Intro:              00:00:00       Podcasting from the base of Lake Tahoe in the Eastern Sierras comes The Medicine Wheel. We are a group of progressive physicians seeking solutions and enlightenment while surfing the seas of big data and summiting mountains of research. In an effort to make the practice of medicine more personal and medical knowledge more accessible and empower you, the listener to be as healthy as possible. Now, The Medicine Wheel.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:00:34       Hello everyone, welcome to The Medicine Wheel, I'm joined here today with my colleague, Dr. Robert Floyd, and a very special guest who we're bringing from the deep mountains around Lake Tahoe. Dr. Mackey. Dr. Mackey is a colleague of ours and a good friend to this program. She's going to discuss a wide variety of things today, and we're going to get started right away by hearing from Rob.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:00:56       Hey, how's it going? Everybody? I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Mackey in residency at UNR and family medicine, and it's pretty obvious when you meet her that she's a very special person and that she is on a different wavelength and path than most physicians. And so we thought it'd be a great idea to have her here. She's a welcome addition to our Medicine Wheel podcast, Dr. Mackey.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:01:23       Thanks you guys, thanks for having me.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:01:25       Of course. It's a great pleasure to have you here. Let's talk about, how did you find yourself in medicine?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:01:33       So I have been on this path since a series of injuries as a competitive snowboarder and Division 1 athlete. So since my teens basically I knew that I was going into the healing realm because I was forced into a self healing process. I fractured my vertebrae two different times, two different years. T-1, T-12, doing snowboarding, and then was a scholarship athlete and had to go right into college and play field hockey through some of those ailments.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:02:13       And that's a lot of very soft sport is it?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:02:16       No.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:02:16       A lot of hitting, a lot of violence.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:02:17       Yeah, a lot of bending over with a really short stick. So yeah, I just had like one big ACE bandage, like wrapped like everywhere. Cause I was just trying to support myself through that with the help of like, you know, some trainers who would tape ankles or whatever. But, I basically saw some orthopedists and something in my 16, 17 year old brain said, that there's more caused by these accidents than what they're claiming. So for instance, I had a cascade of events after breaking these sort of really important, now I know as an osteopath, they are really important junctures in your body between the cervical and thoracic spine and the thoracolumbar junction. And so injuring these two areas has made my spine kind of function-wise in terms of the innervation of the organs and nervous system, central nervous system. So anyways, my gut stopped working, I didn't have a period until I was like 24 years old. Yeah! There is some major sleep disturbances. I had an eating disorder, like I was real anxious type person after these injuries. And my 16, 17 year old brain said, I think this started when I got injured. And the orthopedists of course were like, "no, no, no, that's totally different, you need to go get a colonoscopy or whatever." So I knew then that I needed to kind of go outside the box and saw various healers who got me back on track and found yoga and lived in an ashram and my back has basically essentially no problems now, so.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:04:15       So you chose osteopathic medicine as opposed to allopathic medicine, and again, Dr. Devlin is also an osteopath, and you guys both do body work and- explain what that is cause some people don't know the difference and think, "Oh, osteopath that's way less than, you know, an MD." But I personally know that there's more training in it. So explain that a little bit please.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:04:39       Yeah, I think I think it would be, it would make more sense if Sean and I had an MD and a DO after our name, because the training is, it includes everything that you learn in an MD school and then we get additional tools, an additional, like, one third of our curriculum is based off this philosophy and approach called osteopathy, where we learn to diagnose and treat using our hands as our-

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:05:11       You mean you actually touch the patient?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:05:12       Yeah, exactly.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:05:12       Wow! Okay.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:05:12       Yeah. So osteopathy is based off the premise that the body is comprised of mind, body and spirit. These are the tenants of osteopathy. The body is a unit and that structure and function are interrelated, and then we all have a self healing mechanism. And so when I started reading, when I was applying to med school, when I started reading about osteopathy, I had never experienced it myself yet, but I just knew that with my yoga background, and more of a spiritual healing journey, that this sounded way more up my alley than just the sciency part. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:05:58       Anything to add to that, Sean?

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:06:00       Yeah, no, I think that, you know, she's dead on. I mean, I think osteopathy is, was a perfect fit for my personality. And I think obviously for years, and you and I had a sort of made a connection through our shared residency program. I believe that osteopathy is based in solid theory that was promoted during a time when we really didn't have a whole lot of solid science supporting medicine in general. And we're talking after the civil war, everything was pretty rudimentary. A lot of it relied on surgery, being creative and experimenting with the variety of poultices and potions. Really up until the time of the 18, probably 70s and 80s, when a little bit more of the science started to infiltrate medicine. I just watched a phenomenal Ken Burns documentary on The Mayo Clinic and a lot of, some of these changes were occurring in the late 18 hundreds. And one of the things that we saw happening was sort of, an amalgamation of clinicians coming together and some of that was spurred on by some of the work A.T. Still did by bringing together a new thought around medicine.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:07:08       Can you explain who A.T. Still is?

