Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
119. Spiritual Healing in Cancer Treatment With Dr. Katie Deming
85 Plays5 months ago
In this episode of the Spiritual Fitness podcast, Eric Bigger and Dr. Katie Deming, a radiation oncologist and expert in integrative medicine, explore the profound connections between spiritual healing, emotions, and overall wellness, particularly in the context of cancer. They offer holistic health guidance and empower individuals on their wellness journeys. Dr. Deming strategies for holistic healing for anyone interested in integrative approaches to health and healing.
Also in this episode:
- Dr. Deming emphasizes the harmful effects of aggressive language like "battle" when dealing with cancer, advocating for more peaceful and supportive terminology.
- Highlighted the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study showing a correlation between childhood trauma and adult disease, advocating for emotional healing as a crucial factor in overall health.
- Emphasized that healing requires physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual wholeness, suggesting that integrative practices contribute significantly to wellness.
- Dr. Deming shared personal experiences of metaphysical connections during patient transitions, highlighting the profound impact of spiritual awareness in medical practice.
About Katie Deming
Katie Deming, MD, known as The Conscious Oncologist, is a pioneering former radiation oncologist, healthcare leader, inventor, and TEDx speaker. She transcends the boundaries of conventional and integrative medicine, creating a new paradigm in cancer prevention, treatment, and post-treatment healing. Dr. Deming's methods focus on helping individuals with cancer detoxify and nourish their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves, activating their body's innate ability to heal.
You can connect with Dr. Katie Deming on the links below:
Website: https://www.katiedeming.com/
Instagram: @the.conscious.oncologist
Check out her workshop schedules here: https://www.katiedeming.com/6-pillars-of-healing-cancer/
Free Cancer 101 Guide: https://www.katiedeming.com/cancer-101/
Check out Miracle Season’s collection: https://itsmiracleseason.co/collections/frontpage
Work with me: https://www.ericbigger.com/workwithme?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=work_with_m...
Connect with Simplified Impact: https://hubs.ly/Q02vvMJ90
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Spiritual Fitness and Dr. Katie Emmett
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Spiritual Fitness Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Bigger, and each week we will explore powerful practices, inspiring stories, and expert insights to guide you on your path to holistic health. By blending spirituality and physical wellness, we support you in strengthening your body and soul. Whether you're a seasoned spiritual seeker or just beginning your journey, the Spiritual Fitness Podcast is here to help you unlock your inner potential and live your most vibrant, purposeful life. It's Miracle Season.
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to Spiritual Fitness Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Bigger, and I'm back again with another episode. And I have a pleasure to have Dr. Katie Emmett. She's talks all about medicine, integrative medicine to help people heal from cancer. And ah she's on today and she's going to talk about cancer, emotions, spirituality, healing. Katie, welcome to the podcast. How are you? Thank you, Eric. I'm doing great. It's nice to be here with you.
The Language of Cancer and Its Impact on Healing
00:01:13
Speaker
Thank you for joining us. So I want to start with a quote, a TEDx from your TED Talk about how to speak to a cancer patient. I don't know if that was the title, but you said something at the end and it kind of like slip out. And I want to read a quote to you and you can start there. You said, how to speak to those we want to heal. What does that actually mean? I actually love that. How did you get to that paradigm of those words to say it in that moment?
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think that you know this talk, that particular TED talk, how to talk to someone with cancer really questions a lot of the things that we do in society and the way that we speak about cancer using battle language and using the term survivor which as an oncologist i think when i first really heard this idea that that word was problematic i had been practicing for over ten years so i think the you know i ended the talk with you know saying
00:02:15
Speaker
how do we want to speak to those we want to heal is like really calling attention to, is this language the way that we heal? you know And I would argue that it's not, that when we want to heal using language like fighting and battling and all of this stuff that ramps up our sympathetic nervous system, is not the way to heal because the way that we heal is when we are in rest and when we are at peace. That is the best state for healing of the body. Yeah, relaxation, meditation. and I like to get to the root of things you know on a podcast because there's so much surface level in the world we live in and we don't know where things come from.
Understanding Cancer: Origins, Perceptions, and Advancements
00:02:58
Speaker
right so When I think of the word cancer in the month of July,
00:03:02
Speaker
cancerans, people who are cancer, that actually has a negative connotation when I say it. Like you're a cancer, right? But for me, because of the word, the way it's perceived most of my life, I have a negative connotation towards it because I was very publicized. My question to you, what is the root word to cancer? Where did it come from and who created it? And then on top of that, who blinds a buyer to cancer? Like where does that start and where does that come from? where does the history lie for that word to be such have an impact on our nervous system? Wow, so that's such an interesting question that I've actually never looked into the origins of the word cancer. But the truth is is that when we use that in a medical setting, but the word that we use is carcinoma, which is just
00:03:50
Speaker
defined by cells that are growing uncontrolled. right and so When a pathologist looks at a biopsy, they basically define something as normal tissue or precancerous or cancer or carcinoma. And I'm not sure how we got to cancer from carcinoma, so I actually will have to research that after this conversation. I don't know the history of that piece, but I will say that the way that we perceive cancer in society today
00:04:28
Speaker
is not based on the biology of the disease, but rather the fear, the, you know, all of that negative emotion that's associated with a diagnosis that many people see as like a death sentence. They hear cancer and think that's it, right? This is the end, you know, and am I going to be here for my kids and, you know, catastrophizing? But the truth is that is not cancer. And also cancer is like 200 different conditions, right? We say one thing, but it's so many different things fall under the umbrella of cancer. And I'll just take, you know, one of the most common types of cancer, breast cancer is, you know, it used to be when I started my practice in 2006. And at that time, if someone was diagnosed with metastatic cancer, so stage four,
00:05:21
Speaker
They had a survival of like 18 months. So it really was a poor prognosis. But today, women who have breast cancer that is estrogen driven can live decades actually with stage four disease. And I don't think that story is talked about, you know, that really people can do quite well. You know, I said that in my TEDx talk that even just the word cancer, that whole talk is about language and healing. But the word cancer itself is like a bomb going off in people's head of just so many things that we've been programmed to believe that are just not true. Yeah, it is. It's just a scary word. I mean, even when you say stage four, you know, I had a friend who passed away years ago from, uh, and ah he was an air traffic controller. And I guess working at that, debt you know, whether airport or where he was working that we asked 43 years old.
