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Topic: Guest Conversations

The 2 Questions You Need to Ask Your Doctor If You Have Chronic Pain with Dr. Kim Fischer

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If you're in the middle of chronic pain recovery and a doctor just offered you surgery, there's one question to ask before you say yes. Most of us were never taught to ask it.

Dr. Kim Fischer is a board-certified anesthesiologist. For years she's cared for patients coming in for their second or third spine surgery, and she kept wondering → if we fixed the structural problem, why is the pain still here? Then she developed pelvic pain herself. She saw all the doctors, did all the tests, and collected a lot of labels. A pelvic PT finally introduced her to mind-body medicine, and it clicked.

In this conversation, Kim shares the moment she poked her head over the blue curtain mid-surgery and a surgeon she deeply respects told her he didn't really know if the procedure would help the patient's pain. The patient on the table didn't know that. That gap is what she's working to close. Her question for you: "What is the likelihood that this procedure is going to make my pain go away?" Then listen for words like might, should, and I hope so.

We also get into the difference between managing pain and recovering. Managing is forever, and it's all about the symptom. Recovery is about your life → the concert, the road trip, the van trip one of her patients has been on for five months. Still some pain, BUT no more fear spiral. Kim walks through provocative testing, why fear (and sometimes frustration) shows up before the symptom does, and why "what else could be true?" might be one of the most important questions in medicine.

This is NOT an anti-surgery episode. Surgery has its place. This is about getting your agency back so you can make the choice that's right for you.

And if you heard about this work years ago and weren't ready yet, that's okay. Kim was told about her PT a full year before she went.

Connect with Dr. Kim Fischer

Beckon Health: https://beckon.health/ (sees patients in Colorado, Oregon, and a few other states)

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How to Get Unstuck in Your Healing with Doc Tovah

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If you feel stuck in chronic pain recovery, this one is for you. Not the beginning part where you are figuring out what neuroplastic symptoms even are. The part where you have done the work, read the books, hired the coaches, and something still has not moved.

Doc Tovah has been a chiropractor for 41 years and has hosted the TMS Roundtable for seven, with over 500 broadcasts. She is 69. Her mother had MS starting when Doc Tovah was eleven, she grew up in a house she describes as chaotic, and she was diagnosed with Crohn's along the way. She talks about that diagnosis almost in passing, which is the whole point.

She names the pattern she sees in people who stay stuck, and it is not effort. It is disconnection. People who cannot tell you what they feel. People who say "I don't know" so often that it becomes a freeze response. People who feel okay around others and fall apart the second they are alone with themselves. That gap is the work.

We also get into the part almost nobody says out loud, which is that a victim stance can be doing a job for you. It protected me from being seen and rejected for years, and I did not know it was happening. Doc Tovah has been there too and she says it plainly. You are the problem and you are the solution, and that is the good news.

Then she gives the practice. Not a technique to add to your list. A relationship. Coffee with your fear. Going to sleep with your loneliness. Sitting with the feeling instead of building a story around it. She says fear can paralyze you or it can be fuel, and the difference is not how brave you are, it is whether you stop fighting reality long enough to be with it.

One more thing she said that I keep thinking about. Pain is not punishing you. It is protecting you. And most people who feel stuck are not far away from healing. They are standing right at the door.

Connect with Doc Tovah
– TMS Roundtable, Doc Tovah's YouTube channel
– Doc Tovah website 

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Healing Chronic Pain That Hasn’t Budged in Years with Dr. David Schechter

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If you've been living with chronic pain that won't go away -> the kind that hasn't budged in years, no matter how many doctors, scans, or treatments you've thrown at it -> this conversation is going to give you something most appointments never have: a reason it makes sense, and a real way forward.

Dr. David Schechter has been treating chronic pain through a mind-body lens for decades. He trained under Dr. John Sarno himself -> the physician who started this entire field -> after walking into his office as a young medical student with knee pain that wouldn't quit. What Sarno told him that day changed the direction of his career. And what happened at that Monday night seminar might sound a lot like what you've been waiting to feel: a weight lifting.

In this episode, David breaks down the difference between acute and chronic pain, and why anything past the 3-6 month mark means your nervous system is involved -> no matter what your scans show. We get into the concept every patient needs to know: the nocebo effect. Because the words a doctor says to you ("you have a horrible spine," "you'll need surgery in five years") don't just describe your body. They can shape your pain. Language, as David puts it, is the software of the brain.

We also talk about what it takes to heal symptoms that have been around for years, not months -> the persistence, the doubts worth exploring, and why focusing on capacity instead of pain changes the trajectory. And he shares two stories I can't stop thinking about: patients who saw more than twenty physicians, and finally found their way to neuroplastic healing because AI pointed them somewhere no doctor had.

If your pain has been dismissed, mislabeled, or just plain stuck -> this one's for you.

