Holistic Anti-Aging - 5 Mind Body Spirit Pillars of Women's Wellness

Finding your path toward vibrant health, wellness, longevity, self-discovery, and spiritual growth

A life-changing journey with Dr. Valencia Ray, MD

Holistic Anti-aging – Mind Body Spirit Pillars of Health in Women
Dr. Valencia Ray, MD

In this episode

In this episode, we’ll talk about certain aspects of health and aging in women that are not always the first to come to mind. However, these are essential pillars of a long, healthy, and happy life that we should all consider. Couples may find it helpful to listen to this episode together as it can help increase awareness and better understand and relate to each other.

Our guest in this episode is Dr. Valencia Ray, MD, a functional medicine physician who specializes in mind-body-spirit, anti-aging, and holistic medicine. Based on her own life journey and her medical background, Dr. Ray is on a mission to share these life-changing insights and help guide women on their journey towards vibrant health.

Also in this episode:

Dr. Patti Shelton, MD, LongevIQ medical communications officer
Amir Ginsberg, LongevIQ founder.

It’s a whole mental emotional piece. It affects our epigenetics. It is literally affecting the gene expression. So it’s not just about a little anxiety. What you don’t know can kill you. It’s not like, oh, if I just repress and deny my emotions, they’re just feedback there in the background. No, they’re eating away at your physiology. If they are low frequency emotions like fear, worry, ruminating, anxiety excessively, or just worrying about things you can’t control. There is a way of dealing with that, that’s actually fundamentally empowering that people are not aware of.

Main topics

(0:00:00) Podcast and episode intro, medical disclaimer
(0:01:46) Dr. Ray’s journey
(0:04:05) Being disconnected from our emotions and inner world
(0:07:52) Holistic body mind spirit approach to women’s health & wellness
(0:10:57) The importance of mindset in women’s health
(0:13:13) The left brain, ego, and heart intuition in women
(0:18:36) The 5 Holistic pillars of healthy aging in women
(0:28:51) Diet and fasting for healthy aging in women
(0:39:06) Joy & play with healthy eating – Dr. Ray’s favorite recipes
(0:44:18) The anti-aging power of joy & play
(0:49:47) Joy & play in relationships
(0:55:02) Exercise & movement for healthy aging in women
(0:59:26) Breaking programming and conditioning with self love
(1:05:45) Finding your own spiritual path
(1:13:33) Meditation & breathwork
(1:19:30) The power of listening to your emotions
(1:21:36) Overcoming challenges in your spiritual journey
(1:28:49) How to be free – Concluding remarks

Transcript

This podcast episode was edited to improve readability.

Podcast and episode intro, medical disclaimer

Dr. Patti (00:00:00): This is Dr. Patti Shelton, and you are listening to the LongevIQ podcast. We discuss anti-aging and longevity science and how to benefit from it so we can all live long, healthy, happy lives.

Just before we get started, a quick medical disclaimer, this podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or to provide or replace medical advice. Please use this information to educate yourself as much as possible and share this information with a qualified health practitioner that you trust.

Also, joining us today as always is Amir Ginsberg, the founder of LongevIQ. Welcome, Dr. Ray. Such a pleasure having you here. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Ray (00:01:27): Well, thank you very much for having me here. You know, I always like to share information, Patti, and help others to be able to live a more vibrant life. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy <laugh>.

Dr. Ray’s journey

Dr. Patti (00:01:43): Maybe we should start and talk a little bit about your inspiration for creating a program specifically for women. What inspired you to go that path?

Dr. Ray (00:01:56): Yeah, it’s just been like a lifelong unfolding kind of thing. You know, I didn’t grew up saying I am going to start a women’s group. But when I was younger, I was always naturally fascinated with health and self-empowerment. It started with me. I mean, it started with curiosity, and I did have this kind of curiosity. I would look up at the stars, as corny as that sounds, but it just seemed like there’s this big secrets of the cosmos and secrets of the universe kind of thing. And so as I was heading into adolescence and those years, things began to get turbulent, emotionally turbulent. Some of the insecurities I had when I was very young because of some family dynamics and being teased and, you know, et cetera within my family by older brothers and some other dynamics going on.

I had this kind of baggage coming out of early childhood, and then I’m going into those turbulent, you know, hormonal years, while I had this kind of natural leadership ability that I figured out very early, that was still very much present. I would go through this kind of wanting to help and lead and and yet I had a center story going on. So that kind of led to being curious about, in a way, the secrets of the universe. And I started intuitively having some insights about where I wanted to go a bit. It wasn’t really to be a doctor yet at that point. It had more to do with business. So I started in my teens, being focused on independence as a way to be secure, quote unquote. And that opened the door to a lot of pitfalls in the future where unconsciously I had told myself a story about lack, like not trusting the universe, not trusting people.

Being disconnected from our emotions and inner world

Dr. Ray (00:04:04): It had more to do with my protection of my emotions, like being hurt emotionally. So early on I had this encounter with emotions as something to be aware of and something that frankly I didn’t like in the beginning because I wasn’t getting a lot of joy and collection from home. Now, that’s not to say I had a bad family or anything. I think that overall they were good humans, they just didn’t know what they didn’t know. And these things are perpetuated not only generationally, but in our society at large. You know, there’s a lot of relationship disconnection, and we are disconnected from our inner world because at an early age, we’re driven to focus on the outer world. You know, at an early age, we’re ashamed for having emotions. More so with men, but women too. That’s why I got teased a lot by my family. I was emotional and easy to cry and sensitive when I was young. I didn’t have that much trouble in the outer world that, so I had it backwards. <laugh>. So the outer world was a little friendlier.

What you start with at home, you carry into the outer world. That same expectation. And you find yourself unconsciously selecting people who reflect you, those who you most familiar with. So I had to actually break that one too, where putting myself in a group that didn’t get me or look at me like the deer in the headlight when I would say something that was different.

So ultimately, I stumbled into medical school through a cosmic guidance because honestly, <laugh>, it happened at the 11th hour. And while I was going through medical school, which I got in very quickly, I was barely 21 when I started medical school, I was like, how did I get here? But ultimately, that unfolded too. So it’s almost like my life is a combination of fate versus destiny. And sometimes it might be the 11th hour that I get on the path, but I keep tracking toward this kind of destiny, which is as time went on and I became more comfortable with who I am and got that old messaging outta my mind that somehow something’s wrong with women in particular.

That’s actually what was my greatest insecurity. Like people think because you’re a person of color or whatever, that somehow you’re insecure about that. No, I didn’t have any insecurities, you know, around that. It was nothing wrong with me shoot <laugh>. I knew it wasn’t a color thing. It had more to do with the way I was raised.

Dr. Ray (00:06:51): My father certainly helped us to have that kind of like, yeah, we’re good enough, but on the other hand, as a woman – that same father was kind of misogynistic because of his religion. You know, the religion part is what did it. And so I had this thing where at first I thought if I ever had children in the first place, having a girl might be a problem. And one day I woke up and said, why do I think that? And, and ultimately even my father came around and he was so happy he had his two daughters. He had four boys and two daughters. But even that got reconciled. So as I’m growing and growing, I’m realizing like, wow, women really have a lot of stuff dumped in our psyche and we have more health problems partially because of that and partially because we are used as consumers, you know, for the most part.

