Overcome Pain, Stress, and Anxiety with Vitalistic Chiropractic Care

Brian Strickland 0:00
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Dr. Matt Smith 0:30
You know, our nervous system is probably one of the most important systems in our body because we can eat all the good foods, we can have the supplements and nutrients, we can detoxify ourselves, we can do all these things. But how often do you see it? Especially people that come in the nutrition world, right? They’re doing all the things right? They’re taking care of themselves. They’ve ate organic for 10 years, but yet there’s still something going on that they can’t quite figure out. And I’m not saying that the nervous system is the only thing but it’s a huge part of you know how people heal and how people their cells reorganize over time. Yeah,

Brian Strickland 1:04
you’re listening to the nutrition world podcast, a show about navigating the intricacies of holistic wellness, where natural health food store located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and we believe that optimal health and peak performance should be accessible to everyone. And welcome back to the podcast. My name is Brian Strickland on the producer of the show. And on today’s episode, we have the privilege of speaking to a very special friend of nutrition world. And that’s Dr. Matt Smith. Katie sits down with Dr. Matt, who is a vitalistic chiropractor. And he specializes in light touch chiropractic, not the heavy duty cracking in adjustments that you may be familiar with. And Katie, Matt talks about what he does, how he got into what he does and the impact that it’s had on both of their lives. We have some really interesting topics of conversation. We talked about just hope and how change can happen through this practice. So we really hope that you enjoyed this episode. We’ve got a ton of ground to cover here. So let’s hop into this conversation with Dr. Matt And Katie.

Cady Kuhlman 2:09
Okay, hi. So I am here today with Dr. Matt Smith from Rev. We are honored to have you on our show and on our podcast.

Dr. Matt Smith 2:16
I’m so happy to be here. Katie, let’s, let’s have this great conversation right now. No laughing

Cady Kuhlman 2:22
We were laughing a little bit before we started here. So we’re kind of in a good mood and ready to talk today. So yeah, just honored to have Matt here with me. I have a personal background with Matt and his whole practice of Rev. And so I’d love to kind of just jump in with how did you get into this journey and this place that you’re at and, and when I say that it coming from place of of discussing stress and discussing energy work and discussing a little bit. And though some of those words are a little bit taboo I know and kind of could bring a little bit of uncomfortableness. But let’s dive in and kind of chat about that.

Dr. Matt Smith 2:56
Yeah, we’re definitely gonna talk about energy today. And you know, I think it is important to kind of understand where I came from, because when some people talk about energy or energy work, or the bioenergetics of the nervous system, one, they’re either unsure of what that is, or completely turned off from that, right. My journey started when I was a teenager, rewind a little bit. I’m a former baseball player, I played baseball my entire life. I played from four years old, into my early 20s. In the College. For many years, I thought it was going to be a professional baseball player. And then at 17 year old, 17 years old, I had a wonderful gift that happened to me, where I lost my health. In a quick moment, I was going to pitch in my junior year. And I through this pitch, and my entire body seized up there was like a lightning bolt that went into my L four l five area. And I was in agonizing pain. The pain ended up going away after a few minutes. But it was really, really weird. And it was really, really challenging because I’m like, What the heck was that went to doctors got tests X rays, they couldn’t really find anything wrong, and they gave me some muscle relaxers. And they said, if it ever happens again, just come back. Fast forward. A couple of weeks later, it happened again, I was actually lifting weights. And same thing. I was going down lightning bolt in my back. And luckily there were some rails there that held up the weight for me. And I remember just being an agonizing pain, this would go off and on for several years, I went to medical doctors, I went to typical chiropractors, I went to a whole bunch of different people. They couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on with me. But along the way, I met a chiropractor and he really, really supported me and it was a very natural approach. And I felt better after going to him so I went to ended up going to chiropractic school after college because the pain was coming off and on so much and so often that I knew professional baseball was kind of out of the cards for me and I ended up going to chiropractic school and that is when my entire life change. Because a year into school. My wife and I had Dr. Monica, who you are great friends with. We ended up getting married about a year and a half after meeting each other and then we go on a humanitaire Aryan trip and at that time, were one of two of 50 students on this chiropractic humanitarian trip. We were in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. And at that time, I was thinking I was going to be a typical, you know, pop and crack chiropractor work with athletes help people get out of pain. And you know this story. I met a guy, his name is Dr. Sookie muker. And we can dive in a little later about him. But essentially, he was doing this work on people in the area. And he was very gently touching people. He was working with the energy in the body. I saw that. And I think this is important to share with people because it kind of just gives you a sense of where I was at that moment. In where I’m at today, I saw that and I saw him barely touching people. And I said, That guy is a nutjob. That guy is an insane person. He is doing absolutely nothing to help those people. And I told Monica, I was like, stay away from that guy. He’s enough. You didn’t know that? Yeah, the funny thing is, he’s one of my best friends today. And I’ve learned so much from him. But essentially, I found out on that trip. He was the seventh time Ironman athlete. He was a philanthropist. He was an Iron Man. He was a really, really cool and amazing guy. And I was like, Okay, maybe he’s not a weirdo. And then I had an experience getting one of his adjustments. And I can’t emphasize what that did for me because I got adjusted. And it felt like I connected to something so deep within myself, I was crying, I was an emotional wreck. And I got off the table. And I was kind of pissed off, really, because I’m like, What the heck did you do to me. And that’s really what started this whole process. And from there, learning about neuroscience, learning about quantum physics, learning about how our nervous system in the bioenergetics work, and really, most importantly, how our nervous system is really the key to the communication between all 100 trillion cells in the body. And ever since then, just being on a journey to not necessarily try to fix any person that ever comes into our office. But just teaching them and sharing them information that I learned several years ago, that our bodies are self healing and self regulating. And a huge part of that is how the bioenergetics work within our entire physiology and body.