00:06:19
Speaker
And he had stage four, he died within like three months.
Emotional Baggage and Its Physical Manifestations
00:06:22
Speaker
But it was the stage four that triggered me. I'm like, oh, snap. I went straight into flight, fight or flight. Like, I cannot pray, I cannot help, right? Like, in my, I don't even have the back history on the information or what it means. But I also want to get to, like I said, to the root of, okay, I talked about the word, but you had a YouTube network called Introduce. But you were talking about trauma and pain from someone's childhood and later in life, they can manifest cancer in their body because I believe the body keeps the score. That's a book as well if you're not familiar. Another book by Louise Hay is called You Can Heal Your Life. And in the back of the book, she has probable causes.
00:07:04
Speaker
for these ailments that are emotional. So can you speak briefly on what were you elaborate in an interview about trauma and childhood, how that can manifest in one's life, if you can. So like what type of trauma, what could it be for some people? Sure. Just before I explain that, I'd like to explain how I got to learn about that because I ended up leaving Western medicine in 2022 because I had had an experience similar to a near-death experience, but it's actually called a shared-death experience that happens to medical professionals who are at the scene where someone transitions
00:07:44
Speaker
and they can have a metaphysical experience like in your death. And that happened to me in 2020. And after that event, I had been a radiation oncologist and a healthcare leader serving at a very high level. I knew something was wrong with the way we were practicing medicine because people were coming in younger and younger and you know, as a population, we were getting sicker. So I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what the problem was. And after this event, I just knew I had to leave. The problem was I didn't know what the solution was. I just knew that the way that we were healing was not true healing for the body. And not to say that there's not a place for Western medicine, but I just saw that this was not it. And I knew that I needed to leave.
00:08:29
Speaker
And as I made that transition to start to step out of Western medicine, I started to research what makes us well, what contributes to illness that maybe I wasn't taught
Trauma, Healing, and Techniques for Emotional Release
00:08:42
Speaker
in medical school. Like everything that we're taught in medicine is about pathophysiology, what goes wrong in the body. And then we're taught, okay, this is what's wrong and you give this medicine to fix it. Or in my case, you give radiation to try and fix it. But when I stepped out and started looking at actually what makes someone well, you know healing the definition of healing is to bring wholeness back to the being. and Wholeness really requires physical
00:09:13
Speaker
healing, emotional healing, mental and spiritual healing. So I started digging into these different areas. And the first area that really caught my attention was emotions. Behind you, all the feelings is beautiful. Yes. So that's perfect. That's what I talk about all day long. So what I realized was that there was all this data. And the biggest study that caught my attention was the ACE study. And ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Events Study. And this is a very large study that followed thousands of children into adulthood and calculated the number
00:09:51
Speaker
of emotional traumas that they had in childhood and they called these adverse childhood events but they are such things as physical abuse, neglect, parent with a substance abuse. parent who's incarcerated, divorce. The list goes on, but all of the traumatic things that you can think of in childhood, and what they found was the higher the ACE score, the higher the incidence of disease in adulthood, so cardiovascular disease, cancer, lung disease, and diabetes.
00:10:25
Speaker
And so for me, this was shocking because I was never taught this in medical school. And this is a big deal. And I love that you brought up the body keeps the score because this is right, that our body does keep the score from emotional trauma. And then the other thing that I started to look at was the radical remission data. And this comes from Kelly Turner, where she studied people who cured their illness, most of them cancer, with without conventional therapy or without therapy that they would have expected to cure the illness. And what she did was she looked at what are the factors that are common among these people who are curing themselves. And she came up with 10 factors that that was in common. And of course, when we look at studies like this, it's not causation, but there's a correlation. Clearly, these people are doing things
00:11:16
Speaker
in common that are helping them cure their illness. and Two of the things on her list of 10 had to do with emotions. One of them was releasing past trauma and the other was cultivating positive emotions, so helping people move out of negative emotions and cultivating positive emotions. And for me, this was huge because I was like, this is a big component that we are totally missing in Western medicine. And in fact, with what we just talked about with the diagnosis of cancer, what does it do? It actually causes another traumatic event emotionally, all the fear, all the worry. And so for me, it made me realize like, number one, we need to be talking to people about their emotional
00:12:03
Speaker
experiences and what they've had so that we can help them release that and lighten their load from past trauma. But then the other thing is we need to teach people how to become fluent with their emotions. How do you process emotions in a healthy way and don't suppress them or you know bypass them? And so this is a big part of my practice now is teaching people Number one, the importance of releasing past trauma, and then the second piece of learning how to process your emotions so you're not re-traumatized by the emotional component of the diagnosis of cancer.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah, and I think we're harping on you know the fact that EQ is so important, emotional intelligence, awareness of what our body and minds are processing. Can you give the audience, people listening or people who might watch this, can you give them some tools from your toolkit that they can use to kind of like maneuver from that emotional trauma or pain or past experience to kind of help them shift the paradigm into a more healthy body or consciousness? Absolutely. With emotions and emotional trauma, if someone is sick, it is actually can be challenging to have them do like talk therapy to work through emotional trauma because it can re-traumatize them when they're in a vulnerable state.
