Episode 83: The Science of Light, Water & Sound with Dr. Catherine Clinton

This whole 2 liters of water a day is not something that our ancestors did. Right now, we're hearing so much around.

There's a lot more to hydration than just drinking water. There's a way of looking at the body where pain, inflammation, disease are associated with a deficiency in electrons or negative charge, that there's this potential water network running all throughout our body that can create this surplus of electrons and energy.

If we want to optimize this water network within us, what are we drinking? How else are we focusing on? I'm thinking going outside into nature, everything.

You mentioned going outside, Right. The sun is our biggest source of infrared energy, but we also create infrared energy. So when we move, when we do yoga, we are creating infrared energy in the body when we snuggle. One of my favorite ways, put a blanket over yourself. Have a pet or a loved one, snuggle. Sit in front of a fire. Fireside is rich in infrared energy.

Katherine Clinton, welcome to Rooted in Wellness. I'm so thrilled to have you here. Before we dive into the plethora of questions that I have for you that I'm excited to dive into. As we were just speaking to. This podcast is all about merging ancient wisdom with modern day medicine and ultimately, I believe, awakening what we have inside all of us to become our greatest healer and help us feel rooted in who we are and our health and our happiness. So you are so great at sharing on social. What helps you feel rooted every day? Like you literally share every day that you go outside to get rooted. But I have to ask you this question. What are the three most powerful things for you that help you feel rooted in who you are?

That's a great question. Because I think these days in modern life, we can be so blown away from our core. Right. And having that center is so important. And I think for me, there are three things. I think that my relationship with my family helps me have that sense of who I am, that core. My children, my husband, my mother. My mother's over three or four times a week.

Yeah.

Yeah. So that really keeps me rooted and grounded in who I am and my relationship with nature. Like we were just talking about. My nervous system. Reset is going outside, staring at a tree, feeling enveloped and held in the world around me. And then I think the third one starts even before I get out of bed, even before I open my eyes. When I kind of come to in the morning, it's gratitude that I have. And it just. It's like a ripple. It starts with gratitude for waking up, gratitude for everyone. That is around me and my family. Gratitude for the land, gratitude. I mean, it just ripples out to really gratitude for everything. And I know that can sound trite because we all have really difficult times, but I still find there is that kernel of gratitude that really centers me in.

It's a game changer. Yeah. I'm on day nine of every single morning. I'll wake up, I'm writing down 100 things that I'm grateful for. I really just wanted to tune into the impact of gratitude. And I'm sure there's a study on this in the same way that they've studied heart coherence and the coherence of your heart, your electromagnetic field just expand. It has to happen with gratitude as well. Like, these are the types of studies that I want to go viral online because everyone that sits in that chair speak of things that are free, that help them feel like who they are coming into their essence. And when you're in that state as what we'll get into, that's where healing takes place, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think it's. I'm so excited. I don't know if you know this, but we're doing a research study on heart coherence and mitochondrial function.

Come on. Do you know that I've asked for that two times on this podcast? Wow. You heard me. Yes, I heard you.

I've been listening this whole time and I'm just, I'm so excited. So we've got 34 people enrolled, which gives us really good data. And they're doing a 42 day heart coherence practice to see if there are mitochondrial changes in ATP reactive oxygen species. The test we're using, it's Dr. Hemel Patel's test out of UC San Diego and it tests whether the mitochondria are resilient to stress, whether they bounce back, whether they work as a community. So I'm really excited because mitochondria are so mainstream. They're accepted and acknowledged how important they are for our health. And so if we can tie that to heart coherence and living a more heart centered life, I think now is a great time to do that. Looking around at everything that's happening in the world.

Oh yeah, yeah. Talk about birth out of necessity, right? Mitochondrial function and lymphatic system I think are the future. I really do. But anyways, I'm jumping ahead on the flip side. Let's talk about something that causes you to feel uprooted. You work with so many people, you understand this concept. You understand when we're uprooted. Like coming into LA traffic, which is a severe possibility for uprooting. A lot of people also think that wellness is so complicated. They come up with checklists of things that they have to do. That the stress of doing those things daily is almost what's causing them to feel uprooted. So are there things that you notice in your life that cause you to feel uprooted when you drift away from feeling in attunement?

Yeah, oh, absolutely. I mean, I'm living here in 2025, so I think a lot of it comes from our societal pressure. You know, being productive, having that to do list when you wake up, and then managing this double, triple, quadruple life that we live. Right. Like entrepreneur and educator and mom and homeschooler. There are times when it gets overwhelming and I do drift. And it's wonderful to have kids that are grounded to say, like, are you okay? Which is their nice way of saying, you're uprooted, lady. Let's take a breath. Because we've been doing this since they were kids, right? When they were one, they were taught to take a deep breath. And so they now can see when mom needs a deep breath.

You got it. That imprinting, that happens.

Yeah, Right. And just the busy schedules, the long hours. And I love what I do. I think it's important. I'm excited about it every day. I really love what I do. But sometimes the balance gets skewed and I need to. Okay, that to do list has actually been long, for a long time. And it can be long tomorrow. And I can go outside and recalibrate.

Well, you are a phenomenal teacher. You have an amazing way of taking something that is so vast and complex, like quantum biology and making it very accessible. And I think that you are able to do that because you truly lead by example. And I really do feel like quantum biology is the future of medicine. The more that we understand the impact, even just pulling back on life and understanding our role and, you know, maybe the biochemistry of our body out in this world and understanding that we actually come from the earth. And when we say these things out loud, instantly I can hear some listeners already thinking like, whoa, this is very woo, right? It's like just. It's out there. It might be too ethereal for them, but I really think that this is something that will be the bridge towards prevention, disease prevention, lowering rates of anxiety and depression. So let's first tie into the foundation. Right? So quantum biology, it can sound intimidating for some people. Woo woo. To some Other people. Can you break it down for us in simple terms like what it means and how you see it as a breakthrough for health?

