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Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Dr. Keesha Ewers is an integrative medicine expert, Doctor of Sexology, Family Practice ARNP, Psychotherapist, herbalist, is board certified in functional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, and is the founder and medical director of the Academy for Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certification Program. Dr. Keesha has been in the medical field... Read More
Dr. Rob Downey witnessed his first exceptional clinical outcome in response to functional medicine in 2006 when his natural medicine mentor turned around a severe autoimmunity case via whole food, probiotics and safe, potent anti-inflammatory botanical supplements. When he asked her whether getting Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) training would... Read More
- Find out why autoimmunity is not what you think it is
- Unravel the incredible connection between autoimmunity and your mind and spirit
- Learn to define your state of peace and live in harmony
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Welcome back to the Reverse Autoimmune Disease Summit. Oh my gosh, we are on version 5.0, everybody. So this particular version is, “Healing the Energy Body.” And of course, everything is energy, so there’s just nothing that we cannot talk about when we’re talking about healing the energy body. My guest today is Dr. Rob Downey, who witnessed his first exceptional clinical outcome in response to functional medicine in 2006 when his natural medicine mentor turned around a severe autoimmunity case via whole foods, probiotics and safe, potent anti-inflammatory botanical supplements. When he asked her whether getting Institute for Functional Medicine training would allow him to speak the language so he could understand what she was doing, she responded, “If you get the IFM training, “you’ll help people the way I do.” And he never looked back. That’s where my certification is too, and it’s such a good training so I’m so glad that you listened to your intuition and did that.
Rob Downey, MD
Me too.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah, it changes. I mean, when you think about how we were trained and then changing that paradigm completely to get into the story, the root causes, it’s pretty mind-blowing, isn’t it?
Rob Downey, MD
Mmm. Thanks, Dr. Keesha. It’s such a privilege to get to spend time with you today and to spend time with our participants. And it was utterly transformative. It was a watershed or sea change moment in my life. And the only things I’m probably equal grateful for are the people that love me, including my wife and friends, and the beautiful places in nature I get to be. The magnitude of it’s just incredible.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah. Yeah. So let’s talk about autoimmune disease from a functional medicine perspective.
Rob Downey, MD
Great. What a great opportunity to discuss it with a master, which is both exhilarating and a little intimidating.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
No. No, you know, we both have stories of reversing our disease process, right?
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And no two people are alike. And so it’s you’re a master of this path too.
Rob Downey, MD
Well, that’s really gracious of you. I would say that my thinking in this has evolved quite a bit over 16 years in functional medicine. And it’s so neat getting to talk about this today because this particular conversation goes all the way back to the case that did motivate me to get the functional medicine training. This person who I had had conceptualized, based on my conventional medicine training, as having irreversible disease. So that very first case, the person was put into my schedule because I worked at an integrative clinic. I worked there because I was receptive to integrative medicine. I didn’t have the training and then here’s this person in my schedule with deformities of the hands due to psoriatic arthritis and failing the third drug and getting recurrent pneumonia and looking at losing their job and getting circumstantially depressed, and just so poignant. And looking at me with that look. In the person’s eyes, the look was, “You’re the integrative person, you’re gonna help me.”
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm.
Rob Downey, MD
And I’m so glad that my response was to say, “I’m going to get you to the integrative person “who will help you.” So the person that became my mentor, a Bastyr trained Naturopathic Doctor, and an absolutely radiant human being, six months later this person had 50% resolution when I ran into the patient in the hallway. And so now when I think about it, I realize that there’s this incredible plasticity in all of these systems of the body, including the immune system. And that’s been the part for me that it’s just such a great, natural high being part of somebody getting back on track with getting along with their immune system and optimizing the function of the immune system, including the immune system no longer mis-recognizing the self as the target. The one big change for me in the last year or two, I realized I was using combat or military language, this attack on the self. And no surprise, Jeff Bland, the Father of Functional Medicine, always comes along and takes some idea and refines it in a way that’s incredibly challenging to me and takes a long time to digest. And I saw him interviewed and he said, “We always teach people that in autoimmunity, “the immune system is attacking the self.” But he said, “I’d like us to think of this, “that our immune system is doing its job.”
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right.
