Ep#101 Mind Body Soul Medicine – With Kristin Grayce McGary, Health & Lifestyle Alchemist

0 (1s):
Welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition podcast, where you’ll discover that when it comes to your health, you’re so much more powerful than you’ve been led to believe. And now your host, she’s a holistic nutrition and lifestyle coach, chef author, and Yogi, Christine Okezie.

Christine Okezie (23s):
Hello and welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition podcast. I’m Christine Okezie. Thanks so much for listening today. Today’s special guest is a truly remarkable integrative health practitioner, artfully bridging the gap among Western medicine, functional medicine and Asian medicine in order to facilitate personalized healing at the level of the body, mind and soul. She is Kristin Grayce McGary, an internationally recognized author and speaker, and she’s an authority on auto-immunity thyroid and gut health, alleviating pain and extreme exhaustion. She offers more than two decades of education, clinical experience and wisdom to her patients weaving literally dozens of modalities, including advanced craniosacral therapy, functional blood chemistry analysis, Soma to emotional release, psychosomatic therapy, brain healing, sound healing, ancestral work, plant medicine, and more.

Christine Okezie (1m 19s):
Kristin Grayce is the author of “Holistic Keto for Gut Health, A Program for Resetting Your Metabolism”, “Know Your Blood, Know Your Health Prevent Disease and Enjoy Vibrant Health Through Functional Blood Chemistry Analysis” and her new upcoming book “Blocks to Healing In Our Uplifting Conversation.” Kristin Grayce shares her passion for helping people get to the root cause of health imbalances by embracing the whole ecosystem of our being from the importance of intestinal health, gut repair and food, as medicine to working with our mental and emotional patterns to connecting with our soul’s guidance. She’s an inspirational example of how integrative medicine can be an empowering path to healing in all aspects of our lives.

Christine Okezie (2m 5s):
So I can’t wait for you to listen in, and if you do enjoy it, I’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to visit apple podcast, leave a rating and review. And if you haven’t already subscribed to the podcast, please do so. It helps me keep the messages growing. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the episode. Hello, Kristin Grayce. It’s a pleasure to have you here. Welcome to the podcast.

Kristin Grayce McGary (2m 26s):
Thank you so much, Christine, for having me.

Christine Okezie (2m 29s):
So to start, I’d love. If you could please share your personal story that put you on the path to do this amazing holistic healing work that you do. Such a great story of transformation.

Kristin Grayce McGary (2m 40s):
I have a picture in my clinics for many, many years of me when I was two years young with my aunt’s stethoscopes, she was a nurse and I’m taking the pulse of my grandmother on her forearm. Even though I know you listen to a heartbeat on the chest, something in me wanted to take it on her forearm. And many, many years later, one of my teachers said, you know, and grace, that’s where the Tibet and doctors take pulses. And I had no understanding previously of that. So there was something always in me.

Kristin Grayce McGary (3m 20s):
I always wanted to be some kind of doctor. I knew I was wired in a way to be of service in that way. Yes. And I started really looking at nutrition when I was a teenager and started competitive bodybuilding and, and looking at food in a totally different way. And I was vegan for a long time and vegetarian. And then I got really, really sick. And I was pre-med. I had been an EMT in the emergency room and was on the path to becoming a Western medical physician. And I could not get out of bed. I couldn’t imagine doing a 36 hour shifts in the hospital.

Kristin Grayce McGary (3m 60s):
I don’t know. I, I didn’t know how I was going to do it. That helped me find this particular path. So it was certainly a gift and strange wrapping eventually. You know, I went from doctor to doctor trying to figure it out and it was insane. And many of the doctors told me that, oh, this is just in your head. So they’d send me to a therapist. I go to the therapist, the therapist would say, well, there’s clearly something seriously wrong physically, please go back to your doctor. And like, I felt like a yo-yo and I was confused and frustrated and sad. And I felt like my body was betraying me. Like I was being hijacked.

Kristin Grayce McGary (4m 40s):
And I wanted to understand, I wanted to quote unquote fix it. And that’s how I began my path of, of where I am now and, and how I help people is because I had to do it for myself. And I had to get to the root, I really valued Western medicine and how they could treat symptoms. But that often made me personally sicker and made me worse. And, and so I discovered that there’s something below symptoms. There are many different kinds of root causes and even ancestral genetic lineage affects impacts that are variables in our healing.

Kristin Grayce McGary (5m 22s):
I had unresolved trauma. I had lots of heavy metal. I had mercury in my mouth and had a lot of neurological issues. I was eventually diagnosed with quote-unquote fibromyalgia, which is an interesting term. That means muscle pain, right? Yeah. It’s a catch all. It’s like a wastebasket term. They don’t know what to do with you. So they say you have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. And so I began to get to the root of this and, and dig deep. I had an unresolved virus that no one had talked to me about. I had a car accident. I was date raped, had a of trauma that was locked in my tissue in my nervous system.

