Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Thank you, Robby. It’s really an honor and a gift. No, thank you so much for that humbling introduction. It really is quite an honor to be here. Thank you.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Was tough hearing about yourself. I know when people talk about me and I wait and reply like, “Who are they talking about?”

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

I know I’m like looking around,

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Right like come on. Really? No, I haven’t done all that. But you have done all that. And so can you just spend a few minutes with us and kind of give us a little bit of a backdrop, you’ve got a couple of credentials, big credentials. And the latest one that board certified naturopathic doctor thing, my goodness. Like how many years of school did you go to for that? But give us a little backdrop and then walk us forward and then kind of give us a feel for the things that you look at today and what’s important to you and your practice and your life.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. Thank you for that opportunity. And I guess I’ll start, I grew up with a family medicine. So my father’s an oncologist and my mother has a nursing background. So I was really, from an early age around my father’s practice, having an understanding of the conventional medical world. And then as I grew older and my curiosity grew, I started really having a passion for asking the deeper questions of why we’re here, and you know what they would call back then, complementary and alternative medicine, and mind, body, spirit connection. And I would find myself in bookstores reading those books. And I went to college and I thought I would do the pre-medicine track. 

I’m from east coast. So love my east coasters. But I had to really overcome the ego of not being a medical doctor and carving another path for myself. And so that took me, and my journey took me to Bastille University in Seattle, Washington. And I became a naturopathic doctor there. And during my time there, one of my mentors, Dr. Louisa Williams had just came out with a book called “Radical Medicine.” And during my time there, she did what we call brown bag lunch. She came and she spoke to everybody with this like textbook. 

And she was asking us, “What is the first thing that you look at when you see patient.” And we’re all like, “Diet, lifestyle, stress.” All those things. And she’s like, “You look in their mouth and you look at their dental history.” And so it just opened my eyes up to what we call bio regulatory medicine, biological medicine. And I remember having a very distinct feeling in that moment that whatever she’s doing, I wanna learn. And this was before, Kindles. And so I would just lag that book. It was like over a thousand page book around. I would take it on trips. I would try to pack it in my bag. It was just always around me. And so my journey afterschool, I dove very much in to that work. And I got to meet Louise. I actually took over her practice in Marin, when she moved to Texas, I took over her Moran office. And from day one of being outside of Bastille, I saw really tough cases. Really people who have tried everything. And really were seeking these deeper questions and really open. 

They had been unfortunately broken by the medical system that they were completely not heard, dismissed, minimized often, not everyone but often. And so I had that lens and I had of course the series of mentors reset really taught me to look at these, even in the unconventional world, like another layer of looking at unconventional to see why are people sick? Why do some people just walk through life and barely get a cold or a headache? And some people they can’t even go outside that they’re so sensitive to our environment. And so that is the landscape in that I learned and fast forward, I’m a little over 11 years out of school, I’ve had amazing journey, I’ve had an amazing experience. And then in 2020, I have opportunity to go out on my own and open my own practice. And really cultivate my own brand, and word came to me. And I don’t even know how, I just knew that I wanted this one word that really could summarize kind of the feeling that I want to invoke when I’m working with a patient. And it’s a word called immanence. And immanence is a theological word, and it is used to describe the divine within. So they talk about immanence and they talk about transcendence. 

And so when we’re talking about transcendence, we’re kind of like always reaching outside of ourselves, right? We’re always searching, looking, waiting to transcend, right? And immanence is this idea, at least my interpretation is that, we don’t have to go anywhere, it’s all within us. And I think that was such a message for me. And again, I’m a very much a student, I believe in this thought, but this is what I wanna cultivate for my patients in that, I do, I’m an atrophy. I absolutely believe in the vital force. I believe in the intelligence of the human body. I believe that no matter what the diagnosis is, there is a path to healing. That it’s not up to me to the limit that for a patient. If they’re up and they’re in front of me, like, I’m not gonna say, “This is impossible.” Right? There’s always a way. And that’s up to many factors of how that unfolds. And then, just that idea that I think also when patients are in this world of chronic illness, there’s a lot of, seeking answers, seeking understanding. 

Really like, “Who’s gonna go fix me. What do I need to take? What’s the next pill, what’s the next therapy?” And we need to be innovative. We need to, there’s still so much room to alleviate suffering. But that word to me just brings it all back in. I wanna help collaborate and facilitate my patient’s healing. I’m not the dictator, the guru, the person with all the answers. And so here I am, and we’re recording this in the beginning of 2022. And I am very inspired by this message, this vision. And that’s what keeps me going everyday.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

You see I was fixating on the word. And by the way you spell it, I-M-M-A-N-E-N-C-E. And that’s how one way people can find you is immanence.com, or Dr.Schaffner.com. So when people wanna reach out to you, post, a summit and/or just understand a little bit more about the way you see the world, those are two great ways. For when I saw that word, I go, “Oh my God.” Like, I’m just, that’s so spiritually connected to that. And it reminds me of a book that was a tipping point to me it’s called “The Alchemist.” And it was probably, a desired read when you were in high school or something. Probably like “Fellini.” 

