Physician Deborah Borne talks HRV and Energy Medicine

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability Podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness. Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and Optimal HRV. Check us out at optimalhrv.com Please enjoy the show. Welcome, friends, to Heart Rate Variability Podcast. I am back here today with my good friend, colleague, Partner in crime, Dr. Deborah Bourne. We're going to talk about. We're bringing it out into the light. Dr. Deb, about your work around energy medicine. It's. It's one of those conversations that, along with spirituality that I find fascinating. We hardly ever talk about it in professional settings and then you have a glass of wine or two at dinner and all of a sudden we're talking about, you know, our shamatic journeys and all this different stuff. And energy medicine is one of those things that I, I don't think we talk enough about, grounded in thousands of years of history, something I practice every day with Q Gong in the work that I do. And I know that it informs your work and as an energy medicine practitioner yourself, bringing that into your western medicine training with your work with addiction, homelessness and other really key issues in our society. So welcome back, my friend. I'm so excited. [00:01:43] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:01:44] Speaker A: Just in case the people are just tuning in and they haven't heard your past episodes, let's set the table by doing just a quick introduction of yourself. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Oh, you want me to talk about me? [00:01:56] Speaker A: Yeah, just love it. [00:01:57] Speaker B: Well, I'm really excited to be here again and I love this topic. Of course, it's my love, my light and my lady, and light is energy, by the way. But I started off as a social worker, as you know, to work to support the communities that I serve. And the first, the first entry into integrated health was with my own health, even when I was in social work school where I was diagnosed with really severe endometriosis and all the things that the medical doctors wanted me to do didn't make sense logically. And I ended up working with someone, a macrobiotic nutritionist. And she had said to me, everything you put in your body is the energy that you create everything with. So, and I was like, energy. Nutrition is energy. Everything is like recreated into energy. That's how we function, so we do it. And she said, if you want to change, you have to change the energy and the things that you're putting in your body. And so I the first training I had with like healing was with Reiki and I think a lot of us have heard of the term Reiki and energy and Reiki is a very passive way of doing work. But over the years I've the studying and herbal medicine because of the energy of the foods that we put in and the healing like pills or concoctions we put in our body to heal as well as energy medicine. I studied for four years with Donna Eden and my certified advanced practitioner and a trainer for her and her work, Barbara Brennan, who recently passed. I've read all of her books. She's another great, amazing hands on healer. I'm also an acupuncturist and start off my life as a dancer. So I do a lot of yoga and I do my own personal qigong. So I say this to all the doctors I work with enough. So I do clinical work, I go out in the street, I take care of pregnant people, I take care of folks in needle change, syringe exchanges, I work in a clinic, I do HIV medicine and I use both allopathic western medicine and energy techniques and all that I do in meditation as well. So HRV is the center of all of this. And the reason why I was always so jazzed when you first started to talk about HRV with me, I was like, dude, we have a way of measuring what it is that we know is real. So when I talk to doctors about this and energy, it doesn't seem so crazy to me. Every culture of healing for 5,000, 4,000 years, whether it's ayurvedic, anything, my grandmother, your grandmother, how we heal, we use energy. And it's so fascinating to me with the medicine that I was trained as a doctor and what I see my colleagues do is we use energy for diagnostics all the time. X rays, EKGs, blood pressure is energy. It's looking at pressure. We use it all the time for diagnostic, but we don't use it for an intervention except when we look at something like lithotripsy. We use lasers, but we're not using energy as much in how we treat. But we do use it a lot for how we diagnose. And that's energy. It's just energy. And it's not a crazy thing. I'm talking to you because of energy. My brain moves because of energy. I'm lifting my hand because of energy. And I always, I have a little toy here. I don't know if you can hear it because I don't Know how to set up my zoom. And whenever I teach to either doctors or energy practitioners, I'm doing a addiction training for touch for health providers, lots of nurses. This I say is I got for my kids, but it's actually mine. So I'm energy. I'm a conductor. You're a conductor. When I touch this, I've ever showed this to you, Matt, have you seen this? Oh my God. How did I never show this? And then you go like this, it lights up. I'm a conductor of energy. So you can say whatever you want and think this is wackadoodle. But the fact is, is that we as biological beings use energy. We use energy in our food and glucose change to ATP. It's how we move molecules across our membranes. We use positive and negative charges in our neurons to move things. And I can conduct energy and I conduct energy by touching you and touching points. Or we've all had the experience where we're sitting there and you knew someone just walked in the door. Because our energy and our bio energy, just like the earth and every other living thing, has a biosphere or a magnetic field. And you no way around that. You can measure that. So that's my norm. That's how me, I debborn. I am so logical that it doesn't make sense to just look at healing without looking at energy. And that's how I came to this. [00:07:08] Speaker A: The diagnostic part of it is fascinating. I hadn't heard you say that before, but it makes total sense that that's what we're measuring diagnostically, but not really using that for healing in the same way, which is fascinating. [00:07:26] Speaker B: So why I love HRV is it's the measurement, as you know, of the health of our nervous system. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:36] Speaker B: And if you want to be an optimal HRV or optimal health, understanding that is critical. And so everything if you so many things in energy medicine is looking at. And I could take the energy medicine I studied with Donna Eden and other forms of healing like that modality like touch for health and healing touch. You're setting a stage where you're relaxing the stress response and you're up leveling the anticipatory responding to and recovering from stress response which comes from our vagus nerve. So you're working in Chinese medicine. I'm going to just introduce a term because I'm going to end up saying it if I don't. It's called the triple warmer and it has some other names too, but it's one of our meridians. In Chinese medicine, there's 12 meridians 4 and 14 altogether. And the triple warmer is our fight flight, freeze and appease. And it's very interesting. It doesn't relate to an organ like your heart meridian or your lung meridian, but they really think that it relates to our nervous system. And it's a meridian that other meridians call in when they need support. So if you're stomach meridian, throwing it out there and you're having digestive issues, and then every time you look at hot sauce, your stomach, it will energetically call in the triple warmer. But the fascinating thing about the triple warmer. So meridians are energy channels, just like a road, a direct highway, like your veins and their energy centers. So the triple warmer starts here. It goes all the way up behind your neck. [00:09:36] Speaker A: That's pointing to a ring finger. Just for those that are. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Sorry, my ring. Yeah. So if you're just listening, it starts on your ring finger. It goes all the way up the back of your arm. It goes up the back of your neck. Up your neck. Think about how much stress we hold on our neck. Do you see where I'm holding? Think about how many times you've seen someone going on the back of my neck. It goes behind our ear and it stops right here at our temples. Okay. That's the end of your triple warmer. What's so fascinating is the vagus nerve, the longest nerve in our body. The one that's like digest and rest. And it's what we are working on when we do hrv. Right, Matt? We love that one. [00:10:18] Speaker A: Yep. [00:10:18] Speaker B: Guess where it comes out. It goes and it follows the direct path and some of the path of the triple warmer, but in the opposite direction. So when you want to stimulate the vagus nerve, one of the simplest ways is to kind of go backwards on your triple warmer. Say triple warmer. You can calm down and you're going and stimulating. Just like I'm rubbing something here with this crazy tool. You're stimulating the vagus nerve. So before we go further, let's do it together. And this is from Donna Eden. I'm gonna steal. This is her stuff. And she calls it the triple warmer smoothing. And my. Some people mock me. I'm like, we need the smoothie. So you rub your. Get your hands together, Matt. Okay, you're going to rub your hands. You're getting some friction. And then cover your eyes. You're just going to cover those hands over your eyes. And if you're listening to this driving, please pull over and take a sacred breath. And just a. What Deb got me into now. Matt's thinking. And now take your hands off your eyes and you're going to start in your eyebrows. And we're going to be pulling your eyebrows out from the middle all the way out to the tip of your eyebrows. Remember we talked about that's where the trip warmer ends. Now we're going to go behind your ears, just right behind your ears and push in. These are some really important points with acupuncture. And now go down your neck, pressing in and then just ending at your heart. How's that feel, Matt? [00:11:58] Speaker A: Feels great. [00:11:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And you can't, it's like even if you don't want it to feel good, it feels good. So we were doing some things within energy medicine and with hrv we're paying attention to our, our vagus nerve. You're stimulating the vagus nerve. You're going tracing backwards the triple warmer, saying tripwormer, I love you for existing. You're keeping me alive. But I don't need you to be in overdrive right now. And also in Chinese medicine we're touching back here is something called a wind point right behind your ear. And you think about how sensitive that is and you're stimulating that to kind of close that off. So the tripwarmer smoothie. There's so many easy things to do. And I do this on the street, I do this with doctors. The easy thing to do. So we just reset our, our nervous system. And I love doing this stuff, Matt. You know I check the heart rate variability before and after a session. We can talk about that in a little bit. [00:12:55] Speaker A: Well, and that's where you get the nickname of HRV witch in my house. Because I've shown my, my pre and post dad. Because you do, you've done work on me over zoom and you know, if an outsider who was uninformed, what the heck are these folks doing on zoom? But then you see my post test hr you know I post tested with HRV and I mean it's doubled at times. Like free. [00:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:27] Speaker B: So let's just talk, let's talk in real life and then we can talk about over the airways and how that works because I