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:07:10       Yeah, Andrew Taylor Still is an MD surgeon from the middle 18 hundreds. He actually founded osteopathic medicinebased on his tenants and beliefs that the body as a whole was an integrated set of systems that you couldn't just separate out. And that the neuromuscular component, which is basically the main, but you know, architecture of the body as a building is integral to the functioning of the rest of its parts. And so without either alignment or balance or regular intervention that that body in a gravitational environment or subject to traumas or other turmoilsneeds to be there, adjusted, manipulated, or cajoled in some way to seek healing. So the goal is to take someone who's off the path of healing and put him back on the path and to do so, use your hands, and be integrative in your processes. So I mean, A.T. Still is a legend and a lot of people don't ever really talk about him. The people they normally talk about when you talk about neuromuscular medicine is like DD Palmer. DD Palmer was the founder of chiropractic medicine. But as Kirsten knows, he was in class taking lectures from A.T. Still in the early days in Missouri. And he actually said, you know what, I think all disease is rooted in the spine and I'm going to take my theories and start my own schooling. And he did. And as you can see, chiropractors far outweigh the number of osteopaths in this country and he kind of ran with that dogma and, you know, at least brought some attention to neuromuscular medicine.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:08:45       In the mythology behind that story, I don't know if you've heard it before, and I don't know the accuracy of it.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:08:52       We don't, It's a story.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:08:53       But yeah, exactly. That DD Palmer had, like, brought his family member to A.T. Still and the hospital there, because he had an osteopathic run, you know, program there, for you would just come and stay for a few months and get treated. And Palmer had bought his family member and was observing every day, and the only thing that he could really tell, like, what was happening- because a lot of what we do with our hands is super subtle. And you can't really like tell when something's really happening, but the big kind of obvious adjustment that we do is high velocity movements. So he would see these high velocity adjustments to the spine and he would say, "Oh, well that's when something's really, the healing's really happening." And he went home and took that and made a whole study and practice out of that, which is great.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:09:49       Chiropractic.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:09:49       Yeah.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:09:49       So you, having done DO, that's kind of a, I don't want to say outside the box because it's definitely a smaller amount of people do osteopathy than allopathic, which is MD medicine. Tell us a little bit more about, I know you've done a lot of other training as well,I mean very, very- you do training- I know you do a lot of body work. You've done yoga, but what other training in medical sciences have you done?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:10:19       Sure. So, I've studied a lot of what you guys are interested in, which is some functional medicine through the AFRM and the IFM and just various courses through functional medicine, which you know, is more based on root cause medicine and finding how to support the biochemistry and whatnot. And through that process, I've- and through my own, kind of, journey that continues with my own healing have found neural therapy, which is a German injection technique, which is, which I've been using over the last couple of years. Also prolotherapy, also an injection technique, in a different, kind of, supporting a different system, which is like the vessel and ligamentous integrity of the body.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:11:11       Can you give us a breakdown of both of both of those techniques? What it involves?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:11:15       Sure. So neural therapy is aimed at, basically, neutralizing ganglia and anything that blocks- what we call blocks regulation in the body. So scars can do that. It's old trauma and trauma can store itself in the body in many ways. But this particular therapy addresses it. And how it impacts the nervous system so we can inject, you can inject nerve ganglia directly and it's just with procaine typically or lidacain which is like a numbing agent. And with the intention of neutralizing that ganglia.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:12:02       Is it because you think they're overstimulated or?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:12:04       Yeah, so it's like when people talk about getting kind of caught in a trauma spiral, or fight or flight kind of mechanism, it's with the intention of kind of- our bodies have that mechanism just to stay alive. And it's great that we have that, but there's not really an off button. And so this is one approach to help remind the nervous system, "You're no longer in threat" And yeah, so

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:12:35       You just brought something up that's really important. And there was some work done in the past 15, 20 years on the concept of sort of a Polyvagal theory. And you just, kind of, stepped into that arena a little bit, because with neural therapy we're talking about, you know, cutaneous fields that have been severed. And when that happens, there's a meshes that goes back basically to the central nervous system that, "Hey, something, no bueno happened here, even though it may have been a therapeutic surgery." And the body is like under kind of duress from that experience. And so you're talking about breaking up those patterns and calming that central nervous system down, even though we may not be acutely aware of it, it's actively going on. And could you talk a little bit about sort of the polyvagal theory and about these levels of survival because it's going to go on to some other things we'll discuss.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:13:23       Yeah, sure. So the polyvagal theory basically just generally we, when we get traumatized- and I haven't really like thought about this mechanism in a while, but basically when we get dramatized, you're going to go into sympathetic overdrive and fight or flight. And a lot of people are now aware of that, which is, which is great, but as I said, there's no off mechanism for that. So the body either- normally, typically like, they described polyvagal theory using antelope, and so, normally, in our animal body and brain would go and tremor and shake and get out this trauma immediately, right after they were chased by the lion or whatever. But as humans in the current realm of society, we don't really have a lot of space and room to go shake in the bushes and cry and whatever. So a lot of us get caught in that space of fight or flight and don't necessarily drop back in to that nice- So basically there's a sinusoidal kind of wave where we're going. Parasympathetic, sympathetic, parasympathetic, and they're balancing each other out all day. But once we get out of that cycle, it's really hard to get back to neutral.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:14:58       Just for the listeners, the parasympathetic versus the sympathetic. The parasympathetic is the rest and digest nervous system, it's kind of the everyday calming, you know, just chilling out, after you eat a big Thanksgiving meal, your parasympathetic system is active and you just want to be like, "ah." And the sympathetic is, like she says, the fight or flight system that, unfortunately, like you said, a lot of us have it turned on all the time and we don't have a way, like you said, the antelope, they go and shake or they cry, and you know, our society unfortunately doesn't allow us at this point to have a way to get out of that and release that, all that pent up energy. And it's really, it's too bad.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:15:43       And I assume where you're going with this is that this is a really huge blockade obstacle in a lot of people's healing and these chronic illnesses who we all ended up seeing.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:15:55       Yeah. It can be the actual underlying cause of that disease. And so when we're unable to recognize that baseline that we need to approach that Keystone issue then we're basically just putting bandaids on wounds in the hopes that, you know, they'll leave the office with some sort of sense of satisfaction, when ultimately we've basically just said, "Hey, everything's going to be okay," or, "Here, take this pill," or, "Do this procedure. And let's hope that everything goes well from there." Like you learned in your own personal journey, the injuries you suffered, were far deeper than just, you know, spinous process injury or something like this. And that's something that we try to explain to patients a lot of the time, especially as we age, our ability to compensate from those traumas and those stressors starts to go into decline. And we're no longer able to hold up that fortress of sympathetic overdrive. And we live in a state of, you know, either complex or at least some form of PTSD, and we do that just from living day to day. You know, not being able to pay a bill you know, not being able to get enough work not being able to satisfy your partner, the list goes on, but it creates a whole cascade of issues, which all of us should be empowered with the tools to decompress from. You know.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:17:08       Yeah. I'm a big believer that we don't have those tools at our disposal. We had them, but for some reason the driving forces in our society have made those tools seem less important. And you know, thank goodness we have practitioners like Sean and Kirsten here to help people get back to that. So, speaking of getting back, let's get back to some of your more of your training; you did the neuro therapy prolotherapy, real quick, what's in prolotherapy?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:17:35       I really like using prolotherapy because in osteopathic work, I'm trained to, and capable of, really getting the body mobilized and moving, and less restricted. However, I see a lot of hyper mobile people and I think that that's part of that sympathetic overdrive, is that, like, we become hyper flexible, especially women. We have these flexible ligamentous laxity and.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:18:06       Man, I wish I was flexible.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:18:06       Yeah, it's less so for men, but it's there too. And I find the men, really with like chronic, ongoing complex issues and infections and whatnot, they get that ligamentous laxity as well. I noticed it actuallyin a shared patient that Sean and I had down in Santa Monica. So in order to- I needed a tool in order to give back some integrity to the system, to kind of, into the matrix, to just make that system kind of stronger, not just strong muscles, but really the ligaments, cause we, we focus in on intraosseous and interosseous, bony kind of motion and the ligaments connect bone to bone, right? So prolotherapy aims to just poke at, and traumatize and pepper the ligamentous attachments to the bone just enough so that when they heal, they're a little bit thicker and a little bit stronger and a little can hold a little bit more integrity into the body as a whole.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:19:13       Yeah, no. I, you know, obviously, you know that we do Prolo, and I think the listeners are going to find it of interest because it's something that doesn't get really discussed a whole lot. And as a tool for pain and neuromuscular dysfunction, it's critical. And what you brought up is really the mainstay of why we do it. And that's for stability, and creating more strength amongst an area that we just can't go to the gym and exercise. The other thing with the neural therapy is that it's probably critical for anyone who's had surgery of any sort to go to a practitioner to have neurotherapy done, whether they like it or not, something's changed in their body and their body knows it and it may lead to other problems down the road.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:19:53       And the, the neural therapy you're talking about is the scar injections, right?