I stopped growing after nine years of age, but what impressed me was the words you use that we’re searching so much for things outside, when what we’re looking for, it could be in our front yard or within. And even in our own clinic and coaching services, I often talk about or reference the doctor inside of us, that voice inside of us, and that we somehow forgotten to listen to it. And as good as a practitioner as you are, we can be in our own way, the way we see the world. The best practitioner for me in the world, is the voice inside of me. No one knows me better than that voice. Which could lead you to spirit or however you’re connected. But I just love recruiting people to actually become more cognizant and aware of that voice in determining what’s right and wrong. 

Now I’m not getting misogynistic or anything like that, but it seems like women are really dialed into that. I’ve gotten that down from an early age, guys would just busy hunting and whatever we do. And so, we’re not quite as dialed in. And what I tried to do is in part, in my own discussions with our body of work is just saying, “Listen to your body, listen to whether it’s right or wrong.” Ask the questions internally. Like, “Does this feel right for me?” And that oftentimes could make the difference in, how the approach that you take and how that approach will work on you. Just a few minutes ago what you described, when you talked about the body’s ability to bounce back, the word that came, the download I got when you were saying that was, it’s a miracle, like this person just came back to life. It’s the miracle, right? 

So the thing is, is that, these miracles are happening all around us, but we kind of forget it. If we did in science, anything we can’t explain is just a miracle. Well that happened, it’s just a miracle. Great. Now we can go back to real physics or real cause and effect and all that. And I think we need more miracles or at least the understanding that a miracle is truly just a frequency, like everything else in life, and they’re happening all around us and we should embrace them and bring them into our lives. Not just kind of, oh yeah, it’s a miracle, boom. Let’s get back to whatever it is that we’re doing. Right? So I liked that. So now we’ve got a whole bunch of Lyme patients out there that are tuning in today and even practitioners, and they’re always searching for that. Why me, I’m always wondering why it is that some people are symptomatic and some aren’t. We do know that there’s some genetics involved that differentiates. But people are looking for answers of that big why question. And I think it’s important, but in my own journey and family dynamic with our experience and our Lyme journey, we kind of abandoned the why me thing, kind of early into the game, because what you have is the here and now, and how do you feel now, and how is your body reacting or presenting, based on all of the influences, all the stressors, all that stuff. 

That information is so valid and so on point, for a clinician, for a practitioner like yourself, to be able to understand the body’s expression and then how to piece it, put Humpty Dumpty back together in a way, right? So, on to Lyme, you’ve created an incredible like platform, and I’m so excited for you to tell us about it. So you have some acronym that you use, right? It’s like E-E-C-O that all means something. So the first one is Environment and Terrain. That’s the E. So tell us about what that means and how you use that.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, absolutely. And I just, yeah, I’m totally aligned with a lot that you just shared too Robby and I think right before I go into E I just wanna share, and I’m sure you feel this as well. That sometimes when people hear, especially if someone out there right now is like really struggling and really having a hard time, you can sometimes misconstrue, I wanna have that like fine line of that. There is no like victim blaming or like you caused your illness. Whether there might be some truth in like cosmic effect and all this. But I think what we do know, like we don’t always understand the conditions of why a patient is sick. 

There’s many things that I’m gonna talk about that we’re trying to understand, but they’re complex. And we might not always understand the reason even within our own knowledge, but what we do know, I believe in the the new science. The new kind of voices that are pioneers out there that are sharing is that, we absolutely have way more connection to our unlimited potential than we ever have been taught, or thought to believe or that the medical system reinforces, right? So I believe that we do our patients a disservice if we’re not bringing that into the equation, in the healing conversation. So I just wanna say that, ’cause I know that it can sometimes, depending on where you are in your journey, it’s like, okay, well, like you said, whatever is the past but like here we are now, and how do we bring this understanding and really support people in embracing, trusting, and experiencing it. So that people can experience miracles, right? And experience the healing that we all want for patients. So I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but I just wanted to share that real quick.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Totally. And I did a presentation to the biohacking community once and one of my slides was, could it be that we are the reason, like not just we, like the person, but the limiting beliefs. Like the way that we’ve either the press or maybe even the practitioner, like have guided us to come from a place of scarcity, not abundance. From having limited beliefs where you would be codependent on the practitioner differently. You’re the kind of practitioner that you want to educate me. You wanna bring me into the present and you want me to recruit your information so that I can fly my own plane. You’re there to guide me and give me direction and to keep me from running in front of a bus, right? 