don't wanna, I don't wanna stretch our, like blow all of our minds up. But the point is, is when you fall and you hurt yourself, what's the first thing you do? [00:13:43] Speaker A: Grab. [00:13:44] Speaker B: You hold it. Okay. Because our hands have lots as a powerful chakra of like when we even rubbed in together. So hands and hands on healing. Also doctors never touch anyone are really important and they hold and transfer Energy. So if you just clap your hands together again and then do your tips, tips, tip, tip, tip, tip, tippy, tippy, tip, tip, hand, hand, hand, hand, tippy, tip, tip, tip, tip. And now slowly put your hands together and sometimes you feel some pressure. Do you feel a little pressure between your hands? [00:14:18] Speaker A: Yep. [00:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you come slow, I used to love doing this as a kid. My teacher calls that a chi ball. But the other thing that's really cool. So you can make that. And we've all hopefully had that experience. Experience where you can feel energy on our hands. You're feeling your biofield of one hand against another and you can feel the pressure because we are energy. There's no way around that. But energy also follows thought. And it's why counseling and psychology is also impacted by. It improves your HRV and being safe and sometimes overdoing it. Or if you're going through like you go to your therapist and you talk about something really deep and you go home and you're just exhausted, your HRV might be lower because you're just reprocessing. And I'm glad your HRV goes down to give your mind some time to just kind of integrate. Right. So. So having a really high HRV all the time is not necessarily you want, but I, I did. I do know that like when people do sports or work out too much or totally overstressing their body, their HRV will go down because there is sweet spots of when we're in like a good space. So let's just talk about if I'm doing an energy session on someone. Whether it's a hands on energy session or an acupuncture session, I will check someone's HRV and my hrv. Sometimes before and then after the session I'll check their HRV and sometimes mine. And there's certain, there's certain protocols that I do that I know that our HRVs usually sync up. So I'll sync up with the person and, and certain protocols have even more. Like I know 100% if I'm doing a particular like really long holds on someone like this for a long time and really syncing with their energy, we'll I'll see even more of a sync. But what you're talking about, Matt, is that if I check someone's heart rate variability, I'm just going to use a number and it's 30 and their body has gone through a process in the hour that I'm working with them after that session, if I've helped their heart rate variability and their vagus nerve and their triple warmer can relax. Often I'll see a 10, 20, even sometimes 30 to 40 increment jump. Now, if I don't see that jump, it doesn't mean it doesn't. It's not working. It just means that it was like that therapy session. And it's also really good data for me to know, listen, your heart rate variability didn't go up. This was a really, you're going to need more time to integrate, so don't go, you know, do some certain things. So it's just data, but it's also wonderful data to know that I've impacted someone's heart rate variability. Does that make sense? Because I've, I've increased. And when we're doing our breathing and our resonant frequency, you want to increase your high frequency heart rate variability. You want to, you know, increase your high resonant frequency. You want to, you know, work on that with our, with our RF when we breathe. But there's also other ways of getting to it, which is what's lovely about seeing with energy medicine. I had this one experience, I know I did tell you this, where there were five advanced practitioners. We all went to someone's house and we all just checked our numbers and we all had different numbers, except I think one, two people had like similar numbers in the 40s or something. And afterwards, four of the five people had the exact same number after we all did session. So one of the things they talk about in HeartMath and you and I have talked about this is something called CO regulation, where if there's one person here, that particular heart rate variability and another person here, they can actually start to learn to co regulate. And we experience this all the time without the fancy word CO regulation, which is, I love hanging out with that person. That person makes me feel so good. [00:18:19] Speaker A: Yep. [00:18:20] Speaker B: Like you're smiling with me. You and I are high revs. We can handle each other. I'm not for everyone. Some of the other day is like, deb, your frequency is too high. Please take it down. I got it. Got it. And there's some people who are like, just their energy is not for me. That's CO regulation. Your body's not feeling that you want to regulate. And so we can. There's tons of research out there about how people's high variabilities do CO regulate. And we definitely see that when I do either hands on energy medicine or acupuncture. And I'm really curious if meditation programs, we should do that. Matt. [00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:58] Speaker B: Liquid meditation. Yeah. Yeah. So I do know meditation specifically does impact your heart rate variability. But I'm wondering about on the Collective. So back to how energy medicine is a way to get to the healing of our nervous system and can be measured with heart rate variability. [00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:18] Speaker B: To me it's one of the same and I just love it. I'm going to teach you some other little cool tricks too right now. [00:19:24] Speaker A: Awesome. [00:19:24] Speaker B: When you're ready. Want to learn another thing? [00:19:27] Speaker A: Sure. [00:19:28] Speaker B: Or do you have a