Holistic – body mind spirit approach to women’s health & wellness

Dr. Ray (00:07:48): One of the things I did when I finally got the courage to get off the beaten trail and think outside the box and honor my intuition and honor my right brain and honor my heart, I started studying other esoteric ancient practices or insights, being open to new intuitive downloads and not just the same old past stuff, you know, that’s not working. And I found things like human design and I started honoring the birth chart of your astrology – vedic, or western, it just depends on how you blend them. And one of the best things I did too was that 30 years ago I started doing shadow work on myself in honoring my emotions. And then over that same period of time, there were those who were developing new tools for such a time as this, like human design and gene keys.

And I happened to be fortunate enough to stumble into those pathways in the past, and now I weave them together. There’s also something called internal family systems therapy that I was unconsciously doing on myself in this 30 year period. And that is actually a body of work now too. And blending them in such a way that I’m literally doing holistic, Like literally physical, emotional, mental, spiritual in a whole way. So I’ve created this program, well, whole, wise. The word whole is actually derived and interconnected with the word health.

Humanity is in so much pain and suffering and premature aging, because we divide ourselves into pieces, and we need to come back to this wholeness.

And the consumer industry is keeping us divided in pieces. Go over here for this, go over here for that. And even when you go over here for that, they’re not connecting anything. All this technology coming out that’s not really disrupting anything <laugh> from my point of view. It’s allowing you to measure stuff, but it’s not giving you any solutions. Okay? What good does it do to know all of these different digital patterns if you don’t have the resources and the knowledge and the wisdom on how to change them? And that’s what I noticed. Cause I get bombarded with these – here’s a new tool, here’s another new tool, and none of these tools really are telling me anything (* I can use). If I didn’t have my functional medicine knowledge base, I wouldn’t necessarily know what to do with that necessarily. If I’m still going to the same system that is disease focused, it might just have me on more medications <laugh>. That’s not funny, but I’m just saying.

The importance of mindset in women’s health

Dr. Patti (00:10:52): Beautiful. Thank you for sharing your journey. You work specifically with women. Are there any particular aspects that you see being particularly important to women in terms of staying vibrant and vital as they age? Aging well, having a long life, are there things women need to pay particular attention to?

Dr. Ray (00:11:15): Yeah, I’d say even before the obvious, like food is medicine, moderate exercise, don’t go to the gym and knock yourself out. That’s not necessarily helpful, especially depending on your body type and where you are at, cuz you might stir up more inflammation. The other obvious things, sleep and lifestyle, we can talk about that in more detail, and what I mean by that.

But one thing that is totally overlooked is your mindset. Like, who do you think you are? Because if you don’t really have a sense of worth that’s intrinsic – I am good enough because I breathe. I am not a mistake.

If you don’t understand the balance between the principle – not the gender, but the principle of the masculine feminine, the yin and the yang, the right brain and the left brain that create the whole – they’re not polar opposites. They’re part of a whole.

And to degree that you’re in a society that is totally honoring the fire, the yang, the masculine. But even that, it’s honoring a shallow form of it. It’s not even the pure form of it. So everything is like out of whack and it’s all about overactivity. Never resting. Staying externally focused on the five senses instead of also honoring the sixth sense of the heart. And by the way, everyone, when I use these terms, to be clear, I’m not talking about biological sex and I’m not talking about gender either.

The left brain, ego, and heart intuition in women

Dr. Ray (00:13:12): I’m talking about cosmic like life principle, the balance of the yin and the yang, receptive and active. And men and women have both. If you have a right brain and a left brain, you have access to both. And so if you are a normal human being with a normal human brain, you have a right hemisphere and a left hemisphere. But if you are under the conditioning of the world, you’re over in the left. And how does that apply to women?

The left brain houses this container called the ego of the story of who you think you are, like autobiographical memory. Ego is not bad, just part of the nervous system. And we need it to be individuated, but when we don’t understand that we are self responsible for navigating our emotions, for the story we tell ourselves, then programs can get fed in there.

We live in this world that is pushing us over in this left brain act of separation, linguistic pieces. The left brain sees pieces. It doesn’t see the whole scope. And we as women like totally buy into that. It’s almost like we really get it hard in a way, because we do have more connections to this heart side of us naturally that’s kind of maternal, nurturing, potentially there, that follows us. Nothing’s ever true across the board.

There are men I think are better mothers <laugh> than their wives. I’ve watched it happened so to speak. But I think as women, if we would stop trying to number one, buy into this paradigm that is keeping us not only separated from our heart and the okayness of being female, but it’s also pitting us against each other as well.

Dr. Ray (00:15:23): All this external like competition that goes on, truth be told, it takes us out of our self love. So we’re not aware of the emotional side of ourselves and the self acceptance side of ourselves. If we could blend that into our awareness, that would really help women. Because I think as women, most women have this ability to multitask or see different holistic pictures. They might be because, you know, you do have this kind of greater connection between heart and brain and higher heart intuition potentially. Men do too. It really affects our health and our relationship and our connection and our self work and our self love and all of that.

I think women just have more of a conditioning push toward co-dependency. You know, like having to overgive. It’s almost like you pat on the back if you’re a woman and you serving everybody but yourself. Oh, you’re so wonderful. you’re so wonderful while the man goes off and plays golf. So you have to have enough self love and self confidence to have clearer boundaries. And that will go a long way towards you finding what’s important to you and your health and your self care and all of those things too. And I think you need a role model or you need someone to encourage you and not to beat up men. I’ve been married all these years. I have a son, I’ve respected my father, I have four brothers. This is a humanity issue and we have to resolve it and together women I think potentially can lead, but we have to do our own personal work. Why do I say I think women can lead? Well because women do tend to have a lot of influence over the health of the next generation or the health in the home and buying a food, that sort of thing. The relational side tendencies. If we could get our self relationship together, then maybe we can help the world as well.

Dr. Patti (00:17:58): Another beautiful message there about how anyone of any sex, any gender – it’s important to honor both the feminine and the masculine energies that everyone contains.

Dr. Ray (00:18:11): Yes. That’s to me is this the most important pressing issue. It is this respect of the the masculine feminine in all people and within ourselves first, and with all people in between us. And stop having a preferential bias that goes on.

The 5 Holistic pillars of healthy aging in women

Dr. Patti (00:18:33): Let’s talk about some of the health aspects that you touched on a little bit. You started to mention food as medicine. So maybe talk a little bit about how what’s important when you’re thinking about eating for longevity, vibrant and health. What are some things you might pay attention to?

Dr. Ray (00:18:54): I base the five pillars of my well whole wise program on these five principles. I call it the five R approach.

Reducate

The first one is food is medicine. So it’s like the food is medicine is under the category of reeducate. So there’s this whole reeducation that we need. A lot of things we’re eating we think are healthy. It’s really not <laugh>, it’s actually causing a lot of our problems. If it looks like something and it’s not and it’s processed, it’s not good for you in general.

Recalibrate

The second one would be re-calibrate. So it’s really helping us to understand our hormones and our adrenal glands and the tie in to the circadian rhythms. When we are able to understand this dynamic and how it affects even our energy centers, our mitochondria, which is very tied into aging, et cetera, then we can start to understand the things we need to do that support the hormones even beyond food, our mindset or lifestyle. Cause these are all interconnected. It’s not five separate steps. They’re all interconnected.

Revise your story

The next one would be revise your story. So you have re-educate, recalibrate, and now revise.

And this is a whole mental emotional piece. It affects our epigenetics. It is literally affecting the gene expression. So it’s not just about a little anxiety. What you don’t know can kill you. It’s not like, oh, if I just repress and deny my emotions, they’re just feedback there in the background. No, they’re eating away at your physiology if they are low frequency emotions like fear, worry, ruminating, anxiety excessively, or just worrying about things you can’t control. There is a way of dealing with that, that’s actually fundamentally empowering that people are not aware of.