00:13:32
Speaker
And so my practice is that I do have clients who are doing, maybe they're already seeing a therapist and talking, but the techniques that I've found are most effective for trauma release when someone is stressed, like dealing with a medical illness, is doing subconscious work. and you can release emotional trauma from the subconscious in a much more gentle way that doesn't re-traumatize them or bring up things that can basically weaken them when they're already in a weakened state.
00:14:05
Speaker
and so one of the Tools that I use the most in my practice is something called Psych K and that's P-S-Y-C-H and the letter K. And Bruce Lipton talks about this in Biology of Belief and he used it himself to really transform his life. And Psyche is a subconscious technique or modality that does a few things. Number one, it can release past trauma from the subconscious mind. It also can reprogram the subconscious mind for more empowering stories around health and healing. And the third thing that it does is it teaches a whole brain technique to help facilitate emotional processing.
00:14:54
Speaker
And so the emotional processing, I want to talk about that piece because I think that is something that not many people have heard of. I had never heard of it before. But basically, when we get into emotions, we tend to get into one side of the brain or the other. And if we are in our right side of our brain, we sometimes can be worried about becoming overly emotional because that's like the feminine side of the brain. And it's just like a more feminine approach of becoming very emotional. And people worry that if I allow the emotion and I'm in this side, it basically feels overwhelming. like And then I want to kind of shove it down.
00:15:36
Speaker
The other side of the brain, the left side of the brain when we experience emotions and we're in our left side of the brain, that is a more masculine or logical processing and people tend to just shut it down and basically explain away the emotions and just get into logic and reason. And both of those can be problematic because they don't allow us to experience the natural wave of an emotion. So emotions are designed to rise. and then they'll crest, and then they'll neutralize if we allow them. But most of us have been conditioned to whether it's you're told, don't show your emotions because that's not manly or whatever, or you're so emotional, and so people learn to start suppressing their emotions.
00:16:22
Speaker
And what PSYCH-K does is you do positioning of the body, and PSYCH-K stands for psychological kinesis. And kinesis just means basically the positioning of our body. And so you get them into a position that activates the corpus callosum, which connects the right and the left hemispheres of the brain. And when someone experiences emotions when they have both sides of the brain activated, it makes it easier to ride that wave and not either get overly emotional or explain it away and go into logic and reason. And so that is one of the techniques that can be taught. And I'm not a psyche practitioner.
00:17:09
Speaker
Basically, someone can find you can go onto the website for Site K and find a practitioner and they will teach you these techniques that are so powerful, both for release, reprogramming the subconscious mind, and then learning how to experience emotions. But what I'll explain is that when you get into this whole brain state and you experience the emotions, you are able to ride that wave And then recognize that the emotions neutralize themselves if you allow them to flow through you. And that is very empowering for people to recognize that they can be with their emotions and not lose, you know, feel like they're losing control and actually get down to neutral. So I use this quite a bit in my practice. I work with a psychic practitioner and then they use these techniques like before they go into a doctor's appointment.
00:18:04
Speaker
they will get into position and basically feel whatever anxiety or fear that they're feeling about the appointment and get to neutral so that then when they walk in to see the doctor, they're grounded and they can make decisions from an empowered place because if you can imagine if you're afraid and you're off balance, all of this you know going on in their bodies and then they go into a doctor who basically sounds like charlie brown's teacher like wow wow you know they you can barely process all the information when you're in your emotions and helping people get out of that into a grounded state can be really powerful to help through a diagnosis like cancer so that is one of the techniques that i use the most.
00:18:46
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds sounds like a grounding technique to get people kind of grounded and calm and you know at ease because if we're all here in our consciousness trying to figure out what we should i do.
Prevention and Spiritual Connection in Healing
00:18:57
Speaker
Is something bad going to happen? This and that. And you can't really feel what the emotions are coming up, so you're fighting them. And I get quiet sometimes. They want to control the thoughts, but they only control on the negative thoughts. And I'm thinking about the good thoughts because the negative thoughts only make sense to whatever trauma or negativity they're experiencing about the outcome that they're not getting, right? So I realized some people, they stay in this negative loop because they can control what they potentially might see that's not real. Oh, I'm not going to get the job. They're not going to call me back. Oh, my breasts are hurting. I mean, I have a lump on my chest, so it could be cancer, right? They start creating this narrative that makes sense, that makes it logical for the body to say, okay, this is true. And then eventually they manifest, you know, you said a few things about letting emotions. through you and how physical aspect of the subconscious there's a lot of you and I think what I like to tell people movement is medicine and motion changes emotion. So can you speak on the benefits of spirituality and fitness and how those two components can prevent cancer or prevent anybody in their life from having these ailments or illnesses of cancer or something similar from your perspective from what you know?
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah. Well, this is so interesting. I've never thought about that in terms of fitness and spirituality necessarily. But what I can say is that cancer and other chronic illnesses that we are seeing rising at epidemic proportions right now, like diabetes, neurodegenerative disease, cancer, they are all a result of a toxic lifestyle. that the modern lifestyle is what is making us sick and we are not moving, right? So there's, you know, from a physical aspect, we're not moving our bodies like we used to move. We're not connecting with the sun. We're not connecting with the earth. We're living in these houses with electronics all around and the EMFs and all these things. We've become very disconnected from the natural environment that we were designed for. And then we're eating foods that are processed that are not
00:21:12
Speaker
humanely raised and all of that is affecting us. Basically, we're taking in toxicity. We're also taking in emotional toxicity and mental toxicity and all of that. And then the spiritual aspect, from my perspective, when I think about spirituality and illness, I'm speaking mostly about who you are at your core. like Who are you? Who are you here to be? and Most of us have been conditioned to become someone that fits with their family of origin, the schools that they went to, the government that they were
00:21:50
Speaker
you know, under. So all of these things are conditioning us to become something that fits into that paradigm. But oftentimes that is not who we truly are. And illness can be a manifestation of being out of alignment with who you are at your core. And so this is another piece of the modern lifestyle is that we are being conditioned to become someone other than our true selves, and this also can be related to development of illness in the body.