Rob Downey, MD
“And then ask ourselves what’s next.” And I suppose today’s conversation may be most powerful if we look at the inadvertent problems we’re creating in this military or war combative language, because then potentially we frame the problem in a way that’s inherently got a fight, flight energetic motif, which doesn’t serve us as we try to get to harmony.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
It’s like the war on cancer, the war on drugs, the war on anything, yeah. Yeah, polarization, right?
Rob Downey, MD
Right. And-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Instead of miscommunication.
Rob Downey, MD
Well, I thought about how to frame this for our participants. And so I thought of these two phrases, and it doesn’t bother me if people do or don’t join me, but feel free if you want to. And so, if I say this phrase, “My immune system is attacking me,” and we just stop a second and feel the energy of that statement. And then we contrast it to the statement, “My immune system is doing its job,” and we feel the energy of that. They have a different energy. And so to me, the deeper manifestations of that are that we start from a place of compassion for an overworked immune system, living in a world it’s not designed for. Even compassion for ourselves, living in a world we’re not designed for. And I think then that compassion informs a different character to the answers. I suspect people move more quickly toward elegant solutions that are simple and harmonized with who they are, and they’re less prone to ending up to wanting to go to medications right away, and less prone to mischaracterizing the immune system as the enemy. If we say, “Our immune system’s attacking us,” in a subtle way, it does sort of shame the immune system energetically. I don’t think we wanna do that.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And why don’t we go to the biochemistry and the physical, physiology of what we’re talking about when we say that the immune system is actually just doing its job.
Rob Downey, MD
Very good. So our immune system has these signatures it’s looking for, for self versus other. The most sort of black and white construct we can make of the immune system is it’s teasing out what’s expecting to see. And it’s worth noting also that parts of us change quickly. Like Kara Fitzgerald’s doing all this brilliant work on methylation, which changes second to second, hour to hour, day to day. But our immune system changes over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. So when we think about then the one I love is a conversation you and I got to have before. We talked about sugar and then sugar gets stuck to other molecules in the body. The molecules get glycosylated. Well, now they look alien to the immune system because pre-agricultural people didn’t have a bunch of molecules running around with sugars stuck to them. And on and on, our toxic exposures.
I suspect a lot of your audience is very sophisticated and so they’ve got a lot of the puzzle pieces to pull together that chronic environmental toxicity, the products that come into our bodies or get put onto our skin, estrogen mimics, et cetera, the air, the water, our thoughts, and how those then affect genetic expression or gut barrier integrity. We end up with the cells and tissues being tagged or modulated or modified in ways, all of which are attracting the attention of the immune system. Those things don’t look quite right. And the immune system’s job is to say, “I’m gonna antibody tag this,” in which case, a lot of molecules end up running around the body antibody-tagged and clogging the liver. Or, “I’m going to engulf this in a white cell.” Or, “I’m going to release an inflammatory cascade “to deal with this threat.” So in rheumatoid arthritis that happens in the hands. In asthma, it happens in the lungs. Eczema, it happens on the skin. Multiple sclerosis, it happens in the brain.
But if we had the luxury to be the immune system or be an immune cell, we’d just be looking around and saying, “Huh. Wow! There’s a lot of work to do here.” And so for me, it’s helped me have what I think are better conversations with my patients and people that rely on me as somebody who can hopefully inform their journey to not only heal, but heal as quickly and efficiently as possible. Let’s just be really compassionate toward the immune system and do the things that we need to do to turn over immune cells quicker, via autophagy, so we get some bright, fresh, new ones that don’t have the old residues and misunderstanding. Let’s do the lifestyle things that our immune systems are relying on to be resilient. Let’s live with it, that this is immune system overwhelm, not so much… Let’s let go of attacking the self, ’cause it’s a great way to understand autoimmunity, but I don’t think it’s a great way to heal it.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah, and you know the idea that if somebody is doing their job and it’s in the job description and you don’t like what the outcome is, then it’s probably important to go talk to that somebody. Have a collaborative conversation, right? Like-
Rob Downey, MD
Right.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
You know? And instead of just telling them they’re fired, right?