Restoring balance: the importance of lifestyle

Then there’s restoring balance, and that’s that whole lifestyle approach. There is meditation to that. There is putting an emphasis on sleep and understanding sleep hygiene. It’s one of the most neglected areas for many people. Oh, it’s just asleep. I used to brag about that too. Oh, I go to bed at midnight and get up at 4:30 AM. Yikes! I probably aged myself 20 years during those years. And there was a good reason why I was doing it in a way. I was trying to juggle way too much and still have plenty of time for my children to play with them, et cetera. So I would cram a lot of things late in the evening, and then I mess up going to bed at midnight and then got up early to try to squeeze in my meditation on my workout before I got them up at some early hour to go dashing off into the day.

Dr. Ray (00:21:55): I would certainly arrange some things differently now knowing how dangerous that is and how detrimental it is to your adrenal system and your sleep, et cetera. As we restore balance, it’s like we literally get time back too, because our nervous system is a self-fulfilling prophecy organ or system. And if you don’t think you have enough time, you can waste a lot of time for one thing. But then what do you really wanna focus on? That’s where you really should be looking at. Cause there’s a lot of things on our plate that we don’t have to have there. But then that goes back to the boundaries, and that goes back to self-confidence and self-esteem. The ability to say no, you know, all of those things are all interconnected. Don’t take on too much, you know?

All of that has to do with restoring your balance. I find a lot of women take care of others first and then they never get taken care of until they break down.

Remember who you really are

Dr. Ray (00:22:59): The last one is remember who you really are. And that’s spirituality. And I have to say, for sure that saved my life. That is actually the foundation of everything for me – finding the spirituality that worked for me. And, you know, I have a long backdrop of hit of religion and parts of it worked, parts of it didn’t. And I’m just one of those that believe that nobody gets to tell me what I believe. Okay? That’s like the line in the sand. You don’t get to tell me what I believe.

And so ultimately I have to be responsible for that. And I’m really results driven. Like if it doesn’t work to improve the quality of my life or help, I’m not interested <laugh>. So, practical. And if I see it works, nothing you can say that I’m gonna like, Okay, you said so, so I have to drop it. So at the end of the day it just comes to like faith and core beliefs and results. Because there are principles in the universe. It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not, you’re not gonna get the results. If you think you can just go without sleep for a week and feel energetic and strong, you can believe that all you want. Chances are you’re not. You’re gonna be sleep deprived and inflamed et cetera. So there are principles that you just have to test for yourself instead of just saying, I believe because it says so.

Dr. Ray (00:24:34): Cuz some things are not even in your best interest. And that can come down even to who you think you are as a woman. If you believe that somehow, you’re less than or whatever, just because you’re female, then that’s gonna have an effect on your perception and how you perceive yourself and other women, your daughters, in life, and et cetera. So you gotta guard your heart and mind and find the right spiritual path.

For me, (* spirituality) led me to understand that divinity is not just like out there. It’s like I’m literally part of creation, and that divine is in all things and certainly within us. And if we can reconnect to that, it bought me a lot more. Like my self-esteem is there instead of in my job title.

Dr. Ray (00:25:26): And that’s more of an intrinsic thing. And it also helped me to grow in my ability to let go and not need to control everything because it’s an illusion. You really don’t. <Laugh> The only thing you can control is how you respond. You can learn how to have a consciousness that helps you to authentically respond where you’re not like squashing your feelings. You are just able to stay in a consciousness of equanimity and you’re actually able to tap into the intrinsic joy, the inner child that’s always there. And if you can do that, then you can weather the storms because the storms are gonna come. It’s not if, it’s when. And ultimately that spiritual foundation is what helped me to realize that the mind and my external expectations that the world was pushing in my face and telling me to be enough or good enough or validate was actually wrecking me and my life.

And so I would say you know, those five things, reeducate, recalibrate, revise, restore, and remember, are what we need to reclaim, okay, our power in who we really are. And then we can have more respect for each other’s differences as well. You know, when we are more secure and healthy and et cetera, I can allow diversity of thought to be around me without getting triggered and all upset cuz you don’t agree with me and et cetera. And I think this starts with the individual when we’re talking health and anti-aging and healthy relationships and all of that. But this all trickles out into society at large. And so as you are feeling better about yourself and you don’t need to be comparing yourself to everybody else, and you are doing the work and making the money that you need for your heart’s purpose, et cetera, then perhaps you can leave other people alone and stop trying to micromanage their life as well. And so people can find communities where they are, you know, relating to each other and not trying to control each over the fence and tell somebody else what to do. So I think all of this is really like a microcosm and a macrocosm, you know, like a organism breathing, inhaling and exhaling. So we can bring forward those things that help us with our health and aging. Cuz right now the paradigm is creating more disease than anything

Dr. Patti (00:28:05): Beautiful. The importance of honoring your own wisdom, trusting your own path.

Dr. Ray (00:28:11): Yeah. That’s very unique. You know, it’s not like, oh, it works for me, so it’s gotta work for you too. It a balance. You have to be willing to kind of test the waters, know yourself and trust your intuition. You know, it’ll help guide you. Yes, there are some overarching principles, but then there’s also some unique aspects that may or may not apply based on your genetics and, you know, based on your design, your divine design.

Diet and fasting for healthy aging in women

Dr. Patti (00:28:41): Let’s talk a little bit about some of those overarching principles. Just always keeping in mind that there’s individual differences and everyone needs to trust themselves with eating patterns. One of the things that’s very popular now for health and aging is intermittent fasting. How do you feel about intermittent fasting for women specifically? Is there anything maybe women need to pay attention to if they’re gonna try that?

Dr. Ray (00:29:06): Yeah, so let’s combine that with food is medicine.

With food is medicine, understanding that nature has the most wisdom over any synthetic thing we can create. And in that food system, when it is done organically and not chemicalized and sprayed to death with stuff that causes inflammation and the grounds are nurtured, we actually get sulfur in our food and the soil is given rest. You’re gonna have these natural chemicals and molecules within the food that are intelligent to match what the body needs it for.

So food is medicine, and what I mean by that term even, is when you’re eating foods that actually contain the minerals, vitamins, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidants in them, like asparagus has natural glutathione, in it, et cetera, then that is going to be the best medicine, in that the body will respond to it naturally and it can help the body to heal itself, which the body is very, very capable of doing.

Dr. Ray (00:30:28): Then in, in the context of herbs, certain herbs are more warming. Some can be calming anti-inflammatory, like ginger can be anti-inflammatory very much so, or help with the stomach. Cinnamon can be warming and antibacterial as well, that can heal gut issues and contribute to that. Plus it tastes good. And so there’s that to be aware of.

Dr. Ray (00:30:59): Then intermittent fasting can be phenomenal for prediabetics, for example. I once had a woman in in my well whole wise program. The program is not medical. We don’t even use supplements and it still works wonders. Now, some people may have real imbalances where they may need some supplements to help their tissues to regenerate, clean, and heal, but it’s a metabolic adjustment.

It’s like learning how to burn fat while still bringing in whole foods and vegetables as well. It’s not like this hardcore keto, which can throw off your gut microbiome over the long periods of time. And so in this program, there was an elderly woman who didn’t really have online skills, but we worked with that. And she was insulin dependent and used insulin pump. She had gained weight, legs swollen, couldn’t even walk. They couldn’t really keep her blood sugars out of the five hundreds, okay? Which is quite dangerous. And she came into the program as like, just let me try something, I’m desperate. And within four to five weeks associated, not only she lost 13 pounds, she had normalized her blood sugar completely.

