to make as an adaptive behavior for your beliefs and meanings that you create in response to your sympathetic nervous system overdrive to the emotions that you feel. For me. It was perfectionism. I have to be perfect if I’m going to survive. And so I was really perfecting perfectionism when I got sick, was really perfect at it, driving myself so hard, right? And being sick, you were perfect. I was perfect with that too, believe me, overachiever.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And so attacking myself,

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

It was the best in attacking myself. Exactly. And so I just remember going, I bet that this time period of really wanting off this planet actually does have something to do with my disease process 20 years later. And sure enough later, science does support that with the adverse childhood experiences study. And then I did a study in 2013 that shows how that all transpires. But you know, it was, it was good because I was able to say, oh, I set this up and then go into trauma healing As well as some of the other things, like, changed the diet, but I had already done those things and that I was reading about and I’d only gotten about 75, better. And when I really got into the trauma part and unhooked from, oh, I have to be perfect, you know, and and started healing and self confronting my own ways of perceiving myself and the world my R. A reversed within six months and it’s never been back and I never took those medications. And so then I started devoting my education and you know, everything else from there on toward doing this long answer to that question.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

No, I mean that is what people, it’s really important for people to understand that some of these things that, well that happened a long time ago. Yeah, I was just a kid. You know, I’ve already forgiven them or I’ve already, you know, a lot of patients say that and then looking at the emotions around that that yes, maybe your adult version said I forgive you but the child is still, 

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Screaming in there. Yeah. That’s the thing is I hear that a lot obviously because I call this one of the four corner of the puzzle that you solve because we’re each unique puzzles. But the four corners I call I call out our genetics, your gut help your toxic load and burden and then trauma and I often hear what you just said like, oh, I’ve done so much work about this like years and years and years of therapy and yet they’re still sitting in front of me with breast cancer or an autoimmune disease, you know? Then I very gently have to say, and you’re at your next layer, right, This is not a one and done kind of situation, it’s layer after layer after layer. 

And I remember being in therapy, opening my eyes, looking at the therapist and saying, am I going to go back here forever for the rest of my life, I’m so tired of going here, you know, and it was actually to a different place than this and and she looked at me and it was sort of like, oh grasshopper, you know, she said, and I’ll never forget, like, just the kindness in the way that she said this and she said these moments in childhood and everyone has trauma, every child has trauma, it may not be capital t trauma, like we’re talking about, but we all have had trauma and in these moments are the times that you are basically digging the mine shafts, right? And you will then go down them again and again and again in adulthood to bring up the gems of wisdom and she said like, don’t be afraid of that mine shaft, You know, you have another gem that’s waiting for you down there every single time you think you’re done. 

And so I was like, oh that helps, like that helps to put a realistic perspective on until the rest of my life is done in this body. This will be part of where I get my wisdom from. And okay, that’s good. I don’t have to kind of think that I’m closing the doors at some point on this and never thinking about it again. It doesn’t mean that, you know, that you’re always visiting the rawness and the pain. No, like, you can tell I talk about this, I tell the story and you know, I’m at that place where there’s post traumatic growth and wisdom from it and you can even say, thank goodness that my soul set this up for its growth and learning, right? That but you don’t hurry to that place, you don’t rush to get to that place, right? The body has to be brought along the small child part of you has to be brought along all the small Children parts of you. Like, it all has to be done in a way that’s integrative kind unfolding compassionate. Yeah.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And we’re so used to in this Western society, like what you’re saying, Yeah, this drug, this pill, you know, we have these symptoms, give me a drug and then it will all be gone, you know, and it’s that kind of suppression, quick fix type of mentality. And when you work on trauma, it’s like you’re saying, it’s not a quick fix. You can’t use that model in this type of scenario. The whole idea is the stillness, the patients, the allowing the process to take place in whichever way that it unfolds. It’s not controllable. It it is you have to allow the process to kind of unfold while you’re present rather than trying to say, well now I want to do this or not, I want to do that. So it’s such a different mindset for sure. And it’s not a cerebral mindset, it’s not something that you can logically think it is because it’s operating from your survival mechanism like the little old child and you just wanted to survive, right? Yeah.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