Cady Kuhlman 7:11
Oh, that’s beautiful. That’s so beautiful. I think for the the general public, the nervous system idea may even be something that they’re not even really sure what it is, how it works and what it’s doing for us. So could you dive in a little bit more on like what the nervous system actually is? Yeah,

Dr. Matt Smith 7:26
absolutely. So as we start our life when you are conceived, something called the primitive streak is created inside of your mother’s belly, which would go on to become the notochord, which will go on to become our nervous system, brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and all these neurotransmitters that communicate to hundreds of trillions of cells in our body. It’s essentially a two way highway, a Ferrant, efferent signals, and it is a great communicator to every single system in your body, it tells your heart to pump blood tells your lungs to breathe, literally everything you do is based on this nervous system. And when that’s functioning correctly, you know, we tend to live at higher levels of health and well being right which we can dive into a little bit more on how to optimize that. And what we also learned along the way is that your nervous system is also your perception system, right? So it’s how you see me, it’s how you hear it’s how you taste. It’s how you touch, taste, smell. And it’s also that intuitive gut feeling. And we literally live our external world in the life experiences through the medium of our nervous system. And, you know, we’ll dive into it a little bit later about how those experiences are really just a bunch of energies, a bunch of waves and particles and frequencies if we break it down to the base level of what it is, which is kind of crazy to understand, but you know, the only difference between this wood right here, and these plants right here is the frequency that’s being emitted from those sub atomics that subatomic place, right. So these have a higher vibrational frequency. It’s alive. It’s an animate object, but me and you, right, we’re just a bunch of frequencies, you emit a certain frequency I’m at a certain frequency, the feeling of love gratitude and Soozee Azzam has a certain frequency nervous system takes that in, but also the stresses, the challenges and the curveballs, they also have a certain frequency that our perception system has to take in. And what we’ve seen is that when we have too much stress over time, and over our life, those stressors, those challenges tend to build up within our system, they change our perception of reality. They we see things differently, we react to things right, and over time that disrupts that brain body communication. And what we see is, when too much stress builds up, our energy levels go down, or cells stop responding the way they’re supposed to. And we experience aches, pains, low energy, anxiety, and those are those symptoms that we talked about. Right? And we have a healthcare system that’s revolved around treating and managing the symptoms, which I totally understand. Totally respect and totally honor. And our whole approach is understanding. Well, we have this nervous system, we’ve had all these experiences, some good, some bad, but are all these experiences necessarily Bad. I argue that they’re not bad, right? They’re just experiences that in the moment, we can’t quite process because our nervous system is too overwhelmed from yesteryear stuff. So, you know, our nervous system is probably one of the most important systems in our body. Because we can eat all the good foods, we can have the supplements and nutrients, we can detoxify ourselves, we can do all these things, but how often do you see it, especially people that come in and nutrition are on right? They’re doing all the things, right, they’re taking care of themselves, they have eat organic for 10 years, but yet, there’s still something going on, that they can’t quite figure out. And and I’m not saying that the nervous system is the only thing. But it’s a huge part of you know, how people heal and how people, their cells reorganize your time. Yeah,