I never even had to order a test. She was under the care of an endocrinologist, and the endocrinologist reported to her, Wow, you know, your blood sugar is stable and she was checking her blood sugar every day. Anyway, <laugh> cuz she was monitoring it and, she learned some things about her mindset. She did that without even supplements. It was food as medicine, it was lifestyle, and it was the program that I’m referring – well whole wise. And so part of that was fasting. (*Before she started the program) she had been eating what they’re often told every two hours and et cetera. Well, in and fasting, essentially it’s at least 12 hours between your last meal and your next day meal breakfast. The range of ideal times can vary from person to person, but somewhere between 12 and 16 usually. So there’s an eight hour window where you may have two meals but don’t eat like every hour.

Dr. Ray (00:33:24): If you’re gonna eat more than one meal, give yourself four or five hours between meals. It gives the food time to transit, the digestion to rest, and it allows for autophagy, where the old dead cells can be disposed of. Some of the energy, instead of it constantly going to eating, is going to revitalizing your body and cleaning up debris, so to speak. Also, it gives your body a chance to burn excess fat. And this kind of low level ketones, the brain can run on ketones. You don’t have to measure your ketones because with my program, it’s not a keto diet. You can have protein, but you’re going to eat healthy fats and you’re not even going to take in excessive amounts of fat.

You’re actually going to use a lot more water when you cook. When I was first going into keto and functional medicine, I found that number one, I would weather up into nothing if I didn’t throw a potato or like a sweet potato or some kind of root vegetable in there. My ketones would really go up high cuz I tend to run a normal low insulin, which is a good thing for me. I don’t have like inflammation around the excess insulin happening. But it was also imbalancing my gut microbiome, and I do have a tendency to easily raise excessive cholesterol. Now what is excessive cholesterol? It should really not be a good pin down because 50% of people that have heart attacks, have normal LDL or even a low LDL.

Dr. Ray (00:35:13): So it’s not that LDL number, it’s the inflammation of the fats that we need to be looking at. But if you have genetic tendencies, a saturated fat can throw you off and disturb your gut. For that reason, especially in women, it seems like it throws off the hormones more. And it may be because we have that estrogen drop after menopause. With the well whole wise program, we allow for qualification of vegetables, so you can eat as much as you want cuz they’re more water based versus some more the starches, and weighing the foods, not counting calories. Who wants to do that for the rest of their life? And you know, how much meat, and getting the meat from clean sources – that’s food is medicine too. Meaning cows that are happy roaming the grass, eating their natural foods that their stomach can digest, which is not grains, okay?

Dr. Ray (00:36:19): Then the animal is not as inflamed. The animal is healthier, the animal’s consciousness is better. All of that goes into food in is medicine. And then in this intermittent fasting, you’re having strategically set up when you’re consuming your calories as well. So, you’re not gonna wait right before bedtime to eat all your carbs necessarily here. For a variety of reasons which I teach on because some people respond in different ways, but the whole point of the intermittent fasting is to keep the system with less inflammation and methodically cleaner. That helps with the brain and clarity and burning fat and ketones. You’re not gonna be hungry all the time. Before I started this lifestyle and understood these principles, I had to carry those little processed carb bars all the time every two hours or else I would get hangry.

Dr. Ray (00:37:17): And that was cuz my blood sugar and adrenals were off base. Especially if you have a tendency toward, and there’s a genetic basis for this fitting in many people, high cortisol, easily excitable and woosh! There goes the cortisol, and the epinephrine is going up. So if you have a stable food process for you, and again, for some people, they might just have one meal a day, some people might have two or maybe that eight hour, 10 hour window divided into three. You have to trust the wisdom of your body too.

Intermittent fasting can work miracles for diabetes, prediabetes, it’s a generally a good idea for most people. And that food is medicine, getting educated around the proper oils that are fruit based oils like, avocado and olive and don’t cook with them because they become inflammatory if the heat is too high. Then avoiding those seed oils, the canola, safflower, sunflower oils, these things are actually inflammatory. It’s a seed oil and it’s processed and it’s in a plastic clear bottle which can suck out the chemicals in the plastic into the oil. Plus sunlight is, you know, potentially causing problems where you consume the oil.

Joy & play with healthy eating – Dr. Ray’s favorite recipes

Dr. Patti (00:39:06): One of the things I really appreciate about your approach is that you really value joy and play and having fun in life too. Could you share maybe the importance of enjoying your food and even maybe specifically one of your favorite recipes, a way that you can make healthy, really nourishing food, but that’s also really delicious to consume.

Dr. Ray (00:39:35): Okay, let’s see. One of the things that make this lifestyle work, is to get some new recipes and again, this doesn’t happen overnight, but just to give you some examples – I find that cauliflower is extremely versatile for one thing. And I make everything from garlic mashed potatoes, but it’s really cauliflower, and parsley or parsnips are other things that you can kind of mix in there if you want, but it’s so low in carbs and it doesn’t have lectins or other potential issues, or GMOs, per se. There’s a potato salad for example I make, that looks just like potato salad. And I stopped eating potato salads until I came across this recipe and it just looks and tastes like the potato salad, but it’s made with cauliflower.

Another cauliflower favorite of mine that my son always wants me to make since I started making it, for example, is cauliflower dressing. I have generational background from like the southeast and my husband’s mother was from Alabama. So I actually learned somewhere the holiday cooking from her. And she had this kind of dressing where, she couldn’t tell you how to measure it – you just put this in it and you put that in it. And I knew how to taste it, so I said, Okay, well what did I put in it? And I just whipped it up until it tasted like hers. Okay. So it was really good. Well, I did the same thing with this cauliflower dressing, but the cauliflower dressing looks just like the regular dressing. It’s called cornbread cauliflower dressing, but you don’t have to put anything but the ingredients in it and the seasoning in it and the cauliflower takes that on.

Dr. Ray (00:41:54):When I’m boiling the turkey neck and giblets, et cetera with the seasoning, I do it the same as I did the old fashioned way. I’m putting that in there and then you’re even putting a little bit of Parmesan on it. It is so good. And I only make it at Christmas <laugh> Thanksgiving in general, but that’s something like my family looks forward to cuz it tastes like real homegrown dressing, not like something you get out the store, you know? And then I can sometimes make like keto recipe with almond flour, cassava or coconut flour mixed in together so it doesn’t have the gluten in it. And all organic ingredients. Or using monk fruit to sweeten, or sometimes stevia in certain drinks or something like that.

Dr. Ray (00:42:56): So there’s that piece around. You can play with your food in soups too. Get a vitamix, soften the sweet potato or carrot or whatever, grind it up. You could just put the base in there and put the vegetables in and season it the way you want and cook it. Instead of using like cream, I tend to use like coconut milk or something that’s heavy like that, but it doesn’t have the dairy. So those are some of the things that, you know, I don’t feel deprived if I want something sweet. There’s just different things you can do that’s not high sugar, or have flour.

And I substitute with monk fruit in general anyway. I have this keto bread, I forget the brand, which is made out of almond flour. It only has maybe four ingredients, so it’s not like this list of things you can’t name on gluten free products. <Laugh> If you wanna use bread, it’s pretty darn good. You can make it easily of course if you want, I suppose. But I don’t wanna do everything like that.

The anti-aging power of joy & play

Dr. Ray (00:44:21): I would say in anti-aging, one of the big things that’s left out is play. And I would like to say something about relationships after I mentioned the play here, because I think that’s important.