But for the most part, after I leave your office being seen by you as a patient, the 99% of the time I’m with myself and with my family and I’m managing my own health care. And so as a practitioner, you wanna teach me, you want to raise my awareness and have me partner with you and have ownership to taking care of my own healthcare. And that’s very different by the way, my parents’ generation, I even asked my parents, “And mom who takes care of you, like who is in charge of your healthcare?” And she’d say, “Oh, Dr. Johnson, he does this. And Mr. Schwartz, Dr. Schwartz, he takes care of my kidneys.” And she gave me the whole list of all these doctors, that she has now positioned to take care of her when they ultimately we take care of ourselves, and how we do that is what is way cool.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

So talk to me, tell me about system, tell me about your platform it’s so exciting.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. Now thank you, Robby. So many people ask like, “Okay, what do you do? How do you articulate when you’re with a patient?” And it’s hard, right? It’s hard to articulate all of the things that we do in the office and all the things that we’re navigating in our head when we’re trying to help somebody and facilitate this experience for them. And so I had a team member helped me come up with this acronym and it’s EECO. Which stands for Environment and Terrain, Energy System Support, Clearing the Blocks and Optimizing Flow and Drainage. And so this is just again, a narrative and a framework that really a lot of the buckets that I’m thinking about with the patient, fall in line with this. 

And so this isn’t like a linear process. And that you go to one and then the other, it’s a conversation on dynamic process that we’re thinking about all of this with a patient. And so, as you ask, what do we mean by environment and terrain? And so, what I believe when a patient has a Lyme and/or co-infections and many other stealth pathogens and dealing with a chronic illness, that we sometimes get out of this conversation or out of this paradigm where I really believe in Terrain Theory. And Terrain Theory is all about, it’s not just about the bug. It’s about the host’s response to the bug. So two people in the same room, two people in the same house, two people in the same family, could have a very different response to their outer environment based on their inner environment. And so, even I think the saying goes, I don’t know if it’s 100% true, but it’s at least anecdotal or that Louis Pasteur, the father Germ Theory, even on his death bed, kind of reset everything and said, “Terrain is everything.” He kind of backtracked. And so I think, especially in this day in the era that we’re in, we’re moving away from that conversation. And I think that’s such a more empowering conversation to have. And I do believe that it’s the truth as well. 

And so with that, is that what makes up our terrain is our epigenetics, all the microbiomes in our body. Our emotional, spiritual wellbeing, our nutritional status, our ancestral trauma, like all of this makes us who we are and that affects our immune system and our resilience to whatever we encounter. And then not only on top of that, I believe why we’re seeing the rise in chronic illnesses that we are today and why so many people are sick, is around the environment, around environmental toxicants that are, our mother earth is increasingly polluted. 

Our children that are being born are not starting from a blank slate, but they are unfortunately full of a synergy that has never been studied before of toxicants. And then, they start life that way. And then they’re bombarded through the vaccine schedule and genetically modified foods and poor housing materials and EMF, and not a lot of support for families and all of these things, right? And that, we have this story, right? And when a patient comes in my office, they’re all of a sudden, let’s say, they’re in their late twenties, they’re in their early thirties. And for them, they might look back on their history and it seems like they were fine and then all of a sudden they were sick. 

But again, no judgment, it’s just the way it is. Maybe they were a C-section and then they had normal vaccines. And then they may be, went to school in a moldy house, and then they had a divorce and then they got someone to marry. It’s like all those things leading on, that makes their system respond differently to their environment. And so many of these infections, and sometimes this is not always the case, but sometimes people have been exposed to Lyme early in life, but their body was handling it, right? Their body was dealing with it. And then, that looks like all hell broke loose, and then that pathogen becomes more virulent, more entrenched and creating more symptoms. And so, I mean, I can talk about to our respond environment and terrain, but that’s really the thought process. So I’m looking at not only the pathogens that a patient has, but that in the context of their toxic bucket, as well as that in context of the health, of their microbiomes and their epigenetic expression, and all of the things that we know can strengthen their response.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

So me being your patient, which by the way, I just made myself. As one of your patients, then you would take a look at like my home environment. Give me suggestions as to household chemicals that I use every day that may not be the healthiest choice for me. And you kind of go through a full process where you just, I take you through a day in my life and then you go, “Hey, Robby, this is a good thing to do, but there’s better choices than these chemicals. You can go that way, you can do this, you can do that.” And well, at least what I’ve experienced was the order that you do things in and the way you dose what you do, oftentimes makes the difference between a good, moderate, or an optimal result, right?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

So creating that healthy platform, at least from a building biology point of view, and from what’s a safe home, particularly for the Lyme patients. I mean, at some point when you become symptomatic, there’s like a tipping point. And I know that at least from my experience, like you just articulated, you get exposed, let’s say 20 years ago and you’re young, and your immune system’s really strong. You’re not showing any symptoms whatsoever. And then you go throughout life and then all of a sudden boom, like you become symptomatic. And you’re looking for what happened yesterday, that did this. But it could have been just a collage of things happening in those 10 years or 20 years. 