question? [00:19:30] Speaker A: Let's learn something then. I got a question. [00:19:32] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. So we as magnetic beings, I'm going to hold it this way. We go like this, but we also have what's called a toric field. Energy comes up like, you know, you've seen pictures of the earth and it has that. [00:19:47] Speaker A: The spiraling magnetic field. [00:19:49] Speaker B: Magnetic, yeah. Electromagnetic field. Guess what? We have those two. And just like you have a three prong cable now we have. Because we need a grounding, all energy needs to be grounded. We in our torque field need to be grounded. So one thing that's really important for your heart rate variability is something called grounding. Now people buy grounding things and everything. One of the easiest ways to ground is to take, take your shoes off and step on something like outside and even the rock, your rock pad, like path, patio, whatever on your patio works because just rock. So but we can also ground energetically and there's something called, Donna calls them the four taps. But one way we ground is one of our meridians. The stomach meridian comes down our body. It's how we ground from below, above. So and where we're going to do is tapping it because we can stimulate meridians by tapping. So go to your, where your eyeballs are in the middle and then go down a little bit. You'll feel your bone. [00:20:50] Speaker A: So just tap down from the eyes. [00:20:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. An inch down. Yep. That's your, that's the second point. Your stomach. Radiant. And I've even started to go down to the third point on the stomach meridian which is down near your nose and all in that area. My, my acupuncture teacher who's like an 80 something year old Japanese acupuncture is amazing. Kiko Matsumoto, she's really into this point here. Third. So you're just going to tap in those areas. And tapping can be in any rhythm or rubbing. If that feels good and what that does. Let's just stop for a moment. How does that feel, Matt? [00:21:23] Speaker A: Feels good. [00:21:24] Speaker B: That grounds us from above. Now to ground from below. The kidney Meridian. You can all. These are all organs. Starts in the bottom of your foot, right in the sole of your foot and comes and pulls energy up. It's our deepest, deepest, deepest, deepest energy. And I'm going to talk element. It's the water energy. I study five element theory. The water, it's the deepest. If you think about how deep our oceans are, comes all the way up and it ends. I'm in San Francisco, so I'm cold, unlike the rest of the nation. So if you find your collarbone and then you find your collarbone, mat. And then here's your sternum and you just get to where your collarbone means your sternum and just fall down right there. And then you can tap that and you can tap it or have it. How's that feel that I've made you do this. [00:22:17] Speaker A: I love this one. [00:22:20] Speaker B: Because it's really grounding from below. So those two things alone, you did those every day. So good. And the last thing I'm going to talk about, which we're not going to measure, is to spoon. Now, in Chinese medicine, we use spoons all the time. I'm going to lean over here in my drawer and I give spoons out to my patients and to other people. Is just any spoon table at aap? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you give up? Well, we use them, you know. You've heard of guashan? Have you heard of Guashan? [00:22:57] Speaker A: I have not. [00:22:59] Speaker B: So it's the thing. People do them for their face. So you lymphatic and you whatever. Just rubbing yourself and rubbing yourself with a metal object helps because metal is a conductor. [00:23:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:13] Speaker B: So why not? And really, you could put magnets on your feet or you can take your foot. I'm not going to eat with a spoon after I use it. I'm sorry. I'm going to take my sock, use my foot, and I'm going to rub it. And that's another great way to ground. This is when, you know, I've gone full on. You think so crazy. But when I've done this for patients, even on the street, even over their shoes, they're like, you can feel the difference. And if you want to just try this at home, do one foot and then stand and feel if you can feel the difference. But even my physical therapist uses a spoon. It's not. It's really good. Helping with muscle. Muscle tension. Okay, so those are some of my biggest tricks. You can ask the question now. [00:23:54] Speaker A: All right, so I imagine we have some listeners because, I mean, I love how you talk about this because on One hand, you're a medical doctor, you're practicing medicine. On the other hand, I think for folks that might be new to terms like triple warmer or tapping is pretty mainstream now in science. Where do you think we have a. And I find myself doing this not so much with you, because our relationship. I know you're onto something, but, you know, the first time you rub my foot with a spoon, I was like, what the hell is Deb doing? Like, so there's. I think a lot of us have this kind of gut reaction is something isn't right here. It can't be right. This. Why is a medical doctor rubbing people's feet with a spoon? Where do you think we having a foot in Western and Eastern traditions with medicine? Where do you think we get lost? Whereas my insurance will. I can go get acupuncture, but there's no. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Which is energy medicine. