Use Difficult Challenges as an Opportunity, with Dr. Patrick Hanaway

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast, Live like youe Matter. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo. My host today is Dr. Edward Levitin. And our guest today is Dr. Patrick Hanaway. Dr. Hanaway is a family physician who works with his wife, Dr. Lisa Lichting, in the clinical practice at Family to Family, your home for whole health care in Wetherville, North Carolina. Patrick's work history includes being chief medical Officer at Genova Diagnostics, chief medical Education Officer for Institute for Functional Medicine, and the founding medical director of the Cleveland Clinic center for Functional Medicine. Holy moly wickets, Matt. His current work integrates research, education, and patient care, focusing on nutrition, the microbiome, and evaluating the value of functional medicine. In addition, he's been initiated as a traditional healer, guiding pilgrimage, cerem, and healing. Welcome, Patrick.

Thank you, Wendy. Thank you, Ed. I'm really glad to be a part of this conversation today.

Yeah. And Patrick, you are truly, truly, truly one of my favorite people on this earth. And it's just a privilege to have you on and. Yeah, true privilege.

Thanks. Thanks so much.

So let's dive in. We talked offline, and you talked about how in med school, you were a little bit surprised that it didn't cover what you were hoping it would cover. Tell us more about that.

Well, I look back and I think, why would I think. What was I thinking? That it would be about wellness and prevention and how to keep people healthy. But that was my naive view. And even though I was applying in an MD PhD program initially, I hated benchtop research. I didn't like that kind of of stuff. I wanted to be able to work with people. So they had an interesting journey of trying to continue to expand what I view and see as healing. And so the journey is at medical school is just one, one piece of it. And it was, it was great learning, but it wasn't sufficient learning. So I've continued to expand in many other directions, learning about healing. And I continue to. And that's part of what keeps me really engaged in the process as a clinician, as a doctor, as a healer.

All right, I have to say this is just ridiculous. So I, too, went into medical school as an MD, PhD, and thank God.

He didn't complete that, I must say.

So it's really, like, Parallels are really crazy because I know you've studied traditional Chinese medicine, as have I, and I know you have close ties to Tibetan meditation and Tibetan medicine, and I think you've explored a lot more than I have in Ayurveda. And we, you've done more work, I'm sure in shamanism. I've done a little bit, but it's just, it's just amazing how the ties and I didn't mention this, but you were definitely a mentor to me. So it keeps, it keeps the timeline, keeps adding the parallels, which is just interesting.

I'm older, I got the white hair. You don't.

Well, it's starting, unfortunately. Unfortunately.

We have four kids. He'll be there soon. So you know the backstory, but I don't think the listeners know the backstory. Right. Like, so you sort of alluded to it, but in addition to med school, can you just sort of briefly tick off like, what are the other things you've studied?