Kristin Grayce McGary (6m 2s):
And when I began to uncover that and I found I had food sensitivities and I had genetic celiac disease, and I had all this stuff. And, you know, I have to say it’s, at times it was overwhelming and I would just drop to my knees and pray. And just like, please show me what I’m missing. Show me the next step, because I am lost. And by now I was in Asian medical school. I had transitioned from Western medicine and, and moved into Asian medicine and began studying biological medicine with some of the most brilliant German physicians in the world. I was studying dark field microscopy. I was studying advanced cranial sacral therapy and somato emotional release and electrodermal screening.

Kristin Grayce McGary (6m 48s):
And so many things, I was just a spiral, hungry the information, the knowledge, so I could internalize it and embody it and heal myself and then begin to share it with others. And it did. And through all that, I was a single mom and

Christine Okezie (7m 6s):
There’s that

Kristin Grayce McGary (7m 7s):
There were different parts moving parts that I developed an incredible capacity in my soul had such will and determination that I, I couldn’t give up. I call it the choiceless choice. So here I am.

Christine Okezie (7m 27s):
Yes. Oh my gosh. Isn’t that amazing how life gives you its own classroom. You really, you know, to, to, to just, you know, say, okay, you know, here’s a, here are all these experiences and you know, if you really aligned with what lights you up and what, you know, you’re, you’re just going to go deep and kind of break from convention, you know, and question amazing things happen. Right? Amazing things happen. Oh my gosh. So I was, you know, my next question was going to be like, you know, people because you are so versed in many healing modalities and look to integrate and serve whatever shows up, you know, getting to root root cause for folks, you still come back to the gut, you still come back to sort of, you know, all things go back to that, you know, ancient saying all disease begins in the gut.

Christine Okezie (8m 23s):
Right. And I think that’s a great place where you probably found the interlap between Eastern and Western medicine, at least Western medicine. Now just in the last 30 years, it’s finally talking about the same stuff, right? So I’d love if you could, you know, shed some light for us. There’s a lot of talk about keto and paleo and primal and even functional medicine. We’re going to work on the gut, work on the gut. You know, what is unique about the conversation that you want to have to folks who kind of know that they should be paid attention to their gut health, but really why does it matter? Like in your own words,

Kristin Grayce McGary (9m 1s):
I think the gut is super important. And coming back to the gut, the enteric nervous system, which is separate from our central nervous system is very important. But I think the unique, my unique approach is that that’s not the end all. I think, I think that my approach is more holistic than that and that there are emotions associated with the gut, that there are ways of being in the world. There are ways of thinking that impact our total health and gut health and how we interface with the world around us.

Kristin Grayce McGary (9m 44s):
So we have this microbiome in our gut, we have more genetic material from bacteria in our gut than we do human genetics and our full body. Yeah. We have pounds, My probes

Christine Okezie (10m 6s):
We’re a walking petri dish.

Kristin Grayce McGary (10m 9s):
It is mind blowing and it’s so beautiful. And, but it’s not just in us. It’s the world around us, Dr. Zach Bush talks about this, that the microbes in our environment, the bacteria, the viruses, the conversation that we are having like inner species with our environment and ourselves and our gut microbiome is critical to our existence and how we thrive. And then when we bring in toxins, stressors, chemicals, heavy metals, emotional stressors, five G ancestral or genetic blips and central stressors.

Kristin Grayce McGary (11m 1s):
Wow. Now we have this incredible dynamic mix of variables that may be triggering a biochemical response that we have disconnected from. That is a language. I think these responses, this reactions, these symptoms in our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our gut, our lives are actually are, are actually a language that we can learn to listen to

Christine Okezie (11m 33s):
Such a bigger map of, you know, to work with when we talk about how to take care of ourselves, right. What do you believe is the big missing piece then when people start to have conversations about, you know, Quito and taking care of our gut, Cause it can sounds, it can be someone listening. It might sound like, well, where do I begin? This is really daunting, right? It’s

Kristin Grayce McGary (12m 1s):
Yes, you’re right. And fortunate and unfortunate. I think it’s individualized. What the missing key is. I think that each person has a different missing key. I do think that some people attached to a dog and lack curiosity, I think curiosity in our healing curiosity and how we think, how we judge things, how we see the world, what our beliefs are, how we feel. I think people are lacking curiosity and they get set in a way that this is the only way this is the right way.

Kristin Grayce McGary (12m 45s):
And then this causes a massive disconnection, a disconnection from self, a disconnection from other the world around us. So I think a lack of curiosity and openness is perhaps one of the blind spots in humanity that has an impact.