Absolutely. I love talking about this because we've heard about quantum physics. We, we've heard about biology. But there's a new emerging field out there with quantum biology. And this is the study of the smallest pieces of life. So an electron, a proton, a photon of light, and how they impact the smallest pieces of our biology, whether that's our DNA, a protein, an enzyme, the cell membrane, fascia, lymphatics. Right. All of these things are. Are impacted by these really, really small interactions in the body. And that's really what quantum biology is looking at. It's looking at quantum mechanics in a living system. And this was something that had been theorized about since the birth of quantum physics in the early 1900s. But it wasn't until the early 2000s that we actually got evidence that, yes, living systems appear to be utilizing quantum mechanics. And why we care about that is because we've been working under this chemical, mechanical model where health is a chemical balance and disease is a chemical imbalance, or health is a mechanical alignment, disease is a mechanical misalignment. So you've got chemical interventions or surgical interventions, and that's wonderful. There's an incredible wealth of healing and tools that we have with modern medicine. But there are dead ends as well. And that's where quantum biology comes in. Because if you think about it, we're trillions and trillions of cells, and each one of those cells is completing hundreds of thousands of tasks each second. Some researchers put it into the millions of tasks in one of those trillions of cells. And when we're talking about the current model, we're talking about this idea of random collision where you've got a biological key bumping around a cell till it finds its receptor, unlocking that receptor, and then action happens. Well, the speed and efficiency you would need, that's impossible. Mathematically impossible. And that's where quantum biology comes in. This language of frequency, of light, of electromagnetic frequency. And it allows for very fast, very efficient communication and healing. So that's the exciting thing, is that there's this expansion of our understanding of how life works, but also how healing can occur.

I think that it's something that is so beautiful, and I think the reason why it feels so familiar for me is growing up at an ashram, being around spiritual texts, around yoga. There's a concept of interconnectedness between everything. And to think that we are separate from those around us, from the environment around us, it just. It doesn't make sense. And then even understanding from, you know, maybe the medical lens, what we do within the body, even something like taking a supplement or eating a food that might be good for liver health, it doesn't just go to your liver. It's connected to everything within you. So to pull back on that concept, I love part of your work where you talk about the connection to nature. When you think about the pillars of light, water, sound and frequency, is it those four specific pillars that you've decided to own in on?

Yes.

Yeah.

I really wanted to break it down, honestly. We could have two pillars where everything is frequency, right? Light is frequency, sound is frequency, and water seems to be this receiver and amplifier of that frequency. But I sectioned it out just to make it a little bit more approachable because it's so vast. When you look at how light impacts the body, it's huge. The impacts of sound, enormous. And then this idea of energy, just looking at electricity or the flow of electrons in the body, we could talk about mitochondrial function. We could talk about how cells create their own electromagnetic field, and that guides cell behavior, cell movement. It guides differentiation, how a cell becomes an ear or an elbow. So these are really exciting understandings, new understandings of how the body work. But they tie us right back in to what ancient indigenous cultures always spoke about. How this flow of energy in the body, unobstructed, really is a measure of health. And so for me, it's really exciting, this idea of interconnectedness and how we don't end at the barriers of our skin, because I think not only does it give us a much more expanded understanding of health and healing, but. But it also ties us back into those relationships that heal nature, our community, ourselves. This understanding that we aren't isolated, we are individual, but we're embedded in this vast tapestry of life. And, you know, you mentioned, like, the checklist. That's how it is. When a patient comes and sees me, they come away with this kind of quantum biology checklist. Like, okay, she wants me to go outside at this time. She wants me to do all this stuff. But I'm sort of like fingers going like this and excited, because I know that checklist is a relationship. Having a relationship with the sun, having a relationship with nature and the trees, the ground beneath your feet. Those are unconditional. There's not judgment or expectation. It's always there. And I really believe that we are being called to return, that we need it. But also nature needs it.

It's such a Beautiful reflection. And the unfortunate part about all of this is that I think we just live in a society that's been conditioned to think that healing is something that needs to be intense. You have to go through a protocol or some sort of hardcore intensity that it takes a lot of, you know, modalities outside of yourself in order to do it. And then you catch yourself thinking, is, is it that simple, really? Just, you know, following light, water, frequency, coherence? Are these modalities really that simple? And I think the answer is yes. And I know you and I can share so many stories of clients who have just kind of like, stripped away what they think that they should be doing and. And trying this protocol of connection on. So let's dive deeper into those categories. When we think about light, for example, light is something that's trending now. People understanding the impact of blue light on our behavior, on our sleep, on our mitochondria as well. When you're working on a protocol with light outside of morning light and maybe evening light, how are you speaking to light and the impact on mitochondria?

That's a great question. And it is exciting that people are starting to understand how important light is, because it's huge. I mean, when you look at the difference in lighting that we've experienced over the last 50 years, it's enormous, right? We are just inundated with that blue light. And there's a way to look at it. When you're looking at mitochondria, that blue light is really the brake pedal, right? It's stopping mitochondrial function. And red light is really the gas pedal. It's helping those mitochondria function well. And mitochondria through. Through work of, like, Doug Wallace, different researchers out there, it's been tied to every single modern disease we have out there. So a decrease in our mitochondrial function has been associated with disease. It's foundational to health. And light plays a huge piece in this because our mitochondria are responsive to light. And when we go outside, I keep looking over here because there's this gorgeous. These open doors where we can see this gorgeous view into N and that natural light. If I had a spectrometer in a normal room, indoor, normal, modern lighting, we would see that the lux would be between two, maybe 500 at the top. And that's the intensity of the light. The bandwidth of the light would be very narrow. It would be high in very narrow band of blue light. But if we were to take that outside, like today, this would be 10,000 lux. And the bandwidth would be all the UV bands, not UV, C, because that's filtered out, but ultraviolet B, ultraviolet A, all the visible light into the infrared spectrum. And that just has such an enormous impact. And so when I'm talking to people about light, yes, morning light is foundational. Right. Getting that light first thing in the morning, within half an hour of waking up, that sets up our hormones, our metabolism, our neurotransmitters, our mood, our immune system, all of those things. But taking light breaks throughout the day is really important as well. So going outside, taking a meal outside, even taking a call outside, taking, taking a break. Let's say we are working in an office and we don't have the luxury of dictating what the lighting is. Yeah. Taking a 15, 10, 15 minute break throughout the day. Our bodies are so smart. They understand that once we give them those natural inputs of light throughout the day, even if they're small, they regulate all these different circadian functions throughout the body. That light enters our eye, it enters our master clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain, and then that sends an electrical signal to all our other peripheral clocks throughout the body. Yeah.