Cady Kuhlman 10:45
and you know, even on a personal level, and how I got connected with you originally, I’d kind of like to share because I don’t often share this publicly to everybody. But if anybody knows me, then I want to be honest and real. And, you know, I met you guys, what, probably six and a half, seven years ago now. And I met you through your front receptionist who was a dear friend and came in to rev. And so this is a local Chattanooga place. And we’ll dive into that for a second here. But when I when I came in, I actually found it a little bit odd and a little bit, you know, almost a little quackery, how could How could this light touch therapy that you mentioned? How could this be doing anything because I’ve lived in a world where I had done every modality because I’ve grown up in this so I had done acupuncture, all the different chiropractors, I’ve done all the lymphatic drainage staff I’ve done every type of massage I’ve done ionic foot baths, cryotherapy, you know, all the things right? And I’ve always, I had always eaten healthy, I was never on any meds growing up, I was never on anything chronically. But when I was in my early 20s, I felt as if I could not handle one more stressor. And you remember this place that I was at when I came to you it was a place of if you wanted a visual image of the cup was filled up and it was about to boil over if one tiny thing added to my day, one thing didn’t go right. And kind of the the mental place that I was in was almost like, everything was kind of happening against me almost and that that that stuck place where you can feel I can’t handle one more thing, oh, that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, you know, all those feelings and, and sayings that we know in our culture. And I thought how could this be? How could this be when I’ve, I’ve done all these things, I have my 200 hour yoga certification, I exercise I drink clean water, you know, and and, and, and, and I 100% still support everything that I did. And I think that that was why I was able to actually have as good of health as I’ve had. But on a stress level and an anxiety and like a in a mental load level. I couldn’t manage anything else six and a half years ago, I just could not. And so I stepped into rubs doors and the idea that we could actually increase our bandwidth of stress was mind blowing to me because I remember oftentimes saying, I wish I could handle more but I just can’t and I wish that I could I could handle more of what life was going to have come at me and not come at me in a negative way. But come at me at whatever way it was going to come at. And I just literally couldn’t and so I came into rev and have been journeying with you guys now for the whole entire, you know, six years and whatnot and I will without a doubt say it has been the number one help for my mental state out of any sort of therapy, any sort of thing that I’ve ever done. I truly feel like my bandwidth if I was to measure it on this table went from being an inch to being miles long, truthfully and when a stressor comes, it’s no longer seen as this is happening at me or against me it’s happening for me and I’m not saying this to try to act like I’m a superhero now. It I truly kind of feel that way I can see something and you know a tree that fell on our home a couple years ago. I don’t see that now as a tree that was devastating my life or almost killing me it was actually a tree that saved me and saved us it got us into a new home. It got us in a new place which blessing it is it’s such a blessing and so life is happening for us. And part of your practice and work showed me that that’s what’s going on and so what an invaluable gift that this light touch therapy of Dr. Sookie and you stepping into his you know into his practice has offered so

Dr. Matt Smith 14:18
brings tears to my eyes like really does like I every time I hear you share that or anyone that comes in our office and has that same experience it like I love what I do the docs at work at Rev love what we do, and it’s not that we are special or even that your story is special. I do believe you are very special woman. But I think it’s important to know that every single person has that potential within them. We’re all made up of the same things right? Yes, there’s predispositions for people to be better at certain things metabolize certain things different and we all have our own individual health journey but we each and every one of us have had experiences and like you said the one of them most important questions you can ask yourself is, is this happening to me? Or is this happening for me? And the answer to that question, I believe not only determines your quality of your health, but the quality of your life. And it’s easy to say that sitting here going through a healing journey, right. And there’s plenty of people that might be listening to this and say, Well, you don’t know what I’ve been through, right. And that’s absolutely fair. There’s some really crappy things that happened as well. One thing though, that we try to get across to people, people go through crazy changes physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, at our practice, and what we do how we support people, but one thing I always say is like, this is not a magic bullet, in doing this is not going to make all your problems go away. And you know, depending on the person, I said, it’s not, if things are gonna happen, it’s not, if bleep is gonna hit the fan. It’s when that happens, right? So we’re always going to have these curveballs and these challenges that come. And it’s our ability to adapt to those experiences. That’s the key to health, right? If I had to break it down, what we do, and what we share with people is that life is always going to throw stuff into your ability not to react, but instead to respond. That’s really the key. And that comes down to those autonomic automatic responses, based on all the experiences we have. You talked about bandwidth, I’ll try and kind of explain it in a simple way we like to give the analogy is that your nervous system acts like a computer system, in the sense that it has a bandwidth or a neural capacity. And the analogy we like to give is like, if I gave you a computer from the 1980s, right, remember those? Remember, we were kids and 80s and 90s floppy disk and dial up internet. I gave you that computer today. And I say, Hey, Katie, I need you to go on Facebook, zoom a friend download a movie send an email, would you be able to do any of that stuff? No, probably not. It would take you forever to do that. And it probably wouldn’t work, right? Because that computer doesn’t have the capacity. But if I gave you a brand new 2022 MacBook smartphone latest and greatest out there and actually do that? Absolutely. I have a new MacBook. And, you know, people see it that when I open up the screen, because I have like 2550 different things going on. Because it has the ability to process that in our bodies work the same way. The experiences within our neural bandwidth things that give us peace, gratitude, love, joy, enthusiasm, the highest vibrational frequencies, one can feel, those are things that we process very well. And we do something called integrate it and we grow and we evolve. And we’ve all had really great experiences where like, I’m a better human being because I just had that experience because you know, I feel good. I just did a yoga class edit a workout I’ve been eating really good is kale salad, all those different things, right. And it’s to your point, if we only had good experiences, our life would just be like this. Right? The resistance and the challenges and the curveballs that’s kind of the spice of life in the moment. Is it comfortable? Is it feel good? absolutely freaking not? No, it does not feel good. When we have the aches, the pains and all these things are the stressors and challenges that mitigate or cause that. But you know, if you want your dad’s a perfect example, Dad’s working out his guns on tick tock, right. I love what he’s doing on tic tac, it’s so awesome. 65 years young and looking good. I love it. He’s inspiring to me. But you know, if he was in the gym, and only doing you know, 10 pound dumbbell curls, right, he would never get bigger muscles, right? So stress is actually there for us, you go for a run, you stress your heart, a couple days later, your heart is stronger because of that, right? And so the stresses and challenges, they’re meant for our growth and evolution. But in the moment, we don’t have the capacity to handle it. And from that, if too much of that builds up your body then starts speaking to you. And that’s one thing we always share with people that pain, anxiety, symptomatology and diseases are not the necessarily problem, right? They’re the result of something underlying and those things are actually just a message to you a message like, hey, whatever you’re doing, Matt, whatever you’re doing, Katie, it’s not working, we need to start making a change and start looking at things differently. And again, the gift of the body is that if too much stress is built up, it tends to as a defense mechanism, I believe, shrink our bandwidth, because it says Hey, Matt, Katie, you can’t handle anymore. You shouldn’t. So you don’t have the energy to go do more things you need to go sleep needed to go rest take care of yourself. But what do we typically do in our society, we don’t tend to listen to our bodies or the machine again, I’m speaking on a hole for most people, right? Some people plenty of people do. And then over time just continues to build up and more patterns and more patterns build up. And that’s really what leads people into the chronic diseases that we see so often.