Rob Downey, MD
I’m glad you brought that up. My worry in choosing this way of priming a pump for today’s conversation, I hoped very much it will be helpful. And at the same time, I worried that the concepts might be elusive in a way that was unhelpful. And so I thought of something like, if any of us who have been an effective supervisor, we go talk to the person about, “Are you aware of your job description? “Are you aware of the details of your last job report? “How are you doing? “How’s this feeling from your end?” And then, “How can you be successful at this?” Any of us who’ve done a supervisory role will often hear things like, “Oh, well I just ended my marriage,” from the worker, the employee. “My marriage just ended, my dog died. “I injured my shoulder. “I didn’t understand my job description. “I’m being bullied at work. “I don’t get along with my immediate supervisor.” So that compassion, another way to frame it is, my favorite one actually is with adolescence. Here’s two phrases we can contrast. One phrase is: My adolescent took the keys to the truck without my permission and bent the fender. And then the other phrase is: My adolescent is individuating and maturing. And they’re the same thing.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right.
Rob Downey, MD
But again, one of them recognizes that they’re doing their job and the other sort of frames them as misbehaving. So this can feel like, well, wait a minute. Dr. Rob is like-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Well, and the supervisory one, the one that I wanted to add to what you were talking about, ’cause a lot of us have served as supervisors, you mentioned is how can I best support you?
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right?
Rob Downey, MD
Right, right.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
For you to be able to do your job in the highest and best good for everyone involved.
Rob Downey, MD
Right.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right?
Rob Downey, MD
Right.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
How can I best support you? And I don’t think the body gets asked that by us very often. Like you have been really working hard for X number of years without a lot of gratitude or any bonuses, so. I’m just noticing that and I would like to repair that right now, you know? How can I best support you? Well, I mean, the energy Red Bull drinks that you have in the break room aren’t really helping me at all. Is there a way that you could put something in there that’s a little less toxic? Okay, sure. You know, we can put in warm lemon water and all kinds of yummy things for you. Oh, that’d be great, you know?
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And it’s just like those really collaborative, compassionately curious way of communicating.
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Which works if you take that into your family structures and your friendships and your work environments and your schools. Everywhere, it’s going to work a lot better and that includes with you and your systems.
Rob Downey, MD
I love it that I get to have the conversation with you because I know enough about you that there was a presumption that this would resonate and I would get to learn something today, which is a wonderful benefit for me. The part I’d like our participants to think about is this feels so subtle. This can feel like, “You gotta be kidding.” It can feel like, “This is gonna make a difference?” But the reason I think it makes a difference is if we add to the conversation what Dr. Heidi Hanna calls, “The hustle and the grind.” And so her big study on stress, the number one answer for why people are pinned by circumstance and they feel that they can’t move forward is the hustle and the grind. And so if we say, “Well, what’s our response to that?” We gotta rally. Well, if we gotta rally, we gotta get revved up. If we gotta get revved up, we’re more likely to have that cookie, we’re more likely to have that second or third cup of coffee, we’re more likely to then stay up late with Netflix to then wind down.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Or not meditate or go out in the forest for a walk or sleep for at least eight hours, right?
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah. So I think there’s this subtle fight, flight thing happening where we’re very hard on ourselves. Again, we’re sort of harsh supervisors of ourselves or we’re the coach that says, “Well, we’re gonna get injured today to get the win “at the expense of long-term physical performance.” Whatever metaphors.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
No pain, no gain.
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah. Yeah. And so, we’re almost certainly then if we say, “Okay, what if Eva Detko were here talking about “our autonomic nervous system?” Well, she would probably say if we’re in fight, flight mode, to solve our problems we’re actually not healing. That’s the irony as we rally, we’re in fight, flight. What’s that energy? Our system doesn’t care at all on an energetic level about immunity, recovery, restoration, fertility, assimilation of nutrients when we’re in subtle levels of fight, flight mode to achieve our objectives. And I’m probably reflecting to some degree from some personal grief that I had to get over that I was doing this, and I couldn’t help my patients until I helped myself. And I’m really struck by when we become curious about what we need for restoration and for peace, then we start asking ourselves questions about do we have permission to be at peace in the forest? Do we have permission to put our feet on the Earth and be grounded? Do we have permission to put that lemon water in and sit with it for 30 minutes and just feel the blessing? And the folks I see recover from autoimmunity are in that peaceful, curious place. And the folks that I see have the greatest trouble appear to be in a state of recalcitrant anger. So I start having these connect the dots feelings that this is perhaps more important. Or it’s the kind of 301, 401 level work you’re doing with your audience now that may be a very important time in their journey to be asking some of these questions.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And this is just to get a couple of details and really flush this out a little bit with color. This is when you take a protocol and you have to do it perfectly. This is when you take a diet, call it a diet, make it into a diet, and then set it up as a deprivation of I can’t have, I can’t have, right? These are the places where the healing does not occur in those spaces. Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
Right. Right. You had mentioned that sugar was enough of an issue for you in one of our prior conversations, that you needed it to take it with the seriousness that an alcoholic would take alcohol.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm.