And that figure I like I have a very strong figure out, obviously have a lot of letters behind my name and so there is a time in my life where I thought if I just learn enough, then the world will be safe for me, right? And or I’ll feel good about myself good enough, right? And so the figure out our is actually a part of your ego, it’s part of it’s a part that you generate from a child’s perspective and you can see that like I’m in school 10 years old, so someone’s telling me I’m not doing something, right? So I devote my life to figuring things out as a way of feeling safe, right? So you find those parts inside of you and they have learned some really beautiful skills and there’s a shadow part to it. 

And so that’s a lot of the work I do in trauma healing retreats and working with different kinds of modalities is really learning like what is the gift from the parts you’ve developed in childhood in response to your experiences how to digest and get rid of the hurt. The resentment. I always think resentment is the number one cause of cancer resentment. You know, it’s like the hot tub you put yourselves in that just is so toxic and it’s not a chemical generated by factories out there and dumped into the air, wired or in soil. It’s generated right here and it impacts how you express your genetics, it impacts your gut help, it impacts how well you can get rid of your toxic burden, right? And it all stems from usually trauma and it’s an undigested forms. So, you know, these are all such important. I think parts of the conversation, we’re talking about healing and regenerating, right? Yeah. We talk about aging, We age a lot faster when we are pouring toxins from our own mind into ourselves

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And in regards to genetics. And what many people don’t understand is that genes are turned on and turned off and so we can choose the combination of genes that are turned on and turned off by our emotional set up. So that resentment of that trauma by holding on to that or not resolving that, that will then shift our genes how they express themselves in a less favorable way, which will then speed up things like aging and that will reduce our abilities ourselves to regenerate. And it will reduce our mitochondria are functioning like, you know, if you hold the trough, let’s say, anger tends to be gravitate towards a liver, you know, then that liver will then the circulation will be less, there’ll be less nutrients going to that Oregon, there’ll be less toxins that are getting out of that Oregon. And so you just see the compounding effect by not going through the process going down the mine shaft and working, grabbing those jewels, you know, So it is so important.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Yeah, for sure. And you know, I mentioned earlier this you know the unfolding, letting your mind unfold with some helpful you know, when I give talks, I am on the faculty for the institute for functional medicine and when I teach this stuff to medical providers, you know, one of the things I always say is please stop telling your patients to reduce their stress. You know, like that’s just so ridiculous. You know, so they have someone’s got a special needs child and you’re going to reduce them somehow, you know, or or a job they love. But it’s very stressful and you’re somehow going to reduce that, you know, So there’s just a really interesting way we think about that, that is it’s off the mark. It’s just a little bit off, right? And it’s how we perceive ourselves in our lives, you know? So you can have five people that see the same movie and we’ll have five different take home messages. It’s the same is true. Like five people having the same life experience will have a different perception of it. 

So it’s learning how to shift your perceptual filters so that when you are filtering your information that comes through what Tibetan Buddhism calls your six minds, not one mind, which I love. Those guys really got a handle on how the brain works thousands and thousands of years. You know, like how that mind, how you can actually become master of your own mind rather than it running you. And what they say is, you know, one perception takes 17 different steps. Who knew in like an instant, you know, if you’re saying if you see that, I’m wearing navy blue, right? Okay, so you registered Navy blue, it took 17 different steps to say Navy blue in your mind. And they’re saying like you get input from your, my mind, your nose, mind your mouth mind. So the five senses plus the mind that synthesizes it all. And we can’t take the information in from the five sense organs at the same time and we do know this, right? It’s like a movie projector. You’re gonna do audio and visual like this really fast and it’ll overlay on each other and then, but if you slow it down enough, you’ll start to be able to see that they’re separate. 