Cady Kuhlman 19:31
And then oftentimes that ability to not handle stress and to get depressed and have the anxiety then kind of results in a searching for answers. And if we search in the, the Western world of things, which I do think there’s a place as we both do for Western medications and, and life saving procedures and stuff. But if we look around for, you know, stuff to help us with stress and anxiety, unfortunately, those are pills that generally are not getting to the root of the problem. But in those moments and this is where I can have empathy. When someone doesn’t realize these other things are out here, this, this increasing your bandwidth through new neural connections, this breath work and meditation and these expanding bandwidth things that we can do in our life, when they don’t have those available to them at that moment, they kind of reach for whatever it may be. And that may be an anxiolytic, a painkiller, antidepressant, and all of these things. And, again, that’s not to harbor or be negative towards that choice, because I think everyone tries to do what they what they can in that moment. But I think that if that’s why I’m so drawn to this message, if more people can understand this, at practice, like you guys are a practice, and we’ll get into some at home tips that people can do to expand this as well. But the idea of expanding your bandwidth, then the need for those type of pills, and the need for those, you know, little quick fix agents won’t be as necessary, because truly the cells are able to do it on their own. Yeah. And that’s we both believe that I know what, you know, we’re in two different practices, and we’re in a health food business, and then you’re in a chiropractic neural integration business. And but the root of it both of us is we both know, the body can heal itself. We do know that. And we know that when given the right tools, the right things, it wants to heal itself, and it can and it will. And that’s something I think that’s so interconnected between both of us and our stories is let’s give people something to allow them to heal. Yeah,

Dr. Matt Smith 21:25
100%. And to the point we were talking about earlier, whether it was when we started or beforehand, there is no one answer to the healing process. And it is just that the healing process is a journey. And there’s going to be times of your life where certain things are going to really support. And then maybe you need more things or less things, right. I always just share with people being a human test subject is really the best way to do it. Right. And to your point as well. I think one of the most important things that I want people to know is that it is possible for them to heal. But like you said, there’s so many things that will happen over time. And they’re the easiest thing is to do the drug or the medication, which Yeah, in the moment that’s nice, necessarily needed. And back in the day, I used to be way hardcore against the medical and allopathic model, I have 100% done a 180 on that and soften that, because I believe in the right timing, and what people need in that moment. But at the same time, no doubt, there is no drug medication or surgery, that will help facilitate long term healing in the body. It’s there to be a bandaid to fix, suppress whatever, maybe that is what they are designed to do. And so again, is that necessary? Absolutely. In some experience, some sometimes that is necessary. But if you want to create lasting change, you know, this is just being real with you in the audience. Creating Lasting Change and creating long term change isn’t necessarily the easiest thing, right? It takes a commitment, it takes a journey, to have really self discovery and really going on that path. And not everyone’s ready for that not everyone can do that right here right now. But at the same time, I’ve had plenty of people that have come in our office looking for X, Y, or Z, right, they got ABC going on, and they need to just feel better. But once we start feeling better, then we open up the doors and the potential to so many other things as well. Like people probably come in, say, I got high blood pressure, right? They take supplements, they take some things with you, and then they start feeling better. And then like, Oh, now I want to focus on this. Now I want to focus on this. So when we start increasing our bandwidth, processing stress, and stay committed to our path, not only do we start feeling better, but once we start feeling better, it opens up, opens us up to start living the life that we truly are designed to live, not just feeling good. Feeling good is a positive side effect, right? It’s being more connected, being a greater mom, being a greater dad, being a better wife, better husband, better co worker, greater entrepreneur affecting more and more people, right? Those are the things that really change our entire life, not just our physical well being as well, which I think is is what most people are looking for