Christine Okezie (13m 4s):
Wow. Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I think that really is it’s that open mindset. It’s the ability to kind of, you know, get out of your own way sometimes, you know, so that we can find, you know, different paths that again, no one size fits all. And so right there that I think is one of the biggest limiting beliefs, you know, is like, well, it just needs to eat this and stop eating that and take a bunch of supplements and everything will be okay. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristin Grayce McGary (13m 31s):
And this is the thing with Keto. So my Keto is different. My version of Keto is holistic and geared towards healing, the gut, which modulates immune function. And there is a epidemic of auto-immune issues. Some people have autoimmunity, which is pre disease state. And some people have full-blown autoimmune diseases. And other people have immune dysfunction, which could lead to autoimmune issues or cancer, other immune problems, allergies, et cetera. And so for me, a holistic approach to Quito felt more in alignment with my philosophies of integration and individuality.

Kristin Grayce McGary (14m 22s):
And so I have a book on this that people can get more details in my book called “Holistic Keto for Gut Health, A Program for Resetting Your Metabolism”. And even if you’re not full keto, it’s an incredible book on how to heal the gut, looking at the emotional aspects. And also there’s journaling and exercises on exploring yourself and your beliefs and patterns and behaviors around food. And how do we use food and what’s food really about to us and what did we learn from our family of origin and how do we use it as a strategy for soothing emotions and et cetera, et cetera. So the book more than just like, Hey, eat this, don’t eat that.

Kristin Grayce McGary (15m 2s):
But there is that in it too, it has a mixture of Asian medical perspectives and functional medical perspectives and some integral theory from Ken Wilber and some recipes. And so it’s, it has a little bit for everyone.

Christine Okezie (15m 19s):
It does, it is a beautifully written, actionable guide. You know, that really, it feels like you’re holding our hand through all the different components that you want us to see when it comes to, you know, looking at, you know, what, what, where we’re out of balance. So it’s, it’s a beautiful piece of work. And I would love if you could just maybe take us through, you know, not enough practitioners really understand. I think the real connection between trauma, you mentioned emotion, suppressed emotions, body, weight, body, shape, you know, can you give us some, you know, things that you recommend, you mentioned relationship with food. I mean, is that where people should start?

Christine Okezie (15m 59s):
You know, when they are, let’s say, I just really like in the place that you were at one point in your life just really overwhelmed with, I don’t know what I’m doing. Right. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. You know, where I always find out the reason I asked this question is because right away as a practitioner, you can say, oh wow, you can look at the things they’re eating. And you can say, you know, those are probably irritating your gut causing some inflammation, but they client, the person may not be ready to make all those changes or many of those changes because of sort of just their relationship with food, their relationship with their bodies. Right. So how do you work with them?

Kristin Grayce McGary (16m 35s):
Yeah, this is such a good question. Thanks for asking Christine. Because in my experience, if someone is really having a challenge shifting or upgrading their nutrition, I want them to be more resourced. I want them to have more empowerment and support. And sometimes that empowerment and support comes with like one-on-ones with a healthcare provider or a nutritionist. Nutritionalists like yourself, someone who’s an accountability buddy or someone who is not going to shame them around food and teach them a new way of looking, asking questions, how to get curious. And I think once we shine light on old patterns or trauma and it co it moves from our unconscious to our conscious.

Kristin Grayce McGary (17m 23s):
Now we have more choice and we’re not just being driven by these old patterns. So I think being resourced, getting support, getting more resources, like reading my book or reading other people’s books on these different topics, I think are super important. And then starting with baby steps, some people I work with are like, Hey, I need baby steps. Great. Other people are like overachievers. Like I used to be in there, like, Hey, give it to me all and I’ll do this, you know, so I really can meet people wherever they are and, and empower them from that place. And I think this is key, and this is part of what I think some practitioners miss that they have like only one way of working.

Kristin Grayce McGary (18m 10s):
Right. And so then people fall through the cracks. So I would invite practitioners to get curious also about ourselves and how we’re working with people. And it’s important to find our niche, to also be able to meet our people right. Where they are, and then take them right to the edge of discomfort And challenge them just enough to help them grow and evolve and, and level up.

Christine Okezie (18m 40s):
Yeah, no, I couldn’t agree more again, it’s a very individualized, personalized approach. Right. And that’s the very first thing you have to start with. I think there’s people who get to a certain point. It’s my experience that they’ve tried everything, right. They’ve tried quote, unquote, you know, all the, all the stuff that your, all the shiny stuff, all the stuff that they’re supposed to be trying and working, and it just doesn’t work. And so I always meet people from this place of like, well, you know, I, I’m not, there must be something wrong with me. Right. And I think you can, your story relates very well, which is, you know, you feel like you’re bouncing back and forth, you know, from practitioner medication side effects of medications. And I think your approach working with a functional approach, working with an integrated approach is absolutely key because you’ve got to peel back the layers sometimes of all the effects of the treatments that have been happening.

Christine Okezie (19m 31s):
I mean, I find that’s a huge problem too. You know, just the side effects, just the side effects or they’re taking pet folks walk in with a spreadsheet of supplements and they don’t know if it’s working, but they’ve been told to take a whole bunch of them. Right. So there’s a little bit of detective work going on here.