Find Dr. David Schechter:
Website

Books:
The MindBody Workbook

Think Away Your Pain

ATNS Practitioner Directory

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What to Do When Healing Feels Stuck with Karden Rabin

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If you've been doing the breathwork, the journaling, the somatic work and you're still stuck — this episode is the one that explains why.

Karden Rabin didn't arrive at this work as a patient who got lucky. He arrived as the practitioner who thought he had the answer. Twelve years as a bodyworker — craniosacral, structural integration, myofascial release, the whole thing. Then a seven-month horror show of back pain landed him on John Sarno's book. And he couldn't unknow it. He's now the founder of Somia International and the HEAL Program and the author of The Secret Language of the Body.

What he brings to this conversation is the frame most people in this space are missing. Every technique you've been using; breathwork, brain retraining, journaling, somatic exercises is doing the same thing. It's interrupting and updating a protective pattern your nervous system built when it believed you were in danger. Most of those patterns aren't dangerous anymore. They're just on loop. The game isn't collecting more tools. It's recognizing the pattern and updating it toward safety.

He also reframes something a lot of people in this work need to hear: calm isn't the goal. Calm is a dependent state; it's what happens when two things are true. You feel safe from danger (yin). And you know you can handle danger if it shows up (yang). Most people who've done a ton of inner work have a lot of yin. They're missing the yang. Not more softness – the felt sense that if life gets hard, you've got yourself.

We also go into the "I can't" — the deep freeze that lives underneath most type A behavior, right before the double espresso and the push-through. And why dissolving it is completely different from powering past it.

Resources mentioned:

– The Secret Language of the Body by Karden Rabin and Jennifer Mann

– Somia International / HEAL Program

– John Sarno — Healing Back Pain

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How to build Self Trust in Healing with Dr. Rita Gupta

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You've been to the specialists. You've done the tests. And you still feel like nobody really knows what's wrong — or how to fix it. That's not you failing. That's a gap in medicine that mind-body medicine chronic pain practitioners are finally starting to close.

Dr. Rita Gupta spent almost 20 years as a primary care physician watching her patients get sicker despite everything she offered. The referrals, the labs, the medications. She had access to every record, sat with them through every specialist visit. And she was watching people not get better. That wore on her.

Then she ruptured a disc in her neck and was told surgery was her only option. She didn't take it. She turned inward -> toward integrated medicine, mind-body work, pain reprocessing therapy, mindfulness. And she eventually left conventional medicine entirely to practice the kind of care she couldn't offer inside the system.

In this episode, we get into something that doesn't get talked about enough: self-trust as medicine. Not as a mindset hack or a feel-good concept. As an actual biological process that shifts your nervous system, lowers your threat response, and creates real relief.

Here's what changes when you stop trying to force your body into submission and learn to be with what's there instead: your threshold expands. The loop breaks. Your values become a compass instead of a source of grief.

Dr. Rita says it plainly – every time you can sit with a sensation without collapsing, you're building something. Not ignoring it. Not giving up. Building.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

– Alan Gordon / Pain Reprocessing Therapy

– Ellen Alden's Long COVID community 

– Dr. Rita Gupta's website

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The Root Cause Behind Chronic Symptoms in High-Achieving Women with Ashley Novak, FNTP

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Ashley Novak is a Certified Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP), Restorative Wellness Practitioner (RWP), and Holistic Lifestyle Coach with a BS in Biochemistry. As the founder of Seeded Sage Wholeness, she takes a root-cause approach to women's health — specializing in gut health, hormones, fertility, and acne. Ashley's work lives at the intersection of functional medicine, ancestral wisdom, and women's empowerment, helping her clients move from chasing symptoms to truly understanding their bodies. She co-hosts the Yoni University Podcast and is passionate about reclaiming women's health intuition and building a legacy of generational wellness. Follow her journey on Instagram @itsashleynovak.

In Ep 128 we go deep on the bridge between functional medicine and nervous system work. Why you can have the diagnoses, all of them, AND still need to start with your nervous system. Why Ashley calls it the "scab that never heals." What created the wound first, before the parasite, before the H. pylori, before the mold? Almost always stress.

We get into the "yes and" approach. Yes, the parasite is real. AND your body is freaking robust -> something weakened it before the parasite could take hold. We talk about why the women in Grace and Ashley's worlds are so often the highest functioning, the eldest daughters, the recovering perfectionists who do not realize they have been in fight or flight for 15 years.

We also unpack what women's health research gaps mean for fasting, sleep, fueling, and the ADHD reframe. (Women were not included in medical research until 1993. That is recent. That changes everything we have been told about female bodies.)

And we land on the free basics most people are still bypassing -> water, sleep, walking, sunlight, saying no. Not because the supplements are wrong. But because the body cannot use them until the basics are in place.

If you have been to every functional practitioner, gotten every test, taken every supplement, and you are still stuck -> this episode is the missing piece.

Connect with Ashley:

– Ashley Novak, Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner
– Instagram

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Are You Putting Pressure on Yourself to Get Better? With Lindsay Vine

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If you've been doing all the right things and still putting pressure on yourself to heal faster, this conversation might land deeply.