And so that’s one of the advantages of meditation is to be able to like I was doing when I went back and said so is there a time when I wanted to die? You know, I was slowing things down enough and opening space between stimulus and reaction like an elevator door and saying, okay in that gap, is there a different response I can make that my child mind didn’t understand or know or wasn’t didn’t have a fully developed brain to do? So you actually can change all of this. It can all be healed. And that’s the beautiful part of this. I always say, I never talk about anything you can’t change. And so in that perception, You know, if you’re slowing things down, they call it the gateway to Karma halfway through those 17 steps, how you’ve done it always is how you will always do it in the future unless you stop it in that midway point create just enough of a gap where you create a response that comes from now, the wisdom that you’ve attained in life. 

And then you can shift the way that you’ve always done things in terms of how you think about them, how you respond to them. And so this is why like when we do cognitive behavioral therapy, it never works. You know, just trying to change a behavior at a behavior level doesn’t really work, You can’t say I’m just gonna stop eating sugar usually and have it work forever. So it’s like, oh sugar sugar was in the freshly baked desserts that were permeating my household when I was a child when I came back from school after those terrible experiences and represented safety. So the aroma of a freshly baked dessert, the taste of it as an after school snack and voila, I’ve got a sugar addiction that lasted a real long time until I was diagnosed, you know, a real long time. And so you know, many times along the way I said I gotta stop eating sugar. I would try and like strong arm myself into it and no, there was like a child part in there where that aroma, the mouth, feel the taste, the grounded space inside of my body for just that short period of time until everything crashes. You know, it was like, oh I feel better. Right? So this is where addictions come from, this is it right here and it’s creating that gap where you can say, okay, so here’s, here’s where this started. I need to heal that child part and what was going on there so that then I can respond differently. I don’t have to use the same behavior that she or he decided back then.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And that’s the thing is that you know like sugar, I mean we know sugar is bad, we know alcohol is bad, we know smoking is bad, I mean we know this cognitively, but like, like you’re mentioning, it’s what it relates to, you know, what what emotion does it connect with and you know, what is what is the purpose of doing that, you know? Because we’re trying to recreate a feeling and that we’re wanting to hold, you know? So whether it is then that I want to kill myself or whether I want to feel safety in a lot of times, these are kind of intertwined in a way. 

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Or numb out my anxiety or stop the interest of thoughts about I’m not good enough or I’m not, I don’t have the life I wish I had or whatever it is, God doesn’t love me, you know? Like that’s another thing that’s always really interesting to work with people on is how come I’m being punished, you know, disease as punishment. That’s so heartbreaking. Do you ever hear that? Yeah, like can we take out our bibles and turn to Job, This is not a punishment. God never said that you are going to be without challenge in this lifetime. And in fact we have evidence right here,

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Whatever he went through and God loved this person,

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

I know right. And the idea that somehow if you’re righteous or you do everything right, you’re not, then you won’t have any challenges or health difficulties. That is, it’s so off the mark, You know? And it causes so much suffering. So then it takes on this? Like, what am I doing wrong? What have I done wrong? Why has God punished me? Why? I know I’m righteous like do everything right? I’m a good whatever you want to say and then why am I? You know? And I remember giving a talk uh, there were probably 1000 people in the audience and I was on stage and this downloaded in the moment. I was in the middle of my talk and I remember thinking and saying it out loud saying I’d welcome feedback on this afterwards if anyone wants to come and find me. But it just occurred to me that we have these very odd expectations. 