So speaking of play, I had noticed in myself consciously that there was a part of me that would just jump out at times that were so playful, and people who knew me in a way or been around me for a while, they would look at me like…you know <laugh>. And I had repressed this very playful side of me. There was a time where we were on our fifth wedding anniversary (we’ve been married 33 years now). And my husband didn’t realize that I could even draw until near that time. We had been married five years and he didn’t realize that I could even draw. I had also stopped playing piano. And we were on a cruise for that fifth anniversary with a group of people and we were out on the ocean in the middle of the night and they had a karaoke. And this little part of me was like, I wanna play, I wanna play! And so all of a sudden I just found myself like being carried over to the stage.

Dr. Ray (00:45:44): And I got on the stage and I started doing Aretha Franklin – Respect karaoke. And my husband said he was stunned. He was stunned. We had dated two years and had been married five, and he never saw that part of me. That’s sad. And then two ladies jumped up on the stage and got behind me and did back up. It was so fun. And, I’ve done crazy little things like that periodically.

Well, in the years now that I’ve been studying gene keys in particular and this relates to shadow work –

When I say make friends with feelings as part of your health and wellbeing, I’m literally serious about that. I mean, that’s just not an a cute phrase, because in our mind, when we tell ourselves that emotions are scary and bad, and that to be depressed is bad, and we’re conditioned that way, it creates angst and tightening in our body.

And yet there’s a process when you loosen them up with the natural joy within you that’s already there that it’s just buried can come forward.

And you can also get a grip on getting your body and mind in this state of equanimity where when life happens, it doesn’t have to throw you off. Sure, sadness and grief are real and you can feel it, but you don’t have to drown in those emotions. And when you have this kind of state of more of a transcendent connection to your spirit, your story and the response is very different than if you have this story of I need to control it and make the external world align with me, which you really can’t do anyway.

Carl Jung made it popular, but this is more of an ancient principle that is in the subconscious, based on security and self-esteem, it’s not in the highest frequency or vibration. And so therefore it tends more toward being grabbed by fear or what’s going on in outer world. And to the degree that we are able to number one, access this part of ourselves and actually bring it more into the gift, we can actually access some of the parts of ourselves again. So, I’m leading up to this part that sits in what’s called the spiritual portion of the gene keys profile of mine. And the shadow is seriousness and the gift is playfulness and is sitting right in this important part called the spiritual portion. You know, the heart. Well, that part of me as I have really owned it and I can see it in black and white and it’s like, there it is, that explains that because that is truly more who I am instead of this serious person, you know, constricted so much.

Dr. Ray (00:48:46): And so while over time I have been unwinding the seriousness, just having that realization and having the tools to be able to access that part of me, you know, consciously, allowed me to be able to bring that gift of playfulness and delight and attunement to nature and just noticing things and more this kind of vibe. This is a delightful way, so to speak. Not only did it help me and help of course reduce stress and help me to be more willingness to even play like some of the games with other women that I used to play as a girl, like Double Dutch. You know, I’ve been doing that lately a little bit. It’s this organization that has become national for woman, 40 plus, the double dutch club. Now, they do other things beside double Dutch. There’s other things you can get out there and play, but I get so much like, you know, joy and playfulness and connection and relationship connection.

Joy & play in relationships

Dr. Ray (00:49:46): And that’s one thing that I attribute to marriage and healthy relationship. Being able to relax, being able to play, being able to recreate, you know, recreation, et cetera. We serious adults, we cross this line artificially, and now we can’t play anymore. Well that’s gonna affect your health and that’s going to affect your stress levels, et cetera.

So I would say that’s where some of that mental emotional and mental agility can come in, that we can revise our story. And we can actually, and this is a neuroscience fact. We are creating autobiographical memory, the story of who we think we are. So if you say, I can’t play because I’m an adult, then I’m gonna look and feel foolish…who says? That’s what you’re telling yourself. And that may be what other people say, but as I say, maybe you need to surround yourself with people that have a more expansive outlook on life and stop putting yourself in a box worrying about the other people.

I’m not saying that you bring it to your job, but on your private time you should be able to honor your heart and that will contribute to your health and wellbeing. It can also help you in your relationships, especially when you’re working together, because you’re less likely to outgrow each other when you’re both expanding and growing and you know, dealing with your stuff so to speak. And that is the secret sauce for me certainly. I was persistent. and that’s hard devotion, I guess personal transformation, but I was persistent about – we need to address, we need to take responsibility for, we need to use these tools to help ourselves evolve. And what I found was that the theory was right, because I feel that our relationship is better now than it was 20 years ago. And how do you explain that? It has to do with this kind of growing together, evolution, and willingness with compassion. Cuz you know, beating yourself up is not gonna help. Just with compassion, know that you’re here to learn and grow and meet your greater potential.

Dr. Patti (00:52:10): So beautiful. I love seeing the videos of you playing on the playground. Like, oh, you saw the little girl just like you said, that’s wonderful <laugh>.

Dr. Ray (00:52:21): Yeah, you saw that. See, if you put it out to the universe, that’s what’s so amazing to me, as I was going through this journey this summer. I’ve been working with shadow work like 30 years, but as I got these tools, especially the gene keys, it gave me greater and greater access to what I couldn’t see in myself. Cuz doing shadow work on yourself is certainly difficult and I was doing it on myself because I could never find anybody else who could mirror back. And that regular psychotherapy, et cetera would not work. And then ultimately as I was getting to the point where I was working on this aspect of this particular part of me, and I was all in, I said as I was reflecting one day, you know, okay play, I used to love double Dutch when I was a little girl.

I would love to just see if I can still jump it, see if I can still play. It feels like I probably could and I’d love to do that. But you need three people, you need two people to turn and know how to turn and then you can jump. And, I just said, Okay, so I’m gonna put it out to the universe – I wanna play double Dutch! Two days after that or something, someone I know from Chicago where I grew up, (I’m in California now), I happen to see this post go by and you know, I’m not on Facebook a lot or anything, I’m mostly on there for groups and for some connections. And ultimately she came across the screen and I was like, Wow, she’s jumping double Dutch.

So I reached out to her and make a long story short, as it turns out, there’s this national organization that’s been around for five years or something called the 40 plus Double Dutch Club and they’re all over the place. And I looked up, and sure enough there was <laugh>. So see things are out there and we don’t even know it, but ask and you shall receive. So I asked and I was guided to it and yeah, so it’s like not only can I still jump it, I jumped like I never stopped. And that was what, 50 years ago? I mean, there’s some long period of time it’s been, but it’s in my body cuz I loved it so much. Hula hoops, all of that, I could still do all of that. And so why do I have to stop now? You know, you have to use your judgment if you have bad knees, but I don’t. And I wouldn’t do it like hours and hours and hours like I did when I was a child, but it bought me so much joy to be able to do that again.

Exercise & movement for healthy aging in women

Dr. Patti (00:55:02): And you sort of just alluded to not only the importance of moving your body, but to the importance of finding a balanced practice of movement. So maybe talk a little bit about creating an exercise or movement program or a habit that will work for a woman’s particular body.

Dr. Ray (00:55:21): So with movement, a little bit every day matters. Stretching before bed or when you wake up in the morning. You notice you might be a little stiffer, then those are good times, or even do 10 minutes of yoga stretches like downward dog and sun salutation. Occasionally I’ll take a break and just turn on music to dance too. I like to dance. Cuz when I was younger, I was very athletic and could compete athletically easily. But I prefer dancing for the most part. And that’s still takes a lot of athleticism. But the music can move me. So the point of this is to let go and relax, not to see how good you can dance ot not. And you’re by yourself, right? You can just let it rip.