That just got to a point where there was that tipping point. And then, but when your cup runneth over, it’s not like you can backtrack and just take that last straw off the back of the camel’s back. You actually have to look at the rudimentary issues. Like they talk about root cause. But certainly some other influences that is foundational for primal health. And so number one, wow. Environmental and terrain is cool because you’re talking about external, internal environments and what could have shifted or what do we have to shift in a direction that’s actually healthy for you and create a more balanced micro and external biome throughout here, right?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, absolutely. And you articulated that really well. And that’s a lot of my process and of course we’re really not mold in the home, really not that they’re not sleeping next to a cell phone tower or on top of a WiFi router. We’re making sure that clean food, clean air, clean water, and also lowering that pathogenic burden with the use size. A lot of biological remedies. So a lot of like herbal medicine, botanicals, homeopathics, but also medication when needed, IV therapy, ozone, all of those things. And then reducing your toxic bucket. Like what we’ll talk about with optimizing flow and drainage is how we need to live a lifestyle of emptying our bucket, right?

This is just the situation we’re in, on planet earth during this time, that we just have to be aware, avoid exposure as much as possible. And then how do we, through their use of things, of course in your product line that are just always helping people to remove toxicants because that means you are more resilient, that strengthens your white blood cells, that strengthens your immune system, that makes you less vulnerable to these pathogens. We see this huge, there’s a huge relationship that these environmental toxicants, mycotoxins right? They weaken the immune system, heavy metals they weaken the immune system, change the gut microbiome, glyphosate, gosh, it destroys everything in the body. We have to look at this relationship. I do believe if our planet wasn’t as toxic, we would not see the rise in chronic illnesses that we see today. And that people would be way more resilient to aspire keyed on infections and parasitic infections. They clear more easily. They they’d respond differently. But I think it’s that combination.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Yeah, it’s so true. I’ve seen that time and time again. And I reflect back on my childhood. My grandmother was born in The Bronx in New York, and my grandmother had an ice block on the top of her refrigerator. It wasn’t an electric refrigerator. There weren’t leftovers. We ate fresh food that she went to the market every day, took me by my hand. I remembered she used to have me pick a, they called them nickel pickles. The pickle was larger than my head, I was so young. And I would eat that pickle. That would be my food for basically most of the day, it was just munching on that one big cucumber or pickle. But when you compare that to, and I have nothing against Twinkies, but when you can go to a gas station and buy a food source that has a shelf life of 500 years, there’s a big spread there. 

And I think that heart of that transition of the way things were in my grandparents day, to today, without awareness that you bring to us today in the interview and also in your practice, making people elevate to know that there are other ways that what you see on TV and what excites you, through advertising and so forth, or even through ingredients on a label, there’s more to it than that. And then, and how do you create a healthy platform? It’s way more important to the infectious. The patient that’s got a chronic challenge, because they’re really fighting from behind the eight ball in a sense. But even for people in the other spectrum that are super strong, super healthy, they still have the same environmental challenges that everybody has out there. Then it maybe just hasn’t hit them yet. And so, we have a big responsibility, I feel, to get this information out and just make people aware how important it is. Okay. That’s number one. So number two, in Energy System Support. What the heck does that?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

I know what does that mean? This is an area I think that you and I are very connected on. This is an area that I feel is the future of medicine, right? I feel that it is the more knowledge, the more of a conversation and education that we can have for our patients, that we are more than our physical body, right? That we are more than our biochemistry that we have a biofield. We have electrical and magnetic fields that are throughout our body, intersecting at all times. Informing really our biochemistry. Right? And so it’s this knowledge and how do we harness this information around the body electric, heart brain coherence, and biofield, how do we understand that? And how do you really also understand, principles of sound and light, right? Our body responds to photobiomodulation, photodynamic therapy, but our body communicates with biophotons, right? 

Our DNA is biophoton admitting communication network that signals biophotons through the microtubule and through the college. The big part of our cellular communication is through light. And sound, this is an area that I know that you know very well and I feel very much still a student, but I am very interested in how sound can help to change the field, which helps to change the matter in our system. And then there’s a whole area of research called biophotons, that ourselves actually admit to sound. So then we’re taking it. It’s not just about CoQ10 and methylfolate and B12, which are important, don’t get me wrong, but it’s almost like the blueprint of our biochemistry. And so I feel very much should that, the integration of this information and then the technologies that help somebody when someone is great, yes, we have nature and everyone has access to that hopefully. And we can explore and connect with that. But when you’re sick we need to help kind of amp that all up, right? 

Amplify those healing energies from these things. And so I incorporate not only in this understanding, by using different bioresonance tools to actually assess the body and also using autonomic response testing to communicate with the body individually and help to really create individualized treatment plans. We also have a bio well camera that Dr. Beverly Rebecca is gonna be on the summit. And she introduced me to, we can actually take a picture of the biofield with gas discharge, visualization. so really just incorporating these assessment tools, adding different technologies that incorporate light, adding different technologies that incorporate sound. Also just informing the work of HeartMath and the work of heart-brain coherence that, what a powerful way that we are wired, right? It’s like almost so like simplistic, but so beautiful. 

That our heart is the great conductor, right? It’s the strongest electromagnetic generating field, produces the strongest electrical magnetic generating field in the body. That actually the more that we are in these, what we call positive states. So very like simplistically, when we’re in love, gratitude appreciation, we have a more coherent heart rhythm. When we are in anger and frustration. And these emotions that are uncomfortable, trauma, all of this, then we’re in an incoherent heart rhythm. And that heart rhythm actually is not a small thing. It informs their field and informs their brainwaves. There’s also just even not looking at the electromagnetic field component. 