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah. But it has no connection to the primary care that I get in any way, shape or form. It's something very isolated and extra and not integrated at all. So where do you think we missed in the United States and probably Europe as well, that. That integration, even though it's happened a little bit here and there that people are still struggling with? [00:25:34] Speaker B: I think that you're asking, like three or four questions, and I'll try to at one time, which is fine. And I think they're all really important. The first is about safety. And when someone comes at you with something, anything that doesn't feel safe, you need context. When I look at what we do in Western medicine, sometimes I'm like. I feel like I'm watching people just get leeches on them. You know, leeches can be helpful, but there's no purpose. Like, it feels so weird. I feel like I'm watching a movie. It's like, how can we be giving these to people, like opiate pain medicines and not addressing the cause of the pain? Like, how we've gone about doing medicine, it's strange to me. It's like, okay, for endometriosis, you're going to shut off my pituitary glands and shut off all my hormones and then give me another hormone, and then it's going to still come back. Like, this is all kind of crazy. [00:26:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:28] Speaker B: So again, going back to that logic in my brain, I think Western medicine is phenomenal. I'm a person that's had 15 surgeries. I'm going to have another one. Like, I'm so grateful for what Western medicine is bring. I'm an HIV doctor. It's curious keeping the People I love alive. There's wonderful things about medicine and it doesn't fill the bill for everything. I mean, look at all the controversy we're having around vaccines. I was talking to someone yesterday, like, I don't know if you don't want to do a vaccine, don't do a vaccine. But everyone needs to make their own decision. So when someone's coming at you with a spoon and you feel unsafe, that coming at you with everything, anything, whether it's pills or anything, is never okay. So first and foremost, we, we always need to introduce things in a way of safety. So that's the first. And I don't think in Western medicine we have a broad enough understanding of human. But most Americans, when you look at research with integrative, they're taking a supplement or something and they don't even tell their doctor. Most Americans that can have access to integrative health are using it, but they don't tell their doctor. So I think that first thing that you said to me, someone's coming at you and you're thinking, it's interesting. What does that mean? We have to put everything in context. And by I do integrative health with people have no access to care and they love what I do so much more than the pills because I've had so much medical trauma. So for me, it's a tool for engagement, not necessarily coming at you with a spoon. It's like, oh my God, someone's listening to me. Because when I'm high, I feel energy. And I usually say, you know, when you're high and you feel energy, well, guess what? There's a protocol I use a lot with ear. There's ear acupuncture and there's also ear acupressure. It's actually interesting because with the ears, it's not really on a meridian. In Chinese medicine, it actually is correlated, based on our development as embryos, with places of the brain they've actually mapped out. This particular place is your kidney to map it up. This is your thalamus mapped it out with the brain. If you press on particular places in your ear and just massaging your ear anywhere is great. But there's a protocol that I do, five point detox protocol that was developed by the Black panthers in the 70s, actually Tupac Shakur, stepfather. Dr. Shakur was an acupuncturist that, that worked on this. And I go into predominantly black and brown communities where I'm doing this and I tell them the story. I say, listen, this detox protocol, which works There's a lot of research on it. It's used in like somewhere to 30 to 40 different drug courts in the country. They mandate this protocol. It really works. And I'm putting it on your ear. And I'm also giving you power back because your community came up with this. The second thing I use energy medicine for and why it's so important is increasing someone's locus of control, their belief and their ability that they can work and heal themselves. So when I asked you, Matt, do you feel a difference? Did you feel good when you tapped yourself and you're like, wow, I could feel that you have the ability within you to make change. And heart rate variability specifically measures someone's ability to anticipate, recover from and respond to stress. [00:29:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:45] Speaker B: Right. That's what it does. [00:29:46] Speaker A: Yes. [00:29:47] Speaker B: Heart rate variability. And so if we're trying to tap in, it's because we want to help people be able to make change in their life. I'm an addiction doctor, so I think about this all the time. Time. So when I'm doing energy stuff, I'll do it. And I add a little bit of magic. Magic is just science that we haven't proven, but I do something called muscle testing and other sorts of things. Or ask them how they feel, because doctors don't even ask you, did you feel a difference? It feels better or worse. When I'm working on pain, I'm like, let's try this magnet here. I'll put a magnet because again, it's affecting connectivity from a nerve. And does it feel better? And I'll talk to the person because I want to increase locus of control. And doctors in Western medicine have nothing to do with someone's locus of control. They actually try to take control away from them. So that's the second question. I feel like integrated health, by nature of what it is done well, can bring the power back to the people where it belongs. Because we don't heal someone, they heal themselves. [00:30:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:44] Speaker B: Even if it's your HIV med, you need to remember to take it. You're doing it for you. [00:30:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:50] Speaker B: Are you with me? [00:30:50] Speaker A: And so then what I understand too, I mean, we have a enormous model for