Rob Downey, MD
And that’s, to me, such an interesting one to parse because there is a way to engage that with curiosity that if the sugar creeps in, we’re compassionate and we get back on track, and there’s a very rigid way to approach it with a sense of failure.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right.
Rob Downey, MD
And I’ve experienced enough of both that I’ve gotten more attuned to which energetic space my patients are in around things like that. And so I think it’s also-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I’m off the wagon, so I may as well go down in flames now. Right?
Rob Downey, MD
Well, it’s not like-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I had a little bit of this, so now I can have a whole sourdough bread loaf.
Rob Downey, MD
Well, perhaps it’s empowering. I saw Dean Ornish say many years ago, somebody asked him what to do when people, when their food plan isn’t optimal. And he said, “Just start again.”
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yep.
Rob Downey, MD
And then Mark David said that he doesn’t know anyone that eats perfectly. And then I thought, “Well, Mark Hyman might eat perfectly.” But then I thought about his ice cream and cookies in the summer, or his revelation that if Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey was good for you, how much of it he would eat. And I thought of David Perlmutter saying, “Does grain brain mean you’ll never have “another slice of pizza? “Some people might choose to go 90-10.” And I realized a bunch of the luminaries are acknowledging that our bodies know the way, and yourself included. And so it seems to me, we can think that there’s these folks eating perfectly for their immune system and we just need to be like them, and the irony is that that might be one of the greatest traps of all. Because we’re gonna do this concept called second arrow. We’re not only gonna suffer the immuno-disruptive consequences of the sugar and the glycosylation, but we’re gonna put this second arrow into ourselves of guilt and shame, which is also immuno inflammatory.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right.
Rob Downey, MD
So the immediate compassion and then even saying, “Well, why did I do this? “Did I get a dopamine hit from the sugar? “Okay, so what else can I do to get dopamine “an hour from now, “or tomorrow morning when I feel the same way?” And this has been alien to me too, but I get to benefit from all these thought leaders. And so now I’m doing this, I’m saying, “Well, I got my dopamine hit “from that gluten-free chocolate chip cookie today, “but tomorrow, it’s gonna come from sitting in the sun “with my mushroom “drink from Four Sigmatic.” And it’s really cool to me feeling that gentle evolution. It feels right and I feel great in response to it. And there’s a sustainability to compassion based practices based in understanding why we do things. It feels far more sustainable than any should’s I’ve ever repeatedly applied to the Teflon of my misunderstandings.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I call this the Detox Retox Roller Coaster. You can actually stop buying tickets and don’t get on the roller coaster any longer. But that will come at a time when the evolution is right for you. And that’s the thing is everyone’s different. And you know how long it took me to get off that roller coaster is not going to be the same as what it takes another person. And so, it’s just really having a lot of grace around this, a lot of patience, a lot of willingness. And that’s what I think is one of the most important words in all of it, to develop self-awareness and observe, track your own self, right?
Rob Downey, MD
Mm-hmm.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
What just happened right there? What was I feeling? How old do I feel when I feel that?
Rob Downey, MD
Mm-hmm.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
You know? And then, oh, is this something that I learned to link when I was very young to bring me peace? And maybe that kind of grounding that this brought me then is unhelpful today and I can think of a different way to do it, you know? And so, that’s just basic problem solving instead of shaming and getting into an emotional spiral around it.
Rob Downey, MD
Mm-hmm.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
Everything you just shared there makes me flash on mindfulness and this fork in the road, as it were, where as these things arise, if we’ve been doing our mindfulness practices, whatever they are for us, then we can kind of see these things arise, illuminated by how we’re feeling in the moment and not push them away or attach to them. But some of this stuff is so emotionally painful, its genesis is often- And I wish I had the attribution here, but I heard the most pithy phrase the other day. Our childhood wounds are the mothers and fathers of our fate.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm.