Cady Kuhlman 24:13
totally completely. So beautiful. It’s such a beautiful description. So I’d like to get in for the viewers maybe that aren’t local to you guys, you know, some tips that you could give and some some ideas we could go through about like, how they can increase some of this bandwidth and a little bit more resiliency to stress at home, or any little breathwork kind of gratitude something that can raise that vibration still and and again, this is work that has to be put in this has not been doing at one time, but some tips that you have.

Dr. Matt Smith 24:44
I don’t have anything necessarily planned to share, right? Like I don’t have five steps of healing because there’s way more than five steps. So what I’ll do is just whatever comes to mind, I’ll kind of just share and then we can kind of go back and forth with it. The very first thing that I I share with people is awareness is the key awareness that, okay, I’ve been holding on to stress in my body, I’m reacting in certain ways, and bringing awareness to your body. And this could be through acupuncture, this could be through chiropractic care, this could be through our neural integration process, this could be through meditation, whatever it is that you need to do prayer, right, anything that you need to do to get quiet, and start listening and tuning into your body. I’ve studied quantum physics intensely, there’s a lot in quantum physics is that wherever attention goes, energy flows. And wherever energy flows, change can occur. And so if we’ve had all these experiences, and we have, and the analogy I use is like, we’ve had stress, and then something triggers that kind of like, there’s a scratch on a CD, someone presses playing, the verse keeps playing over and over and over again. So it’s recognizing, I got a pattern that’s playing in my physiology, and then I want to make a change. And so that’s the first step, you got to be aware of what’s going on, if you’re going to want to make a change with something. So meditation is been, you know, over the last 20 years, meditation, the science of meditation has caught up to what, you know, Eastern philosophies of have known for many, many years. When we meditate, when we quiet our mind, we activate our parasympathetic nervous system, we are a society that is in sympathetic dominance and sympathetic overload, right, not just from the stresses and challenges of family and work, but we got these, you know, amazing smartphones that are stimulating us all day, all night. And you know, there’s tick tock and Instagram, Facebook and stories. And, you know, I have a love hate relationship with it, because I do think there is power and goodness in it, and we can connect to the world, but it’s also low grade stimulation overload and to the system, right. And so we have all these different things, meditation, what it will do, and breathwork, what we’ll do is get you to drop in to that parasympathetic state. And if we can just start training our body little bits at a time to get more parasympathetic, the the kind of the scale begins to go in the opposite direction, right? And so I think the first thing is focusing on how can we increase our parasympathetic response. So meditation breathwork, getting outside and taking your shoes off and connecting the earth grounding, right? Is recharges our entire system helps us drop into there. And those are the top things that I will say to people when it comes to increasing that from a either hands on approach or things that you can do. And most people hear meditation, and they’re like, Well, I can’t quiet my mind, right? I can’t, I can’t do that. Gonna bring that up. Don’t call it meditation, then yeah, just call it sitting in silence, put on some hurts music, have a guided meditation app, but just focus on your breath. And one of the most important things that you can do is nasal breathing. And every time you breathe in, you actually activate your sympathetic nervous system. When you breathe out and exhale through your nose, you actually activate your parasympathetic nervous system. So it’s actually weird when you start doing it at first, like trying to longer exhale than you have until you feel like you’re gonna like run out of breath. And again, it’s a practice, it’s something that you can do consistently over time, you’ll get better at it. But my whole thing is start practicing longer exhales than inhales and over time, you’ll naturally start seeing changes in the way that you breathe, you’ll find yourself being more calm. And this is just a little simple hack that you can do. You know, right here, right now, while you’re listening to this,