Kristin Grayce McGary (19m 48s):
Exactly. It’s, they’re guessing people are guessing. Practitioners are guessing, and, and this is why people get lost. You’re like, well, I tried this and I tried that, but no one was listening to how their body and soul, like the order that their body and soul wanted to peel off those late those layers. And they weren’t paying attention to the details. And they were just kind of doing broad strokes, like, oh, well, if you just go gluten free. Well, yeah, there are a bunch of other foods that cross-react with gluten and will act just like gluten in your body. So going gluten free, isn’t always enough. You have to actually detail it in for your individual biochemistry. So I think that people who say they’ve tried it all, I love them.

Kristin Grayce McGary (20m 32s):
I love you if you’re listening. Cause I was one of those people. And what I found is that I tried it all, not in the right order, Not for long enough and not with the right guide and support.

Christine Okezie (20m 48s):
Yes.

Kristin Grayce McGary (20m 48s):
And then I realized I hadn’t tried at all that there were 25 other things I didn’t even know about that I couldn’t drive. And then I began listening in a new way to what was best for me and my body and my life and my health goals and my emotional wellbeing. What was good for this being And, and getting guidance and help from my teachers to learn the language of the symptoms in my body to decipher that, to peel off the layers in my own unique way. And then I got results.

Christine Okezie (21m 28s):
Yeah. Yeah. Certainly self-awareness, you know, I always say is sort of the, the, you know, the superpower when it comes to really reclaiming, you know, sovereignty in your body and in regard to your health and everything, it’s just a curiosity plus self-awareness, you know, and then I’m going to add in, cause you talk about it in your books. So beautifully with regards to folks who are trying to understand, you know, our food issues. Self-compassion, you know, this, this is really, I think, another missing piece and it gets a lot of lip service, you know, but it really is medicine and it’s absolutely a doorway to be able to access all of these other paths, which takes some work.

Christine Okezie (22m 8s):
So, you know, if you’re not able to take care of yourself with kindness and patience, some of the things we’re going to need to do to heal ourselves require, you know, some resilience, right.

Kristin Grayce McGary (22m 21s):
It is. It’s so true. It’s so true. I think also, as you were speaking, what came to mind? It’s actually the top of my fourth book. I finished my third book, but it’s not published yet and I want to self publish it. And it’s very exciting. It’s on blocks to healing.

Christine Okezie (22m 36s):
Okay. Let’s go there. Yeah.

Kristin Grayce McGary (22m 39s):
So I definitely want to go there, but what came to mind is what my fourth book is about, which isn’t totally written yet, but I got the download for it and that’s how I’m paying and, and the spiritual aspects of pain. And so often in our culture, so many people I work with have some kind of pain, physical pain, emotional pain, trauma, psychological pain, spiritual pain, push it away. We’re taught pain is bad, push it away, get rid of it. Yuck. We’re not taught to build a capacity, build a capacity to work with it. That pain is actually a kind of medicine more.

Christine Okezie (23m 18s):
Absolutely.

Kristin Grayce McGary (23m 19s):
And so teaching people, empowering people, giving people the tool or the tools for them to lean into the edge of pain and use it, flip it into medicine often, quickly alleviates the pain.

Christine Okezie (23m 35s):
Yes. But that is deep work, you know, around being gentle with yourself about being trusting yourself, of being able to hold yourself through that. Right. Absolutely. I couldn’t agree

Kristin Grayce McGary (23m 47s):
To the self-compassion.

Christine Okezie (23m 48s):
Yes, it does. It does. And it’s, it’s also why, you know, with all the wonderful miraculous things that Western medicine has to offer, it kind of really misses the boat on that one because it feeds into that tendency to make it go away. So, you know, have a headache, pop a pill for a pill for every ill, you know, and again, it can be very useful and beneficial, but if that is our tendency for everything, right, we can see how quickly, you know, again, talking about just the layers of side effects of pharmacology and all of it, you know, layer up on that.

Kristin Grayce McGary (24m 24s):
Yeah. I stopped calling them side effects. I call them other effects. They’re not really side effects. There is no side effect of Western medicine. There are other effects of the drug, but the pharmaceutical companies say, oh, well it’s a side effect. Cause they want to minimize psychologically minimize their impact. But actually they are other affects of the drug. And they are just as potent and often harmful as, as you know, the opposite of why you might be taking it, you know? So I call them other effects.

Christine Okezie (24m 58s):
Yeah, no, I think that’s much more accurate. That’s much more accurate. So I have, you know, a fair number of folks who I’ve worked with, who come through the door of a weight loss or digestive issues, you know, or nighttime habits around who they want to shift. And those are important things because they are, you know, but they’re the symptom, as I always say, and we always end up doing work around that to get to really what is the underlying sort of behavior and thoughts and mental patterns behind that. And so by the end of our program, the transformational benefits go way beyond the actual habit, whether way beyond the actual calories or the shape of their body, it’s, it’s really, you know, much different.