So I was in med school and I was with a friend studying nutrition. He was in a chiropractic school and he was studying nutrition. So I studied nutrition with him. And then, and then he introduced me to this Chinese healer and I took several hundred hours and learned the niching and the electroacupuntoscope and I thought, okay, this is cool. And during that time I learned about guided imagery and worked with Jim Gordon as he was setting up the center for Mind Body Medicine and spend a bunch of time with Patch Adams and learned about clowning and healing in medicine and that and focusing on nutrition as well as just about getting kicked out of medical school because of my involvement in some health policy issues in the city and county of St. Louis at the time around the corporatization of medicine. So I was just kind of stirring things up in different ways. And then when I went into my residency training program, I'd been very interested. I'd studied some chiropractic with my friend, but it's like, okay, I'm not actually going to, you know, rack them and crack them and do high velocity manipulation. But I began to learn sort of an osteopathic wannabe and I in residency, I got to learn a lot more about that and learn a lot of hands on skills and, and kind of, I guess then also during that time my wife said, let's go study with Toronto. Low dog Toronto was before she was in medical school as an herbalist and brilliant woman and great teacher. And so she studied, studied her biology with her and then from there went and was meditating in, in Nepal and India, Tibetan monasteries and met some really amazing Tibetan medicine doctors. And they, they offer, they said, you know, we'll teach you this and, and like, cool. And they said, first learn Tibetan and come back in 10 years. Which when you're when you're 30 is like, oh, my God, I can't do that. You know, now that I'm 60, I'm like, you know, in my 60s, I'm like, that might have been a good move because. But anyway, so I learned of it, I learned the principles of it, but I never learned the full aspect of it. But where it. Those is is this. This understanding of Tibetan medicine was a synthesis. In the seventh century, they had the first international medical conference. 652 was the year. And. And what. And I. And from that became the foundation of Tibetan medicine. And you think, how can they do that? You know, is it magical thinking? The medicine? Buddha comes down, tells them everything to do and, you know, and then you study it and it's like, oh, they had he West Africa, from Persia, from Greece, from the. From. From India, of course, and Tibet. And they had old, you know, shamanic healers. They call them, you know, rock healers, like from the bump tradition. Well, they lived and worked together for over 50 years with the top doctors of their time working together. So it's like, well, you can probably synthesize some things in 50 years. And you. We were. We're more like, well, can I. Can I get it in. In 20 hours? You know, can I figure it all out? So that's how I see these interrelationships and the blessings of my life of just in the. In the tradition of the Witka people, the Huicho people in the Sierra Madres, where I've been initiated. You know, the way in which we are taught as. As he is traditional healers is we follow in the steps of the deer. The deer guided the people, the blue deer. And so what I'm looking for always is like, what is the next step? Being present right here. Where is the next step? And that's really what my goal is because it's focused on an intention of how to be of benefit to my people. So that's where I'm coming from. And that's, you know, like, I have no idea what else will present itself to me. We're talking about Ayurveda. I live in Asheville. I was in Albuquerque for years and learned Ayurveda there. Panchankarma. But now the Ayurvedic Institute is moving to Asheville. And it's going to be like, you know, three blocks from our old office. So it's, you know, who knows how life unfolds. Just listen, learn, grow.

You have a question? Because I have a question.

Well, I'm just trying to how do you synthesize?

Hold on. How did he legit meet every single forefound founding father of functional medicine and the cool. Like, seriously, you've met everyone and you've hung out with everyone and it sounds like you've actually worked with everyone, which is just mind boggling, Patrick, when you think about, like you worked with Taroni, Low Dog could stop right there and I'm fangirling, so. All right, you can keep going. Just had to put that, I mean.

That actually goes to a similar question. I mean, you have this, I'm going to say right brain and then you have this amazing left brain that you are.

What's the difference?

Right brain's more creative and left brain is more intellectual.

Wait, so if you're a lefty, you're right brained, and if you're a righty or left brain.

Let's keep going.

You're not going to be able to suss that out.

Let's leave that. Okay, but how do you connect the two pieces? Because you were chief medical officer at Genova, you did amazing work at the Institute of Functional Medicine. I think you still do. You were at the Cleveland Clinic and just your brain is from an intellectual point of view and you've met everybody advanced.

Your brain is advanced.

So how do you put those two sides together and how do they coexist?

The left brain, the scientific brain, is the one that's really honored in our culture and where the focus is. And I am blessed that I've got a pretty good IQ and I can remember things pretty well. I was able to go through medical school knowing if I just saw everything twice, you know, I, I would pass a test. And so I, I never cared about like trying to memorize everything in medical school. I was more interested in learning all the stuff that was about helping to heal people. And I have no idea where that, that drive came from. But I'm one of those, you know, like I, I knew I wanted to be a doctor when I was five years old. You know, it's just a drive in me to do that. But it was a doctor in terms of healing. You know, I feel, you know, I've been introduced to some amazing teachers and I've watched other people want to meet those teachers and it doesn't happen. And so I don't know why that is, but I've been, I've been blessed to be able to have these opportunities. And some of them I've squandered, and some of them I've been able to take advantage of. And so for me, you know, the important thing, like in our friendship relationship, Ed, is about pay it forward. It's like, you know, I've been given all of this. It's really important for me to continue to give it back. And what is more important than what's in my mind is what's in my heart and being able to feel what's going on. And frankly, that's a skill set that the so called soft skills that are really harder than anything else is to recognize that and not rely upon the primacy of my mind that's valued in our culture, but really to be able to focus on what are the feelings and how to help people and how to. How to bring these things together. I think part of my. My gift is, you know, being able to see patterns that synthesize things together and. And I need to focus on that. Not so much on the minute details.