All of our organs, when they function for our bodies to have that circadian rhythm also. Right?

Yeah.

One of the moments that I remember as a kid, I always, I was forced to do yoga like it was caviar problems. But in yoga, the teachers would always say during sun salutations, right. We're facing our palms towards the sun to literally charge to bring that light into our bodies with every single breath. Right. I've never forgotten that you see animals going inside all day for a reason. So don't underestimate the power of light. I love that. Take sun breaks throughout the day, go out for a walk, rain or shine. Yeah. Just getting outside into the daytime light. Water is something else that fascinates me. And earlier, I guess it was like two or three years ago, I did one of the courses that you have online. I love learning from all of my friends, but studying the kind of molecular formation of water when water is moving, when water is activated, when water is charged. And it was after that time that I started whispering words of gratitude and love into my kids water bottles.

I love that.

Something so silly, but I give it a lot of meaning. Can we talk about water for the body in terms of hydration? Right now we're hearing so much around, you know, we're drinking too much water. This whole two liters of water a day is not something that our ancestors did. But when we're prescribing hydration and the essence of water absorption. How do you see it through your lens?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that there's a lot more to hydration than just drinking water. And that's the exciting thing when we start to look at the research around water, we see, see that again. So many things happened in the early 2000s. You know, in the early 2000s, Gerald Pollock and his team out of the University of Washington were the first to identify a fourth phase of water or a different phase of liquid water. We're so used to thinking about the three phases, right? Ice, vapor and liquid water that we drink. But there are many different kinds of organizations of liquid water. And that's what he found. He discovered something that he termed easy water. And he called it that because that's a name that describes this lattice formation of water, because it excludes things, it pushes things out. So he called it exclusion zone water, or EZ water. And what happens is when you look at living systems, whether it's cellulose in plants or our cell membranes, our mitochondria, our fascia, they're hydrophilic, they're water loving. And so water can come right up to the surface, it's not repelled away. And when it does come up to the surface, something incredible happens. It changes structure, it becomes more viscous, it becomes gel, like Pollock proposes that it takes on this honeycomb hexagonal lattice formation like a, like a honeycomb. And as one sheet of this liquid water, liquid crystal, easy water forms, it acts as a template for more sheets to form. And incredibly, it pushes out a positively charged proton or a hydrogen. And so you've got this different molecular makeup, H3O2, with this zone of positively charged water right outside of it. And this water that's against these hydrophilic surfaces, like our cell membranes, is negatively charged. And when you look at the research, separate research, not even looking at water, our cells depend on that negative electrical charge to run. And so that water is surrounding our cells, it's negatively charged. And right outside of it forms this zone of positively charged water, like a battery, a separation of charge in a 9 volt battery where you have the negative charge and the positive charge creating potential energy. We see the same thing with water. In fact, Professor Pollock took an electrode, put it in this negatively charged water against a hydrophilic surface, and one in the positively charged water that forms just one right outside. And it was enough to light an LED light bulb. Wow. Incredible. So incredible. And then you know, if we just want to keep blowing our minds here on water, we've got that aspect of this water battery, but it's also responsive to energy. So when it is exposed to infrared energy, and I love how you say you just said we should go outside even on a cloudy day, which is so true. We think of the sunny days being most impactful, which they do have a lot of impact and healing. But even our cloudy, dreary gray days are filled with infrared energy. And that infrared energy builds that zone of easy liquid crystal water. And so that's a builder of that battery. Our ultraviolet light can excited, so it can create free electrons. And there's a way of looking at the body where pain, inflammation, disease are associated with a deficiency in electrons or negative charge. And so to think that there's this potential water network running all throughout our body that can create the surplus of electrons and energy and then also be used to transport them, it starts to paint this incredible picture of the body.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Okay, so from the lens of our listeners, then, if we want to optimize this water network within us, what are we drinking? How else are we focusing on? You know, I'm thinking going outside into nature. I'm thinking the ionic energy that you get when you go by an ocean or by any stream. Right?

Absolutely.

What's the. You know, I don't want to call it a prescription. Let's call it a recommendation. Yeah, yeah.

Well, we see that it's really adding infrared energy.

Right.

If we add infrared energy into our system, it has the potential to build that battery. And so everything you mentioned going outside. Right. The sun is our biggest source of infrared energy, but we also create infrared energy. So when we move, when we do yoga, we are creating infrared energy in the body when we snuggle. One of my favorite ways, you know, put a blanket over yourself, have a pet or a loved one and snuggle, sit in front of a fire. Fireside is rich in infrared energy. Saunas, we see a lot of robust research coming out about the benefits of sauna. And I wonder if that's directly tied to this capacity to build that water within us. So adding that infrared energy is a wonderful way to do that. And that's also what we see with coherent energized water. Some people call it structured water. Right. That adding energy into our water has the capacity to add energy into the body. Right. And there's this misnomer out there that if I energize my water and it's an eight ounce Glass of water, and I drink that. Then I have 8 ounces of energized water, and it can go right up to my cells and do all this stuff we've been talking about. But we have to remember water so dynamic, it's always dancing. Those hydrogens are moving and forming different bonds. So this isn't something that's static. It's something that is dynamic. It's always moving. So what we're really talking about is adding energy into the body. And from a hydration standpoint, first, I like to think about minerals.