this in China where the. I mean, I. I wouldn't even say integrate that. The. I, I don't want to call it west medicine, modern medicine. I, for lack of a better term, because I don't want to say it's only Western with. That is. Is, as far as I understand, it just walks all with the. The traditional Chinese medicine. [00:31:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:22] Speaker A: That it's A different thing. It's not. Not necessarily like there may be different practitioners, but there's one. It's a. It's healthcare over there, which gives us a very different model. [00:31:36] Speaker B: So there's a couple. This is gonna be the third question that I heard in your original question. In the acupuncture training that I did was for doctors. So it was done by doctors. For doctors. They do a lot of work with folks in Germany. In Germany, there's many more acupuncturist doctors. And for me, in my locus and control, like the other day I went and was working doing energy medicine for Juneteenth at an event in the. In the Bayview Hunters Point area in San Francisco with the community. And I was able to do stuff for people. This one guy, for his pain, he's like, I haven't been able to walk without pain and in 20 years. What'd you do? I said, I just did this VA program called battlefield. So the BVA has an acupuncture protocol that they've got to 5,000 people or something like that. It's called Battlefield. I just said, I just put the season. Your battlefield points, it went major pain from 10 to go to 6. [00:32:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:36] Speaker B: So the sound like the intensity of your pain. And then we found a point with a magnet. Again, energy on the place that hurt on your foot. You told me. And we did this together. [00:32:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:48] Speaker B: So. So. And so Germany. I. My understanding is they have it more integrated at the va. They're understanding and part of their work doing with this Battlefield protocol that we're doing here. And I think part of it is. So part of it is, I think the need for research because we pretend that we have to be research focused as opposed to what feels better in you. Right. And I think that we don't put enough weight into what feels better. Not that everything could be pushed and Medicaid can cover everything because it feels good. But. But I think that there's some, like some surgeries that we do are not evidence based, but they certainly help when you heal a broken bone. So I think that there's the need to reculture the importance of how someone feels about something. And then I think that we also need to have more research, and I think that we need to change the norm about what it is that each person can do. So I'm a generalist. What I mean is that I'm a generalist and I feel very comfortable doing lots of different things. And I'm fine with uncertainty. And I teach addiction doctors and Sometimes infectious disease doctors and residents and students. And I notice that in certain specialties they won't like. I can't deal with your hypertension because I am, I don't know, orthopedic doctor. Like, we become very specialized in the field and it's really hard to kind of bring things back, to deal with uncertainty even within each Brookfield's field. But if you talk. So I'm going to talk about Arnica, Montana, homeopathy. Homeopathy works on an energetic level beyond my comprehension. I don't know a lot about homeopathy. I use homeopathy. I have a homeopath doctor provider, and I use Arnica, Montana all the time. And they've done so much research on Arnica, Montana in Europe. [00:34:56] Speaker A: Is this a town in Montana or. [00:35:00] Speaker B: Arnica, Montana is a particular. It's a plant. It's a beautiful yellow flower. Arnica Montana. And Arnica Montana is a homeopathic remedy that is very wildly used. Arnica Montana, Arnica and Arnica is used by a lot of orthopedics and a lot of plastic surgeons. They use it both orally and topically for pain and trauma. And they've done a lot of research in Europe where people go to the emergency room and for anything, and they've been given arnica homeopathically and they improve regardless if they came in for pneumonia or broken bone. So that homeopathy works on a really even, like, high vibrational. I don't understand. But there is a lot of research. But our vibration, again, is energy. So getting back to your original question, how do we bring this more into allopathic, into Western medicine? We need to talk to the people that we're taking care of. What do they believe in? So when I talk to the humans that I work with, they have a spiritual life. That's why you and I talked like five years ago. What's the most important thing you want to talk about, Deb on a podcast? Spirituality. [00:36:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:14] Speaker B: Because everyone has a spiritual life. Everyone has something that they're connected to everything. Everyone has something that they feel awe about, whether it's a dog or nature. 80% of the people will say nature. Whether it's their belief in what they call as their God or deed, whatever, everyone has something that's important to them. And we as providers and healers need to ask someone that question. Same thing with what is your belief system around your health? [00:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:42] Speaker B: Well, right now we're working in San Francisco on the opiate crisis, and everyone must go to treatment. And there's A war on harm reduction. I'm a harm reductionist. Harm reduction is treatment. It's a step of engagement. You and I both do motivational interviewing. If someone's pre contemplative, you still need to do an intervention. That's going to be evidence based in work. So that is connecting. And there's not one human in the world that doesn't want to feel better. [00:37:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:10] Speaker