Dr. Emmett's Journey to Oncology and Spiritual Insights
00:22:25
Speaker
Yeah, and it's so true because I know for sure most people, at least in America I would say, from what I know, not most, because most is wrong. The majority of the people don't know because we haven't been programmed or conditioned to know ourselves, right? To know our ancestral lives, our background,
00:22:43
Speaker
who we really are, how we really think. Like you said in the beginning, you know some practitioners or doctors, they're told to do things a certain way. And you felt a nudge that, I don't feel this, this is not right. While we practice in like this to heal this ailment, we should be doing something else. And then you had a shared experience, you said. And so I want to talk and shift the conversation to who Dr. Kate, who is she? What is her background? What is her roots? How did she get into this medicine to help people heal and why cancer? Why not know physical therapy or spiritual healing? Did you grow up in this background? like Where are you from? and like
00:23:23
Speaker
How did you become the woman you are today? Because for me speaking to you and I came to you as a patient or client, your energy makes me feel like I can trust you, right? And I love how you articulate knowing and your beliefs around everything that you're doing. Well, who is Kayden? How do we get to know more who she is outside of a title of a doctor and all the things she practiced? Because I think that's important. Your energy that comes through is so authentic. Thank you. So I think that that's evolving, right? I think we're always going to be learning about ourselves. And honestly, a lot of my journey of becoming who I am today and continue to become something throughout my life is a lot of it is the undoing and the letting go, right?
00:24:12
Speaker
But there are clues to who I was throughout my lifetime. And you can see those, right? But you only see them looking back. It's like looking forward, it's not so clear. But now that I look back at my life, I can see how everything led here to where I am in this new practice. I grew up in California, so I grew up in Northern California, and then I was a springboard diver and went to UC Santa Barbara and was on the swimming and diving team there. So when I was in Santa Barbara, I was studying biopsychology and neuroscience. Basically, I was interested in the biologic basis of psychology, so understanding what was going on in the brain, what was going on in the body that was
00:24:58
Speaker
causing people to behave in different ways. And I didn't know what I would do with that as a career. I was like, well, I guess I could become a doctor or I could do research right now. I know that I could do anything, right? You could do anything with an undergraduate degree, but at the time I was really like, gosh, what am I going to do with this? And at the time, my mom was a nurse practitioner and she was like, I don't know that you want to be a doctor. Like I know that you love children and you want to have a family. And most of the doctors that she worked with were male at that time is quite different than it is today. And so I was like, well, I'm like, I don't know. I said, well, what would I really not like about medicine? And maybe I can just cross it off my list. And so.
00:25:41
Speaker
I had never had anyone close to me die. And so I thought that I would find death or being around people who are dying very challenging if I went to medical school. So I decided to go volunteer at hospice when I was 20 years old. And that experience, obviously it didn't turn out as I was hoping to cross medicine off my list by volunteering at hospice. That experience just changed my life because at 20 years old, we're so self-centered and think the world revolves around us and like we're just like trying to do all the things. and I learned so many things from these people who were facing the end of their life, and they were so generous with me of sharing the things that they wish they had known before they got to this place of looking back.
00:26:30
Speaker
And the things that they shared with me, there's a book Regrets of the Dying that was written by a hospice nurse. And the number one thing that she said, people said to her, was the exact same thing that people said to me. And it was, I wish I had the courage to be myself. That is the number one regret, and that was the number one thing that I heard from them. And other things that they would say to me was, I wish I had you know just been me. like I wish I had been able to just be me and not done what everyone else wanted me to do. And I wish I hadn't worked so much. right and So all of these pieces, but at 20, I was just
00:27:12
Speaker
hooked I was fascinated by them because they had so much wisdom and they were so generous and the intimacy of being with people who are at the end of their life is so beautiful because they're open and also the veil starts too thin at the end of life and they start to see things more clearly. And so I was hooked and I knew from that experience that I wanted to not only go to medical school, but I wanted to work with cancer patients because I wanted to be with people who were facing life-threatening illness because of this intimacy, because of
00:27:49
Speaker
the beauty that can be seen, you know, when someone faces a life-threatening illness. But what was interesting was when I interviewed for medical school, I interviewed at probably six schools, I think. And you interview with like six different doctors at each school. And I only interviewed with one oncologist in all of the schools that I interviewed at. And I was so excited to meet this guy. I was just like, oh my gosh, he was the first oncologist that I was going to meet. I had never met an oncologist before. So he said, I see in your personal statement that you want to become an oncologist. And why? And so I told him about this experience of hospice and how it just changed my life and that I wanted to be with people who were dealing with cancer. And that the intimacy that I wanted that I wanted to have that intimate relationship with patients. And if I had such an amazing experience as a volunteer, what would it be like to be their doctor?