Right.

Just that osmosis rule, so that we get water where it needs to be in the body so that we have some kind of mineralization in our water and then adding energy into it. And that energy can come from stirring, it can come from tea. There's really exciting research out there about how tea builds this energized water builds easy zones of water in the body, or, excuse me, in a glass of water. Yeah. Actually, there's research out there showing that a lot of traditional remedies, ghee, teas, all of these things that our ancient cultures knew about really are building this energized water. And then there's incredible research out there that's new and emerging that shows how beneficial it is to our health. It seems to act like an antioxidant. And, you know, when we look at this kind of line, we walk with research. And how much research do we need to prove something? Well, I would love to see more funding in this. I would love to see more results. But for right now, doing something like stirring my water or making tea or whispering good thoughts. Right. There's a lot of interesting research about conscious intention on water. The downsides of that don't exist. So, I mean, maybe, maybe a time commitment. Right. You've got a second or two where you do that.

Right.

But we're not talking about a hardcore intervention with side effects. So I'm really excited, and I'm hopeful that there will be more funding. We've got probably about 7, 8, maybe 10 research studies showing the benefits of structured energized water on humans. We have lots of research on agriculture and plant growth.

Right. Oh, my gosh, that's so true. Yeah. And, you know, from everything that you're describing, the way that I'm hearing it and feeling it is ultimately focusing on these little things you're turning on your bodies. You're activating your body's ability to heal without doing anything else. You're really just mimicking what it actually needs. And replicating what it needs from nature. So activating your water. I just think if we were to drink water from a river or a stream where there was flow. Right. And you mentioned minerals. Right. The power of the water moving through rocks and stones and dirt and stuff like that. So spring water is essential if you had it. Add minerals when you can activate it. If it feels good, it takes a few seconds. I think the power of intention more than anything is just so powerful. Which really leads us into frequency. Right. And I love the frequency is coming online. When we think about frequency, I think there are some videos that went viral even with water that was frozen, listening to a certain type of happy music, and water that was frozen with like darkness or a different type of. Of frequency. You could see the difference in the molecular structure when it was frozen based on the music. Right. So if you don't think that you. The water within you is impacted by your environment. Let's move this now into sound and frequency then. Sound and frequency for the body. Another ancient ritual at the ashram. Something that I think a lot of people resist going there. As we sit in satsang, we chant every morning and every night, and everyone resists it. But 10 minutes into it, people are playing instruments and joining and maybe even dancing. Right, so let's talk about sound and its ability to activate the body's healing response.

Yeah, absolutely. What a beautiful activity and practice. You know, it's so powerful. And all these things we're talking about are free and accessible. Right. And so powerful as well. You know, there was a sound study out, I think it was 2024, that showed that our cells hear sound. They can change their genetic expression when they're exposed to different sounds. And we see that different sounds have different impacts on our nervous system, on our vagus nerve, which lead directly into our state of inflammation, sort of that foundation of health or disease. And so sound can be such a powerful external component to our life that we can add. But also there's that internal component of sound. And you just mentioned chanting. Like we are resonant beings. We have all these resonant chambers from our lungs to our nasal cavity, all these different areas that resonate sound. And the research is pretty exciting, showing that when we do generate sound, it increases nitric oxide, it increases oxytocin, that love hormone, that bonding hormone, it increases dopamine, that feel good hormone, serotonin, that calm focused hormone. And melatonin, it increases that master antioxidant in the body. And we're talking about chanting, singing, humming, Prayer. All of these things have a powerful influence on the biology of the body. There's a researcher out there, John Stuart Reed, he's an acoustic physicist and his work is fascinating.

And.

And he did a series of research studies where he partnered with Professor Sunjul Ji out of Rutgers University. And they were looking at donated blood. So they took this donated blood and they put it in little cuvettes and they exposed it to different frequencies. And both of them at the beginning of the study were like, we're going to find that classical music is the most powerful. Right. And so they put it in this machine called a cymascope to measure the response to different frequencies. And what they found was really exciting. They found that low frequency music, like popular music. Right. The opposite of what they were thinking. It revitalized some of the cells. So when you get donated blood from a blood bank, some percentage of the red blood cells are alive and active and ready to go, ready to transport oxygen throughout the body. There's another percentage of blood cells that are damaged, a little dysfunctional, on their way to death, but not there yet. And then there's a certain percentage of blood cells that aren't viable anymore. And what they found was that middle section of damaged cells, they were revitalized.

Oh my gosh.

They became like healthy, viable cells from exposure to music. And we're talking 10 minutes.

Incredible.

Low frequency music. And not only were those cells revitalized, but they were able to bind more oxygen.

Oh, my goodness.

Just absolutely incredible. And this is talking just about sound.

More oxygen, more energy. More energy, more vitality.

Absolutely.

It's just mind blowing. It's so simple, but just so I'm like, just in awe of all of this because again, everything that we're talking about is free. And it's ultimately a simple return to nature, right?

Yep.

And whether or not some people need the science, some people don't, listening to different types of music cause you to feel a certain way, which means that it's impacting you, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I get that question so often. Like, so what should I listen to now?

What are we listening to now? Yeah, and it's like, you know what.

It'S like our vitamins or our food. We want diversity. We want a lot of color. We want a lot of different things. We want a lot of minerals and vitamins. Same thing with our light. We want a full spectrum of light. Same thing with our sound. We want a full spectrum of sound. And we want to be exposed to the sound we like. Because not only is that Influencing all the things we were just talking about. But it hits that nervous system as well. So you're getting a double benefit there. So it's as easy as putting on your favorite song and singing along.