Like your Children are never supposed to die before you like, where do we ever get that or you know that you’re supposed to live a certain shelf life and then die in your sleep and not suffer if you do everything right, you know, and I just remembered that just came through and going, nobody has ever said this to us like this is not a lifetime guarantee. What’s refund? If you’re not happy, this is not how it works. You know, like actually life is guaranteed to give you challenges in all shapes and forms and so you know, what is it that you get from? That is not what you’ve done wrong, but what is meant to be learned here and how can I be an instrument in your hands, you know like yeah, I mean Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, didn’t say, what did I do wrong, but did say like can this cup move on, I really don’t want to do this. And then went, oh yeah, not my will, but your will, that’s right, you know? Okay. Yeah, so that idea of surrendering of control, right? That’s so huge. I think that’s our biggest addiction is to control. And I think it’s one of the great big trauma patterns that leads to disease. If I just can control everything then I’ll feel safe and it’s a rigidity that happens inside the system that lacks surrender. The cell has to have an ability to get rid of garbage and bring in nutrients, it can’t be rigid has to be soft and semi permeable. And so if our thoughts are rigid ourselves will be rigid right?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And that’s exactly it, one of the, it was a fascinating thing I was talking to a friend of mine, he uh the other day and he was, he was doing this kind of transcendental meditation, you know back in the, I think it was back in the nineties or something like that and it was getting really heavy into it and and he was working with this one lady and she she was dealing with a disconnect with with a twin and that was really bothering and bothersome to her and she felt all this suffering young life and and thought it was really felt life was really hard and so he was, they were able to get to a point where she was able to experience herself prior to ca coming into this life and feeling those kind of those changes, that kind of light energy, light spirit and each time your, your energy is getting denser and denser as you then moving in towards a fiscal form but you also remember the, the excitement of coming into this world and all the things that she was getting to experience that she, she would not be able to experience in the form that she was in prior to and and so after this this experience, you know, my friend was asking her well so having seen this, having felt this, would you wish that you would have made another choice and she said no, not at all. 

Yeah, she said she she was so excited for all the tribulations and all the hardships and all the things that she was going to experience and to learn from, this, this perfect lab that we’re at, you know to learn all these cool experiences, trauma and all but with that then we are also needing to look for the tools that you are teaching that you are giving people to move through these things because we’re not meant to be stuck in them were meant to learn from them And and that is the key then to be able to move towards tools that we can use to be able to to grow as individuals and be a better servant to experience joy and to live life as full. 

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Exactly. And you know, and ironic medicine has this concept of five different layers were not just a physical body. We have five bodies, they call them sheets. So you’ve got your your physical that has your genetics and your organs and glands and tissues and systems. And then next to that is your energy body, which we now know exists through our own scientific methods, right through curly in photography. And then we have next to that our emotional mental body. And this is where the undigested thing happens, right? Where we get stuck places in our emotional mental body and then the wisdom body and then spiritual body and the spiritual body is the portal that carlieu would call is that portal to the collective unconscious that we’re all privy to. And we don’t get to hang out there in our wisdom and spiritual bodies as often as we want to when we’re talks in these others. Right? And so we get stuck in that dense nous right where it gets subtler and subtler and lighter and lighter out here. And so, you know, it’s really important in terms of how we as you said, express our genetics, how our organs behave, how we perceive. You know, if we say, oh, I’m not something’s not right, Something’s not the way I wanted, my expectations aren’t being met, Somebody’s, you know, I mean, I hear all the time like stupid people that don’t agree with you are, you know, stupid people are the ones that don’t agree with you. Right? 

And so the intelligent ones are the ones that you agree with. We have a lot of polarization in our society these days, and a lot of people are really activated and triggered by people that don’t agree with them. And so what will happen is, you know, the mind then says, oh, this isn’t okay? And then sends a message to the adrenal glands which say oh fight flight, freeze or faint, you know? And then you’re off to the races, you’re pumping out cortisol, breaking down your gut wall. And then you become intolerant to the food that you’re eating because that’s making its way through. And the immune system is saying, whoa, I’m I attack anything that’s not not me. And here’s this thing, broccoli that’s not me. And you started becoming intolerant to the oddest things, right? Because you’re intolerant in your mind to what’s going on over here and to your thoughts and so then your body becomes intolerant to the environment that it’s in. 

So that then keeps a negative feedback loop that keeps you stuck in this very dense place instead of being able to go, you know, oh, there’s this really beautiful place, I can hang out you know right? So getting the mental emotional detoxification is vital because through the you know 720,000 naughty Schroeders and nerves that you know through ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine, Chinese medicine, they talk about you know these are your acupuncture points where they cross, we have 720,000 of these places, that’s why acupuncture works you know and and it’s feeding information from your emotional world into the rest of your system. Your vagus nerve is very famous these days and you know we talked about vagal nerve stimulation and all about the vagus nerve but you know like we want to go above that, we don’t want to always be talking about that nerve and getting it to do what we wanted to do. It’s like what’s triggering you in the first place, right?