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:19:56       Yup, that's exactly it.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:19:56       Because the scars, if you have a transverse scar, it's gonna disrupt the energetic flow of your body, or bunch of different flows of your body.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:20:06       Sure. On the Meridian systems, and then additionally, your body is kind of like constantly distracted by that scar in terms of like, "Oh, do I need to keep healing this area?" And you're not able to pay attention to like things that you actually need to heal new wounds, new bruises, new illnesses that come up, and I think that it leads to a lot of confusion by the immune system.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:20:30       Yeah. It's tied closely, I think with the emotions as well. I think I've seen patients who we've treated and even with manipulation who've had very strong somata emotional releases where you'll manipulate somebody. I've done CV for techniques on people where they just, I just noticed my hands are of fluid and I'm like, "what is this?" And it's tears running down their face and you're like, "what is going on?" I'm first time I had that happened was when I was in fellowship at The University of New England and I was beside myself because I didn't have the tools then to deal with that. And it came up from a past molestation trauma of this patient. And it's amazing what our hands can do and pick up, and of course as we do this more and more we see that scars and specifically trauma like that can be tied into emotions that are kind of trapped. I mean, and until you treat it, you won't know, you know. But there's some people we do heal and a week later, and are like, "Wow, my mood has been so much better. I'm like feeling good and not getting those headaches anymore." And they notice some subtle improvements that they just kind of took for granted while I'm going to have headaches or I'm just going to kind of be in, you know, a sort of a sour mood. And that's just kinda how I roll until they'd get something like this.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:21:41       Yeah. That somatic emotional world is completely tied in to our body. And I think for me, that's what I've learned over, you know, all of the modalities, yoga and integrative medicine is, and what it keeps coming back to is that you have to address that last layer, which is probably the most important layer of psychospiritual, emotional. Yeah.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:22:10       Well, what's funny is, you know, my experience since going to burning man, I started doing emotional freedom technique, and so EFT and, and it's a very potent tool and the more you realize what you're doing with that tool the more it should be honored. And I think a lot of people have done it sort of loosey goosey in a sense. But what you can do is untapped, some pretty deep trauma in folks, and you need to know how to deal with that and it's one tool I think you can empower your patients with because they need something to go home with. And even if it is just a subtle tap saying, "Hey, listen, everything's going to be okay." Even though my monkey mind says, this, or, "somebody told me that," or, "My world's crashing around me." There's a way out because it's really not about what's going on externally, it's about what's going on internally because we're sitting right here under no duress. But with an active imagination very quickly. We could be under stress and we can be panicked and, and have a sympathetic response to something that isn't there but an illusion in our mind.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:23:09       Absolutely. Let's continue down the road of your training. What other trainings have you done?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:23:14       So the next training and the most recent training I've done is through the Klinghardt Academy. So Dietrich Klinghardt is a long time kind of talking head in the functional medicine world, and notably treats a lot of chronic infections and Lyme. And...

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:23:38       I'm honestly surprised he's still alive.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:23:38       Yeah, exactly.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:23:38       He's so contrary to Western medicine, and he has so many amazing philosophies and thoughts and treatment modalities. And so which one did you do with him?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:23:51       I feel blessed to have seen him in person because I really do think he's one of the greatest minds of our medical time. I went up to Seattle and I did the autonomic response testing, you know, level one through three, the basic A.R.T., which is his version of like a muscle test, but he calls it autonomic response testing. So he's taking it a step kind of upstream to the autonomic testing instead of just the kinesiology muscle testing. He also tests against typically muscle testing. Testing against a strong arm, but he tested against a weak arm because he thinks that, or that- he theorizes that a lot of the things that can contribute to chronic disease can actually activate the sympathetic nervous system toxins and traumas and whatnot. So testing against a strong arm, it's hard to tell when the arm gets a little stronger. They're mostly in muscle and kinesiologist testing until it goes weak. So that was his idea behind testing against the weak arm, which changes it to be a little bit different than standard kinesiology.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:25:08       And how long was that course?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:25:10       That was a week long course. And he did it like German style where you like start at eight and you like, don't go home until 10:00 PM.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:25:20       Wow.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:25:20       Yeah.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:25:20       That's a very intense...