Christine Okezie (25m 41s):
It’s just something where they’re, they, they learn to like themselves more exactly how they, how they are. And as a result, they take better care of themselves. And as a result, their symptoms kind of get better too, you know?

Kristin Grayce McGary (25m 53s):
Yes. So I’ll share something along those lines. So I also am a psychosomatic therapist. So I do face reading, body reading, hand and foot reading, and also pastoral corrections that the soul expresses itself through the structure. So I don’t believe in weight loss because when you lose something like you lose your keys, you want to find it again. And so the words actually impact our psychology and our unconscious. So I believe in releasing weight,

Christine Okezie (26m 25s):
Yes,

Kristin Grayce McGary (26m 26s):
Releasing excess tissue and often emotions are stored in excess tissue. So I had a woman recently from corporate. She is a go getter and a main thing. She is the matriarch of her family. And I do these private one-on-one retreats for days. And people come and stay with me and Costa Rica and their entire life changes it’s full on. I pull out all the stops and this woman was a strong, yes. She was like, no, I’m ready to really change my life. And she was, and she came in and she had a lot of excess tissue and she had intra an interesting relationship to food and self-soothing and using food to check out of her really hard, corporate driven days where she was one of the only women in the room of really hardcore corporate kind of driven men.

Kristin Grayce McGary (27m 24s):
And so one of her checkouts was food and she would sooth herself and reward herself with food. And she also had a lot of pain. She had joint pain in her body. She had a lot of bloating. She had some brain fog and thyroid stuff, stuff with her. And she came in and we got to work and she began to peel off these really old layers. And this is someone who has resources and support and has done a lot of work. And she still instantly dove down and found new layers to peel off.

Kristin Grayce McGary (28m 8s):
And we went very, very deep. She would sometimes say, okay, we just worked for three hours. I need to look great. And so I’d help her integrate. And I’ve been doing integration calls with her right after, after our five days together because everything changed. I mean, her body changed her mind changed to relationship with food changed. But the real test is when you go home.

Christine Okezie (28m 35s):
Right. Great. And you gotta, you gotta do life. You gotta try it on.

Kristin Grayce McGary (28m 39s):
She went and then her husband went into a two week program to do a juice cleanse and start looking at his relationship to food.

Christine Okezie (28m 51s):
Yeah.

Kristin Grayce McGary (28m 52s):
And then her grandkids started to shift food And, and, and their sleep patterns even. And then she started to change how she would eat with her family because she noticed the way they were doing it didn’t actually work for her. And it triggered some old stuff. So she started to find a new way of being around food and self nourishment, self sustenance. And I just had a conversation with her and she shed released almost 20 pounds in a month.

Christine Okezie (29m 34s):
Wow.

Kristin Grayce McGary (29m 34s):
And getting she’s not

Christine Okezie (29m 37s):
Right. Right. Yeah.

Kristin Grayce McGary (29m 38s):
It’s that she’s becoming embodied around all the work we did. And that’s going to take some months to really embody all the pieces, but she, she cleared some old trauma from her tissues and recognized she was using some of the excess tissue to protect

Christine Okezie (29m 59s):
Herself. Absolutely.

Kristin Grayce McGary (29m 60s):
And when that memory came up and out, and she was aware of the little girl inside of her, that was just wanting to eat sugar cause she’s scared and hurting

Christine Okezie (30m 11s):
And she

Kristin Grayce McGary (30m 12s):
Could see it from her adult perspective. She didn’t have to give it so much power anymore. Huge, huge ahas and transformations. We went incredibly deep and guided meditation work and a whole lot of things.

Christine Okezie (30m 29s):
I love it.

Kristin Grayce McGary (30m 30s):
So this is one example that’s coming to mind.

Christine Okezie (30m 33s):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you pull that all the stops because that’s exactly it, right. When we have the, the broader understanding of what, you know, what our design is, you know, of what really influences, you know, how the body’s function, how our minds and our bodies interact. It’s potent, it’s potent because, and, but to your point, it’s, it’s, it’s a level of commitment. And that’s what I always want to kind of shine is that You got to hit that point where you believe that you want to get to the bottom of it. You know, you want to actually not, it’s not just about how you look, it’s not even about, you know, what you weigh and all that. That’s nice, but that’s not enough.

Christine Okezie (31m 14s):
Right. You have to understand like this woman did probably that my life is going to change in ways that I can’t even foresee and I’m ready for that. Right.

Kristin Grayce McGary (31m 22s):
And that you don’t have to do it alone.

Christine Okezie (31m 25s):
Getting the right accountability and support is

Kristin Grayce McGary (31m 29s):
I’m available for those for my people. You know? So I think this is key. So I think I used to talk about the four CS and talk about curiosity around our health. Talk about self care, caring, talk about self-compassion and talk about commitment

Christine Okezie (31m 48s):
A hundred percent

Kristin Grayce McGary (31m 48s):
And that we owe it to ourselves. That is so, so often I’ll just speak to women generally for just a moment that so often we fall into a pattern of giving.