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And that’s the thing is that I mean like the vagus nerve, we talked about the sympathetic, parasympathetic and be able to shift back and forth. So we have a challenge enough to shift you know stay away from the sympathetic which are you know fight or flight or kill you know immune system activity and all these things towards the the pathetic but then what you’re talking about is even you know? So once we can learn that then we can move into, you have all these other layers of experience and other layers of fluidity that you can move into to experience life that is such a bigger and better and more and and richer way, you know, we have all these these five layers of of body and each layer, I mean you should be able to move awareness in and out and and depending on what it is that you’re wanting to experience, you can then experiences with these different layers of who you are, 

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Right and we’re much vaster than we think we are. You know, we’re so limited by these bodies in terms of that’s where we begin and end and when really like after you shed the mortal coil after you die and this body is left behind you, you who you are is limitless, you know? And so it’s like if you can can I call it going from eagle? Two mouse perspective, you know, like if you’re in a mouse you’re that child space where you’re scurrying around, you can only see right what’s in front of you. Everything looks fairly dangerous because when you’re a kid it is, you know, and you’re really low on the predator list and that’s how it works and you’re looking up at everything. But when you’re an adult you’re an eagle and you have the ability to see a larger vision to be able to say this is only one part of something much bigger and it’s just a dot, you know, and to be able to have the resilience to come in. 

And I noticed this when when people are working with integrated medicine too, sometimes they’ll get really want to drill down into every single snip of their genetics and you know, like get enmeshed in the bark of the tree and I’m like okay, pull away like get the big picture because this one snip is really part of something really a lot bigger. So I always think like of that resilience being able to move back and forth that we call this heart rate variability and you know, we talk about heart math and the ability to move from the stress related response to rest and digest one that requires resilience and perspective is also a way of being able to like how you change your perceptions the resilience to stop, create a gap, right? Have the response that comes from maybe your older wiser self, you know, physics tells us that time is not linear, that we actually have the one that was conceived and the one that will die from this body all in the same cell of time. It’s not a line. 

So you have access to every single part of you, it’s already in there, all the information. And so if you want to access an older wiser version of you, like grandmother willow and Pocahontas like what would she say right now about something you know? And instead of the upset child part of you, you know that one may have a very limited way of thinking a very mouse way so you actually can move with fluidity. We now know that well being is all about resilience. The aging, well is resilience that the ability to move out of the state of cancer and autoimmunity is resilience. That’s what it takes.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

And it’s not about avoiding difficult experiences because we like, like we talked about like you’re mentioning, nobody said that you know child is supposed to die after you and nobody said this and that I mean we we are here for I mean this is like the best learning school, this is the best uh place where you can really experience these these life events and then use tools, you know to be able to move through them. And so it is, we should just say no to, I want to just be safe. I want everything to be perfect. That’s not the purpose of living. Yeah. The purpose of living exactly what you’re you’re mentioning is that resilience and the experience and yeah,

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

And don’t get me wrong, any of my four kids died before me. I’m gonna be devastated. I don’t want that to sound flippant, but at the same time I don’t have an expectation that I’m somehow robbed or they’re robbed of their lives or you know, and I’m a conscious dying doula too. I’ve done a lot in hospice and conscious dying. And my daughter had this is one of my bad mother moments that I tell sometimes when I’m doing trauma retreats, uh, and it only happened like four months ago. So this is not old.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