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:25:22       Really intense, intense and in depth. And he was treating patients all day and, you know, his staff was helping in the morning and then he'd come and stay until like 10 or 11 at night just with us. He's really passionate about teaching, I can tell.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:25:37       And that's at the Sophia Institute in Washington, right?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:25:39       He works out of The Sophia Institute and he holds these classes at Bastyr.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:25:43       Oh, okay. Excellent. Excellent. So for the listeners, if you're interested Dietrich Klinghardt at the Sophia Institute, very interesting. Lots of great information there.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:25:54       Yeah. You know, I think that you've kind of gone down a little bit of a twisty trail here. Kind of talk to us a little bit about the style of your practice because this background is very unique.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:26:10       The style of my particular practice.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:26:11       Personal practice, yeah, how you care for patients, right now.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:26:13       So I am trained just like you guys in family medicine and I certainly use all of the tools and skills and knowledge of pathophysiology to inform my osteopathic treatments. But I generally practice 100% osteopathic, which means I use my hands on everybody who walks in the door, whether it's an acute ear infection or cold, or chronicyou know, complex illnesses or old, old, old back injury. I'm putting my hands on them to gain as much information as I can about the issue.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:26:54       So, I'm assuming that's kind of a lost art, like I don't imagine many, even osteopaths are pure osteopaths anymore. Is that correct?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:27:03       Yeah. It's like a secret society.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:27:05       You guys talk about the secret handshake, right?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:27:09       Yeah. Yeah. And unfortunately, I think the last time I heard of the statistic, only about 10% of graduating osteopaths use their hands at all, and less than 1% of us specialize, which means we do it on every patient.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:27:25       Wow, Interesting.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:27:27       And most of the osteopaths, DOs, are functioning just as any other MD. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then since learning prolotherapy and neural therapy, I incorporate that, when I see fit. And then additionally and what I'm most excited about right now is incorporating some of Dr. Klinghardt's testing, but I've used Paul Lee in Durango, I trained with him to use my osteopathic skills and the primary respiratory mechanism, which is something we're tuning into in everybody, to basically ask the body some questions and get an answer of what's really happening and what's priority to focus on.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:28:13       Can you explain that a little deeper?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:28:15       Sure. So Dr. Klinghardt has the seven factors that block regulation and lead to chronic disease, I've switched them around to nine factors, so they include infections structural imbalances, toxins like, psychospiritual. And so basically I'm using my hands to go through all of these potential things that could be causing this person's acid reflux or whatever they're coming in the door with. And I'm asking, putting my hands on their bodies, since my hands are so attuned to being on the body, I can ask a question and I can get an answer based on the response that the body gives me.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:28:57       And you get good results?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:28:59       It's like muscle testing, but the osteopathic version of it.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:29:02       But the whole body, top down?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:29:03       The whole body, yeah. Yeah. So, you know this is going to sound weird and maybe like discredit me, but like I had this TMJ problem the other day that I've been treating and treating and doing inter oral and doing all the structural things that I know and had been trained to do and decided to run through the nine nine factors. And a lot of this was something that she's been holding on, this patient had been holding on to, from, you know, a psycho-emotional realm.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:29:37       Like a previous trauma, mental, physical, whatever, it does matter?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:29:40       Yeah. And I don't know what that means to her, but I sent her home with it, and she's, you know, it'll heal her, and she can find maybe the right person to go to. I'm not interested in keeping people, coming back to my office, if I'm not even treating the right realm and psychospiritual, emotional, even though I'd love to be great at treating that, it's not my specialty. And so I'd rather have people, you know, sending them to the right place for the priority issue.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:30:11       Excellent. Awesome. That's good to be able to recognize your shortcomings and refer them to someone else who can, you actually did that for a patient of mine who had a chronic disease, and I had known that you had suffered the Lyme disease and I called you and you sent me, you referred, asked me to refer her to a doctor in South Lake. And so she has an appointment. She was, she's been out of the country for the last three months, four months, and she has an appointment in the next couple of weeks with her. So I'm really excited. Yeah, I'm really excited.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:30:45       So Dr. Dang in South Lake is a naturopathic doctor trained by Dr. Klinghardt and one of the Sophia practitioners.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:30:54       Yeah, that's maybe someone else we should have on here too. She'd be great.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:30:57       Yeah, absolutely.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:30:57       Yeah, she's awesome.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:30:58       So then your- tell us a little bit about- this is like he said, this has been kind of a windy, twisty road for you. What's the biggest lesson you've learned along this path?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:31:14       I think, the biggest lesson that has come definitely from my osteopathic teachers and, and you know, for a lot of like full on osteopaths, osteopathic work becomes like almost a lifestyle or a religion of sorts to them. For these old timers, you know, you just like start living this, this way that understands that the body is a whole and that, you know, we break down the body in med school and we dissect it and we learn how to treat each system separately and now it's time for us all to kind of bring it back together and into a unit that functions only as a whole. So like one of my teachers in Santa Monica who I got the chance to work with and study with for the last five years, you know, I think, he quotes Sutherland when he says the smallest viable part of the human body or living body. Like, the question is, what's the smallest part, viable part, of the human body? Sort of like a riddle. But the answer is that it's the whole. Yeah, we're not toady potent plants and we can't take an organ out, we can't take a finger off and it becomes its' own living entity. We need- we can take parts off and we can still operate as a whole, but that, that whole, we need the whole for any of the parts to work. And that 'whole' is comprised of much more than anatomical parts. And that's why I love osteopathy. Osteopathy acknowledges that there's a spirit and there's subtle realms in the biodynamic traditions that you can't see and you can't necessarily feel unless you train to feel.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:33:16       So it goes back to the whole mind, body, spirit, everything as a whole.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:33:19       Yeah, it's full circle. Like I lived in an ashram when I was 21, and I had a Bindi on my forehead and a spiritual name and like, you know, I was all about the spirit healing and, although that, that isn't everything all the time and you can't always pray your cancer away, but some people like have been shown that they can. It's not everything, but it's definitely a big part. I think of what we're, we're all, kind of, trained out of listening to.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:33:56       Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's something we're not really trained in traditionally in the sense that, hey, you know, that kind of stuff was always reserved in our puritanical world for the clergyman, for the priest to sort of deal with, or whoever had their, whatever religiosity head figured they would go to. But yeah, as clinicians, I think more and more, I think they're becoming awake to the fact that, chances are, based on the science we have, that our bodies are imbued with some sort of energy or spirit that we might not be able to clearly define or understand. But it's there and has to be acknowledged and it has to be worked with, you know, and there's people who seem absolutely normal but have a broken spirit and they will die. And without a will to live and with a broken spirit. That's, that's ICU level situation. And a lot of us don't have the tools to deal with that. So I know for myself, the patients I deal with, one of the first things I ask them when they're diagnosed or come to me with stage four cancers, I mean, do you have a will to live? And if you have a will to live, do you have a reason to live? What, what's driving you to be alive? And some people, they can't answer that and they don't know. You know, because I think a lot of times the story that's in their head is that, well, this is my diagnosis and maybe there's no, there's no way I can live, you know? And our goal is to sort of unwind that story and to find out what caused this and maybe give them a new purpose. You know,