00:28:47
Speaker
And um that man crushed me. oh why He looked at me and he was like, that is not a good reason for you to become an oncologist. If you want to become an oncologist, you have to love the science because you have eight years of science ahead of you in order to do this. If you just want to be with people with cancer, you could be a therapist, you could be a nurse, you could be all these other things that you have to love the science. And I took that, now I see in retrospect, I'm like, maybe there was some truth because now that I've experienced this side of practicing medicine, you know I see maybe what he was saying, but at the time I thought he was saying I wasn't smart enough or I wasn't good enough or whatever. right and so
00:29:32
Speaker
I remember I walked out of that interview and just was like tears streaming down my face. I'm just like, oh my gosh, like maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I don't know this. and Then I decided that I was never going to tell anyone again, at least in you know when I went to medical school and all of that, my reasons for wanting to go into it because I thought, gosh, this is you know maybe not a good reason. But I knew that what he was saying was not because I wasn't smart enough. I was interviewing at Harvard, so obviously I was smart enough to become a doctor. But it started to open my eyes to not everyone saw things the way that I did. you know And so I started you know medical school, then went eventually into radiation oncology,
00:30:18
Speaker
And I spent a lot of time around people dying in my career just out of my own interest in that. So about half of my practice was palliative, meaning those people would eventually die of their illness. And so I learned so much wisdom from being close to death throughout my career. And I felt like There's so much that we can learn from people who are close to the end of their life that it's hard to see it unless things are really turned upside down in your life to see what's really important, what matters. and One of the things that I loved about being an oncologist is that all the BS falls away. When someone's dealing with cancer, it gets real, and that you're really dealing with
00:31:08
Speaker
what's important in life. and that to me has always been and of The thing that's kept me going is being close to people and really having this intimate connection with my patients. and so Anyway, this whole concept of being close to death, being close to dying has continued to inform me And in 2019, I started to have those little nigglings like, something's not
Realigning Profession and Personal Path in Oncology
00:31:36
Speaker
right. You know, like people, like I was saying before, I was having this feeling like something's not right, but I couldn't put my finger on it because it didn't make sense. I was making lots of money. I was, you know, doing good work. My patients liked me. My colleagues respected me. I had said to my husband, I said,
00:31:53
Speaker
I know this is weird, but I feel like I'm not supposed to be practicing radiation oncology." And he was like, that makes no sense. He's like, you didn't finish your training until you were 32 years old. So I didn't have my first job until I was 32. He's like, you make half a million dollars, you work 40s a week, you're good at your job, maybe something is wrong with you if you're not happy. and so He was like, you basically have everything that anyone would want. And if you can't be happy with that, maybe there's a problem with you and maybe you're just never going to be happy. And so I had internalized that for a little while and I was like, gosh, is there something wrong with me? You know, it's like, I just couldn't put it together. And then in 2019,
00:32:44
Speaker
I helped a patient die using something called medical aid in dying. and that is where you can If someone has a terminal illness in certain states, you can have a doctor write a prescription so that if there were you know suffering that is excessive, when someone just decides that it's their time, they can actually take medications to end their life on their terms. And so that is legal in Oregon. And so when I first moved to Oregon, I was approached about it by one of my patients and I was like, no, I'm like, I took an oath to do no harm. I'm like, I'm definitely not going to write a prescription to end someone's life. But then I watched a movie, a documentary,
00:33:31
Speaker
And this was early in my career, maybe it was like 2008 or something, 2009. And the movie came out called How to Die. How to Die in Oregon or something, I think. It basically was about this process. Now it's called Medical Aid in Dying. At the time it was called Death with Dignity. And it really made me understand that it's a compassionate thing to do, that we do it for animals. Why would we not allow humans to choose if they were suffering excessively to end that suffering? And so after watching that film, I decided that, okay, if a patient ever came to me and wanted to explore this process,
00:34:12
Speaker
I would be open to that so that they would have a physician that they trusted who's willing to participate. And then I also made the decision that if any of my patients pursued this, that I would physically be with them when they took the medication if they wanted that. And most doctors don't. They would just prescribe the medication and then the patient actually has to take the medication themselves. It's not a physician-assisted suicide or, you know, no one else can give them medication. They have to take it. So in 2019, I had all those years actually, they had you know some requests about this, but a lot of patients who start the process never end up needing to take the medications or whatever. And so it wasn't until 2019 that I had a patient.
00:34:55
Speaker
end up taking the medication. And so I was with her and her daughter, and it was one of the most beautiful transitions I had ever experienced. But when I left her house, I knew that when I left this body and when I moved on to whatever was next, I was leaving alone. I don't know why that day that was just so profound for me that I was like, I cannot let anyone else tell me how to live my life because when I'm leaving, I'm leaving alone and I'm not going with my husband who's saying, you know, you should stay in this job or whatever. I can't point to him and say, he made me do it. He wanted me to stay in this job because it provided a you know stable income and all the rest.
00:35:43
Speaker
And so I think that it had started kind of there, that unraveling where I just was like, I'm not going to get to that end of my life and regret doing what I know is true, but I still had this like, I wasn't totally sure why I needed to leave. And so then in 2020, when this happened, it was just Clear and all of a sudden I knew and because I had had that experience in 2019 I knew that if I had the conviction that I was supposed to do something different that if I didn't do it when I got to the end of my life, I would be just like those people who had that regret of not having the courage to be themselves.
00:36:23
Speaker
And that's really what did it for me. And my decision to leave Western medicine totally blew up my life, as you can imagine, because, you know, all of my financial security, everything was tied into that. And then to have a partner who wasn't supportive, I went through a divorce, basically had to sell everything. Yeah, it just basically blew up my life. Yeah, we're to awaken it like the ego. Oh, yeah, for sure. That's the thing and I was listening. Now, I'll ask you a question. It might sound odd or maybe not. This two to one question is, have you tendency like your spiritual powers? Yeah. Do you believe you can bring people back from dying?
00:37:05
Speaker
I feel like we've got a gift to like, I don't know, save people from dying or like, it's like a spiritual thing about your nature. Like I can't explain it because for you to get all that information at 20 to work in hospice and get like people regrets when they're on a death day to have that information. I call it a prerequisite before you got to the spiritual awakening. You already had the information, right? The universe gave you the information and then you made a decision. And I also feel like it led you to your soul's calling, your soul's purpose, because you already served the ego's purpose. Come to, you know, our colleges and make all this money and you have everything that everybody would want, but you wasn't fulfilled. You know, there's a quote, success is getting what you want. The building is doing what you call to do, what you're made for.