Patrick, can I ask you something rather personal?

Anything.

Feel free to not share if it gets too intimate. I know that you were diagnosed with cancer a number of years ago.

3.

As you approached the diagnosis and then got the diagnosis and then went for your healing, how did you specifically, really specifically meld. I mean, when I always say to people, when you have a mechanical issue, functional medicine might not be your source.

Right.

If you have a baby in that needs to come out, it's not a functional medicine approach. It's simply a mechanical behavior. So if you had a tumor that needed surgery, but you also approached it, how did you approach it? What happened?

Well.

There are many layers to the story, so I'll try to be succinct. It is not lost on me that we had two Native American elders, Dakota and. Anishinaabe teacher at her home. When I felt a mass on my left neck, you know, and it was hard and it was. And it didn't hurt. And I thought, this is not a good thing. We had a gathering of about 100 people, and I'm like, I can't talk about this. I don't want to make it be about myself. But it happened while they were there. So I went and got it biopsied and literally there wasn't a whole lot of time because we as doctors can pull the doctor card with friends and colleagues. And so the next day I had a diagnosis that the lymph node was squamous cell carcinoma. And the next morning I had a PET scan showed that I had a mass on my larynx. And then it was like, where do we go? And that was the day Before Thanksgiving. And during that time I was fasting for pilgrimage to go to sacred sites in Mexico. And the doctor said, like, we're not going to do anything before that anyways. Why don't you go down and do that? And so I did. And that was part of the journey. But in it there was an awareness of I need to do whatever I can to be able to live my, continue to live my life. And that was something that my eldest son at the time, so he would have been 27 or just turning 27, you know, said, look, I'll help you if you, if you really want to live. But if you're looking at this of like, you know, well, I might live, I might die and I'm accepting, then he says, then I'm not going to help you because you don't actually care about living. And it was kind of a kick in the pants that I needed from him in a way that said, okay, I'm going to do this. So I studied and looked at what we could and talked to, you know, had the opportunity to talk to major thought leaders. And it's like, oh, you know, and because it was a stage four cancer, I sometimes say like, it had to be right in my face, you know, that is like, you know, this is not, I don't, I didn't, you know, in terms of that diagnosis, I didn't have hpv, which is the common thread. I wasn't a heavy smoker, heavy drinker. So I kind of fit the 3% category of a relatively uncommon cancer. And within that 3% category, it doesn't tend to do as well. So the idea of a 50% survival at five years was considerably less for my diagnosis. I'm like, okay, I'm going to do, I'm going to do the radiation and I'm going to do the chemotherapy. They don't do surgery for that anymore because it disrupts the anatomy too much. But I'm going to do acupuncture to help my overall health and well being. And I had done shamanic healing while I was in Mexico with my teacher. And I really focused on nutrition aggressively with a ketogenic diet and fasting before chemo and using, doing craniosacral therapy and doing frequency specific microcurrent. So a lot of different things. But I, you know, even within that, you know, and I had a feeding tube, you know, we, my wife had to figure out how to make Lisa and my niece how to make, you know, keto. Keto tube feeds. They don't, there's no such thing. You know, so. And even within that, it was incredibly difficult to be able to go through. And there were times where I felt like I don't know if I want to keep living because it's really hard. And it was the relationships and the connection with other people and, you know, and asking for help, not my usual way of doing things and finding out that there was much more help and support than I could have ever imagined from many different realms. So, you know, it's integrating and synthesizing, and within that, there's a hundred things I didn't do. And there are people who said, well, you should do this or you're stupid or you should. You shouldn't do this because you're killing yourself and you're wrong. You know, I'm like, really? I didn't even ask your opinion. You're a doctor friend of mine, and you're telling me what I should do, but you're not talking to me. It was. It was an interesting, interesting dance, but, you know, I had radiation daily for seven weeks, what's called 70 gray of radiation to my left neck, which is the equivalent of about 70,000 chest x rays and 56 gray to my right neck. And, you know, I still have some pain in the neck from the fibrosis because radiation therapy is kind of the gift that keeps giving. But, you know, when I look at, you know, the alternative, I'm. I'm pretty pleased. I'm accepting of that and continuing to work with it. So that's. That's about as succinct as I could be. But there's many other emotional layers to that. And, you know, I want to just. And I've talked about this. I've. I've often used Mary Oliver's the Journey. And I'm just going to say that real quickly here, if I may.