Grace sits down with Lindsay Vine, an ME/CFS and long COVID recovery coach who spent seven and a half years navigating her own healing journey, including a period of being fully bedbound. Lindsay now works one-on-one with clients and teaches mind-body and neuroplasticity courses within the healthcare system in British Columbia, Canada. She also co-created the CFS Programs Guide, a searchable resource covering 34+ recovery programs to help people find the right fit without the overwhelm.

Together, they explore how the pressure to "get better" can become the very thing keeping the nervous system stuck. They discuss the role of goodism — the deep need to be seen as good — and how it drives people to turn recovery into another achievement to get right. Lindsay shares her own turning point of shifting from valuing achievements to valuing who she is, and they talk through what it looks like when brain retraining feels fake, why positive psychology alone isn't always enough, and how doing less can sometimes be the real healing move. They also break down the three pathways that keep people stuck — worry, pressure, and self-criticism — and what to pivot to instead: gratitude, focusing on wins, and self-compassion.

This episode is for anyone who's ever thought, "I should have figured this out by now."

Find Lindsay: 

Website

Post Viral Podcast

CFS Programs Guide

Listen to Episode 14: Healing ME/CFS Using Brain Training and Nervous System Regulation 

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Your Brain Is Creating Real, Severe Pain ; A Doctor Explains Why and How to Stop It with Dr. Rebecca Kennedy

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In this episode, Grace sits down with Dr. Rebecca Kennedy, a family medicine physician with over 20 years of clinical experience and founder of Resilience Health Care in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Kennedy spent 15 years at Kaiser Permanente where she led the Long COVID specialty group, treating some of the most severe cases in the entire Northwest region. After witnessing how profoundly the neuroplastic model transformed her patients' lives — and after developing her own severe neuroplastic symptoms — she left Kaiser in 2023 to focus exclusively on this work.

Together, they explore why so many people with long COVID, MCAS, POTS, and ME/CFS aren't getting better with conventional treatments, what the research actually shows about spike proteins and inflammation markers, and why the brain's threat response may be the unifying explanation that finally makes everything make sense. Dr. Kennedy shares why the placebo and nocebo effects are far more powerful than most people realize, why long COVID may be better understood as a post-pandemic syndrome, and what it takes to move beyond surface-level nervous system tools into the deeper emotional work that creates lasting change.

Covered in this episode: 

✨ Dr. Kennedy's journey from Kaiser Permanente to founding Resilience Health Care — and her own experience with severe neuroplastic pain and fatigue 

✨ Why spike proteins, cytokine changes, and abnormal blood tests may not be driving your symptoms the way you've been told 

✨ The real science behind the placebo and nocebo effect — and what vaccine trial data reveals about the brain's role in side effects

 ✨ Why most people with long COVID are middle-aged women who were previously healthy — and what that tells us 

✨ How MCAS, POTS, and ME/CFS diagnoses can unintentionally keep people stuck in fear and body-focused treatment 

✨ The critical difference between nervous system regulation tools and the deeper emotional processing that actually turns off the signal 

✨ Why stopping body-based treatments entirely can sometimes be the missing piece 

✨ How to accept a neuroplastic diagnosis when everything you've been told points to something structural

Connect with Dr. Rebecca Kennedy:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

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How You Can Heal From Chronic Dizziness with Dr. Yonit Arthur

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Grace sits down with Dr. Yonit Arthur ("Dr. Yo"), audiologist, vestibular specialist, and creator of The Steady Coach, to explore why chronic dizziness is often a nervous system issue—and why that's actually hopeful news for recovery. Dr. Yo shares how conditions like PPPD, vestibular migraine, MDDS, and medically unexplained dizziness are rooted in brain-generated symptoms rather than structural damage, making them fully reversible through mind-body approaches.

The conversation covers why dizziness creates such intense fear and anxiety (even in people who've never experienced anxiety before), how the brain's threat response keeps symptoms alive, and why traditional vestibular rehabilitation often falls short. Dr. Yo explains the role of movement exposure, thought pattern work, and stress reduction in retraining the brain's balance system. She emphasizes that recovery is possible regardless of how long symptoms have persisted, and shares practical guidance on addressing the intrusive thoughts and health anxiety that commonly accompany chronic dizziness.

Grace and Dr. Yo discuss the importance of separating symptom reassurance from anxiety reassurance, why therapists need specialized training to support clients with these symptoms, and how the vestibular field is finally beginning to shift toward acknowledging stress and nervous system involvement in chronic dizziness.

Connect with Dr. Yonit:

– Dr. Yonit Arthur's YouTube channel: The Steady Coach
– Free comprehensive chronic dizziness course 

– Instagram: @therealsteadycoach
– Anxiety resources mentioned: DARE (D-A-R-E), Disordered podcast by Drew Linsalata, The Anxiety Guy, Anxiety RX by Russ Kennedy

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