Rob Downey, MD
And so I think we’re realizing now, based on your work and others’ work, that we’ll run into these habitual things that we did. So many of us don’t realize it’s an action in itself to just look at it in the light of consciousness.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
Just to stop and be aware. And so good news for our participants is you don’t have to then go run three miles or go prepare a gluten-free bread or something. If you just stop and be aware of what you’re experiencing and be curious, that in itself is beneficially immunomodulatory. I think that might be some of the best news of all.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm. So can we talk about the connection between the gut, the brain and spirit? We’re talking a lot about consciousness, which gets left out of the conversation a lot. And I think we’ve-
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Brought it into the spotlight as an important one to talk about.
Rob Downey, MD
Love to do that. I think they rise and fall together, and I love the physiology of that. I think all of us in functional medicine are enamored of physiology. So I think about the piece in the brain, which comes from parasympathetic rest and digest, rest and restore nervous system tone, then running the software to the gut so that we assimilate nutrients and we have good gut barrier integrity, thus little or no leaky gut. And then that positions our gut to help our brain stay healthy and happy. As the gut barrier rises and falls, so rises and falls the blood brain barrier. So we’re doing a favor to our brain barrier integrity by helping our gut barrier. And I think that the spirit, on a spiritual level, we’re wired for safety. Again, borrowing from Heidi Hanna.
I feel like all of these conversations could be subtitled, “Another Day of Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.” So when she says we’re wired for safety, our spirit needs to feel safe to do its most brilliant, dynamic things that it does for us about where is the opportunity? Where is the service? What’s my highest self? What can I let go of? How can I grow? Even our spirit letting the universe in to do those amazing Jungian synchronicity type things it does when we’re in a state of service and peace and gratitude and abundance. And then I love it that any of these three pieces of the triangle all can undercut one another, so they can be vicious circles or vicious cycles, but they can all support one another. So sometimes my gut restoration and repair patients, the gut supplements will reboot the brain, which reboots the spirit. And others will have a spiritual breakthrough, which reboots the brain, which reboots the gut.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm.
Rob Downey, MD
So I love it that people can, from my perspective, they can take any point of entry and good things will happen.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm. So we are talking a lot about finding peace in this journey. And we live in an era that I think it can be universally defined as not very peaceful.
Rob Downey, MD
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
So how do we encourage people to be able to stay peaceful when outside circumstances are not?
Rob Downey, MD
It’s something I think about a lot. I presume I’m gonna be thinking about it, reflecting on it, a lot for the rest of my life. I’m not sure there is a more important question in my lifetime. And I’ve seen huge benefits to my patients and the people that are on the learning journey with me if we ask more and deeper questions about that. The biggies for me lately are that the news, like what’s happening in the world, is important for us as citizens but I think we get way too big a dose. And then I think those of us that are intuitive or empathic can tolerate an even smaller dose. And I’m very concerned that I’ve never heard a single, I think this might have even been part of our last conversation so I have to apologize if I’m being redundant, but I’ve never heard the news anchorman say, or anchorwoman say, “Today, this many kids were nice to their dog. “Today, this many people took a walk. “Today, this many people took a meal to their neighbor “who was recovering from surgery “or just got out of the hospital.” So I’m super concerned now that the world is much better than the news. And luminaries like David Perlmutter in, “Brainwash,” are saying this. That in many ways, we live in a much better world than we ever have lived in. I also think about I was part of homeschooling for a while and I read world history to my kids. Humans have done brutal, weird things to one another for a long time.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
So that’s the dark side of us that we-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
This is what I point out to my children. I go through generation by generation, and my dad did the same thing for me when I was crying, when I was pregnant with my first child and there’d been another drive by shooting in Dallas, Texas, where I live. And he said, “Keesha, what was happening “when I was born in 1945?” And I gave him a little historical snippet of the horrors. And then he said, “What about my mom in the 1930s?”
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And again, another world war and he just kept going backwards. And he said, “This is the way of humans on this planet. “And so who you are bringing into this world right now, “the onus is on you to help them become “a vessel of service, to be of aid to this world.” And I just thought, “Oh my gosh, “what a beautiful way of putting everything into context “and perspective.”