stop at about three seconds in. Longer exhale. So that’s a great way that you can really begin to change that parasympathetic response. And I think also to bandwidth get smaller, think about, you know, just like these lines, I draw it on a piece of paper. So it’s like think of like, a capacity to handle things. And it begins to shrink over time, when too much stress builds up. And when you do that you’re going in the wrong direction. So I don’t actually like to tell people all these different things to do all at once because we have to stop the train from going in the wrong direction. And just by doing the simple things, that’s really when you’ll start shifting it from going the wrong direction and you’ll start really causing cell regeneration in the other direction. And then from that, how to increase bandwidth from the five pillars that we talked about number one is nervous system number two, which we talked about number two is mindset. Every thought that you have sends out electrical frequency in this world you have something called your RAS your reticular activating system in your brain. It is a seek and find mechanism. Simple way to say it, whatever you put out there more you see more of in your life. So if we are constantly thinking, why is this always happening to me? This is The worst I hate this, this is awful. What do you think we tend to see more of in our life, hate the bad, the ugly that causes more stress in our system decreases our bandwidth even more. And again, this isn’t going to change overnight. But if you have an experience, and it sucks, it’s not that fun. It’s uncomfortable. And if you can just make that little 1% shift from Why is this happening to me too? Why is this happening for me, and you start looking for the good, start looking for the positivity start looking for the love and kindness and gratitude. In that experience, you start to see more of those experiences, your perception of future things begins to change. And you don’t keep adding the same old, same old, same old, how many people you hear and see. It’s like they keep having the same problem over and over and over again. It’s just different people, places and things, right? Why? Because that is a frequency that’s coming from their nervous system. So again, awareness first, some people are aware, some people aren’t aware and that’s okay. Make start making shifts and changes. And then begin, you know, essentially hacking your body. It’s not just about thinking positively right? Positive thinking only goes so far. But when you add in the quiet time you add in the listening and tuning in getting energy to flow in a different direction. You start to really start feeling different. You start feeling I I’m not just grateful up here, I’m grateful for you. drop into your heart. Katie, I’m so grateful for you. You aren’t awesome person. Right? Do you feel the difference of that from coming from here to here. And this heart right here is amazing. It has more energy coming from here than it does from here. Right? So when we drop into our heart and feel the emotions of gratitude, appreciation, joy, enthusiasm, especially when stuffs hitting the fan. Exactly. That is really when we make quantum leaps. And we change the entire trajectory of our life. So those two for sure. I love that are the biggest things

Cady Kuhlman 32:03
that would say it was coming to mind when you were speaking about the kind of seek and find situation that goes on is I had a massive fear of throw up. And I hate to bring that up on the on here. But I will so a massive fear of throw up 10 plus years ago, and so I would see everybody throwing up everywhere I’d see people in parking lots, I would see them everywhere. And like have you physically seen random people throw up in a long time? No, probably not. Right? Okay, that maybe you would ask people that they’re like, Katie, where are you going? I don’t ever see anyone. And it was because my mind was so hung on the thought that I was scared of it. I didn’t want to see it. So what did I think all day, throw up, throw out throw up? Throw up, right. So then that’s what was in my field was that so I was seeking and I was finding it. So just like you’re saying and you know, one other personal example that came to mind when you were kind of speaking of that, as well as after having my second son and I was getting some rounds of mastitis that were very uncomfortable. And I didn’t like it. And my mental state was thinking, Come on, you know why five rounds here of this annoying cystitis. But I started at truly, truly, truly, instead of seeing it as this horrible, painful experience that it was now that didn’t negate that I did feel horrible. But because of the work with you, because of the work of mindfulness that I’ve done, because of this being able to drop down and actually not, not always believing every thinking thought that I had up in my brain about getting a fever, or that’s painful, you know, those little feelings that will arise because it is what it is, I would repeat this line oftentimes, and these were in the the newborn days of you know, having a two and a half year old and a six week old. And those are some hard days, you know, some challenging days, I would repeat to myself, the only way out is through. And so instead of trying to escape that situation, instead of trying to make it something that it wasn’t, I would actually just breathe into the truly breathe into the pain, breathe into the discomfort, the exhaustion, the tiredness, and now I look back. And that’s some of the most resiliency that I’ve personally experienced in my life. And now I feel like I’ve grown from that I don’t feel like it. I know I have. And so it’s those things where, you know, like you said, you can say positive things, but dropping down and becoming the positive thing and actually centering with the positive thought is, or even, maybe not a positive thought, but centering with what it is, and then allowing it to be rather than trying to, to change. It was a huge, huge, huge, huge revolutionary time in my life. And so thank you. And that was something that you know, visiting you and Monica, when I first had visited and you guys would have this positive outlook that we’re speaking about here and this resiliency, and this increased bandwidth occasionally and I want to say this, just in case any viewer was thinking this I would think to myself, well, maybe they haven’t had anything negative happened in their life. I really thought that I did for a minute. I thought maybe They haven’t struggled, you know, maybe they haven’t. Maybe they’re able to be in this place because they didn’t come from this place. Or maybe, you know, maybe they’ve had a world where things were just a little easier for them. And then I started being able to shift my bandwidth and my resiliency and my mindset. And I’m like, oh, no, they’ve just, I don’t really know exactly all the struggles, because no one will ever know everyone’s struggle. But it doesn’t matter. Because at the end of the day, I can see why and how you guys were the way that you are and the way that you were and still are. And that’s what we’re offering today is this hope that it is available out? There it is, it’s available, because I think, you know, if we have hope we have almost the greatest gift possible, and offering of hope that someone that’s listening now that thinks I can’t do this anymore. I can’t wake up every day with this type of belittling mental state, this, this feeling of an elephant on my chest, this feeling of all of this, that there is hope for them to not be in that place.