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, so now I'm starting to talk about this a little more, but what happened after that first shared death experience was that my gifts started to open. And so I can basically, you know, the best way that I would describe it is that I'm a death walker or a death doula, that I can help people make that transition. from this realm to the next. So when someone is ready to transition, often the hardest part is letting go and letting go to surrender, to walk that path to the light. And I didn't know that I had this gift. I didn't know any of this after the shared death experience.
00:38:36
Speaker
I was different. so you know David Hawkins talks about in Power versus Force, he talks about people who have near-death experiences are bathed with very high frequencies when they go outside the veil, and it tunes their antenna to this higher-level information. like If you look at the scale of consciousness, and That is what happened to me. I just was tuned to something different and suddenly I started to know things that I'd never learned in this lifetime. and so That started to happen to me and I would receive information. But then the other thing is that I had a patient who I was very close to. I had been her doctor for 16 years. She was a young woman with breast cancer and she had a young daughter who was nine years old.
00:39:26
Speaker
and This was in, I guess, 2021. So my sheer death experience was in the fall of 2020. And in 2021, she basically went into a coma. And her husband, I was on vacation and all of this is very synchronistic.
Spiritual Guidance in End-of-Life Care
00:39:44
Speaker
I'd never go on vacation by myself. I was on vacation in Ojai by myself at a hotel And her husband starts texting me that she's in a coma and the doctors, he didn't trust the doctors. When she was sick, he wanted to talk with someone that knew them very well and that they trusted. And so he was talking to me and it was clear that she was dying, basically what was happening. And
00:40:11
Speaker
I could tell that there was some resistance and she did not want to die. You know, a lot of people don't want to die, but a young mother with a nine year old daughter is like, hell no, I'm not leaving. And she was just so stuck. She doesn't want to go, but I can see her body is failing. And I was in this place where I was like, I think I could help, but I also want to you know respect her free will, and also I don't want to step into like say something to him that is like, I didn't even know that I had the gift. I just sensed that I could help in some way. And so I said to him, I said, I had this experience,
00:40:50
Speaker
before where I connected with someone while they were transitioning, I think that I might be able to connect with her. Would you be okay if I attempted to connect with her? She's like in a coma at this point. And he was like, yes, because he trusted me. We had like a very close relationship. And so over the next couple of days while I was on vacation you know in at the Ojai Valley Inn, just this beautiful place, it's very spiritual in and of itself, right I basically started checking in with her. like I would go into meditation and try and connect with her.
00:41:25
Speaker
And she was very resistant at first. Like I could feel her. She was almost like a bee, like buzzing and like just basically pushing me away. Like, I don't want, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. And I just told her, I said, there is no hurry. I have no agenda, but I just want you to know that if you need help, I'm here. and I will keep checking on you." And so over several days, I kept checking in on her in meditation. And then eventually, this was like, I don't know, like the second day or something, I had this experience where I was having a massage. And actually, this like brings tears to my eyes because it was so powerful. But Mother Teresa came in into me and said, I'll show you how to walk around.
00:42:15
Speaker
And I've never read Mother Teresa's work, but the things that she told me, I later went and read, and they were word for word things that she's written before. And basically, the next time I went back into meditation, my patient told me she was ready. And so Mother Teresa took her hand and had me take her other hand. and showed me how to walk her own. And for her, it was like a grassy hill that she needed to walk. And that's where like that initial transition, it could be up to a light, it could be to a tunnel. For her, it was this hill. But basically, at the top of the hill, there was this giant man who looked like a bear, like 300 pounds, like 6'2", 6'3", big, big guy.
00:43:10
Speaker
and then this little woman with him. And Mother Teresa, myself, walked this patient up the hill. And then when she got to the top, she jumped into the man's arms and she just said, Daddy. And Mother Teresa said, our work is done. And basically, when I came out, I texted her husband and I asked, did her dad already pass? And I said, can you send me a picture of him? And I said, and I think there's another woman, but I don't think it's her mom. And sure enough, he sends me a picture of her dad. It's like a giant man. It's like just this huge guy who looks like a bear, exactly like what I saw. And then her aunt Millie was this little woman. The other one with him, and they had both already passed.
00:44:04
Speaker
And so, for me, that was confirmation that this was real. you know and so And the reason why for the tears is that it's overwhelming, you know the beauty, and to have you know spirit guides come in when someone's transitioning and the spirit guides will be different depending on that person's beliefs. right But my mom also passed. in 2022, and I helped her as well. And hers was different. So this is the interesting thing that each time it's different, but the big challenge that is apparently related to my gift is helping them just come to peace with letting their body go, you know, releasing the attachment to this body. And for my mom, it was also Mother Teresa.
00:44:58
Speaker
and Mother Teresa came in and she told her we were both standing on either side of her. And my mom, my mom said to me in this space, we had had like a very challenging relationship in the last couple of months of her life because I had mentioned that she had cancer in my TED talk and she had before told me that it was okay to share that. But After I gave the talk, she had a surgery that was unsuccessful and she decided she didn't want people to know she had cancer. And I had already shared it. And so we had this you know kind of rift where she was upset with me. But in her transition, when Mother Teresa and I were standing on either side of her, she said to me, she's like, I wish I had known who you were.
00:45:49
Speaker
When I was live, you know these important people. and Anyway, Mother Teresa basically told her it's time to let the body go and started to unzip her and basically took a zipper and just unzipped her body down. the body just like fell down and just light started emerging that just merged into everything and engulfed us all. Another guide that is with me that my mom didn't know but I've now had contact with was also behind her.