Please.

Okay. You know, one day you finally knew what you had to do and began. Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice. Though the whole house began to tremble and you. You felt the old tug at your ankles. Men to my life. Men, my life. Men, my life. Each voice cried. But you knew what you had to do. You didn't stop. Though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundation. Though their melancholy was terrible, it was already late enough and a wild night and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind. The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own that Kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do, determined to save the only life you could save. So that's the journey, and I think it's the journey for all of us in finding out how to do that. And we as caregivers want to understand how we also need to give care to ourselves in the process of. Of this journey. And. And I recognized this is sort of a hard thing to say, but I'll. I'll say it. I recognize that a lot of my caregiving had to do with that was how I could feel good about myself and that instead. And then that there was actually a selfish motive to doing what I was doing. And it's like, oh, no. Like, take care of yourself. Give yourself what you need so that as you are. Then offer care to others. It's from that place of. Of a pure. Offer a gift, if you will, and allow that. And that's a continued edge of learning for me.

Yeah, I think that's true for most of us in this field anyways, that love. It is. We do it. We say it's altruistic, but we do it because it makes us feel good, which is not a bad place to be.

It's mutually beneficial.

Right.

It benefits people and it's benefiting us. Because I'll say for myself, I'm here to make a profound difference in the lives of others, in their experience of life, their vitality, their relationships to themselves and others. And so that practice that we do allows me to make that difference, and then it allows people to receive that. I mean, I think it's mutually beneficial, and the danger lies in being arrogant about it, like, oh, look what I did. It's not about that.

Right, Exactly.

I'm assuming that the listeners are wondering. I'm wondering, where are you now what happened with. Because you referenced stage four cancer. What's happening right this minute?

I've had PET scans each year for the last three years. There's been no evidence of disease since three months out from my chemotherapy, which ended right about this time of year, three years ago, or my first PET scan, and I've had a follow. Most recent one was in February of this year, which again showed no evidence of disease. You know, I look at my various nutritional markers and inflammatory markers, and I'm doing. Doing well. And, you know, I feel really, really fortunate and blessed. The ENT doc says, you know, at five years it's considered a. So we'll see. But, you know, I will always have that. That Aspect of cancer. To me, cancer is about transformation. It's about, it's about. There's something in my life that was growing out of control and I got a, I got a reasonable handle on what that was. In addition to the cancer. The cancer was sort of the physical manifestation of it. But, but you know, my life has changed, my priorities have changed and my, my attitude towards myself and others has changed. I'm sorry it took that to learn, but, you know, I feel like I'm a better human being and a more, more compassionate as a healer. So.

So you bring up a point that I always struggle with, which is cancer, heart disease, heart attacks, things of that nature are usually a wake up call. And for some of us are necessary to wake us up for whatever reason. My question is always, how do you get a person before that from a. Like, how do you find, how do you wake, how do you help people wake up? Everybody's gonna make, have their own journey. How do you help people wake up so that they don't have to experience that? Some people will.

Sometimes people need it like that. It's only bad enough when that they can't intervene until it's what I call bad enough. Bad enough, all hands on deck. But until it's bad enough, don't bug me, right?

And that's why I said, even like if they said a stage two laryngeal cancer, I'd be like, I got this.

You know, it's got your attention at stage four.

Totally, totally. In a big way. And you know, the, when I was in, in med school, I was involved with the prevent the first prevention meetings at the cdc. I ended up doing a little internship in the division of nutrition there. And I, I was very, very interested in the same thing that you speak of in terms of clinical prevention and how do we help people. But what I've observed as a clinician is that as Wendy just alluded to, it's until there's something that requires change that the people become motivated to be able to make the change. Now for some, it may be that the kind of the classic example of wellness or high level wellness is those people who are athletes who are working to optimize their performance. And so they're on one end of the scale. One of the beautiful things to me of functional medicine and the approach is like, it's the same for helping that, that Olympic athlete to optimize their performance as it is for that person in the ICU to be able to make the shifts necessary to move back towards, towards wellness. The Same concepts, not the same tools, but the same concepts are applied. But even with that high level athlete, like, like they're doing something where they're already motivated, they're not where they want to be. And so they've got that built in. And I don't think that we can intrinsically give that to people. I think that I used to feel that it's more important to if I just educate them enough that they'll get it and they'll make the shift. But where I am now is more about, but deeply listening to where the person is at to find out what those levers of motivation are for them and be able to move in that way. So it's about deeply listening to where people are at because all of us yearn to be able in some way to be able to bring our best self, our authentic selves forward.