B: And if they say no to your intervention, then we haven't asked them or offer them something that feels good for them. I love that. So when you ask me that original question, how do you bring this in? It's a necessity for Western medicine to have more radical hospitality, which is what we do in harm reduction. You come as you are and radical hospitality that I'm here for you as a human being. And we need to start to get that shift. Because when someone's kind to you, you know what happens to your heart rate variability goes up. Yes, Matt. So. And people say, you're so nice. I'm like, I'm actually not really nice and I'm not really kind. I'm just a really good scientist and I know that gratitude, compassion and kindness will help not only your heart rate variability, but mine. So again, back to energy medicine. While we're here. These are techniques. A lot of them are ancient, some of them are new. It could be acupuncture, chiropractic, nutrition is energy medicine in a way, because you're giving different kind of food to help improve the energy in your system. It could be homeopathy, which is a vibratory. It could be qigong, it could be yoga. You're working with breath. It could be meditation. Those are all forms of energy medicine to me. And I deb more study or practice a lot of those. And I like to have a wide palette so that when someone comes, I'm not just coming at them with a spoon unless they're like, that seems cool. And I can show that you are actually magic. And look what you can do. [00:38:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:49] Speaker B: Does that make sense? Answer your question. And I. My heart breaks. I also, one of the things I've done that I told you, I ran a consult service and I started a consult service and it's still going on in the General Hospital, in the safety net. We're working with my colleagues to help them work with really challenging patients that are either using drugs, have severe mental illness, experiencing homelessness. And, you know, one of the things, they're like, what are you doing? This tapping or whatever. It's like, I. I'm Doing it because it's a form of engagement. And my heart breaks for you that you have nothing to give someone. [00:39:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:25] Speaker B: So you end up giving them things that you think are okay but not okay for them. So for me as a provider, that's the fourth part of the question. I do this because I know it works. So I'm going to tell you a really cool story. This is really cool. So on one of our drop in centers in San Francisco, people come in if they're using math or alcohol or heroin and they need a night to sleep before they try to get into a program. It's. It's this really cool place that I have an integrative health clinic there two days a week. And this woman was having an asthma exacerbation. And, and we had to call in 91 1. She was. Her oxygen saturation was 84. And you know what, you know what saturation you want for someone? Matt, don't. 100%. [00:40:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:40:10] Speaker B: 100 is good. Yeah. But anything over 90, but you want to be 100% oxygen. This woman was 84. She couldn't speak full sentences. And we're called 91 1. And we had to get to the hospital. And I said to the nurse and I was like, why don't. You're like, why don't doctors do this? I was just thinking about the emergency. I wasn't. I forgot that I have these other tools. Right. Because I'm human. My heart rate variability was very low. But then I couldn't think of possibilities. And I looked at the nurse, I said, you know what, let's just use some energy medicine. We're here now. Let's just do it. So I told you there's meridians. There's one that's called the heart meridian. It starts here on your shoulder and it goes all the way out to your thumb. And I said, do this push in right here at the beginning of this place to the nurse and squeeze her thumb. It was so interesting. Then the woman's like, no, over here. She could feel where it worked. And we're pressing and squeezing as hard as you can. I was holding the beginning and the end of the meridian. [00:41:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:09] Speaker B: And we literally watched her oxygen go up on the monitor. And she turned around, started yelling at her dog, stop barking. Like this woman couldn't even say a whole sentence. [00:41:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:20] Speaker B: And so by the time, by the time the ambulance came, her O2 sat. When we held it was, was like 95. And then we let go and her O2, but. But still it was. You Know, I'm not saying this is in place of emergency medicine, but it was so cool because I was like, oh yeah, I forgot that I have these tools because an emergency was out of context is what I was saying. A generalist specialist. I forgot I can. Okay. And I use them and I've used this since then with several people. One of the things my teacher Donna Eden has said is that if someone's having a heart attack, you can right on their pinkies because you squeeze their heart meridian. So that's how I was like, okay, let's just squeeze the heck out of her end of her lung meridian. And I was telling this story to my acupuncture teacher, the doctor person that runs the acupuncture program where I study acumed. They're so good. And they said I was telling them a story like, yeah, you know, we use needles because that gets more exact and it does stick, stimulate it. But we are conductors. So holding the beginning and the ends of meridians, it's fine. So I, I think, you know, the, the opportunity to get more creative. I am working actually the Osher Center. There's Osher centers of integrative health around the country. Our Osher center got money to help us look at making manifest integrative health for the safety net and for the underserved. So that is one of the things I'm very passionate about. But I