Every night at dinner, we all take a turn picking a playlist. So every night we all get something that we want. And I'm going to keep talking about the ashram today just because it's so relevant. But whenever the cooks in the kitchen are cooking, there's always some sort of music playing in the background. If it's spiritual chants or bhajans or binaural beats or something like that, they're always playing because they believe that the energy from that, the frequency is infusing the food that we then intake. Another blessing. Same way to talking to your water, right?

Yeah. Well, when you think about it, what is food? You know, it's made up of water. And we see that water is such an incredible receiver for music.

What a beautiful concept to just hear it said the way that you just did. So if everything that food from the earth is made up of, we consume, and that gives us energy to our body, and then our very own fabric structure is made from what comes from the earth. Right. It's just the merge of just, I guess, the battery charge. Right. For fuel. So moving on to coherence. Right. Coherence, resonance, magnetism. For some people, this means there could be a feeling of just feeling too abstract, but understanding what coherence is. How do we put coherence in a context of biology then? Right. When we think about coherence, I think for me, it's easier to understand at an energetic level. And maybe where the disconnect is, is understanding biologically. How does this impact somebody?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I like to describe it as a symphony. So the body is really this incredible orchestra, the symphony. Each organ, each cell is a instrument, and they're all collectively playing this beautiful song of life and health. And then when one starts to get out of tune, it can kind of derail the song. And when they get really out of tune, some of the other instruments are like, are we still playing the song? You know, what's happening? And it gets really decoherent. Coherence is this idea of two or more things working as one. Two people dancing the tango or multiple molecules of water creating a wave in the ocean. And when our body is working in coherence, it allows for fast, efficient transfer of energy and information. Right. We think of eating something and that energy needs to be broken Down. It needs to be assimilated. We need to have it diffused throughout the body. But with resonance, that can happen instantaneously, like two tuning forks, where you strike one and the other one responds. There's incredible research out there by Irina Kosik, and she developed the resonance recognition model. And for a long time it was mathematical, saying that the possibility that our cells communicate via vibration or frequency is quite possible. Then she did something incredible. She did a research study where she took an antibody and an antigen. And these are two things in the body that when they come together, there's a predictable immune response. And so she took two specific ones and. And she measured the antigen's resonant frequency. What frequency is the loudest? What vibration? And when we say frequency, we really mean vibration, movement. Right? And every element, every atom on the periodic table has its own unique frequency, its own vibration. And she measured the resonant frequency of this antigen, and then she created a peptide that emitted that same frequency. So it didn't have the same structure, it didn't have the same function, but it did have the same vibration. And she put it in a petri dish with the antibody, and it acted exactly like the antigen was there, the exact same response, but led by frequency. So there's this now emerging model of the body where we don't have to come in contact, two cells don't have to come in contact to communicate. Two things don't have to come in contact to give energy. There is this vibration where energy and information is held. And that sounds mind blowing and maybe makes people feel a little skeptical, but this is what we do all day with our phones, with the Internet, these electromagnetic waves of information we deal with all the time and we utilize to great convenience in our everyday life. We're talking about the same thing in the body.

It's entanglement. Right. It's that concept of quantum entanglement.

Yeah.

And I think that, I mean, if you just look at. What's the classic example, if you throw a stone into a lake and the waves that ripple out of it and there's another wave coming from another direction, the waves tend to merge together, right? We just look at that reflection from nature and what a beautiful reflection. When we're thinking about living in coherence, thinking about what you're surrounded with. In yoga, you know this, we talk about everything that you become. It's not just what you eat, right? It's what you smell, what you watch, what you listen to, what you hear, what you feel. It becomes you. And if we think about healing from that perspective. Why on earth would we just want to add more stuff into us? Right. And for the scientific brains coming into this conversation, aren't there now studies on coherence and cancer cells? Coherence and free radical damage, coherence and inflammation. And you can literally see a cell under a microscope after going through some sort of frequency or vibration. Input, yeah.

Right. Input, yeah.

Input, yeah. You see a reflection in how the cell changes.

Yeah. It's absolutely incredible. And when we think about what does that mean for us, that means that we have non invasive, very fast, very efficient tools for healing. And really what's exciting for me, yes, that's very exciting. Exciting. But it's also exciting what you just said about how that all becomes us, that we in modern day society right now, I have not had a patient that I've seen that doesn't feel a lack of safety or a lack of belonging. And when I give them that checklist, I know that, that after a week or two, they're going to feel that safety of the rising and setting of the sun. They're going to feel that sense of belonging in their natural surrounding. And that is medicine. And I think that's where we heal and that's where the world around us heals as well.

Such a great point. When I think about all the clients that I've worked with, I think I had to get to this point of just seeing the patterns whenever somebody would sit in an initial call with me. The brainwashing or what we think we need to do is understand what is the protocol, how do I exercise, what are the supplements to tell me what to do and I'll do it right. And I've always just understood just from my own healing journey. Well, whoa, whoa, let's like pull back on that a little bit. When's the last time that you actually felt healthy, happy, safe, joyful, all the things that you're seeking now? When's the last time that you actually felt that in your body? Honestly, Katherine, nine times out of ten, I met with tears. It's a memory from being a child. It's a memory from being somewhere outside and a memory that they love. And it's an overwhelm or a release of just the remembering. Like, God, it's been so long since I've been there. What was it about that time that made me feel, I guess, incoherence. Right. So how do we get back to that? And I think that this is a really exciting area of the future of medicine because we talk about Integration all the time, but there's no integration that's actually happening. And this isn't to say you and I aren't saying that. Who knows? But one day there may still be a world for. Obviously we need acute care, right? Surgery and medication and all those things. But what if the integration was. Now understanding that this was part of your protocol, the essentials for what this human vessel needs.