Yeah.

Yeah, that, that definitely struck a nerve in terms of as a caregiver, I always want to fix people. And a lot of people don't want to be fixed or want to be intellectually want to be fixed, but want to do everything that they do and just feel better. It doesn't always coincide.

Yeah, I always love when I do my first workup on people, I say I'm doing a dual track. It's hard to get in to see us, we're full. People wait a while. By the time they came, they were motivated for some problem that they want to fix. But I always say we're also looking at what are the things that are going to put you at risk for cardiometabolic disease, cancer, degenerative disease, because those are reversible now. And if you're interested, that's a game we can play because on my watch I don't want you to get those things. You know that my goal is that that not happen on my watch. So we can play that or we can just deal with like you got a stomachache and gas. Just depends what game you want to play. I think a lot of people want to play the game if they recognize like, oh, I have, I have a say in this. You know, maybe you don't want to do. Maybe it's not bad enough to go keto. By the way, are you still keto? Are you back off keto?

Well, let's see, I was on, I was keto for about eight and a half weeks and I stopped about a week ago. So just kind of like a low carb Mediterranean, but also just got some lipids back. And you know that I have a relatively bad Lipid profile and keto is not a good thing for that. So I'm, I'm looking at what to do. I mean inflammatory markers, everything is great, you know, visceral fat doing, doing well. But I'm, I'm actually, I'm in the preconsum play. I guess I'm in the contemplated phases of really going plant based and more vegan for a while and seeing now I did that. It's funny, I guess I have had lots of opportunities and lots of things. When I started med school, the research I was doing was in the Lipid Research center and I was challenging the head of the Lipid Research center about cholesterol. And I said it's really all about diet. And at that point in time, one of the speakers we had come to our nutrition series was, was Nathan Pritikin. So. And Nathan wasn't a doctor and this was, you know, in the very early phase and he obviously influenced Dean Ornish and others around that. But you know, I, I was eating a diet, I was eating a vegan diet at that point in time. My colostrum kind of vegan.

Hold on, what kind of vegan? You know, like plant food vegan or bread vegan?

No, all plants. All plants. I mean my, my cholesterol, my total cholesterol level was 109. You know, like the goal was, you know, 100 plus. Your age? I was 27, 20 actually at that point in time. First year I was 24. You know, so I'm like, okay, I got it. But I was depressed. I didn't have any, you know, kind of progesterone as a, as a mother hormone for any of the rest of my hormones and it wasn't the best thing for me, but it was, you know, I demonstrated that I could do it and so I'm playing with that right now. I've done a little bit with Will calls ketotarian kind of approach. I think that that's a really good, good way of thinking about doing it, but it's still pretty high fat content. And I think it's the coconut oil. For me that probably is the, is the thing that, that, that has the biggest effect on my lipid profile.

And now there's a subset of people who, who are genetically sensitive to coconut oil and don't do well on keto as. Unless you are keto without the coconuts.

Well, and I'm gonna, you know, see and play with that, you know, for myself. But you know, when I talk about the cholesterol and lipids really I'm also talking about advanced lipids. I'm not talking about just your cholesterol level, because it's really about the particle number. And we could spend time talking about that. But. But, you know, the other factors are, you know, have. Have been just fine in terms of inflammation and other kinds of advanced markers. So I feel good. But I would say that from the age of 43 until it was evaluated, I guess right when I was 60, you know, my coronary calcification score, which had been zero, I'd had it tested at 43 and 52 and then at 60. But at 60, you know, it was. It was up to 70. And so it's still less than 100. But it, you know, it. There was some stuff that it was. It wasn't zero. Yeah. So it's like, okay, well, I got to pay attention to that. So that's where I'm at now.