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:35:14       You could wonder if that's like when, let's say someone's been married, a couple have been married for 75 years and you know, the husband dies and the wife dies four, five, six weeks later, right? Very similar.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:35:24       Right, right, or hours later, absolutely. I think, I think what happens is that there's such a integration of those energies that at the time of the physical passing of onethe other one kind of just will spiral out and want to leave, just doesn't have the oomph to stay around. And I've been in situations and I know some of my colleagues have where they've taken care of husband and wife duos and they've been in nursing homes or they've been in the hospital together and they do, they die within, you know, days, weeks, the hours, whatever. So I think there's something to that, that bonding that can occur between two souls, you know.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:36:05       So what do you consider to be your best medicine and what's your self care?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:36:11       Oh, good question. So, in the realm of staying whole, I like to attend to all of the parts of the whole. And the best way that I've found for myself to do that is through the practice of yoga. And my yoga practice has definitely evolved like most peoples' do out of the Asana, which is the poses and the touching your toes. And but more into the just bringing my energy back into a cohesive kind of unit. And that's more- that looks more like a meditation, but, I'm lucky enough that I get to have a job that I basically get to like meditate all day with people's bodies. So my job, unlike a lot of peoples' jobs actually, I think, keeps me honest with that practice and keeps me reminded that I need to, like come back into this body, which is so much more intelligent than anything our minds could come up with. Yeah.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:37:24       The funny thing that you brought up is sort of this meditation style practice. And so when I was in Colorado, I had a practice where we did, you know, 90%, it was cranial sacral and BLT work. Could you talk a little bit about that because we haven't touched on it yet. But there's a lot of power in that very subtle form of osteopathic therapy.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:37:44       Yeah. So I think that the biggest misunderstanding about osteopathy and on a basically a daily basis, I have to explain what osteopathy is, because nobody really knows when it is. And I'm always changing the definition based on my audience, but because it's also just so complex. But I think the biggest misunderstanding is that we are a musculoskeletal practice. And the way that I've understood it and been trained to understand it, is more that we as osteopaths use the body too, as a tool, to come back into that wholeness. And so it's the job of the osteopath to reunite that person with their own healing mechanism and we use the body and our hands to contact that wholeness. So it's not necessarily that- and you could use it from the hands, from the feet, from the head, from the neck but you're coming into that wholeness, and I think that's what sets us apart from other body workers who might be doing more direct work, like on a knot, if you're a massage therapist or pulling fascia if you're a Rolfer or you know, they're working maybe on one or two anatomical layers of the body. Whereas osteopathic, we're usually taking two or three layers of the body, bony fluid, fascia, visceral, and kind of spreading our attention through various layers of anatomy in order to actually- so, I'll explain it like this, maybe it'll be easier to understand. So if you pay attention, like if you've ever played baseball, have you guys ever played baseball?

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:39:38       Yeah, I grew up playing baseball.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:39:38       So, I grew up a tomboy, and I played a lot of baseball. So you're like playing catcher or you're, you're trying to figure out if somebody's gonna steal on first, and you want to make sure someone's not stealing on third. And so you're looking, you're looking at two things at once and you're not looking at either one. And that's basically what's happening in an osteopathic treatment. We're taking in information from different systems and we're just holding it in the awareness and the body's intelligence does the rest of it.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:40:11       So you may be working on, like say something, you know, a sinus infection or something like that and, but not working up here, you'd be able to be working down on the hip or something.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:40:21       I've been, you know, treating people on their toe and they'll say, "Oh, like you made my upper molar hurt just now." And like, there's no system that explains that. Not even, you know, Chinese medicine or anything like that where you're, you know, treating the diaphragm and all of a sudden your headache goes away. Or there's this, all these phenomenon happen during these treatments that are, aren't understandable unless you think, 'consider the body as a whole, all units.'

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:40:53       You brought up craniosacral, and I had some craniosacral done when I was living in Jackson Home, before that I had broken some bones off of my sternum, and so it was very unbalanced. You could see one pointing out sticking out more than the other. And I went and had this craniosacral work done, and I'm used to really good, hard, deep tissue massage, which you're great at, by the way. She's amazing body worker. And so this lady did this work on me for about 50 minutes and she goes, "Okay, we're done." And I was like, "you didn't really do anything to me." And then I stood up and looked in the mirror and the two points were back even. And I was completely blown away. I was like, "what the heck? Just happened right there." I have no idea how it works. But she, somehow she had adjusted me without even feeling like I got adjusted.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:41:43       I mean that's the, it's sort of the art form. I mean, I think we look at some of our teachers, you know, from the education through remotely, through Sullivan or through Sutherland and then through like Jim jealous, you know, Viola Fryman, there's lots of ways to kind of get to the end result. And I'm not sure if it was true craniosacral or balanced ligamentous technique or whatever was being done on you, but there's a lot of subtle work that gets done and just acting as the outside observer on the body. It starts the motion of the body responding to that observation. And so you can actually sit there and just be a quiet little good observer and the body will start to take care of business and will start to repair issues, and help that patient get onto a path of health. And we're not, you know, there's all these theories out there of why that happens; it could be that, just the connection of two energetic fields, you know, Jim jealous really relies on this sort of energy, fluid dynamic because, you know, we came from one cell basically, and then we became sacks within sacks, within sacks, within sacks, and there's these torsional fields in these sacks. And when you put any sort of attention into that fluid mechanism, then innately there's an intelligence there that starts to respond to that. I think we don't really know. But trust me, it's, you know, people don't keep coming back and utilizing these services because they don't work. It's because they do. So I'm not sure what your experience is, and have you ever spent any time with Dr. Jealous?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:43:08       I have, yeah. And Stephan Hagopian, who I worked with down in Southern California, is one of the teachers for his curriculum. So I've taken a lot of biodynamics through him as well. Yeah. It's something like, it's really interesting, the body, even if you're not even touching it, if you're just acknowledging the truth of what it is, and you're knowing that like, you know, the liver sits underneath the diaphragm and you're acknowledging that relationship, the body starts, it's almost like the body says, "Oh, this person really knows what they're talking about. I'm going to surrender to what the process is and get out of the way." Which is what we're trying to do as osteopaths as well.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:43:48       Right, yeah, don't make it worse.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:43:50       Because I mean, the human body is meant to run well, and it's meant to heal itself. It's pretty spectacular.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:43:57       Yeah, so, like, treating kids, they're like little sacks of water, especially the little newborns. So, you can't go in and say, "I want this bone to like move this way," or that way, because they don't even have those structures formed yet. And so they really respond well to this more biodynamic subtle approach that we're talking about. And so what, all it takes is really just inviting their body and waiting for their body to come back on to what we call a mid-line or an axis around which they're functioning optimally.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:44:34       And you can almost just encourage their energy to help them heal.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:44:40       Some people, some people can.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:44:42       I mean, if you, and I had the luxury of being treated by Dr. Jealous, that some level you don't, I can't explain, I have no idea what was going on. But basically he held my hand and adjusted my entire body through a handhold, which lasted about 15 minutes.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:44:57       Seriously?