This is like you’re experienced and trained self, that’s doing this,

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

This is experienced and trained self. So my 28 year old daughter had just gotten a puppy and we’re very, very dog. People in my household, I have three, we love our dogs and we are dogs. Like we like to be Fed and everything. We like to be petted and cuddled and you know, if anyone says, what’s your favorite thing to do, it’s what I’m doing in the moment. You know, I just love, I’m a dog. And so, so she’s got this puppy and she’s really bonded and established this puppy. And she goes, oh, mom, Like I have so much anxiety that something will happen to nova that like I love her so much eggs. Like, I don’t know what would happen if she died. And I said, well, honey, you might want to picture her dead a few times a day, just so that you can, you know, and she goes, mom sometimes, I don’t want to do your exercises. I was like, she goes, when I have Children, you’re not going to be doing that, are you? Oh, fair point, fair point. It’s nice for you. You’re right, honey, sorry.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

So for listeners out there that are you know, they’re dealing with autoimmune. They’re dealing, let’s say cancer. Because I mean, you dealt with breast cancer as well from what I understand. Yeah. So it’s I mean, it’s all those fears, you know, that that people, I mean the word cancer is just a scary word. So for those people that are out there thinking that maybe there’s I don’t feel quite myself. I don’t feel like, you know, I’m happy, happily living. I don’t feel like I live life at its fullest. Or maybe, you know, because you have that aspect and then you have, you know, autoimmune and then even worse cancer. Yeah. So what are some directions that you can give those people? That these are the steps that I would suggest that you would take next?

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Yeah. So I’m just going to briefly tell the story of my breast cancer. So I can put this in context. So, 10 years after I had reversed my R. A. My son came home from college and said, Mom, I need to tell you something? And I said, this sounds serious. And he said, it is and we sat down in the dining room table and he said, when do you remember when we lived here? And I was, me and his brother were sexually abused by a neighbor boy. And this is a boy that was 12 when they were five and 3 and it was the son of a friend of mine and would come over and play and I just remember I had my youngest daughter on my hip and I had opened the sliding glass doors, I was looking at all of them jumping on the trampoline and saying hey and I said his name, do you want to just hang out here and play with them and I’ll pay you to babysit while I go to grocery store and come back, you know and all of you guys can just hang and I’ll call your mom and ask if it’s okay. And he said, yeah well during a couple of those times then this happened and I just remember because of my own experience that was like the very worst thing that I could have heard as far as on my watch this happened and I just like this guttural primal you know, release came from me and I said, why didn’t you tell me when you were younger? 

And he said because of this, I didn’t want my childhood defined by this and I didn’t want, you know like so so I immediately went into this um I call it the ICU nurse, she goes into crisis mode and get things done and and I located the now grown man and uh I asked him, you know, I called him up and he said I’ve been waiting for this call, this is yours for 15 years, you know, and and you know I said I have a few questions for you and and so we we did some talking and then I had him pay for some of their therapy and we ultimately did this very amazing. I still did this exercise is forgiveness exercise after they got through. It was just amazing, it was so beautiful and over a few months period, about four months after that um I wound up with a lump in my breast and went in, I had diagnostic ultrasound and had this really beautiful blood supply to it, and as I looked at it on the screen, I was like, I know where that came from, it was in my left breast, right over my heart and I said, give me a month and then I’ll be back, but I know what this is from in all of this, I had done all this work to forgive him, I got, you know, facilitated all these things like taking care of my kids and I I was just filled with self recrimination and loathing for, but you know, and I could go back to that moment, just that sliding glass door, opening it with her on my hip and and just like screaming at this younger version of myself, like, take your kids be lazy cow just like, you know, oh my gosh, it was so deep and dark how much I wanted to kill her for doing this, like, really. 

Like, and I went, okay, I know exactly what I have to do and it was the hardest thing I have ever done. Forgiving my vice principal. Easy forgiving even who hurt my kids was much easier than forgiving myself. And I went into the jungle and I worked with some Ayahuasca for a week. I did trauma therapy. I mean I really like into it and I finally um I finally got to a place where I could forgive myself and I even got to a place where I realized it was a form of self abuse to take the wisdom of the version you are now and turn it on the younger version of you who doesn’t have that information and, and crucify them for that, right? Like it’s just not okay to do that. That’s self abuse. And so I got to that where I could even get there. I went back in and I had another old sound and there was no tumor, it was gone completely gone. Like the blood supply was just hanging there and you know, I don’t tell that story often because I don’t want people thinking, you know, but I already like, you can think your way out of cancer or whatever this was this. I always think we’re individual puzzles. 