Patrick, what. How are you spending your days these days in terms of. Are you seeing patients? Are you doing leading ceremonies? How. What's kind of your milieu?

A day in the life.

Day in the life. It's more like a week in the life. But, you know, so I. Because I. Things each day is really quite different from the rest. So, for example, to, you know, yesterday I did some personal healing work in the morning and then worked on our business practice in the afternoon, saw a couple patients and focused on that. Then in the evening time, I spent time with my wife. This morning, I've been preparing. We have a gathering of 15 traditional healers who are coming here for training and working for a couple days, and then having a gathering of about 100 people with a teacher this weekend and then doing some traditional healing. Healing work at the beginning for a couple days next week. So I do new patients, new clients. It's all traditional healing work. Current, Current clients. It's. It's. It's functional medicine and other aspects. You know, so I've got patients with, you know, cancer and long Covid and autoimmune disease and, you know, different kinds of things. And so I continue to see them as part of the practice, but really that's, I could say, winding down, frankly, the burnout of prior authorizations and pharmacies and insurance companies is something that. It's not why I went to medical school. And then I do some consulting, working in the area, specifically around the gut microbiome. I continue to do that both on the diagnostic and therapeutic side of things, of how do we bring balance. And. And, you know, that. That continues to be Both a knowledge base but something that I feel is like a great representation of, you know, the macro and micro, how we are inside and how we are outside in terms of diversity and expression.

You could go.

I can go. Okay, thank you. So what I'm. My next question is really coming from the perspective of what value can we bring our listeners in terms of. We've had a pretty wide range conversation. Do you have any perspective when a patient is looking for a physician or a functional medicine physician? What should they look for? How would they identify somebody? Was it really.

Yes. Oh, see, it's really kind of creepy. Patrick. We've been married almost 19 years and sometimes I'm like, wait, I was going to say that. So creepy.

That is creepy.

Okay.

Yeah, you asked it better though, just for the record.

So I think that there's, there's a couple different levels of the question. One is around practitioners and finding someone that you are a, able to resonate with that you know, is not, is not arrogant. Like I would not recommend someone go to a know it all doctor because if the doctor knows it all then they can't actually learn from you. They can't, they can't find something new. They don't have the level of curiosity and empathy and wonder that is going to help them to really connect with you as a person. You know, so find someone who's got training and who's open and curious. They, they have the answer. They have a, you know, like this is the answer, like it's on my website and this is the answer and these are the stuff.

Just do this program and you'll be 100 cured.

Exactly. You know, they, we want someone who will be able to connect to you as an individual. And you know, we have worked to train, you know, now thousands of clinicians in functional medicine and that's a great way, a great start to be able to do experientially. I find that, you know, those who have been out and doing it for a couple years are often some of the best people because they're still open and wide eyed and empathetic. They don't, some of those who have been doing it for 30 or 40 years seem to, they seem to know all the answers. And I would avoid those kinds of doctors.

Damn doctors.

Fair enough.

Really great in the sweet spot, I think.

Ed. I don't know, we're more than a couple of years, so I don't know.

I'm seasoned, but only because I'm old.

And the thing is too is, is finding someone who's Actually been practicing at least a couple years because, you know, I find that two to three years of full time practicing functional medicine is the minimum that you need to begin to understand it. And so even as I'm training new people, it's like, no, it's going to take a couple of years of doing it every day and then kind of like a light bulb called, our switches flipped and, and people get it and it's, it's beautiful to see it and watch it unfold. So, you know, those are the kinds of things, but I, I think more of where I, I'd like to talk about it is about the individual. Not about, you know, connecting to the doctor, but you know, in terms of the individual. And that is that, you know, we, we have these opportunities in our lives to be able to really slow down and listen and connect to the world. Too much of our lives are focused on the news and on what's happening in the world and getting stirred up and stressed. And I think that the decreased vagal tone from the increased fight or flight response from all the various things, whether that, you know, social media or, you know, computer news or the various tribes of that people are identifying with, is actually preventing us from slowing down and connecting to ourselves, to each other and to the natural world. And that's really where the opportunity for healing is the greatest. And that, you know, reminding your listeners of that aspect and that in mentioned the idea of diversity before, diversity in the gut and diversity in the gut microbiome, but it's also diversity in who we connect with and how we move in the world of being able to hear and allow many different kinds of voices and perspectives in our lives and creating an opportunity for dialogue. So the culture of genius, if you will, is predicated upon diversity of views and opinions, a dialogue of those having conversations and then having the discernment to be able to take those ideas and move forward. That is the way in which we have the opportunity to be able to grow. And for me, having this holistic view that is allowing for many different kinds of perspectives to be included is something that helps to, to, it helps to ground that. It's like I am not right and I, I am losing some of my righteousness in, in being able to really be curious about where people are at and listen to their stories and connect to their lives and care about them as human beings. So, so.