Christine Okezie (32m 1s):
Yes.

Kristin Grayce McGary (32m 1s):
And it’s not selfless it’s because we get kind of screwed up unconscious validation and self-worth, if we’re giving too much of ourselves,

Christine Okezie (32m 12s):
Yeah. That runs deep.

Kristin Grayce McGary (32m 15s):
Society origins, giving, giving, giving gifts until we are depleted. And so it’s important to recommit, to refueling ourselves and, and how we do that can really take us to our edge. And it can be confronting at times of some of the old strategies of protection we have created around self care and around our health and around our food and our self nurturance and around our relationships. And I think as women, it’s important to acknowledge this and honor it and love these parts of ourselves and to come together, to come together and support each other and empower each other and lift each other up around these topics.

Christine Okezie (33m 6s):
I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more again, it’s this is why when we talk about health, right. And I love this, you do this in your work, you know, health in Western society, as you’ve said, is, is, you know, the absence of disease, right? The absence of sort of, you know, physical dysfunction, you know, on some level of our being. But when we really work on, okay, wait, what really is health? Like people say, I want to be healthy. I’m committed to my health. I think it’s even that much more, it’s a great place to start. Well, let’s think we all have these beliefs about what being healthy means, you know? Right. So how would you define health?

Kristin Grayce McGary (33m 44s):
Well, I love what you’re bringing up. This is so key is to find what is our own definition of health. And it’s more than the absence of disease, right? This is so key because in Western medicine we’re trained that health is the absence of disease. If

Christine Okezie (33m 59s):
You have a good lab report, I have a good lab report. You’re good.

Kristin Grayce McGary (34m 3s):
Right? Like, and what’s so ironic about the good lab report is that those reference ranges on the lab where they say, it’s good, both reference ranges, quote, unquote, normal are actually based, mostly on sick people.

Christine Okezie (34m 16s):
I know.

Kristin Grayce McGary (34m 17s):
Or a test insert, not even a group, a large group of healthy people. So it delicious, or they’re like, whoa, what are our markers of health? And, and that, it’s, it’s more than just the absence of disease. To me, health is about connection. It’s about our capacity to thrive. Health is about our resiliency is about homeostasis. This constant balance act then goes on biochemically, but also emotionally and spiritually to how do you know, going back to the gut, how are we consuming?

Kristin Grayce McGary (35m 1s):
How do we take in the world around us and our relationships and food and nature and stress and chemicals. How are we digesting? What is going on in the world right now? These are all aspects of health. How are we emotionally? Are we anxious? Or we depressed. This is part of our health. Are we having friends that are superficial or do we go deep? Are we go, go, go fast cars, fast food, fast relationships like speed dating, Casper courts, fast money. Are we like, go, go, go fast. Is that, is that what we consider health? And can we get curious about the impact of that on our curious and honest with ourselves about the impact of that on our bodies and our minds and our relationships in society.

Kristin Grayce McGary (35m 53s):
So these are all aspects of health, our connection to nature. Are we living in a concrete jungle? I am so blessed to spend most of my time in Costa Rica in the jungle. I live on a river. Yeah.

Christine Okezie (36m 8s):
Yeah.

Kristin Grayce McGary (36m 8s):
I go, when I sing and I, I get in the river almost every day, I listened to the birds and I, I sit in nature and I breathe fresh air. And even if you’re in a concrete jungle, can you find a tree? Can you get your feet on the earth? And in the grass, can you connect to the bird outside your window? Yes. Connecting to nature is such a huge part of health. And we, we forget. And so all of these pieces kind of make up my, my eclectic definition of it.

Christine Okezie (36m 47s):
Yeah. It’s a dynamic, you know, relationship integrated, interconnected, you know, very broad, you know, way to look at it, you know, and as a result, then we have this, you mungus menu on how to feel better and how to take care of ourselves, you know, as a result of that expansive definition of health, I love it. So I would love to ask you just shared a little bit about, you know, your kind of day to day and environment and how that influences, how you take care of yourself. But what would you say are the not knowing everything, you know, the experience that you have, people, you know, struggling with, you know, very common and auto immune system issues, immune system issues in general, what are the non-negotiables in your self-care toolkit and ones that you say you really should, you know, look at these, highlight these.

Kristin Grayce McGary (37m 39s):
Well, I can give you my non-negotiables, but those will be different for others. I wouldn’t have presented, I wouldn’t project these on to patients unless they’re showing me they’re ready. And I check in, I believe in a team approach, right? So I may be a healthcare provider, but I work as a team with my patients. I don’t want them giving me all their power, so to speak. I’m not all knowing I’m mission. I believe that actually you and your body in your soul knows much better about you than I do. And it’s my job to listen to it and translate it for you and help you listen to it in a new way. So my non-negotiables for me, maybe different for other people, but I can give you some for me.