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:44:57       And I felt, Oh, I felt like a rock star. I felt 10 years younger. I had super energy. My back pain went away. And we were, we were at a bar, actually it was a post AO conference and we just started chatting and then he just started talking to me about some of the stuff we just shared. And he's just gifted. He's gifted in so many ways and he's just such a gentle, loving soul. His presence is healing. Absolutely. So.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:45:18       I got the opportunity as a fourth year med student to get treated treated by Herb Miller who is like my teacher's teacher and I'm one of the old timers who's since passed away. But he, it reminded, your story reminded me- cause he basically just held my calf while I laid down on a table for, he had, he was like 80 something at that point. So he didn't have a lot of like extra Purana or anything, but he held my calf for like 10 minutes and I was like glowing for two weeks afterwards. And at that point I was like, this is, this is what I'm going to learn how to do. Like this is it.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:46:02       Yeah, it was funny, when I did my craniosacral training with Viola Fryman, that was a like some of these gurus that are there. And that's really kind of how we see them because they're just, they're amazing healers and body workers. And just to be able to have your- like I remember four people working like four people, probably 65 and older working on me at one time. And it's almost like you're levitated off the table. It's almost, it's amazing. I mean, someone's working on your, you know, your cranial mechanisms, somebody on your sacrum couple of people on your legs are holding your... Oh, it's mind boggling. I mean, it's really mind boggling. And this is, so people really will go to these, you know, yearly or every other year, these big gatherings to sit and learn from these folks but also experience their therapeutic work.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:46:50       Yeah. Talk about like how I keep myself healthy. I just show up to a osteopathic course. My friend Laura calls it going and sitting in the soup. You're just like in the room with all these people and you're just feeling some sort of light, lightness or lift. Yeah.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:47:12       Yeah. It's always good to go because it reinvigorates your passion for this kind of work. It's kind of funny. It's unique and it is, you know, we say secret society or club or whatever, but at the end of the day, I think people who are drawn to this work have a resonance, a certain kind of resonance. Because, I always find myself, when I can meet a brand new osteopath who does this kind of work, and we know, we just kind of do, just know that this is what's going on.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:47:37       I kind of feel left out right now, to be honest with you.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:47:39       Yeah. There's some MDs who have transferred over. Come to the dark side.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:47:46       Yeah. The funny thing is it's something you can learn, easily learn. And we had a guy from Tulane that came up, and when I was doing my fellowship, he was taking the OMT class just to get his hands honed, because all he wanted to do was neuromuscular medicine. And he was going into that arena no matter what. And he was, he sort of recanted, oh my gosh, I wish I knew, I had no idea until I hurt myself and was treated by an osteopath that this was even a possibility. And so it's really a sort of a conversion thing. And I was lucky enough to have osteopaths take care of me when I was growing up. And so I kind of knew that whole thing.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:48:20       I think one of the problems is that most people don't even know osteopathy and they think a doctor, it's just MD, MD, MD. I hadn't, before I went to med school, I'd never heard, and probably two or three years into med school, I'd never even heard of DO. So, what do you think that we're doing right in healthcare today?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:48:43       Hmm. We're certainly good at keeping people alive.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:48:47       Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:48:50       I'm grateful, you know Western medicine, allopathic medicine saved my mom's life and I still, you know, she's here visiting me right now and I wouldn't have gotten that time. She had a big brain abscess and would've died like 13, 15 years ago. So I think that the medicine has given us the technology to keep those hearts beating, and now it's time to make it worth while that your heart is still beating, you know? Yeah.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:49:29       Okay. And on the opposite spectrum. What do you think- I don't want to be evil and say, what we're doing wrong, but what could be improved in general medicine these days throughout across the U S?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:49:42       I think, you know, even my grandmother who died last year but had heart failure and was dying for like a year, she looked at me and she's like 91 or 92 at this point. And she's like, so they're not actually gonna fix my problem, they're just going to kind of make it better for right now. And I think every patient usually comes in to an osteopathic office understands like, wait, this is just sort of BS because like, they're not actually asking what the real problem is. They're just going to give me a medicine to cover this up. And I think that that runs rampant right now in our protocols and our systems. And we're running protocol driven medicine because we're afraid to get sued. And that reality really sucks.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:50:29       So you think it's just like, just bandaid medicine?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:50:31       Bandaid medicine.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:50:34       Yeah, it's not individualized. I mean there's no addressing the issue- is that you're unique. There's no other Robert Floyd's running around. And so you basically have an N-1 to work with. So you've got to know as much as you can about that subject in order to provide the best care possible. And you know, obviously the tool you're using Dr. Mackey is put your hands on, let's feel what the hell is going on here, right here and now. And a lot of us, how many times have you gone to see a clinician and they don't even touch you? They don't even shake your hand in some cases. I mean it's mind boggling