00:46:22
Speaker
And basically, it was the most beautiful experience, but it's like these things are hard to explain. And also, like I have not been ah super forthcoming with all of this because it's hard to even articulate or explain or and do people understand it, you know? Listen, the miracle season, this is what spiritual fitness is about because your spirit is so fit, the whole space for people to transition. And I knew when I saw you, I'm like, she's more than what the words say. There's something going on.
00:46:56
Speaker
And now, and I understand it. So let me get this clear. So I'm not thinking the opposite. So do people come to you when they're ready to go? And do you know they're ready to go? Like you walk them out, but do you ever keep people saying, is there like a choice? I don't know if you saw the soul movie that was the animated or Disney, where the Jamie Foxx became the cat and the cat became the guy and then you went into the coma and like in space and trying to decide that they should leave Earth. The way that I would describe this is that when we come and we incarnate in a human form, we our wholeness, which is one with everything, connects to the finiteness of this body.
Connecting with the Higher Self for Healing
00:47:41
Speaker
and that you know when we are open, when we are the fullest version of ourselves, we are connected to that wholeness. right But then we have the ego, we have the human. that There's kind of always this like dance between the two. But sometimes you know someone thinks that they're ready and the higher self is like, no, it's not time or you know the opposite. You can have this like where people think that they want to go or they're not ready and the higher self is like, no, the time. So I don't know someone's sole contract and what they're here for. And so I always
00:48:20
Speaker
am just open to the free will and seeing what unfolds. But the truth is, is that I think that there are things at play that we may not be privy to. And also the other thing is I don't do this in my practice. So I'm telling you this right now, but this is not something that I've been forward facing with. So people come to me to heal cancer. But this is something that is obviously part of my gifts and that I'm sure at some point I will do more of, but I haven't. So this has not been part of my work. This has been more just something that's been unfolding. Like seriously, I'm getting like, okay, when is the book coming out? When is the movie going to be written? What are writers, what are producers like? You have them. This is a movie. Like literally I'm looking at you on my photo.
00:49:10
Speaker
This is a movie. And what I'm getting like, as well as you can walk people in that transition, I also feel like you can help people, you know, deny that if you come in with the guidance, you know, I feel like. Yeah. i tell you Well, and so I'll talk about my current practice is that I help people heal naturally and that sometimes actually when someone is getting really close to the door, is when that connection to their wholeness can happen and the divine healing happens. And that's what radical remissions are, is that I really think it's us connecting with our higher divine self and recognizing that we have the capacity to heal. And an example of that is, I don't know if you've read Anita Morjani's book, Dying to Be Me. No, that's a great title.
00:50:01
Speaker
She basically was paranoid about breast cancer because her sorry about cancer in general because her best friend had cancer, her brother-in-law had cancer, and she was like eating vegan and doing all these things to basically not get cancer, and she ended up getting ah lymphoma herself. and What happened was is that she ended up getting so sick that she was dying of the lymphoma and went into kidney failure. and When she went into kidney failure, she had a near-death experience.
00:50:35
Speaker
And in the near-death experience, she basically connected with her divine self and realized that she had created the cancer out of her fear and that she could also heal it. She basically came back into her body and healed all of the tumors and now travels the world to share her story. And this is what I'm doing in my practice is I'm teaching people how to clear out their bodies so that they can connect with their higher self and they can heal. And even this morning, I just got a call from one of my clients where we've been doing this practice, you know, all of these pieces, the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual, and her cancer is gone. They can't find it.
00:51:26
Speaker
You are amazing. By the way, do you believe in or have you experienced plant medicine? so I work with a very powerful healer who has done a lot of plant medicine. I don't know if you've read the books from Carlos Castaneda. I heard it's the title, but no. The Don Juan teachings of Don Juan. heard of it. But and I'm asking that because I just was in Peru in May. And I experienced Wachuma cactus plant. Both in my heart and the downloads I got from the grandfathers that
00:51:58
Speaker
Miss Madison can heal cancer. That's the downloads of that. And so I know it's not legal in the States, but I know out there it's legal. So I'm just saying based on your practice, I mean, it makes sense you have this type of energy around you, your healer. And then here's another question and maybe you can help. So I have a former coach, right? Great guy. He has a son. And he's not just got drafted into the NBA. I won't say his name, but his son was a lottery pick. 30 days or maybe 60 days right before he goes to the draft, he gets that most from kidney cancers in each floor. He had like three surgeries already.
00:52:36
Speaker
He opened up to me last week about it. And I know a lot of this stuff is spiritual. So outside looking in from what you might be channeling right now, which you might know, what is something he can do? Because I'm going to reach out to him because I probably can share your information. But what is something he can do that's tangible steps that can kind of, I can't say remove it. I don't even know what I'm asking. I'm just saying what remedy to flirt and think about a beauty in a process that he can. Yeah. Well, I think that the thing is is that it's different for everyone, right? So everyone is an individual and the disease that they manifest is different depending on what they've experienced. But with you know when you're doing Western medicine for cancer, they're focused on
00:53:21
Speaker
eradicating the cancer, but not looking at the deeper issues like what is going on, whether there's emotional trauma, whether there's, you know, suppressed emotions,
Holistic Approaches to Cancer and Spiritual Awakening
00:53:34
Speaker
what's going on? I think really looking at what is the root cause of this illness? What is it related to? And my belief is that cancer is an imbalance of increased toxicity in the body and lowered immune function. And what you want to do is you want to start looking at the areas of your life that have toxicity like emotional toxicity, mental you know mind thoughts, and also what we're eating and how we're eating and connecting with
00:54:04
Speaker
the elements and protecting from EMFs and all of those things. So there's all those pieces. And then the spiritual aspect of who are you, you know, and what's out of alignment in who knows that it could be, it's never one thing that causes cancer. It's usually multiple things. And so what I would say is that you want to be looking at all of these aspects, but it also is up to the free will of the individual. Cause some people just aren't open to that. So that's where I'm always like these are the things that I would be looking at but then also respecting that he's on his own journey.