Kristin Grayce McGary (38m 20s):
And then I can give you some that have come up with patients, if that would be helpful. So being in nature, living in nature to me is non-negotiable now I have to live in nature. And I understand that is not for everybody and that some people’s work life and family life. You know, my kids are older, so I can do this now. And so for me, it’s a, non-negotiable, it’s not for everyone For me. I will never ever, ever, ever, ever put a poison in my body knowingly. That means I will never, ever, ever put even a crumb of gluten or a process, toxic chemical food, or genetically modified food into this beautiful vessel.

Kristin Grayce McGary (39m 17s):
I just won’t do it. I’m not gonna put dairy or coffee into my body. I’m not going to put alcohol into this body. I just won’t do it. Those are non-negotiables for me. I just, my body speaks to me. My body tells me what it likes. I’ve done a lot of different functional testing and cross-reactivity and food sensitivity. And , that’s one of the reasons why I’m so good at it is because I’ve done it a lot on myself and others

Christine Okezie (39m 47s):
Don’t have that.

Kristin Grayce McGary (39m 48s):
And I listened to my body and my body’s a no. And some people say, well, God, don’t you feel so restricted? And like, no, I’m a gourmet cook. I make raw desserts that are gluten-free dairy-free that are so healthy. You can have them for breakfast. So I am not suffering for lack of healthy, delicious orgasmic, healthy food. I’m just not.

Christine Okezie (40m 11s):
Yeah.

Kristin Grayce McGary (40m 11s):
Yeah. And I have a really strong self care developed line of, of, in my being that, that I have developed a capacity of self-love around food and I don’t attach emotional caring for myself with food.

Christine Okezie (40m 37s):
That’s been a long journey in the making for sure.

Kristin Grayce McGary (40m 41s):
Right. Yeah.

Christine Okezie (40m 42s):
Yeah. And when I say non-negotiable, I w I don’t mean rigidity for the sake of rigidity. I mean, non-negotiable because it’s a non-issue, you know, and, and, and that’s what I want folks to take away is that it’s not about having the perfect whatever. Right. You’ll know, it’s perfect. If you will, when you don’t have to push so hard to make it happen. Right. And so this is the paradox, and I’d love if you kind of maybe, you know, jam on this for a little bit, the paradox is when you take this integrative approach to taking care of yourself, getting to root, cause looking at all the factors you’ve just described, right. It does take time and attention, and it does take some dedication commitment and your fourth C right.

Christine Okezie (41m 25s):
And at the same time I found there’s this balancing act where you don’t want to tip into, you’re just always working on yourself and it feels so hard. And it, I’m just, what’s wrong with me now. Right? And there’s this very delicate balance. Do you know what I’m saying? Because I have people who working with amazing folks, professionals and guides along the way. But one of the things that I’m always really sensitive to is are you feeling empowered in your journey, Right? Because it’s the journey that counts not the outcome. So if you’re grinning, gritting your teeth, feeling deprived, feeling like, oh my God, I’ll just, you know, another, another thing I need to eliminate another supplement I need to take it’s counterproductive, I’ve found.

Kristin Grayce McGary (42m 14s):
Well, for me, this is also often the root of why they’re having an issue in the first place. And it requires addressing the mindset. It requires addressing the triggers around it. Instead of like, like some people just pull back, well, okay, then don’t eliminate it. It’s too hard. But what I would like to do is, well, let’s shine a light, let’s have some conversations and do some sessions around why it’s hard. Let’s go into the triggers of why this feels like deprivation. How has reward and punishment been part of your wiring and go there, because that is juicy.

Kristin Grayce McGary (42m 54s):
And there is some beautiful awakenings that can happen there. So that these old shells of protection naturally melt and dissolve, they fall away. And then it’s like, oh my God, the food tastes different. Now I want this, like this, this body is worth this. It’s, it’s hungry for this. And so

Christine Okezie (43m 16s):
It’s

Kristin Grayce McGary (43m 16s):
Not an either, or it’s a both, and really

Christine Okezie (43m 20s):
Yes, yes. But it is be willing to take the detour eyes, what I’m hearing, you know? And that’s, that speaks to me a lot too, is be willing to go, you know, a little bit more Securitas in your journey of exploration, which is really the key, right? Yeah.

Kristin Grayce McGary (43m 34s):
Yes. And to get curious and compassionate, like when we hit that wall and we’re like, oh, I just want, okay. Let’s, let’s, let’s soften, let’s lighten up. Let’s look at this. Let’s go play, but it doesn’t have to be so hard. Let’s look at the wiring around it having to be hard. And then now I’m going to trick you and we’re going to play a game.

Christine Okezie (43m 56s):
Right.