There is a direct connection through our neurology, from the heart to the brain. We actually have more communication from heart to the brain, than to the brain to the heart. And so cultivating a heart centered practice and that this is a really big part of how we interact with somebody. I believe this information too explains a lot of the patient, patient doctor relationship that therapeutic relationship, is that interaction between our fields and our hearts. And I think that is where a lot of healing potential can happen. So, this is ancient medicine, ancient wisdom. That is also, I believe the future of medicine. And this is the realm of miracles, right? This is the connection to the unified field, the connection to the power of intention, the power of thoughts. all of these things that seem miraculous when we’re only looking through the lens of biochemistry and you told me in physics.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Wow. I’m not even sure what to do with all that. That’s amazing. But you talk about photon. Photon is basically light energy. However, it manifests. You talk about a biofield, in the ’60s it was called an aura. It’s amazing that these days we’ve got actually devices out there that can measure that. There’s certain kinds of photography that we use, not just infrared spectroscopy, which is a form of photography that they can capture heat that’s generated from your body. Graphics that you can actually grab an aura around someone and actually measure that field. As a child when an infant is born, their biofield can be measured to be almost 700 feet around or outside their body. 

But by the time that we’re in our late teens, early twenties, that field collapses. And as an adult, we’re lucky if our biofield can measure past our fingertips. So three to four feet around us, but we have this energy field around us. And it is something that, not just in a quantum sense, but we are all connected in that way. And that heart to brain connection, that heart math stuff that you talk about is so important. Because we’re taught in high school that the brain is the center of the universe, but now we’re discovering that it’s the heart, that’s leading the brain. And that’s so super interesting. 

And they’ve done these, I’ve read these studies where, they take identical twins and they’re on separate parts of the world. And yet their hearts are connected through this massive energy field. So they can feel certain emotions and share them, even though they’re not on a telephone or texting one another. So I find that whole area to be so interesting, and we need to dive deeper in it. So I do believe, like you I agree, that energy medicine in sense might be the new wave of medicine. And this goes back to Einstein in the ’40s. He made some bold statements about, he was studying the thermals, the effects of sun energy on the earth and said that all life on the planet, plant kingdom and animal kingdom, has a frequency related to it. And then Royal Rife picked up on that and created a whole body of work called Rife Frequencies, where he actually identified each of these frequencies and how they’re related and how your body perceives, and actually your heart and your brain will react to a frequency of something, as you’ve seen in homeopathic approaches and stuff like that. 

Which is super intriguing because of all the benefits, which isn’t traditional, it isn’t allopathic. It isn’t the MD approach. It isn’t the pharmaceutical approach. What looks the same under a microscope, a pharmaceutical or synthetic formulation versus a natural one that comes from plants or flowers, right? So if you look under a microscope, they may look the same from an organic chemistry point of view, but the way your body responds to the two differences is enormous. So that energetics, the intangibles, become the more important driver, right? In making things work, or at least looking for optimal health. 

That’s really important for all of us out there in Lyme world, because you could be on a track where you are taking pharmaceuticals and different kinds of medications that aren’t quite doing it for you. But then you might find that the same formulation, but one that comes from a natural source well, your body will respond to. So it’s just making people aware that there are other roads to Rome. And I think like yourself, I’m a naturopath and a homeopath. So I always looked for the natural ways to recruit the body’s own resources, to fight back, to be strong. And I think that’s more sustainable in terms of long-term health and wellness, in general.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. Well I agree Robby. And I have been seeing so much more increased sensitivity, right? In our patients both Lyme and chronic illness. So they may be under the label of like mass cell activation or what have you. But the sensitive patient, is I used to feel like I had like a couple of my practice and then I might treat a lot of sensitive patients. And so this is also, I feel like the medicine that they need and respond to the most powerfully, is in the realm of a frequency and bioenergetics. And now, I think that they’re, our patients are the canaries in the coal mine, right? And so we can look at that as a weakness, some people do, but I also look at it as like, your body is actually responding to a horrific environment right now. And it’s sounding the alarms, you’re the wise one, while we’re all asleep here. So I like to flip that switch.

I appreciate what you shared in this idea of resonant frequencies, right? And how every organ system and every tissue in the body has an optimal frequency and when we’re in balance, there are these frequency devices or even light and sound and these things to help us come back to balance. So, now I really, I have a circle of incredible friends and colleagues and I do see more and more devices, not only in your accompany, but others that are really working with frequency and it’s gonna be like, I feel like, we’re all gonna have our little frequency devices that are sending us healing frequencies throughout the day.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

There’s a classical study that was done by Emoto, when he actually, like the father of structured water. And then I know that you’re planning to also talk with, or interview Dr. Gerald Pollack, who wrote this amazing book called, “The Fourth Phase of Water” that got me completely turned on. So many lights went on in the room when I read that book, that it’s remarkable. And Emoto just took like a bowl of water and people holding hands. And one day he said, “Focus on hate, and everything putrid in the world and all that.” And froze the water, looked under a high powered microscope, and saw the crystal or lack of crystalling formations of the water that was the hateful water, next day, same water source, same group of people holding hands. Now that thinking about love and joy and everything that’s abundant in their lives. Froze the water, looked at under a high-powered microscope, same microscope and saw these beautiful flake like, everything that you would think that looks like a snowflake under a microscope. And the dramatic difference just from the energy and the intention, that the water held from that emotion in the room. So this is really what we’re talking about. The things you can’t see, you can’t smell, you can’t taste, you can’t hear, that reminds me of an EMF. We should talk about that later on.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

No all of this, right?