And then there’s the singing that is actually very parasympathetic. Humming is very parasympathetic as well, and those kinds of things help to release tension. I’m about to go on an endeavor to also really look at the meridians balance, like in the Chinese acupuncture and cupping, they talk about ying yang deficiencies, et cetera. Because your nervous system, especially if you’ve been an intense person in the past, could still be holding muscle memory to make it easier for you to trigger into. Even excitement can trigger into stress so easily because your nervous system is so wired type. Fascia massage, myofascial release can help to release stored up tension in the body that is affecting the aging process in your joints and in your tissues.

Dr. Ray (00:57:16): And your emotions certainly play a big role in that frequency of your tissues and your body as well. So, you know, as I hopefully have demonstrated, a lot of our limitations are self-inflicted because we are telling ourselves stories that can be to a halt. And if we take that part of ourselves and put it into the equation for health, that in itself can help the aging. But then it also tends to help your self esteem, how you feel and that’s gonna affect who you attract in terms of your relationships or maybe even your existing relationships, what you’re willing to tolerate or not, or work together and grow. So all of those things are dynamics and if we stop again, cutting ourselves and our lives up into these little pieces, then we can better, you know, come together in this holistic way.

Dr. Ray (00:58:18): So the well whole wise program is a program that can go beyond borders and teach people to empower themselves. And while I do teach about supplements and I do teach about how to do intermittent fasting, and sound healing and yoga, and have other teachers come in, like I, I don’t teach yoga, but I know I can talk about it a little bit. I just can kind of do it, but I’m not trying to be a yoga teacher <laugh>. So you can have people to bring their collaborative skills to the table as well. Art therapy, you know, these are things that the magic of being online, can actually really be a positive thing because you can do some live events, but you can reach people around the world. In some of my gene keys communities, I’m interacting with people in New Zealand, Germany, England all the time like once a week. So we didn’t have that before. And that really breaks down cultural lines and seeing how much we really do have in common, you know, as well. Yeah,

Breaking programming and conditioning with self love

Dr. Patti (00:59:25): Yeah. And you said something that I think would be really lovely to expand on a little bit which was, it doesn’t matter whether you’re singing well or not, it doesn’t matter whether you’re dancing well or not, the point is just to do it. So maybe talk a little bit more about how people can bring creativity into their lives in this way that let go of self judgment and just opens that channel.

Dr. Ray (00:59:48): Yeah. So that’s actually a core and of one of my most passionate aspects of our work – who do you think you are. Because everything actually comes from that.

What is the root of all evil? Self-rejection. It’s when there’s something about us that we are rejecting and not at ease with, that causes us to be excessively greedy and holding onto things; that causes us to compare ourselves to others. And that poverty lack separation consciousness, that’s like a computer program in the collective. You can hit the delete button and start to work on that, because it really is like a software program. It’s really in the mind, and the mind is going to trigger emotion. It’s gonna trigger physiology, It’s gonna create your perception.

So until you are willing to learn how to optimally operate this amazing brain, take back the steering wheel of your mind and really recreate and revise your story about your worth, it’s gonna be harder to do those things. But if you start at this fundamental level of realizing that pretty much almost all of it, I mean, so much of what we think and believe is programmed and conditioned. You know, you’re a woman and you think like this. You’re a man, you think like that. You hear that in the messaging. Once you get out of that field, you start to see like, I’m a woman and I don’t believe that. So you can actually see it happening. And if you are asleep, you’re just kind of caught up in it, and you are just going along with the program, so to speak.

Dr. Ray (01:01:40): But if you would break that program, realizing that loving yourself is not the same as narcissism. There are narcissists who hate themselves. Okay? Narcissism is another word for separation consciousness and insecurity. You can tell yourself the story that I’m better than, but still you’re in fear and you can tell yourself the story I am less than, and still you’re in fear. The difference is one is hooked into this kind of aggressive you know, lack of compassion. And they are going to do what they need to do to survive, but they’re feeling insecure, so they’re just gonna accumulate and accumulate, but at their core, they’re insecure and they feel cut off. That’s why they act like that. And on the other hand, you have the one who’s the doormat and thinking, if I can just get love, if I could just serve enough and people can just, you know, if I can just give, give, give, give, give, then somebody will love me.

So both ends are like looking to control in their way that maybe this one’s trying to control material assets so that they can be loved or perceived as okay. And they’re putting their value in money, which can take wings and fly away or whatever. And then this person is doing maybe the opposite. But at the end of the day, in order to have self-compassion, to be willing to be curious and creative and experiment – it takes a certain degree of self-love and confidence, or else you’ll be telling your own self the story that’s ugly. Oh my God, you can’t do anything, right? Or, you know, whatever. Versus saying, well, hey, that’s just fun. I’m just experimenting. I’m not trying to win an award for the best picture. And so that’s what I would say is certainly that a it conscious creativity, you have to be willing to experiment.

Dr. Ray (01:03:43): You fall down, you get up, you brush your knees off. You don’t have to put it into public. This is just for you or maybe your little group that you’re kind of sharing and et cetera. But all along you’re doing this. You’re telling yourself this is okay, you know, I’m playing here. I’m being innovative here. And who knows what will come out of it. Some new breakthrough might come out of it. Some new invention might come out of it, but it’s going to be hard to do as long as you’re micromanaging yourself and judging yourself. And I had it really bad, so I can say this. I mean, my my inner self-critic was so bad at one time, I couldn’t go to sleep at night. It wouldn’t shut up. It was that bad, Okay?

<Laugh>. But a part of me apparently wanted me to learn how to do this naturally because I never took any psychotropic drugs. Like my body repels that kind of stuff in the first place. That’s just the way I’m wired. So back in the day when I thought, well, let me go to a therapist and see if they can help me. I was in my twenties, late 20 or early thirties, it took me maybe one or two visits to realize this is not gonna do anything <laugh>. So, so at the end of the day, I struck out on my own.

Remember we have neuroplasticity – the brain can be trained and rewire itself. To a degree, we are willing to learn the skill sets to do that. We can take that control and start to see the drama of the narrative that is manipulating you going on out there, making you sicker and poor and unhappier in your relationships, and certainly unhappier with yourself. Cause you’re the one co-creating all this stuff.

Finding your own spiritual path

Dr. Patti (01:05:43): Yeah. Beautiful. I’d love to also talk a little bit about spirituality, about finding a spiritual path. So many people either have absolutely no experience of spirituality in their childhood, or maybe they had an experience with a religion that kind of didn’t resonate with them, or parts of it didn’t work for them. So how can people go about starting to explore that and finding a path that’s gonna work for them?

Dr. Ray (01:06:07): Yeah, you know, that’s actually like a third program that I have. I call it facet healing. And the tagline is be you magnificently, okay? Be you magnificently is, you’re already magnificent <laugh>. It’s just a matter of uncovering it. And what I mean by magnificent? You have this divine connection made in this image and likeness of this creator, which for me is a spirit. It’s not male or female, okay? I mean, it’s like this principle of masculine and feminine. I mean, it’s just unknowable. When I say unknowable, what I mean by that is like you can’t put in a box, but from my perspective, it’s certainly benevolent. And then there’s free will universe, okay? So in free will universe, a lot can go on. And ultimately my path came through a very fundamentalist Christian religion where I had a lot of questions at a very young age where my needs were not met when it came to being a woman and asking certain questions like, why did this happen? Where did mommy get you know, all of these things.