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And not just getting- It went kind of like I have a meditation idea that’s from mouse to eagle. It was like I was taken from being the mouse and running around and seeing only the horrors that were right there, to being the eagle that had like this larger freedom and perspective and could dive into whichever current by choice. And I think that’s so important for us to remember. We’re not mice.
Rob Downey, MD
I don’t know of anything more important, because it’s an existential challenge for so many of us now.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
To say, “I must reconcile myself to this “for there to be a path forward.” Because I think the magnitude of the information is inherently goes right past fight, flight into freeze, faint.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right.
Rob Downey, MD
I mean, it’s so profoundly distressing, we feel frozen or we feel dissociated.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
So to me, the most important part of being peaceful is realizing that there’s this sort of holographic or cognitive distortion type issue of what’s actually happening in the world is sort of beyond our comprehension, and by electing to focus on the parts that we sort of heart intuit matter most and that we’re true stakeholders in that would be what a dear friend of mine calls strategic withdrawal, which is we strategically position ourselves for our heart and our mind and our existence to be a light to others by humbly acknowledging that it’s just too much to drench ourselves in horror.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah. I had to ask my husband to stop relaying the news to me. I said, “I don’t watch it for a reason “and I don’t look at it on my phone “first thing in the morning the way you do.” So when we would take our hikes in the morning, he would be full of the news of the world and I would say, “I don’t want. “I didn’t get on my phone this morning for this reason, “so I don’t need it to be conveyed to me. Thank you.” You know?
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
I just keep myself really, I don’t watch any media that is horrifying. I don’t. And people might say, “Well, that’s very Pollyanna,” but I actually find out what I need to find out. You know? It just happens. And then it keeps my energy system really clean.
Rob Downey, MD
That to me is, I can comment from just having made a 97% reduction in my news consumption since the last time you and I talked. I’m sleeping again. So there’s a one-to-one correlation there. And Natasha Fallahi, the Sensitive Doctor, taught me that if we’re empathic or intuitive, which many healers are, then the folks that are relying on us for that healing energy, we may not have the bandwidth for some of that other stuff. And I don’t ever want to feel like I’m undercutting my citizenship or my degree to be informed, but the abundance of the information relative to our need for the information appears to me to be about 10,000 fold to one. I mean-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right.
Rob Downey, MD
We got a skewed ratio here, so I’m not struggling anymore with whether or not I’m a good citizen. I’m still picking up plenty of the major storylines. And I also think about which things I need information on because it’s part of my job. So I just did the last Institute for Functional Medicine update on COVID, and I track that through CDC. Centers for Disease Control and New York Times’ perspectives, I find to be a helpful companion to that for me. There’s many good sources, of course. But so I think there’s a balance here, but I’m just so pleased to be getting the dose right. Also had a person I think is brilliant tell me to just not feel like, not be so hard on myself and feel like I have to solve these problems, but instead to just put my feet on Mother Earth and give them to Mother Earth and get a recharge. And I’m gonna explore that a lot more.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
When I can’t sleep. Now, I’m gonna push the dose, I’m gonna do it more often and I’m gonna see how many these things I can give to Mother Earth. So-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
There’s a mystical part of me that-
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
In Peru they call that Hoocha. And in the Andes where I was trained by a teacher, you literally take your hands on the top of your knees, your legs, and put your feet hip width apart, and you lean over and you just think about like all of the dark thoughts and feelings that are congesting for you and feel really heavy and stuck energy. And you kinda do the lion pose in yoga and just: And you lean over and you just like you’re vomiting it onto the Earth.
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
And the idea is that Pachamama then takes all of that and makes it into fertilizer and grows beautiful vegetables and fruits and flowers and, you know? And that she really can take all of that, you know? She’s the stabilizing force underneath us. And if we’re disconnected from her, we forget that we can ground that way, we can release this. We don’t have to be the container, that she can actually transform it and make it into something beautiful that feeds lots of other beings, you know? And it’s just like, “Oh yeah.”
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah. That’s so beautiful. And I’d like to say that historically, I trusted that, but given how revelatory it was for somebody really prescient and wise to tell me that I needed to do that, and just go ahead and do it, it was humbling and also just incredibly reassuring. And it feels to me like, “Okay, another watershed moment.” This is letting go of beating up on myself, that I have to be able to carry this and going ahead and saying, “It’s okay to let this go.” And then the same person said, “And then Mother Earth can go ahead and give you a recharge “every time you get to.” Wow!