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Right. But all those things in nature that are all around us that make the difference then guess what, if we’re well-hydrated 70% or more of our body is water. Our brain is 81%, our cells 98% water. And so you get happy water, loving water inside of you. Everything starts to work better. And this just science, I mean, think of all the religions that are built around praying on water and holy water, and dousing with water that has prayers and songs and attentions tied to it, for health and wellbeing, it’s remarkable. We’re back to that word immanence. Right? I wasn’t quite sure how. Okay. So now we’ve done environment, we’ve done energy systems. Let’s talk about clearing blocks.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, definitely. So this is through the lens of bio regulatory medicine or biological medicine, this concept of interference fields. And so this is, when Louisa was sharing a radical medicine book. She has a pretty thick chapter on what the interference fields are. And so these are often the areas that I find when a patient comes to see myself or one of my colleagues that are areas that are, areas that are often overlooked to that. These are the silent, hidden infections that are really poisoning the lymphatics, poisoning the nervous system, poisoning the circulatory system, that kind of drain on the battery if you will. So we often look at the mouth. So the mouth is often an area, we call dental interference field. So there can be root canals. 

There can be a mountain fillings, there can be a wisdom tooth cavitation. So all of that can be highly, that can highly interfere rather, with a patient’s ability to self-regulate and heal. And I’m happy to go into that more. So that that’s one area where I see interference fields play and then the other, which is quite common to our scar interference fields. And scars are often from trauma, from surgical trauma injury, areas that can be, still hold actually the emotion of that event. And so when I look at a scar interference field, I think about it in a few different ways. I think about it as, I’m in the area like of turbulence and the connective tissue and the fascia, and that it’s preventing really good lymphatic drainage and flow, and also can bio accumulate because of the netting on the cross fibers of scar tissue, it can accumulate heavy metals and glyphosate and Lyme spiral Keats. And can be an area that is toxic. Often than the cells in scar tissue, have a lower resting membrane potential than unhealthy stress. So it’s this kind of low grade stress to the autonomic nervous system. And then how I already mentioned before that these scars can hold a memory of the traumatic event. 

And so we do scar therapy. I use neurotherapy. Which is an injection technique that came out of Germany and we use, in local anesthetic we use procaine. And that’s compounded, it’s preservative-free, and that has a property where it can really break down scar tissue. So it helps to really soften the connective tissue breakdown, the scar tissue return blood flow to that area. So can flush out toxicants. And then it has a profound effect for some people that have really in that moment, but they can have the thought, the awareness, the emotion, the release of that trauma from their systems. So that their body can self regulate and heal. So these are the often overlooked areas that like seem low, but can be quite big for preventing somebody’s body to what we would call self-regulate and heal.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

I have a small spin on this that I want to share with you. One of my mentors who passed his name was Bob Marshall, was . Okay, so he and Dr. Fobbs, we did some work for that company, still do we love them. But this goes back 15 years. And anyway, so they had their definition of an interference fields. And I can just speak to my own personal experience. I had an inguinal hernia when I was younger and it was repaired. So they came in and they did a little surgery. And so now after a week or two, my muscles healed, and the tissues healed on the outside, but there are energy fields, this whole connection of the energy network, which is basically what acupuncture and acupressure, the whole Eastern approach to looking at the way the body is healthy. And they’re non-invasive term tools for diagnostics that they can check your pulse and look at your tongue and look at your eyes and to be able to see where there would be energy blocks, meaning that, like you have a vein and an artery that would move blood from one place to another. 

But what about the energy that’s moving from one place to another and those meridians, right? And so you have the surgery and now you’ve repaired the tissues and you repaired the muscles, but what have you done to repair the energy channel that’s also been broken? And so we came up with mud packing and castro pack techniques to actually heal the energetic fields, those channels. And when you’ve got your energy channels and your blood channels and all these systems working in concert, as I think that we’ve been designed to do, then the healing process is expedited. And it’s done in a, again, a more primal way. So I love that you’ve taken modern techniques to address an age old challenge, which are these fields that are also being disrupted and the importance of making sure that those connections are made in order for us to heal properly. 