Some people are more prone to pursue that path as part of their lifetime. And I’m not saying any of it’s bad or good, or right or wrong or anything. Maybe you’re perfectly happy not believing in any kind of greater power. I’m not gonna say that that’s bad, and you should go find your spiritual path. However, just looking at the state of the world, something’s really a mess here. And frankly for me, finding the spiritual path, it was something that intuitively as a girl, I knew that there was something out there. That’s why I was talking about secrets of the universe and, you know, connecting. And I connected within my religion with Jesus. Cause it was Christian, certainly however I came to see in my own. Again, the more self confidence you developed, the more self love, the more self acceptance, the more willing you can expand your mind and take risks.

Dr. Ray (01:08:37): While I don’t believe in some of the concepts of what I grew up in, I still bring along certain concepts. And then let’s say, Jesus as this guy, teacher, my definitions may have shifted some, but for me it’s still a very real connection in many ways. But it’s expanded. So part of it is just feeling into being like reconnecting inside and knowing that there’s, you know, what’s beating my heart? What’s breathing my lungs? The body dies off, but yet there’s something that enlightens the body. Where is that connected? And this is where your intuition and your own knowing has to connect with it. There are scriptures in the major religions, parts of it that can be uplifting and inspirational, and parts of it can be real debbie downers <laugh>.

And you have to use your judgment and discernment because it was not working for me at all to think that there was this hell, fire, and brimstone, you know, God that didn’t like women, women had to take a second seat, or that this god favored certain people over others and all that. That didn’t work for me. It was just causing more fear and separation.

When you meditate and you get quiet, you go inside, that actually stimulates this awareness. They’ve done studies on this where you feel more connected to a force outside of yourself that is also inside of yourself. Getting out in nature is a way to connect big time. Cutting yourself off from nature decreases your likelihood of finding your spirituality.

So in this facet healing, the graphic is a diamond, and there’s this brilliant light that comes from the center of the diamond, which is that light within us. And we are like facets on the big diamond of life, you know, universe, cosmic, cosmic glow, God, whatever you wanna call it. And it’s both. We are facets on this diamond of the self, so to speak. I believe we are all one with this life force, but we are individual facets too. Then to the degree that we deal with our emotional wounding, that’s what causes the smudges and the obscurity of the light.

And these are shadows, they are not anything to be ashamed of, they’re not who you really are. They’re just who you think you are. Okay? Or they’re just energy programs in the field, like poverty, lack, and separation consciousness that get put in the field. And we all know people can be mind controlled through their nervous system. You keep showing them this, you keep showing them this, you keep saying this. And if they don’t expand their vision to reject it, they think that’s the way life is. And their brain will keep going toward that core belief. Once you believe it and you feel it, Oh, I get old after age 40, Oh, I’m gonna get sick after age 50. A lot of these things are self-fulfilling prophecies because your nervous system is like, Oh, okay, I can make that happen. Okay? Whereas if you believe you can create a world that is not like concentrated in the hands of 0.0001% in terms of the wealth, and have a more equitable world, if there’s enough collective focus that can be created too.

Dr. Ray (01:12:30): So yeah, it would be just like spirituality is a way to escape victim consciousness, which is a real thing. But it’s a mindset actually. And one thing that’s certainly true, be it unto you as you believe. And, that’s what the nervous system is doing for us. It’s showing us what we believe and how creating on a microcosm level in our individual life, and then collectively, there’s the influences of the collective get thrown in there. But ultimately there’s this source, but you have to intend to connect to that source and what that means for you. And, then it can become real. It’s not just this thing you do on Sunday morning.

Meditation & breathwork

Amir (01:13:29): One question that I’m super curious, is there any form of meditation you’re in particular like to do or recommend?

Brainwave entrainment sound

Dr. Ray (01:13:43): Yeah, so for me, my mind was so busy that I had to start with brain entrainment sound (* also known as Brainwave entrainment). So again, depends on where you are. Like for me, I had to have a little piece of paper and pen by the chair because every minute something would come up, like, remember this, remember this, remember that. And I couldn’t quiet my mind. So let’s you are one of those people. You wanna get great headphones and a high quality sound that can then entrains your brain to a frequency of being more in a alpha relaxed state instead of a beta busy state. And then, alpha theta. And I literally used back then soundtracks made by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson. He’s still around. And I would listen to those and it would put me sleep at first, certainly because I was exhausted.

Once I got my brain under control and quiet, there’s different forms of meditation I’ve done. And for me now it’s easier just to sit still, to focus on my breath, kind of focus inside. And I can even feel my whole body vibrating more and kind of like zoning. And sometimes in that state I’m like awake, I’m not asleep, but I feel like I have to ground so I’m not like floating outta my body or something. And so there are skills around just like kind of grounding. Because my whole thing is to bring heaven to earth, not to escape the body. So like “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. So within the body as this instrument of walking on the earth, bringing in this vibrational love that vibrates through the aura from me.

Parasympathetic breathing

And so the meditation can be anything from a form of focusing on your belly moving and keeping the mind steady there or focusing on a breath. You may need to do some parasympathetic breathing, like slow count in – four, pause two, exhale eight, slow pushing out more. Exhale and inhale to put you more in a state of relaxation and parasympathetic. That helps to kind of bring it notch a down. Sitting up with your feet on the floor, usually you’re less prone to fall asleep than if you lay down.

Thoughts and emotions during meditation

When the mind does start rushing in, you can just say, Okay, thank you for sharing. Go back to your breath. So you need to create a focal point because you don’t wanna like get mad at your mind, shut up mind or all of that <laugh>. You just want to be able to notice it like a cloud. And it takes practice. But that’s where I found, if you have that problem, the brain entrainment sound can really help save you years of trying to just sit there and struggle.

The other thing that comes up during meditation for people is emotion. And some people shut that down. That’s why they don’t want to meditate cause they don’t wanna feel it. But there is a technique that’s old, it’s new to a lot of people, but it’s called emotional freedom technique (EFT) or tapping. It would be great if you could sit there and for a while, give stuff at least 90 seconds to try to let it just excel out this emotion or this anxiety.nJust coming out to say, Oh, I notice that anxiety, I’m releasing it.

You visualize it, you visualize it going away. But if after like two minutes it’s still like overwhelming you, et cetera, that’s a great time to use emotional freedom technique and tap it out. Not like you’re trying to get rid of it, but these emotions that are repressed in our body create toxins in the body too. And this is your chance to actually release it consciously and let it go. Like a zip file. The EFT is allowing it through the meridians to really released in more bulk than just sitting there.

Some people, I’ve heard them recommend you just sit there torturing yourself for five or 10 minutes drowning. The element of water goes with emotion. So you sit there drowning in your emotions. I don’t personally think that’s all that healthy. You think you’re gonna look forward to sitting there drowning in your emotions? So you’re gonna be less likely to meditate. That’s why so many people are so busy they don’t wanna feel. But if you have a tool like EFT, tapping, or if you can actually notice you exhaled it out and you are letting it release without judging, then you’ll get to a point of equanimity where you’re not carrying this baggage.

Like I don’t go to sit in meditation and then get into anxiety. I used to, but when you’re cleared it out, and day by day you might have situations come up, but then you shake it off. You notice it, you see. Is this something I need to know here? Am I thinking something that’s stirring this up? Is this something that’s come up in my awareness for me to heal?