Dr. Matt Smith 36:01
Absolutely. I mean, beautiful, beautiful story. And I just so appreciate your authenticity of sharing that. Yes, we have had some stuff happen in our life, right? We all have these experiences. And I think about like, someone like Oprah Winfrey, or someone who has made a really great name for themselves and really affected so many lives. A lot of the times those people didn’t have a kosher life, right? Yeah, Oprah had an awful childhood, right. But she brought herself out of that. And because she had such a negative experience, negative quote, unquote, it was just high energy experience. And because she moved forward process and integrated, it allowed her to swing to that opposite side affecting so many other people, right, and whatever your thoughts and whatever about Oprah doesn’t matter, right? That example goes to anyone. So I think the most important thing is to understand is like, the greater the challenge, the greater the opportunity. 50 pound dumbbells versus 75 pound dumbbells, right? harder, more challenging, but greater growth is gonna come from that. And then one thing you said that just, you know, again, not to get too deep into it, because I do want to help people to understand on a simple level, but your nervous system doesn’t know the difference between right here, right now, five minutes ago, or 25 years ago, right. So if you saw something that triggered you that happened 20 years ago, you would have that same emotional response in your physiology, right, that’s that automatic response. Now, knowing that we can be like, oh, man, I got all this stuff that’s going on in my life. And I can’t control it, right, because it’s all subconscious. But what we can start doing is start paying attention to that, and then consciously begin shifting that within ourselves. And so if you are in this deep, relaxed state, you’re in that parasympathetic subconscious part of your brain and nervous system vagal tone is increased. And you start feeling in to health, feeling in to gratitude, feeling into that, to use your words, you begin to literally start changing yourself from an energetic frequency standpoint, and then the cellular standpoint, and then a tissue standpoint, and then our entire being so, you know, that’s kind of a way you went into it, you kind of focused on it, it’s really connecting to that piece right there. And I’ve never, I don’t really share the story all that often. But I’ll share it here. You know, I told you, I had that debilitating pain, I would go off and on with with pain. And I started this process, probably not eight years ago, nine years ago. And it was really, really helping supporting me opening me up to things. But you said something about going into the pain. I went on a 10 day silent meditation retreat with Monica, I don’t know if I’ve shared this story with you before. And I was still dealing with pain. So think about sitting and meditating for an hour at a time, five times a day. So like you really get to know yourself after a while. But I had a very profound experience, probably five, six days in. And this is probably seven years ago that this happened, meditating. And when you’re sitting down cross legged, you definitely start feeling some pain in your back. If you’ve had long, you know, if you’ve had a long term back pain, and I started feeling this pain, and I kept being told through the meditation, just pay attention to it. Just look at it, just observe it don’t give it a name good or bad, right? And so I was like, well, it’s frickin hurts. So like, I’m getting it, but I kept working through it. And the pain got so intense because I kept focusing and breathing into it trying not to avoid it, which we often tend to do right. And I was breathing into it pain was intensifying, shooting pain that I felt back in the day when I threw that pitch and I was lifting that way. It was coming back. But I had been in school at that time was halfway through school at the time. And I remember just knowing okay, this is a pain response. This is is a neurological signaling to my brain. And I cognitively knew, Okay, I’m not dying. And I’m not going anywhere, you know, my lumbar spine still going to be there at the end of this next 30 minutes I had left in the meditation, I’m just going to breathe into it. And I remember this intense pain continued to build up continue to build up I just kept breathing kept focusing going into the pain as Mia Monica like to call it, and I cannot explain it. But all of a sudden, that extreme pain that extreme heat turned into a quick coolness right in my L four l five area. And it spread throughout my entire body and I had a beautiful rests the next 15 as the pain completely went away. The crazy thing about that, ever since that experience, I have never experienced back pain, again, completely gone from that was how long ago, seven plus years ago. Now of course, if I go run a marathon or I lift really heavy, I’m gonna be sore the next day, I’m a normal human being right. But the same pain that I was having over and over and over again, completely went away. And I know and believe it’s because I finally allowed myself to integrate it at a vibrational standpoint within my nervous system. And that pattern is no longer running within my system. Wow. Yeah, that’s beautiful. It was profound for me. And that in that right there is why someone comes in our office with autoimmune disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis, back pain, neck pain, chronic anxiety, depression, I can sit there and be with them, I can hear them and listen to them. But I also will hold the space knowing that I’m not special, the people that the hundreds of people that have gone through our office and gone through this care, you too, there’s nothing special or different about them. Yes, we’re all special in different, right. But that person in front of me, I know with certainty that they their life can change if they’re willing to go through the journey of starting to making those changes, because again, our bodies are brand new, every several years. And so it’s what we do every single day, that’s gonna build new cells, new tissues and the new US.