Absolutely. That's something that I talk about a lot in my practitioner training is the capacity of ourselves as practitioners to hold that coherence. Because sometimes we might be the first harbor of safety that that person has experienced in years. And to be able to hold that space. Imagine if that's a foundation of a medical relationship with every provider, is that they first provide a sense of safety and belonging.

Right.

I mean, what an incredible shift we would see.

Time to lose the white coat. Let's hover on that word safety for a second because there was a client recently who said, well, what does that mean? I'm an adult, I know that I'm safe. So for people who are listening, that feeling of safety, ultimately, I'm going to describe it this way and I'm going to let you describe it the way that you teach your practitioners. My dad would describe vibration. When we all came into this world, there was a vibration, right? The stars, the moons, the planets, the alignment, everything, there was a vibration, right? So we came into this world with a frequency. I'm getting woo. But when we think about that, it was a feeling of wholeness, it was a feeling of connection, a feeling of just excitement of who we are, the way that we were, just pure acceptance of everything that we were. And then growing up, we tend to lose that safety because we try to fit in. We're looking for approval, we're being told to act or look or be a different way. That could be the loss of safety that we don't necessarily attribute with not feeling safe.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think we kind of. I'm noticing that in my youngest right now is that she would go out and do anything and dance and sing, sing in public without a care. And now it's starting to creep in like, oh, I shouldn't be singing here in the middle of this space. And that's society and norms. But also there's that lack of safety that comes from dimming and conforming. That also can accompany our growing up and our evolution as humans in this, in modern day society. So I think that safety also really refers to the state of our nervous system where, yes, I'm adult, I know I'm safe here right now, but my nervous system understands that something happened maybe in early childhood that has this repeated sense of danger that's underneath the surface at all times. And I see that a lot with patients. When I first came into practice, I was doing a lot of work with veterans from the war. And it was incredible to see the somatic responses, the physical responses that one has from, from trauma. And now living in the world that we do, that's become a norm, that all of our nervous systems just kind of are afraid and on edge. And that's just how it is. Well, it doesn't have to be. And when you look at what all these cells in the body do to heal, they require safety. If there's not that sense of safety, they we don't get that chance to complete that deep healing in the body. And so I think it's more than we think it is. Right. Because most people now listening can agree, well, I am safe right now, and I'm grateful that I'm so safe. But it has to really do with the state of our nervous system and that deep sense of calm and relax and being who we are and centered and feeling safe.

Would you agree that the body cannot heal in a dysregulated state?

I would, yeah. I think that there's only a certain amount of healing that we can do in a dysregulated state. And again, that comes back to that sense of safety and that sense of danger when we are in that zone. Sense of danger. We have those two branches of the nervous system, right? The parasympathetic rest, digest, repair, you're safe, and then that sympathetic state, that fight, flight, freeze, go, alert type of response in the nervous system. And both are needed. I mean, that's what heart rate variability is measuring at all times. And we're supposed to be just like a ping pong between the two at all times because we're always filtering an enormous amount of information around us. So we're meant to be flexible and to be moving between the two. But a lot of the demands of modern life have us leaning towards that sympathetic dominance. And the research is robust that if we don't enter a state of relaxation, a sense of safety on a cellular level, there isn't that. Healing and repair.

I agree with you. Sleep, rest and regulation for me are the top three. Nutrition, light, everything that we're talking about is so important. But I think the state of your body is something that you just need to recognize first. And I think for a Lot of people, it's challenging because it hurts to realize, you know, for many of us how long we've lived in a dysregulated state. We almost identify with it as a way of being. And there's a lot of unlearning that has to happen. In that comes a lot of freedom also. But I hope listeners feel a sense of liberation, like just the acknowledgement of, oh, my gosh, my body is so resilient, it can run on fumes for as long as I need it to. And, you know, the world has shown me that I've had to be this way up until now, and now I'm choosing another path.

I think that's so important. And I think that, you know, we talked about heart coherence and this idea of having gratitude and love, a sense of awe. Those are beautiful. And they drop us into a state of coherence. But that's not all that we feel as humans. And I think that we can have a state of enormous heart coherence and be in a state of coherence even when we're angry, even when we're grieving, frustrated, jealous. I mean, whatever it is we want to say, those negative emotions. I measure heart coherence with a three lead, like an EKG machine. And I've had patients who have come in with a new enormous trauma and even myself have experienced where I'm hooked up and we're feeling these intense emotions of anger or grief, rage. And the heart coherence is off the charts because we're not. There's no friction between us and that emotion. We're not judging anger and turning into blame or grief and repression or some type of shame. It's just raw emotion. And when you think of coherence as two people dancing the tango, they are right there on the table dancing the tango with that anger or that grief, and they're still in that state of heart coherence. And I think a lot of people kind of have this idea. A lot of people ask me, so when is it going to be fixed? When's the trauma going to go away? You know what I think, like for myself, for example, my father was the son of his father and his father before him. And there is this long lineage of hypervigilance, of being a little more sensitive to stress that I don't see on my mother's side and I don't see in my sister. I think I inherited that hyper vigilance so that it's easier to get me into a state of not feeling Safe. And that is a familial lineage. That is an ancestral protection mechanism that was passed down, you know, these cortisol responses passed down to protect me. And just learning about that and understanding, okay, so nothing's wrong with me. I'm not super sensitive or not strong enough. I just have come from this lineage where this provided protection. And so now I just fold that in to who I am. And I know that I. I need a little more space sometimes. I need some more time outside, sometimes more decompression. And it's just who I am. And it's beautiful. And the same thing with my emotions. Like, I can feel angry and sad and all these things, and if I just feel them and let them go. On the other side is coherence. It is that sense of peace that.