The power of listening to your emotions

Dr. Ray (01:19:31):

Your emotional guidance system, you don’t wanna ignore it, but do know that if you practice meditation enough, you clear your system and you’re doing these things for physical and emotional and mental health and you’re sleeping and you are mindful of playing and you’re eating good food and now your relationships are even getting better. All of that is part of a new paradigm. It’s the way your brain is now seeing the world.

Love ends suffering. Fear promotes suffering, fear and separation, lack, you know, focused on that, that creates this paradigm.

I don’t think we humans are as bad as the rap we get. not innately. However, if you think these ways, you build these ways. And then it genetically affects your gene pool epigenetically. It’s kind of like the cycles are going on and on. But the question is can you break it? Can enough people break it that we shift the paradigm? And I would just say that I believe we’re in a time and space that it’s like the universe is conspiring to help us to deal with this problem. And before the light comes to, you know, there’s the storm in the dark. And what we’re witnessing is a lot of the things that were always there, they were just repressed and hidden. And now it’s coming out.

So as an individual, you can’t control all that stuff, but you can actually contribute service to humankind by number one, dealing with yourself. That’ll make you happier. And then you’re shifting the vibe, which shifts the field cuz we’re all interconnected.

Dr. Patti (01:21:24): That’s a beautiful message, that’s an important message for all of us to hear.

Overcoming challenges in your spiritual journey

Amir (01:21:29): I don’t know if we can answer that, that’s a very big question, just a warning <laugh>. But like you said, we live in times where more and more people are waking up, and they’re starting to ask really tough questions such as, where exactly am I? What am I doing here? And then people become aware of all these conditionings, and all these questions rise to a point that one may wonder, is it really my life that I’m inspiring or desire to achieve? Or maybe it’s just someone’s else idea? But then they find themselves at a point – where do I go from here? Am I getting crazy? Do you have any practical advice or some thoughts on that?

Dr. Ray (01:22:16): Yeah, I do. So imagine this 30 years ago, and I’m going through what you just described. It was lonely, okay? It was hard. It was lonely. I couldn’t even talk to my husband about it. He thought I was crazy when I started meditating. He opened the door, looked in and said, if I didn’t know you better, I’d be concerned. He shut the door. I laugh about it.

But I have this gene key that is like the warrior of the light. And in a shadow is about struggle in the fighter,. And its gift is perseverance. And its Siddhi, it’s higher spiritual vibration is honor. Knowing what’s worth fighting for. And I’d say that it was a self defense mechanism. Cause I know where it sits in my gene key. It sits in this sphere of mental self defense mechanism.

So there is this balance between fate and destiny, I believe, where we don’t have to do it. It’s not like you going to get the stronghold, like you better go do your life work <laugh>.

Most of us are coming here with this kind of design of intention, and then we get derailed by all the conditioning and the gaslighting and all the social herd holding you in. So you do have to get to a certain level of courage. Cause it’s not that the fear won’t be there. You have to have some courage.

Asking for guidance

Now, here’s what I know for me. I was designed to be a forerunner. And that’s one reason why I had potential extra grace. Because when I hit that dark night of the ego, okay, really, I don’t know if it’s so much of the soul, I think it’s the ego. I could have checked out, I could have jumped off a bridge, or whatever. Thank goodness I didn’t. And one of the main reason that held me there, was that I kept asking for guidance. I kept asking for help. And this one night I just declared, you know, God, if you don’t help me, I’m going down.

You may not know which way to turn, but the first step I believe is to ask – Seek and ye shall find. So there is this place of humility where you have to realize that the ego can’t help itself. It’s a part of the problem. The ego’s not bad, it’s just limited to the 3-D. And it’s very very easy to program when you’re out of awareness. And mind you, this has been going on since you were born, right?

So you’re told how to see the world. You’re told how the world is. So part of it is if you start with this sense of, okay I’m going to learn how to love and accept myself intrinsically in here and seek this greater power, whatever that means for you to help me, because that’s what’s gonna be the foundation to help you have the courage to unplug for one thing. But then, it’s harder to do. I mean, this stuff is coming at you so intensely these days, that if you could be drawn to a community of support, not as a guru, the guru is dead as far as I’m concerned. I mean, it’s more like you need to go inside for your guru, so to speak, but find a community that is like-minded to support that.

If I’ve been at this 30 years, I do have a head start. That doesn’t mean I’m perfect. That doesn’t mean that I’m still not growing. I am, you know, like a playful child. I’m still expanding her because she’s actually a part of that big heart of love that can help radiate this kind of healing space. But it is a healing space. So if you can find communities, and that is why I unfolded well whole and wise. you know, the name of the program came to me intuitively in meditation – well, whole wise. I’m like, well, that’s a good ideal. So, to a degree that you can tap into that inner self, find a community of support.

For me, my trust is not so much as in that person, my trust is vertically and internally that it’s the divine source and understanding my emotions make it less scary because now it’s like I’m not just trying to make sure I don’t get hurt. If somebody disappoints me, I’m going to ask myself, well, what was my expectation projected on that person in the first place? Use your intuition and judgment as to who you confide in. Don’t just go worrying everything on if you’re concerned.

Most of the things I share, and one time I couldn’t even share them because I was in the drama of them. I was believing I was a victim, I was having pain about this. But as that healed and I became more objective, that’s where that equanimity comes in. So I can talk about things that might seem like sensitive to some people. There’s no more power over me, but that story, it’s just a story. If anything, honestly, I’m more concerned about protecting the people who are involved in this story than me feeling ashamed about something. Because it’s been healed.

Dr. Ray (01:27:58): It’s like there’s no emotional pain on it anymore. So answering your question, some of this is just courage. Got to have courage to take the risk. Some of it is a process of making friends with feelings and loving yourself so that you’re less vulnerable to constriction when something does happen. And then you actually develop more ability to be vulnerable because you’re less protected. You feel less shameable, so to speak. Part of it is getting certain people out of your life because they’re toxic to you. They don’t wanna grow and they’re gonna hold you back and they’re going to judge you and you know, on and on and on, right?

How to be free – Concluding remarks

Dr. Ray (01:28:48): So I would just say, see it as an adventure, as an a journey. That’s the container I’m holding for well, whole, wise to help people understand how to operate their brain and nervous system to not be hijacked so easily, to guard their attention and focus, to understand core beliefs, to understand how you are artificially trying to control something you can’t, all of these dynamics come in, and allowing other people to be and stop trying to project on them and judge them. You don’t want the people doing that to you, right? You wanna be able to be free. So it’s all of those things.

But in community, I think it takes on like a life of its own. It’s like there’s you and me and then there’s this whole container and that container is like this spiritual power, at least that is in my container. I’m not holding the space, not Valencia, it’s the power through me as I’m purifying my heart and shadows and doing my best to come from a place of love and not fear and judgment.

Amir (01:29:52): That is a beautiful, beautiful message. Thank you. I think more people need to hear it and I’m so happy we had the opportunity just to share it so people can hear and the words would sink where they need to.

Dr. Ray (01:30:07): Yeah, they’ll sink where they need to. <Laugh>. Thanks. Well I’ve enjoyed speaking with both of you and hopefully our paths we’ll continue to cross again. Remember those five R of reeducate, recalibrate, revise your story, restore balance, and really top of that list, even though I listed as the fifth, is remember who you really are. And that is gonna go a long, long way.

Dr. Patti (01:30:36): Thank you so much for sharing so much wisdom, so much beauty with the world.

Holistic Anti-Aging – 5 Mind Body Spirit Pillars of Women’s Wellness