You also said something else that is really intriguing, and that we won’t have time to cover today. Is about the emotional impact on all of this, because we have emotional trauma too. We are all looking for a batting on our elbow, Howie that hurts in a bruise, but what about the emotional piece? And/or even if you’ve got a chronic element, you’ve got Lyme disease, what about the emotional and the family dynamic that’s also tied to that challenge. And I don’t believe you can truly heal completely and sustainably, unless you do address the emotional component to your journey of healing as well. I know it’s somewhere in here, it’s probably not an optimizing flow, but I know that there’s blocks and clearing in your own philosophy that I think addresses the emotional pieces as well.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah. Yeah. The trauma piece can be like a really everywhere, right? The trauma can be in the connective tissue, it can be held on the structured water. It can be held in the field. It can be held in the limbic system of the brain. So there’s like many layers of where trauma can disrupt our ability to get well. And it’s a little bit of everything, for when people are going through this. And so I weave that through the environment and terrain, and also the energy system because of the field. And then of course, clearing the blocks site. I think about interference field is more these, staying true to the definition. These dental for societies, the silence, hidden infections, also they can be in the tonsils and the sinuses or the appendix and then, scars. And then it’s all in a way that the others, there’s just that connection and that release, right? That we see when we’re really, using the right remedy at the right time, the right support that the body releases and can clone.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Yeah. And they come in at different times. Right? I mean, you may look at me and say, “Okay, we’re gonna do, step one, two, three, four, five line it up. But then as my body is going through the steps, maybe step five, is actually expressing itself in me somehow and where it should be in place in step five. You’re seeing it in me when I’m on step three. And so that’s the interconnection between your system, the EECO. It isn’t just a static of format or platform it’s dynamic. And the dynamic part is me and my body and how I’m pressing itself through the process. And I absolutely love that because we’re all individuals. And we have the book lot knowledge and the didactic applications and all that and clinical experiences. And then there’s the reality of me presenting myself to you today and what you do as a practitioner and what you do as a feeling loving individual in understanding that. And no one could ever take that. That’s what differentiates you, Dr. Schaffner from everybody else on the street. So we got one more left and then we’ll because we could talk for hours…

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

I know we could.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

SO optimizing flow, that’s a big topic in itself. Because we’re always looking for that higher status of the bar and how do we optimize and make the best version of ourselves today, and how appropriate is that we’re talking about it being a new year, that we can actually look at a fresh plate and kind of close the chapter on last year and look forward to all the great things that are in front of us. So talk to me a little bit about the flow and how we optimize that and how you integrate that into your platform.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Absolutely. When you learn these things and you kind of like, study all this and see what patients teach you, you kind of like, these things are complex, right? Patients that I see are complex, whether there’s implicity, right? I know that I have to get their bodies to flow better. I know that I have to increase exclusions of water and their body. I know that I have to increase coherence in their field. And so flow is a big one and flow and drainage. And so this is like my naturopathic roots, right? So this is supporting organs of elimination. 

So our liver, our bile flow, our intestinal and digestive health and our colon and our kidneys and our lungs and our skin, making sure that our organs of elimination can eliminate through the elimination channels that they are designed to do, right? Are we breathing? Are we sweating? Are we pooping? Are we peeing? Are we hydrated? All of these things. And then on the backdrop of that, an area that I’m very passionate about is the lymphatic system. And the lymphatic system I think, it’s gotten a lot more press, a lot more awareness, but I believe that it’s one of the most overlooked systems still in the body. And I think it’s one of the most rewarding to treat, especially for chronically ill patients. ‘Cause that’s really where, it’s really the intersection of where the toxicants lodge, where the pathogens reside, where the trauma can reside. 

So it’s like that intersection of all of it. And then lymphatic system is, highly interconnected throughout our whole body, it’s this vast network of capillaries and vessels and nodes and organs and it’s job is to remove waste, and really present our immune system, what it needs to engage in fight with. And so when we look at the lymphatics in context, also both what we call the extracellular matrix, which is another area, which is highly involved with in a chronic illness. 

We drain the lymph and that drains the extra cellular matrix. So the cells can communicate better, but it’s these hidden kind of interconnected areas of the body, that really need attention to move out stagnation, congestion and keep them flowing. So we do a lot of drainage to support the extracellular matrix. We do a lot of lymphatic, not only manual therapies or some of the tools that I have in the office or home tools we recommend, or topical things to recommend in the body, but also herbs and all sorts of things. But the lymphatics are really big. And then every patient with a chronic illness knows about binders, right? 

So we need to support our protocols with binders, so that we can help remove biotoxins and environmental toxicants, and normal metabolic waste out of the body to prevent what we call a Herxheimer reaction, so that we can really tolerate the treatments that we’re asking our patients to do. So I believe the equation’s very simple that we want to be, killing at a rate that our body can handle and eliminate. And these tools through flow, drainage, binders, all of this can really create successful protocols. And then it also helps, not only after you recover, but having a lifestyle that understands these things so that we can keep a bucket mice and amity and not overflowing so that we stay healthy and we stay resilient.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Again, the Lyme people tuning in, it always frustrated me when my daughter, when she was in her teens, we would go from Lyme literate doctor. And this was, I don’t know, maybe 25, almost 30 years ago now. So Lyme literate doctors were few and far between, the research on Lyne was moving along. But it had been out there, but people didn’t really grasp it, because there were many Lyme patients misdiagnosed often because people are symptomatic and they present as something else other than Lyme, or the doctor wasn’t Lyme literate. So they weren’t even looking at Lyme as being a possible challenge, so that they’re treating them the patient for the wrong thing and not for the right thing, which is a really bad combination. But I’d always hear from patients. “Well, my doctor told me if I do this protocol, I’m gonna feel like crap first.” Which was the Herx reaction. And I thought to myself, why is that? A Herx reaction is really a detox response, some die off. That basically means that the protocol is working. 