00:54:42
Speaker
And it was so interesting the contracts, right? It's like, cancel happens, but your son makes it to the NBA, and he's a lottery pick, and he's actually good. You know, so it's like all these years being a father, and then boom, son 1819, boom, you know, he makes it to the NBA, you've been coaching him, you know, this whole life, waking him up four or five a.m. to go to gym and shoot the basketball. This happens and that happens. And I'm like, okay, Is it the son who has cancer or the father? The father. Yeah. You know, it's like, wow. Right before, like 60 days before the draft, you get noticed that that's what's going on and then you have three surgeries. So, but yeah, I just was curious and I think I can't wait to look for the Netflix documentary of you.
00:55:27
Speaker
but Not even from a, you know, because I feel like the world is becoming more spiritual. And I feel like most people need spiritual parenting. But all the old ways of the Western way of thinking, being, and doing is not really helping. And people want results. And sometimes... best way to go is go within and get the information and get the medicine from your soul. But your soul is medicine, right? And you can listen that can tear you upside down and take you to your divine union to be complete and behold, to clear that energy. And so I'm just so thankful for who you are and work done for you to answer the call, to shift from the practice to your own practice, to be consciousness.
00:56:08
Speaker
to to be this healer in a way that you can't really put in a box. And so it's just amazing. like I don't know. I don't know if a book is in the process. I'm just excited to know you because I'm all about having resources and you never know who you're going to meet and or why you're going to meet them. But I know for sure, like you're definitely a messenger or angel in a lifetime and people even know more about you to hear you and I just look forward to seeing you grow on Amazon as a gift, right? And own it, step into it, right? And like, yes, I'm here. What do you need? Let's go. Before we leave, before we get off, is there anything you want to share with people who might be going through a rough patch in life, emotion, medicine, spirits, you don't have to be cancer related or illness in general, something they could probably like, focus on or give life or like to, to kind of make them feel better?
00:56:59
Speaker
Well, actually, so this is a practice that I'd known about this before, but I just came back upon it. And it's from a hypnotist in the early 1900s, Emil Kooy. And the practice is that 20 times when you wake up and before you go to sleep, you repeat this 20 times. And it's day by day in every way. I'm getting better and better." And that is so powerful. like I started recommending this for my clients because Kui and some other physicians were curing people with illness in the 1900s using this.
00:57:40
Speaker
And so I started using it with my clients. I was like, okay, well, I want to use it too. And just to see what it's, you know, what it can do. And what's beautiful about this saying is it doesn't matter what you're going through or what you are wanting to become better and better at. It's like so broad and so open that your mind doesn't, you know, sometimes when you do affirmations, your brain kind of like, well, that's not really true, right? But with this one, it's so gentle day by day in every way, I'm getting better and better and repeating that
00:58:15
Speaker
into the subconscious mind because we are always getting better and it is a very challenging time to live on this planet and that all of us need healing and all of us need to, you know, have that hope that we are getting better. And I think for me, it's just getting better is just really getting closer to who we are. And sometimes that requires really rough things in our lives. You know, we think that it's a catastrophe, but maybe your friend's cancer is an invitation to His spiritual awakening, and you know, and you just don't know Then did you know why it was 20 times because I know that well I used to say it I was having a rough patch last year I used to say it a few times before bed Sometimes in the morning every day and every way I get better and better Did they put the is 20 like the magic number or 21 times? Like what is it about the number? Does it matter or?
00:59:07
Speaker
I don't know. That's just actually his practice was having like a string with 20 beads or 20 knots and just doing that. And I think it's the repetition though of repeating it. I don't know if there's something specific about 20, but having that repetition and doing it right before you go to sleep, right where you're going to go through that Theta state where your brain is really suggestive. And then again, when you wake up, the repetition impresses the subconscious mind. and say repetition is the mother of skill. Yeah, that makes sense. I actually got to and start doing that again and again. So how can we find you like, well, concession or call some take-thin, like how do people get into the vortex of doctor to get this map?
Dr. Emmett's Practice and Future Contributions
00:59:49
Speaker
So my website is katydemming.com. And my podcast is Born to Heal. And on my podcast, I basically share my story of leaving Western medicine and then bring on experts
01:00:02
Speaker
to teach me and my listeners all the things that we should be teaching in Western medicine that we're not. And you're on social media as well, right? Yes, I'm on Instagram and Facebook. you that katie just the personalize Ooh, it's at the conscious oncologist. So my practice is called conscious oncology because consciousness is the foundation of my healing. And so I call myself the conscious oncologist, not because I'm more conscious than anyone else, but because thats the foundation is conscious oncology.
01:00:33
Speaker
Katie, you're amazing. Thank you so much for your medicine and wisdom today, substance and all the transparency that we had. This was a nominal interview. but Thank you, Musket. Please follow her, conscious oncologist, go to her website, tap in with her frequency. It's definitely a miracle season because the information we got today is tiny. It's going to last a lifetime and we look forward to the movie. I look forward to the movie. and we'll heal it for the universe. This is another spiritual podcast, they're doing without. Share, subscribe, like, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Eric.
01:01:12
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on the Spiritual Fitness Podcast. We hope today's episode has inspired you and provided valuable insights for your holistic health journey. By blending spirituality and physical wellness, you can strengthen your body, mind, and soul. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Until next time, stay strong, stay inspired, and remember, it's miracle season.