Are there specific besides curiosity, which is I think probably the most important thing, are there any practices that you do or you recommend from turning off the phone for four hours to whatever it is. Is there anything that you would say that just to be practical that allows you to be the person you. You were, you have been and that you continuing to be.

Well, there's a lot of different kinds of. You know, I have a daily practice that, that helps me to be able to ground. I have a practice of focusing on gratitude at the end of the day that helps me to remember. A simple practice that I ask patients to do is to say, take your cell phone, turn it off, all the way off, power it down, you know, and go and walk in nature for 15 minutes alone. Not with someone, not talking to someone, just being in nature. You know, 15 minutes is, is plenty of time and you know, if you can do more, that's great. But you're not doing it to get your steps in not doing it, to be able to, you know, try to. Well, I mean you're doing it just to be able to listen.

Do you find people going to withdrawal?

Not, not for 15 minutes. But there's a lot of resistance to even doing it in the first place. And you know, I, it's the, you know, well, what if I get lost? I have to have my phone on. Like, okay, well if you want to carry your phone and, but you make a commitment that you're not going to answer, you're not going to talk on it, you're not going to text while you do that and I encourage you, even don't even pull it out to take a picture of something that's going on. Just take a picture with your eye and remember it, you know, remember how beautiful that was. So that's the simplest kind of thing. Another simple thing I'll, I'll say is like, you know, sit with a candle for 10 minutes minutes, just light a candle and just sit with it. You know, if you can't go outside, that's another simple way to be able to do it. These things are non denominational, you know, the connection. There are many different spiritual traditions that you can deepen into and I'm, I think it's important if, if interested to find one that resonates with you and find a teacher that, that you connect with, with and deepen in that. I'm not a big fan of the smorgasbord, kind of a little bit of everything, you know, like, but they take practice and deepen in it. So those are some, some initial thoughts. But it really comes down to, you know, being able to open your heart.

It's amazing. So it feels like we're, we're Running really low on time, which I know I can do this forever with you and truthfully plan to. Outside of this, is there anything else you want to.

Can I just say that was like. Like your illness was terrible. And for us, the worst part was the lack of connection, you know, like that. You know, of course, when that happens, you have to. All hands on deck, pull it in, narrow the focus. But it was like a hole, like, where's Patrick? And that was. It was really so impactful that you weren't there. And I didn't mean to totally take us off, but I just had to acknowledge that. And so it's so nice to see you sort of back. You know, back. New and improved Patrick. So, anyway, back to you. Oh, okay. Back to me.

Back to you here.

So we could probably do this for a while. And as we wrap up this episode, I'm sure people are thinking, okay, well, he's cool. I want to find him, follow him, listen to him more. How can people find out more about you?

So there's two ways. One is through our practice. Familytofamily.org and there's things that they can learn about the traditional healing work. There's some videos and some podcasts of different. Different aspects, you know, some of which we've talked about today, and then we're developing. And right now, it's just as a landing page, but it's called your healing roots, yourhealingroots.com and that is where Lisa and I are wanting to be able to move more deeply into doing retreats and education with people. We sit on a beautiful 38 acres with a river running through it and have places for retreats to occur. And we, you know, so we're beginning the developmental processes of. Of being able to do that. So those are the. The two. The two best ways. And people tell me they see lots of things of me on YouTube as well. So there's the. There's the usual suspects.

Got it.

All right. Do you want to close it out?

Yeah. Thanks for being here, Patrick. And if you're just tuning in, you're listening to another episode of the Five Journeys podcast. Live like you matter. Thanks for listening.

Live like you matter. Thank you.

Thank you.