If the goal was to let’s say, lower the population of Lyme or co-infections, right? So that’s working, but what they’re not thinking about holistically or systematically is gee, it would be nice if they opened up your plumbing and your sewage system first, so that you got all of your detox pathways on board, or at least partially on board. So that when we did dial up the toxic event, by doing some protocol to get a dial off, that you wouldn’t have to have a Herx reaction, it would just be another thing that your body has gone through, but then it’s done in a regular way, in a regulated way or more controlled fashion. That’s a little bit more easy on the body and more sympathetic or more understanding. So that you don’t have to go, you don’t have to feel like crap, pardon my French, if that’s French. 

In order for the better. I think that’s just excuses to be lazy about it. Just focus on the order of things. That’s what we mentioned earlier in our discussion. If we focused on detoxing and using binders and lowering that toxic burden on the body before we started loading more toxins into the system, then we could regulate better and we’d have an easier path and maybe a little slower, but certainly a steady direction out of the other end of the tunnel, that’s more sustainable. And I think that it’s a kind of a better approach. But I think that optimizing your health and focusing on flow and under deserved lymphatic system that are misunderstood or not utilized properly, I think is really an important place to start, to get a fundamental on a foundational positions so that you can have a sustainable, healthy outcome. 

I love that approach. And basically altogether, you’ve got a dynamic really flowing, integrated way to approach patient care that is revolutionary. And I love that. It’s really great. So we probably 15, 20, 30 minutes longer than we probably shouldn’t be spending together, but this has been so exciting, so we have to bring this to a close and I feel really guilty about this part. So I want you to leave us with a message or two, like if our aligned patient was not feeling so great and needed some inspiration, what could be one or two things that might inspire me, or even if I was a patient that was kind of managing okay. But wanted to maintain that dialogue a little bit more, what would be maybe one or two simple things that you might recommend that I could do as early as tomorrow that might make a little shift to make a difference?

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Yeah, now that’s a really great question. And of course my mind goes to a thousand things, but I thinking about what we all have access to. And I work with patients like you out there every day. So I understand, the complexities, I understand the highs and lows. I understand that sometimes your physiology is completely hijacked and don’t feel like yourself, but I think that there are moments that we all can cultivate and step into. And my message would be to really, really simple, is to develop a ritual or a practice or whatever words come to you, around gratitude. And I think that gratitude is a very high-frequency emotion. 

Gratitude has a profound energy in our heart. I feel that, that also remember a lot of patients have neurological issues, right? Who have Lyme disease. And we forget to talk about the heart sometimes, we’re so focused on the brain and detox in the brain and getting into the brain and crossing the blood brain barrier. We can actually get into the brain by creating coherent, a coherent field of energy out of our heart. And we all have access to. So even if you’re not feeling like it, even if you are tired, just start with one thing. 

One thing that you’re grateful for each day, and maybe you’ll work up to three and many spiritual practices, even many very well scientifically minded practices. When you start doing that, you start changing your physiology. You feel better ’cause you’re connected into what you have and what you don’t have. And I’m a student of this, I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I’m studying people like Dr. Joe Dispenza and all of these things. That you start broadcasting a frequency and a signal to the field to draw more to you, that’s gonna help get you the right answers, the right support, the right therapeutics, all of those things to line up for your own healing journey, to really, really, recover, right? And to get back to life. I mean, that’s what we all want for you to live a life that feels meaningful and purposeful, and that you can get out of survival mode because your physical body doesn’t feel well most of the time. So I will just say a gratitude practice, even though I could say a thousand other things, but I think that that’s something that is within the realm of possibility and for everyone who’s listening.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Amazing. Well, I’m gonna tell you what I am grateful for. Right now my number one thing that I’m grateful for, is you carving out the time to share your wisdom with all of us and also your participation in the summit, and the energy and the love that you bring to, and the authenticity that you bring to the table every time you show up. So thank you, Dr. Schaffner. We really appreciate you, your time, and all of your contributions that you’ve made and are going to make in the future to all of us. It’s amazing. You’re amazing. Thank you again, and thank you for joining the summit.

Christine Schaffner, N.D.

Thank you, Robby. The feeling is mutual. And thank you for allowing my participation. It’s really an honor.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Hey everybody, it’s Robby Besner. Thanks so much for joining us today. Please share this content with anyone that you think might benefit from it. And we’re looking forward to having you with us tomorrow for another great interview.