Is the most beautiful reflection I've ever heard. It's full permission to accept all parts of us without judgment. And in terms of the coherence, even the emotions that are a distraction from how we want to show up and be in this world. And it's accepting it in the moment. And I guess that's the regulation aspect of it, right? Just being with it and feeling it.

Yeah, That's a perfect way to put it. Rather than regulating being like, stop that emotion. Yes.

Stop it. Fix it. Make it stop. Right, yeah. Distract yourself. Yeah.

Oh, I love that. Regulating is coming to peace with it, accepting it. Because we're humans and we're meant to. To be humans. And I think we see that a lot with parenting now, which is wonderful. We don't want to have that child suppress that emotion or tell them to stop crying, but we do that to ourselves. So I think expanding that to all ages and stages and understanding that there's value and normalcy, you know, we're meant to feel those emotions, and just feeling them is the medicine.

When my kids see me cry, I'll sometimes look at them. I'm like, I've got to get it out. I don't know. It is. Everything is okay, but I just have to get it out because I want them to normalize it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. When my father passed away a few years ago, I was sad. And I'm a person that is outward with my emotions. So I was sobbing loudly, and my children came up and tried to, you know, hug and make it okay. And then they quickly realized, well, we're not going to make it okay. So they just sat and played a board game next to me while I was curled up crying about losing my dad. And I thought, you know, in hindsight, what a beautiful lesson for them to understand that it's okay to feel these things and they don't have to fix it. We're just going through it. Like, you can just play your game of sorry by me and it's okay.

And just be with me. Right. How beautiful. So in your practice, when you're working with patients, are you using biomarkers and blood labs and urine tests and stool tests? How much of it is a part of your practice? Or are you choosing differently with the people that come to see you based on what their symptoms are and what their goals are?

Yeah, I think it's so individual. I think some of those tests can be really wonderful. I love looking at a person's cortisol response. And it's not because I don't know what it is, it's because I want them to see it on paper. Right. Because we are really driven by those lab results. So when someone's sees, oh my gosh, my adrenals are dysregulated, then some of those suggestions have a little bit more weight. So I do love to see some test results, but oftentimes I am just trying to get the basics done first to see what that will resolve. And it resolves a lot of things.

That's a good point. I wanted to ask because I feel, you know, not only is blood lab testing, there's so many businesses and companies that are opening right now, and I think it's an exciting part of modern medicine to be able to really understand our physiology and our biology. And if I had to wave my magic wand, I really hope that the future of healthcare is around personalized healthcare, then it's an asset, then it's great. But to your point, I think for people who the second you see the data that's the inspiration to drive your behavior changes or your habits every single day, then it's worth it. Right. Especially working through symptoms. Now, in terms of going back to light and sound and frequency, how do you work that into a protocol?

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, the light piece is pretty easy and we talked a little bit about that. When patients come to see me, they get a lot of education because I'm really trying to impress upon them why we're doing circadian medicine versus a high powered pharmaceutical. Right. And so that looks like getting out in the morning light for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the sun, getting out throughout the day and then lowering the lights at night, that's a really powerful piece. Like, we talk about the light, but the darkness is just as healing. And that repair mechanism, I mean, we talked about morning light with hormones and the immune system and metabolism. The exact same thing is true of darkness and sleep. So really counseling people about syncing their circadian rhythm, making sure that their whole body knows that it's time to rest. Not eating before bed, a few hours before bed, not watching that psychological thriller right before bed. You know, these are all things that get us stimulated as well as modern lighting with blue light that tells our body, oh, it's noon, keep going when we want our body to know it's almost time for bed, start secreting melatonin, start doing all these things in our hormonal pathways, our metabolism, our immune system, to really facilitate health. And so that one is pretty easy. And then I think the sound piece is such a fun assignment to give patients because I think that there's such an individual game they can play with different sounds, different frequencies and, and internally generated sounds. So I will often walk them through the different vowel sounds. I think it's fascinating to understand that these ancient indigenous cultures always utilized vowel sounds. They all had different languages, they were all spread out and not connected, but they were using these vowel sounds as medicine and, and they activate different areas. They have different feelings to them. So the sound piece, I really work with people to kind of give them that freedom to find what resonates with them.

Yeah. Is there a recording that you refer to to get people practicing, or do you create one for them?

No, I.

Are you singing with them?

Yeah, we actually do a little bit of the. The vowel chanting in the office so that they understand what that means, to like sustain a note, a sound, and reverberate that throughout the body. And I share with them what I do in the morning. I go outside, I get the light in my eyes, I get it on my skin. I stand barefoot on the ground, so I'm getting that kind of electrical conductivity. I do a lymphatic dump, so get my lymphatics moving and circulating. And I use sound to really kind of boost all those things that we were talking about. And if you try it, if you do self generated sound, if you chant, if you tone for a minute, you notice the difference. I mean, you've. There's this change. You feel it, you know, it's like feeling the difference after you exercise.

Yeah, right.

Or going outside in nature, it's a. It's a feeling that's marked and you can really notice it. So that's something that we, we do in the office. And I do. I talk about electrical charge, I talk about grounding, I talk about EMF and minimizing it where we can all of those things. And water is a huge piece of that electrical charge in the body. So we talk about that a lot as well. Drinking mineralized water, charged water, and then building that water in the body.

As people are waking up to these, I'm going to call them simplicities or realignment or connection. How can we continue to go out into the world? I'm going to take a guess that it's really mastering our mornings and mastering our evenings, the bookends to life. But where are you sitting in terms of EMF exposure, noise pollution maybe for people who live in really big city centers and stuff like that?

Yeah.

What's your tip for them?

Yeah, I think that coming back to what we said about coherence, that it's all the body's resilient and we're meant to have all these things.

Yeah.