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:51:07       Yeah. Yeah. We've worked together with clinicians that they see their patients from the door. I mean, that's just ridiculous.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:51:15       Oh, I know. And I, I think you're absolutely right. That's one of the issues that we've sort of harped on here is that there's this sort of generic cookie cutter approach to a lot of medicine and in a lot of fields and there's not a lot of cross talk that we really should encourage between these specialists and an effort to provide the most comprehensive care for folks. And hearkening back to that Mayo Clinic documentary that Ken burns put together. It really is about having collegial teams that are having communication regularly about patient care and bringing everyone's expert to bear on that patient, as if that's the only thing that mattered was the patient and their outcome. And we're not, we don't do that. I mean we, and we do have to sort of, quote unquote, 'move the meat' and in some sense whether we're in the emergency room or we're in a clinic or a hospital, you have to get through a certain number.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:52:02       You need to explain that, that saying. Because people don't understand what the saying means.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:52:02       Yeah, the saying is referring to, there is a list or an agenda that you have to get through, which involves you engaging with patients in a way that's effective enough to deal with several issues. Or maybe it's just a singular issue and then you're getting onto the next patient because there's only so much time in the day and there's only so much time to document that encounter. And one of the most critical things that we're demanded to do is clear, concise and, you know, documentation that is going to be able to support our billings to a third party entity or the administration to do so for us, as we work for them, if we're not independently working for ourselves. So that's part of the picture. And 'moving the meat' is sort of a crass way of saying, we have to move through a certain number of patients in an effort to keep the clinic open, the hospital open, the ER going or just simply to have care given in a timely manner. And so it's a challenge and it's something that's sad. I mean, you know, for me in private practice I can spend two hours with the patient and it's not an issue cause I set my own schedule. However, when I'm in the hospital or from in the emergency room that's set up by somebody else or by random chance. So.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:53:12       Yeah. So you being involved, you've gone through, you know, the DO school and then you went into family medicine and you are on your twisty turny path, that's unlike in this field. How do you think we could improve medicine right now, for the masses? What kind of improvements could you see?

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:53:35       I'd like to see some more of all of this research money that's coming from pharmaceuticals be allocated to searching for answers and solutions to problems as they come up as each individual problem. Bio-Individuality is a big word in functional medicine and I really think like just out of convenience and for the sake of science we're operating on these like, well most like most of the bell curve is going to respond to this therapy. And I'd like for that research to expand out to these out of the box areas.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:54:21       The outliers.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:54:21       Yeah, exactly. And the fact that we all have a unique history that's caused these imbalances and to really start training the MDs and the DOs to see all of the story, and there's some really smart people, smarter than I am out there, who I'm sure could include this in our way of thinking about medicine; is, this person has like a life history that needs to be considered.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:54:59       Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think really honing in on that is important and obviously getting money to make that sort of work happen is critical because unfortunately that's what gets the wheel rolling.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:55:08       Totally. I'm not sure how to go about doing that.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:55:11       I think we're going to have to go to Black Rock City, I've talked to some of our mentors out there.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:55:15       Yeah, exactly. Our mentors.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:55:16       I think it's a greater problem than what we're going to solve in here.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:55:19       I don't think I can solve it, but I do know that I'm trying my best by you know, teaching as many med students as I can and I'm going to start teaching at the residency for those people who are interested in thinking outside the box. I think even in the holistic world, I've met some people in my own health journey who are still kind of operating like allopathic people in that kind of dynamic between patient and doctor that says, "I know what's happening to you and you need to do this." And I think we really need to change that dialogue and start recognizing that the patient who walks in the door has a unique story that we've never heard. Even though they might have the same labs and even though they might have the same pathogens that we really need to listen to it because their body and the patient themselves are going to probably tell us the answer.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:56:21       Yeah, I had a- in med school in Louisiana, I had a cardiologist, he was the director of the students and he was funny, he use to, probably smoke like a chimney, but he chewed Nicorette like it was going out of style. But he said over and over and over a good history and physical will tell you everything. And that's kind of going what you're saying. You know, you have to talk to the patient, you have to, you have to dig deep and ask about, you know, did you have childhood trauma? Did your parents smoke? I mean, and the, if you do a thorough history and physical, you're going to have the answers. It's not always the lab work or, "Hey, yeah, this person's just got this pathogen. So it must be this." But there's lots of other things that are important. And like you said, each individual.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:57:05       Yeah, you're right. The key thing you said was the patient will tell you what's wrong with him. And that's legitimate. I mean you, and in some cases you can ask, "Hey, what do you think's going on? What do you think?" "Well..." And then the wisdom starts to flow because their body knows and they say, and especially when it comes to cancer or specifically if somebody has been either in denial or not recognizing things, they'll awaken and say, "Hey listen, this is what I really think's going on." It's when you're able to have that transparent, authentic exchange that the work can get done, you know, but a lot of people, they are one of the biggest things that people come into the office with to see you as a physician is shame. And when you have too much shame, you will not be able to be authentic and you won't be able to share intimacies that you kind of have to be able to do in order for the good work of healing healthcare to be done. And, and a lot of times, you know, we're in the office, is there anything that can help you out with right? And for the male patient, it may be, "I'm not working as well as I used to" for the female patient may be like, "well, I think there's something going on down here." And it's the last talk that you may have after you dealt with, you know, the upper respiratory issue or the headache or something that's less intimate for them. And I think we have to learn to be able to hold this very gentle, loving, nonjudgmental space so that we can get to the truth. And so that these histories and physicals that we want to do and have happen can happen in a way that's comfortable for everybody. You know, but you know what I'm talking about. So.

 

Dr. Mackey:         00:58:30       I can't tell you how many people just are so appreciative, by the time they get to an osteopath, they've been to like 12 other people, but they're so appreciative that before I even have them on a table that we're just talking and they get to tell their whole story. And that is like the beginning of the healing.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:58:48       And, whether or not we like it, and I know this is something that we've trained to kind of pay very close attention to, is there is a relationship that becomes very apparent between a doctor and a patient. And it's hard to define because it's almost like mentor, educator, confidant, caretaker. And on a certain level, an intimate connector that's very unique and not in anywhere else in our society because we will go places where sometimes even their own intimate contact, their lover, their husband, wife, whatever, will not even have access to. And I think to have respect for that and to honor that in a way that's wholesome and authentic is critical for building these relationships you're talking about.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:59:33       I'm sure you've heard it before, "wow, you're the first doctor that's ever just sat there and listened to me." Right?

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:59:38       Super sad.