Each of us is very different. I have, I’m loaded with breast cancer genetics and my family, my mom’s had it every first degree relative. Like it’s there. I do not excrete for hydroxy estrogen metabolites very easily. And, and so, you know, that’s there. The thing that tipped it into a tumor into the dense blood supply was actually me hating myself. And so when you say what’s next, I have found throughout the years, that was probably 17 years ago when this happened, I have found throughout the years that often times a lack of self compassion is at the root. And so when you say like what’s next step? The thing that I will normally say to people in a summit interview such as this is just for 24 hours, watch your own thoughts. It developed what they call it a witness mind or an observer’s mind and really don’t go to sleep to it. Stay awake to exactly what your thought patterns are. You have like 94,000 thoughts a day. I don’t know who counts them, but supposedly At least 65% of those are recycled. So you’re going to have themes intrusive, thematic ruminating circles and cycles. You do just automatically become awake to those looking at your operating systems. Start seeing what’s going on in the background and just for 24 hours. Don’t judge them. 

Don’t, you know, don’t do anything about it. Just watch and see what the tone is that you’re using to speak to yourself and others what the theme is, What are intrusive. Ruminating ones versus life supporting sustainable ones. What is, what’s the verb is you use, you know, start right there and there’s a really lovely exercise. You can do where you get some black pebbles and some white pebbles and at the end of the day for every life destructive thought you’ve had put a black double in the middle of the table or on the floor wherever you are and for every life supportive and sustaining one celebratory gratitude thought that you had put a white one in there and at first you might be astonished at how many black ones are a few white ones but by doing this very kinesthetic visual process with the stones, it during the next day you can start catching yourself and that’s a black stone. I don’t want to put in the middle. I can change that And you start to realize that your mind even though you believe it’s the massacre need not be that you are in charge, this luminous awareness, This expansive consciousness if you will keep it awake, it can be master if you allow it. And so awake awareness is what you’re developing when you stay constantly alert to your own and you don’t do what I call lazy mind and go into default from these old trauma patterns. And so that’s like the most powerful thing that you can do.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I love that. I love that And I love that kind of the physical because then you can kind of have a fiscal anchor as to what’s going on with your mind. I usually tell my patients that thoughts are like the birds, you know, flying in the sky. I mean you they fly by and you can’t really control that. They fly by. You know, you can observe them but you can’t control if you’re going to land on your head. So it’s the same thing. 

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Check your eyeballs out. Yeah, exactly,

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Exactly. Yeah. Let’s do that. Yeah. Do an Alfred Hitchcock kennel scenario.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Exactly, exactly. Which is what I was doing when I got cancer.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

Yeah, exactly. You just allowed that to take place. But yeah, so you can’t judge yourself on the thoughts, You can’t judge yourself and and just like what you’re saying is that just observe, you know, don’t, you don’t don’t engage, just can observe and see what your head what your thoughts are and then just know that your thoughts are not you, you know, they are just taking place so well anywhere, I mean I was looking at all the amazing courses and masterminds and everything that you’re doing for an individual that just want to kind of start the process and and kind of looking at at things you know within their own life. I mean where would be a good place for them to kind of start to dip their toe in and learn?

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

My website drkeesha.com D. R. K E E S H A dot com, my book solving the autoimmune puzzle is a great place to start. And then there’s a link there that when you get the book, if you put in your receipt number that we give you a recorded book study program that I did on it, where you take a really deep dive into each chapter and some of the practices, sorry worksheets and things like that. So that would that’s a great place to begin.

Michael Karlfeldt, ND, PhD

I love it. Well Dr. Keesha, has been such a pleasure, such an honor and such incredible work that you’re doing. Thank you so much. I love it.