I think when I was sitting in naturopathic medical school in environmental study, it was, environmental medicine was very overwhelming. It's like, okay, your water is polluted, the ground's polluted, your food's polluted, the air is polluted. It's just overwhelming. But I remember the professor saying, but we're constantly detoxing and we have the means to detox from things we haven't even created yet. And the body is really intelligent. And I think that's important when we start talking about emf because it can be really disempowering because we don't have control over these things. We really live in this sea. But our bodies have evolved with these natural EMFs in the body and with ways of amplifying the coherent ones, the healthy ones. So I think first and foremost I want people to understand that that exists in the body and it overrides. That's the foundation we're talking about. Right. So I don't want it to be this fear based kind of approach to EMFs. But we are really living in this sea of man made EMFs. And, and there's things they agree and there's things we can do about that. Right. So turning off the router at night.

Exactly.

Not sleeping with EMF and remembering that it's proportional. So when we hold a cell phone to our ear, it's much different than if we are holding it away from us or having it down on the table. Same thing with a router. So if we have a router that is right by our person versus in the Next room. It is a dramatic difference in exposure. So that's something that I really want people to understand is that even though there are towers going up everywhere and routers everywhere and we live in apartment buildings where we can't control the neighbors and all that stuff, it's really proximity. So if we're allowing our body to get some break, if we're being conscious of limiting the direct skin to skin exposure or the direct really close proximity, then we're allowing our body to come back into balance. And that's what it needs. It is flexible. We are meant. Everything we're talking about here, we're meant to bounce between. Right. Our nervous system, our ability to detox, and exposure to toxins. All of these things. We are meant to flow and. And be resilient and be exposed to. Right. That idea of hormetic stress.

Right.

And how it actually makes us healthier.

You got it.

So just being mindful of not being always exposed, maybe having a practice where we go out away from EMFs, going in nature once a week, once a month, whatever is doable that doesn't add stress, I think that's where we really start to see healthy change. Rather than worrying about every toxin and every wi fi exposure and every.

You go crazy. And what a good reflection. Thank you for that lens of positivity. If you're someone who, the second you go online, you're feeling the overwhelm from the toxic world, toxic environment, toxic air, toxic water, toxic food. Food protect your energy. I think that's like the foundational truth of today. And everything that we're speaking to, we've been fortunate to be, have been put in front of teachers who give us the reflection, which it inspires us to think in a different way. And if you can change your belief system, then you can change your reality and what you're speaking to. Like, if you really believed that your body had this intelligence to heal, if you really believe that every day you're unstoppable going out into the world, you'll prioritize your grounding. Do you use EMF blockers at home?

I don't.

Yeah, you believe the intelligence.

That's why I believe the intelligence. And I. I mean, we have a nighttime ritual. So the router's outside our house, and I unplug it a little bit before bed, so we sleep without it. And then I have to go outside and do that whole ritual I was telling you about before turning it on. So I try to really. You know, it's the same thing with blue light. Blockers, I have them. I think they're great and wonderful when needed, but I try to live a life where I don't need them just because for me, it's easy. Easiest to just slip into a way, a lifestyle. Yeah. But there are, there are things out there that can be really helpful. And they have measured, you know, the, the amount of EMFs, and they can be helpful.

Yeah. Can you paint a picture for us in terms of how you see the future of medicine, doing the work that you do, and maybe the hopes of how the system will shift? How do you see the future of medicine?

That's a great question and it's an exciting question. I mean, all of these things that we've talked about, they're starting to trickle into mainstream medicine. Right. Light is being talked about. Light therapy is certainly being recommended in hospitals. Sound now is being used to treat hard to treat cancers. High focused ultrasound. We start to see these things becoming more available. So I'm hoping, hoping for a reconciliation between ancient medicine and modern medicine. You know, the scientific revolution in the 1600s with the telescopes and the microscopes, it was like, if we don't see this under a microscope, if I don't see it under a microscope and you don't see it under a microscope, and we agree that it exists, than it doesn't. And that cast aside all types of things, ancient indigenous knowledge, religious beliefs, faith, intuition. Yes, yes. What our grandmothers always spoke about. So I'm hoping that grandmothers are invited back into the conversation, that all of these healing tools can be on the table and be respectful, expected, and then that will be our personalized medicine. And what will that do? That will not only create better healing, but I think it'll create better communities, more trust in the medical establishment. And that idea, once we understand that these invisible blueprints that exist with light, with sound, with electromagnetic fields, fields of energy, they embed us in this world, this interconnection. And I am hopeful that that not only trickles into our medicine, but that trickles into our society and our relationship with the earth and our relationship with peoples all over the earth. So it's a big hope, but I think we are stepping closer and closer and more and more ready and hungry for that reconciliation.

Agree more. It ultimately feels like just going home again, going home to truth, going home to what we know, what works. And you know, you and I, I've said this many times on this podcast. If I could be doing anything, I would be traveling the world and finding all of the wise, sage healers. With the recipes and the practices and the rituals and documenting everything before it's gone and reawaken it for this new world that you're talking about going to be my Number one call. Dr. Katherine Clinton. Where can people find you? You're great on Instagram, but you have so many courses coming out. Tell us about your school.

Yes, absolutely. Well, I didn't get creative with my name. I'm just Dr. Katherine Clinton everywhere.

I love it.

So that's the name of my website, my YouTube, Instagram. I've got a new book coming out. So Dr. Katherine Clinton. And it's all about everything we've been talking about. Water, light, sound, frequency, coherence, ancient indigenous practices, all of this. So I am so excited to get this information out there and help shift the needle like you are doing.

Thank you. I am one of your greatest fans and I'm going to get all of this out into the world. I can't wait to have you back. I'll get our kiddos together somewhere in nature. And thank you so much for being such a positive light into this world that I'm just so excited for people to be open to and hearing about. You're an amazing teacher. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.