do think for the people listening here, obviously they care about heart rate variability, they care about their own nervous system and they care about the nervous systems of other people. And energy medicine specifically is supporting the vagus nerve. It's helping the vagus nerve feel safe. Even just relaxing on a, like on, on, in a, on a warm, comfortable beach blanket where you're just laying there on the beach and you have it, you feel good. That helps your vagus nerve. Right. So helping people feel comfortable and safe, even if it is placebo, they're feeling comfortable and safe. Their vagus nerve is going to shine. Right. So you're creating an environment. And if you give people things that they can relate to, which is your question, and most of people in this country and other countries, they want more integrative health. And at the end of the day, things like the five point detox and battlefield. Five points and ear. I just use ear seeds. I don't even use needles. I just go around. I think I did those on YouTube. [00:43:56] Speaker A: Oh yeah, like a dozen times now. [00:43:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I actually have one right now in one of my points that I love. So that. And then it's giving the power back to the people and the person to do it. So for me, I love energy medicine because I am logical. All I want to support the Vegas Nerve. I believe in what data we have. We need more data out there. And I also believe that every human listening to this podcast has within them what they need to be whole. They might need to get learned different places to tap or touch or whatever. But. But we have. We're just these incredible systems and machines that can actually activate, like with the app, learning your resonant frequency and learning how to breathe in a particular pattern. There's data, there's things that we can do, tap, touch, whatever, that also can do and support that. [00:44:50] Speaker A: So final question I got for you here. How have we talked about the medical world opportunities you found for integrating this? And I'm curious, when you bring HRV and HRV biofeedback into the energy medicine world, I'm curious what the response of that community is. [00:45:11] Speaker B: That's really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't start to talk. I didn't talk about chakras or auras or other sorts of things, but those are also very powerful matters want to put out there. So for those practitioners that might be listening, those are also really important energy systems. There's the nadis in Ayurvedic, which is another energy system. So it's been very interesting, I think. And you came to a conference with me and it was just one energy fields. Like, I've even talked to my chiropractor about this because they're adjusting. I do go to a particular chiropractor that adjusts just my atlas again, totally adjusting where my. Where my vagus nerve, like, comes out of my head. And I think what's interesting at least with the Johnny Eden world and some other worlds where they understand the importance of the vagus nerve. [00:46:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:02] Speaker B: Like Donna herself has taught a lot about the vagus nerve nerve. And so I think. And like, I've worked, I trained with Gabor Mate, who does counseling and healing work and other areas like that. And people that have read the Body Keeps the Score and understand Steve Porges. So. And they understand the importance of the vagus nerve, Right? [00:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:23] Speaker B: Dana. Deb. Dana. So whether you're doing it therapeutically or doing it from a healing, more and more we're understanding and people are speaking to the vagus nerve. So I think it hasn't been that hard of a stretch. I think like everything we as humans need just getting used to using a monitor and. Or having the Discipline to do something. I think that false dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. It's not the issue with heart rate variability. It's the issue of a healing doing energy practitioner, Reiki practitioner, an acupuncturist. Starting to incorporate a biometric is the stretch. Does that make sense? [00:47:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:05] Speaker B: And so it's kind of, it's the same issue that I see with Western doctors is adding in the use of energy not just as a measure because we get biometrics, but adding energy and as a form of healing is really the change. And then with the, with, with therapists and with like my emdr, I've talked to this with my own EMDR therapist or when I've done eft, which is the tapping and with energy, hands on energy medicine people, Reiki practitioners, adding a biometric into that world, I think is, don't you agree, is kind of feels like it's the divide. Like because they're, it's. They've always had this free space and they don't. Yeah. And I think we, we use like as a therapist, I use like give me your, give me. Do this assessment and then I'll do the after assessment. So we've used questionnaires, we've been in the soft sciences, but I think adding biometrics is the gap. Is that helpful? [00:48:09] Speaker A: It is. My friend, I could talk to you forever about this. So I bet we'll just see what questions come in and that, that'll direct our. [00:48:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And if people want to learn more tool like energy, like easy to use quick and easy energy tools to help your vagus nerve. I'd love to do a little quick video for people to be able to do too if people are interested also. That might be fun. [00:48:33] Speaker A: That would be great. So Dr. Deborah Bourne, my friend, my mentor is so great to talk to you. As always, you can find show notes including more information about deb debtimalhrv.com and thank you for joining us, Deb. Thank you so much. And as always, thank you. See you next. [00:48:55] Speaker B: Thank you.