Cady Kuhlman 42:01
That’s beautiful. Thank you. So if there was one last little bit that you wanted to kind of send viewers home with, you know, one little wrap up statement or one call to action for them to kind of go and do today or to think about or to resonate on? Is there anything you could you could pull from right now?

Dr. Matt Smith 42:19
Going back to the hope thing? Yeah, have you read the study about the mice that they put in water, it’s kind of morbid, and kind of kind of crazy. Don’t love these tests. But it’s interesting to see. So they put mice into water, and they were swimming, trying to to keep living, right. And it showed like the mice would stop swimming, let’s say about two minutes, I’m gonna get the numbers maybe just a little bit off, but about two, three minutes, and then they all passed away, right? Because they just gave up hope. Then they took a group of mice and they did this repeatedly, they put these group of mice in the water for about like 30 seconds, 45 seconds or 60 seconds before the you know, the typical time where most mice would just give up, they then grab those mice out. And they put took them out, let them rest. And then they put them back into the water. When they put those mice that they took out after a while that were like okay, they these I saved, I’m not going to die. They swam in that water. I want to say for eight hours, it was something crazy, I might be getting that numbers a little bit off, but it was significantly longer. Right. And yes, that’s mice. But the whole point of it was understanding the science of hope. When we believe that something greater is possible for us. We do amazing things. And so my one piece of advice to people, whether it’s through nutrition, whether it’s through working out whether through its detoxifying your life, whether through its nervous system work, physical, PT, acupuncture, whatever it is, do those things, stay consistent. Began do the deep work to really start trusting in yourself and really start believing that healing is possible. And again, there’s going to be things that work and things that don’t work, right. Keep testing, keep trying and don’t give up and I promise you, if you don’t give up, and you just keep working on yourself every day 1% 1% 1% I love like when you start eating good. You know if someone eats good for a month, they’re gonna start seeing if they’re really unhealthy, they’re gonna start seeing changes. If someone starts working out three days a week for a month, they’re going to start looking really good and start things are gonna start changing. Now imagine they do it for three months yeah, now imagine they start doing it for six months oh, that person is really making some changes and you just stay consistent over time those 1% shifts begin to compound on top of each other in the greatest changes and the most long term changes or the changes that happen where yes and the initial part of your healing process or whatever you’re doing. You’re gonna see oh man, I was feeling X y&z And now my symptoms are gone. I’m feeling better But the real change is sitting down a year, two years, five years down the journey. And similar to you like, it’s the subtle stuff, right? It’s like, I used to act like a real jerk when my boss or friend or wife or sister, whatever, maybe said something to me, I don’t react that same way. Man, I used to be so stressed out when the kids were on summer vacation, and now I’m not. So it’s those subtle things that really, it’s like, we don’t even notice it. But we’re literally your intentions and what you’re trying to create over time, you literally become a brand new human being. And so that’s what I just shared with people two things have hope, believe and know you’re in it for the long game, because the long game is really where you then start feeling empowered, that no matter what happens in your life, you know, you’re going to be okay. And I’m going to be able to move through this. It may take a day, may take a couple of days may take weeks may take a year to fully move through whatever it comes up in your life. But you know, because you have a history and you know that this is possible that I’m gonna move through this and I’m gonna be just fine. And that’s what I love working with people. It’s like, people come in our office, we’ve seen him you’ve seen him for five years, right? stuff still comes up. things still happen. But how often have you shared with me I got this going on but okay, yeah, I’m good. I’m gonna handle it. And that that’s, I believe is the way to live is most connected and most I don’t know, most joyous way of living because you know, you can handle anything.

Cady Kuhlman 46:26
I fully agree. It’s one of the greatest gifts I think we could we could give to ourselves and to friends, family and anyone so 100% Yeah, thank you, Matt.

Dr. Matt Smith 46:35
It’s honor to be here. Love you guys and love what you guys are doing here nutrition world love being partnered up with you guys. And just the beginning here in Chattanooga and unworldly

Cady Kuhlman 46:43
fully agree