 

Dr. Floyd:          00:59:39       I hear it all the time, because, you know, unfortunately on average the average doctor interrupts their patient every seven seconds in an interview, and, which is horrible. So, I like to talk a lot most of the time, so I just kind of zip my lip and listen and say, and then I kinda guide them through what they may need. The questions I get, I need to get answered, but I hear it all the time. I'm sure you've heard that too. "Wow. You're the first doctor that just sat there and listened to me.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:00:08       Well, just yesterday, I was seeing somebody and they say, "Oh, we're running out of time, aren't we?" I said, "are we?" said, "this is your time? You tell me." I said, "I'm not sure we're here until you're done."

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:00:18       They're just expecting...

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:00:19       Yeah, I'm just like, "no, I'm not. I don't have wear a watch. I mean," so I'm like, "I don't know." So it's like, "I think we're good. Just, you know, let's finish this up and do so on your time-frame." Because I think their mentality is, "Oh my gosh, I just need to get in." And, and you and I, of course in a situation where we can spend hours with these patients. But, these folks who are in these sort of more mechanized clinics and hospitals, they don't, they just don't, and they're getting hustled out the door or the doctor is hustling out the door if somebody is in a hospital. And it's sad because some of these patients are in dire need of that connection. You know.

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:00:52       Desperate. And it's part of the reason why their autonomic are all messed up.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:00:57       Right, right. Yeah. And the other thing is I just was talking to a colleague of mine is, okay, you get to go to the ER, right? Not only you got a reason to go the ER, like something's going sideways or South fast, but you go into a place where you're kind of getting manhandled and you're getting poked and you're meeting new people and it's very abrupt and quick and they're systems that we're comfortable with as clinicians, that patients are like, "Holy moly, I'm getting deeper into this big box. I'm not sure where they're taking me." And suddenly you're in a dark room, they're shooting radio waves at you to take pictures. They're poking you to take blood. And by the time you're on the floor and in a bed and you have some friendly nurse introduced themselves, you're already got kind of PTSD and you're already suffering from the traumas of just getting to that bed where you're quote unquote safer. So I know that there's lots of places including the Mayo and others that are looking at how do we soften that experience? How do we make this so, like when you walk into an ER, it's like, "Oh my gosh, how are you doing?" And it's done so and in an inappropriate way versus sort of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So I don't know, we'll see. We have a lot of maturation to do when it comes to that.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:01:58       Good segue. And so then, what do you see, how do you see the field of medicine in 20 to 25 years?

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:02:04       I believe that the only way to go, and I think this goes for the world at large in terms of the political scene right now and just generally how the balance of- and I'm going to get hippy on you right now.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:02:22       That's okay, we like hippies.

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:02:22       But the general balance of masculine and feminine in the world is like in a great transition right now. Where men, even men who are more masculine in nature, are waking up to emotionality in the feminine and the flowing and the movement. And we're kind of like coming into this really cool time period of life history where I think there's going to be like a more, for lack of a better word, feminization and intuitive movement in medicine where we're tapping back in full circle, went full the other way, direction and scientific method and full circle back to like, let's go and feel what's happened.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:03:07       Well, there's a reason it's called MOTHER earth, right?

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:03:09       Yeah. Yeah. We use these terms all the time. Yeah.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:03:15       Yeah. There's certainly has been a lot of misogyny in medicine and it needs to certainly be tenderized. And even when I went through, I mean, I grew up in a household that was very conscious of treating people very kindly, compassionately. And when I see behaviors in the hospital of how people treat one another or how they might treat one gender over another gender, it's kind of appalling. And it's sad because it's still present. But getting better for certain, you know. And I don't know, as a woman training in medicine, did you kind of see the difference going through the ranks?

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:03:47       Yeah. It's interesting because I've always been more of a tomboy or masculine person or an even person. I can be kind of in either world cause I have like the scientific brain slash I feel and you know, you might identify those as masculine and feminine.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:04:10       You have the fluidity, you go to both.

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:04:11       Yeah, I'm pretty fluid and I've always been kind of described like that since I was a kid. But I would notice thatbecause I am here in a female body that people for sure treat me differently, and, yeah, I have short hair right now. And I didn't, I had long hair and in med school and then chopped it off, my fourth year, super short, and all of a sudden my attendings were like looking at me and listening and paying attention because I had different hair and I had taken the feminine kind of form out of me a little bit, the different hair.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:04:53       Wow, that's interesting.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:04:53       See, and you and I couldn't feel this because we weren't on that aspect.

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:04:58       No, I tried to keep my hair as long as possible and it still didn't help.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:05:03       Damn hippie. So let's finish this, finish this up. Unfortunately I need to be somewhere soon. But what pearl of medical wisdom, can you leave our listeners today?

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:05:10       Are our listeners mainly patients?

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:05:15       Everybody.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:05:15       Everybody, the world. What's your message? What's your pearl to people?

 

New Speaker:        01:05:19       I would say my pearl is to keep developing your intuitive forces cause they're gonna lead you to the right practitioners and the doctors who are listening, they're going to lead the right patients to you that you're going to know exactly how to help. Or they're gonna, they're gonna going to lead the right patients to you who are going to challenge you in the ways that you need to be challenged and grow. And so developing your own spiritual and intuitive body.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:05:53       Awesome. Awesome.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:05:57       Yeah, this has been amazing. So as you know, there was much love for you,

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:06:00       Much love.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:06:00       And the good work you're doing.

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:06:02       Thank you guys.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:06:03       Obviously we want to continue this conversation another time and in fact maybe go into more detail about some of the good work you're doing. So can you kind of remind our listeners where you're at right now and possibly how they might find you?

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:06:14       Sure, I'm up in Truckee, California. I'm working out of a wellness studio slash yoga studio downstairs called Namaste. Standard. And I can be contacted through DrKirstenMackey.Com, you can see all the services and things that I'm doing and contact me that way.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:06:37       Perfect.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:06:38       We're very grateful to have you here. Thank you.

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:06:40       Thanks you guys for inviting me.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:06:42       Of course, and we'll have you back. If you liked the podcast, please go on and rate it, like it. If you didn't like part of it, please give us some constructive criticism on how we can improve it. If you liked it, please rate it high. Please share it with everybody who you think might be interested.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:06:58       Great. Thank you guys so much for joining us here on The Medicine Wheel and we look forward to catching up soon, Namaste.

 

Dr. Mackey:         01:07:03       Namaste.

 

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