Kristin Grayce McGary (43m 56s):
And I’m just going to trick your unconscious. Right. And I’m going to do it with love because we all need that. I have a very, very strong unconscious, like, oh my gosh, I’m so difficult to hypnotize. If anyone wants to hypnotize me, that’s a

Christine Okezie (44m 14s):
Challenge

Kristin Grayce McGary (44m 14s):
For the challenge. I’ve read some of the best of the best. And I’m like, eh, so, so I think that sometimes we need to get habit like unconscious sneaky approach with love and to bring love, to return, to love, and that this can help deactivate some of the resistance to the change and, and help us eliminate the deeper pieces that I look at as fun and not work. And so sometimes too, I get to model that that’s kind of fun. And then my people feel that, and they’re like, oh, it’s not hard. It doesn’t have to be hard.

Kristin Grayce McGary (44m 55s):
And people know let’s have fun. Let’s learn how to meditate with fricking chocolate. I can’t meditate. I’m like, you can with my chocolate, You know? So there are ways to have fun. Like, okay, you’re having a challenge with sugar. You’re craving, you feel addicted. You’ve got these tendencies. Your brain is just like, okay, let’s, I’m going to give you some raw desserts that are like, sugar-free so healthy. You’re not going to believe it. And you eat that as much as you want go for it. And while you’re doing that, here’s a journaling exercise,

Christine Okezie (45m 36s):
Right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. I love it. I love it. Yeah. It’s beautiful. Oh, such great, great strategies and great practices that you offer. Amazing. Like what’s the number one thing that you would like our listeners to take away from your work.

Kristin Grayce McGary (45m 52s):
I guess that it’s individualized and very comprehensive that there is no one size fits all. And that, you know, I, I had a big publisher. I had to write a book for the general public to draw some big brig, makes some big brush strokes. But to please understand that, even though genetically we’re human, we are still individual and, and some experts will argue and say, you know, we’re all the same. We’re really not that different. But I actually feel like we are at a soul level at an emotional level. I look at the ecosystem of your being, and that is very unique to you.

Kristin Grayce McGary (46m 37s):
And, and there’s a way in which we can look at those details. So to, to understand that you’re an individual, that it’s not one size fits all and that, and that you have your own unique, magic and medicine for the world. You have your own special gift to offer the world. And even if you don’t know what that is yet, even if you don’t understand it, or you haven’t found it, or it’s confusing, or you want to find it to trust, to keep the faith that you do have it, and you can access it. And there are many, many, many doorways that can get you there. And holistic keto for gut health might be one, and there might be others to follow your heart and to try things to not be afraid to try.

Kristin Grayce McGary (47m 27s):
Even if you fail that failure in mind, isn’t real failure. It’s actually growing. And that if we don’t make mistakes, if I didn’t go from doctor to doctor and have so many failures around getting better, I wouldn’t be here today. Multiple decades later, helping people. And to me, each one of those, Nope, not that one. Nope. That’s not right. Nope. That’s still hurts to me was an opportunity of, oh, there’s more, that’s something more for me to learn. There’s something more for me to embody. There’s something more for me to discover. There’s something more for me to try and to never give up to, to trust in your higher self, to trust in nature, to trust in your body that your body is communicating.

Kristin Grayce McGary (48m 13s):
I think those are the big things.

Christine Okezie (48m 15s):
Oh my gosh, those are pearls of wisdom. And so, you know, people can really take that to heart. Cause this is, you know, sometimes it gets hard, you know, but I think you offer so much, you know, hope and resilience and you, and you bring, like you said, you bring the power back to us. And I think that ultimately is where we, we have such greater opportunities when we remember just how powerful we actually can be, you know? Okay. Is there anything else, Christine, grace, that, you know, you wanted to share maybe a special event or anything that you’re working on right now?

Kristin Grayce McGary (48m 51s):
Sure. Thank you for asking. If people are interested, I have a monthly newsletter and I share recipes. I launched blogs every month. So to please join my newsletter list, I don’t spam you. And if you do that, you’ll get a free keto for gut health recipe book. That’s digital beautiful. And you’ll also get a lot of beautiful offers that I share different offers every month and all sorts of fun things I do one-on-one retreats. So if you’re interested in that, or you’re interested in having a very fresh and individualized comprehensive, look at your health, I do functional blood chemistry analysis.

Kristin Grayce McGary (49m 31s):
You can find all of this on my website. Yes. And on all my social media, I have lots of different social media, you know, Instagram and Facebook and all sorts of things that people can find me on. And I can give you all those links. Absolutely. Kristen grace mcgarry.com is my website and grace is spelled differently. K R I S T I N G R a Y C E M C G a R y.com.

Christine Okezie (49m 60s):
Awesome. I will include all of that in the show notes, Kristen Grayce, this has been amazing. I feel like we just touched the tip of the iceberg as to all that you have to offer. So thank you so much for the, the amazing work they’re doing in the world. It’s such a wonderful service.

Kristin Grayce McGary (50m 13s):
Okay. Thank you, Christine. Thanks for having this show. Thanks for getting things out there in the world and sharing your magic with so many. It’s so impactful. Thank you so much for having me.

Christine Okezie (50m 23s):
My pleasure now. Thank you.