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah. I mean, that’s science even tells us about that charge that we get, and it really does impact us. And this teacher that is teaching me this practice said, “There’s arrogance in believing that “you have to hold everything.” And I went, “Oh.” Well, that’s an interesting step further into thinking that somehow I’m just that important that I have to hold it. You know? I said, “Oh, yeah.”
Rob Downey, MD
That makes so much sense to me. That makes so much sense to me and it’s so humbling. And none of us, I don’t think might, I’ll only speak for myself. I don’t like to run into my own arrogance.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm.
Rob Downey, MD
But some of the most important growth steps I’ve ever taken in terms of being a healthier human being, happier human being, have had to do with hubris and arrogance.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
It creeps in somewhere. Probably is a protective mechanism for the underlying fear and anxiety. And so I was just suffering so much and not sleeping so much due to this existential overwhelm that I just felt, I remember saying after hearing from Marissa Rignola, “Yeah, go ahead. Give it to the Earth.” Okay, great. I’m outta here. I’m gonna go do that right now.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
And then again tomorrow and again, the next day. And she encouraged me to go ahead and do it at lunch, even just to let go of the mornings, realizing that a bunch of the folks I take care of just their energy is really a struggle for them, their energetic imbalances. And then I think empaths and intuitives and healers sort of are to some degree we’re tuning in. We have to tune into that radio station to be of service, so then there’s a consequence if we feel beholden to carry that out of maybe a kind of self-flagellation or something.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
If we can instead give it to the Earth, we can serve better.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right. It clears us out.
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Because ultimately, it isn’t us doing the healing. We are not the healers. We are not the ones, you know? We are just channeling information to another person.
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Right?
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
We’re just the vehicle, the telephone, the communication vessel. You know, it isn’t us. And so that’s the thing that when he said that, it clicked in. I went, “Oh my gosh. Yeah. Okay. “I can see that. I can track arrogance there.” You know, this isn’t even about me. And so, it’s like, “Yeah, okay.”
Rob Downey, MD
I’m in.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
It’s just like going and dumping out the trash. All right.
Rob Downey, MD
Right, right.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
Right. Well, and that lack of ego so that then these healing experiences, I find that they happen more and more often the less I identify them with me and realize I get to be a participant in this experience, not a source.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
I would say now it feels like, as far as I can tell, there isn’t any perception at all that I’m the source. I feel a sense of transparency around. There’s some sort of greatest good that wants to happen that’s co-potentiated by a person who wants to be the facilitator and a person who wants to be the recipient.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Yeah.
Rob Downey, MD
Feels a little bit like Reiki.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Mm-hmm.
Rob Downey, MD
And I love it that sometimes we’re the recipient, sometimes we’re the facilitator, that feels like part of the beauty of life too.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Well, and in all of it, we’re mirroring each other and what we need to learn, so, if we’re willing to.
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
See it that way. So yeah. Well, it has been such a pleasure to spend this time with you. Thank you so much for sharing even a fraction of your wisdom with us.
Rob Downey, MD
Thanks for all the light you bring, Dr. Keesha. I love getting to be in it.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
You too. So you have a free gift. You ran a really beautiful summit called, Healing Habit Summit, and have an e-book I think that you put together or a guide of healing habits.
Rob Downey, MD
Yeah. So that will be available. And it’s 15 pages, and it’s, “Healing Habits From a Functional Medicine Physician,” and it’s deliberately provocative and quirky and fun and has different things each page.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Like you. Which is so great. So great.
Rob Downey, MD
So I think people will dig it. And a lady who’s really gifted and does a lot of this work is the one who made it beautiful. So I gave her the ideas and she made it absolutely gorgeous. Lindsay Griffin, who is based out of New York. And so I’m always, I feel attribution is another part of grace and graciousness and gracefulness. And so she took something I felt really good about and made it great. And I hope people really benefit from it and enjoy it.
Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C
Thank you. All right, everybody, we’ve got Dr. Downey’s contact information here and that really beautiful download that you can take advantage of and really learn what he’s up to and the work, the beautiful work, that he’s doing in the world. Until next time, be well.
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